The Model S, aimed to rival conventional mid-market sedans from BMW and Lexus, is a far more ambitious -- and some would say unlikely -- project.
A "clean screen" design, the Model S would be built in Tesla's own assembly hall (in an undetermined facility in Southern California). It would offer a choice of three progressively costly battery packs with ranges of about 165 miles, 230 miles and 300 miles; it would accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and would have a top speed of 125 mph; the base price of the car would be $57,400 ($49,900 if you count the federal tax credit on all-electric cars); it would offer seven-passenger seating (which seems impossible, given the size and layout of the prototype and the increasingly stringent federal rear-crash standards) and optional all-wheel drive; it would provide for quick replacement of its floor-mounted battery pack, a daunting technical challenge that would require that the pack be a load-bearing part of the structure. Tesla expects to build 20,000 vehicles in the first full year of production.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, May 21, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 92 words Type of Material: Correction
Tesla Model S: A column by Dan Neil in Business on April 29 about Tesla's Model S said the car would not have the capacity to accept 440-volt current, which would allow it to be charged in 45 minutes and make it theoretically possible to drive the car cross-country with only brief stops to plug in. The column should have specified that the car would not accept a 440-volt alternating-current (AC) charge. It will take a 440-volt charge in direct-current (DC) voltage, which would require a special charging device not readily available.
And all of this, Musk has said, will take place 24 and 30 months after the company receives the federal loans, an audacious timeline that makes many in the car industry roll their eyes. Even people inside Tesla are leery.
"Elon likes to portray all this as extraordinarily easy," says J.B. Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer. "But there is certainly a lot of hard work between now and launch."
Tesla has already had to walk back a claim regarding the Model S' recharge capacity. The car will not have the capacity to accept 440-volt current, which would allow it to be charged in 45 minutes. Such a recharge cycle would have made it theoretically possible to drive the car continuously cross-country, stopping only briefly to plug in the car while passengers take meal breaks.
As for the production vehicle, this is what is known:
* Tesla is committed to using the same battery strategy as in the Roadster -- using large, liquid-cooled packs assembled out of off-the-shelf lithium-ion batteries, the so-called 18650-sized batteries. The packs will be somehow sandwiched in the floor of the vehicle. The quick-replacement design is problematic, said Straubel and Kurt Kelty, the company's director of energy storage systems, and is the subject of a lot of "deep thinking." Regardless, Tesla has no plans to invest in battery-swap infrastructure as part of the Model S' business plan.
