Posts Tagged ‘lotus’

New All Electric Tesla Roadster: Slower, Crashier than Lotus Elise

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

How many Tesla Roadsters have been delivered to paying customers so far, after a half decade of development and at least four production delays? A handful, so far.

How many Tesla Motors products have suffered accidents already? Well, let’s see, there was that one involving the car of a “Founder,” and then there was that other one that no one’s supposed to know about, and… Pictures or it didn’t happen, right?

Pictures! Now really, is an advanced air bag waiver appropriate for the typical driver of the Tesla Roadster? Is it true this particular car crashed something like ten minutes after delivery? Is it true that Tesla is trying to make the Roadster faster than the somewhat similar gasoline-powered Lotus Elise? Is it true that you could get a Lotus Elise for something like $30K and then have something like almost $100k left over to buy massive carbon offsets? Is it true that you can actually get a Lotus sports car with a manual transmission? So many questions.

Shouldn’t Tesla work on something practical like increasing the Roadster’s abysmal range instead of trying so hard to make it accelerate faster?

Here’s a Tesla in San Francisco that managed not to crash, on a least one day, anyway:

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Noblesse oblige is nothing to kill yourself over.