The Eclectic Electric Sportscar
(continued)
Spoiled from the wind in my hair, spoiled because my previous gas-powered automotive experiences were matched, even somewhat surpassed, by a device designed by a team Silicon Valley geeks out of laptop batteries, carbon fiber and a lot of 21st Century gumption.
It makes sense, if you think about it, that a vehicle like Tesla would be an "Only in Silicon Valley" story, what with Tesla getting their initial monetary backing from what enigmatic CEO and co-founder of Tesla, Martin Eberhard calls, "The Sand Hill Road Shuffle", named after the venture capital firms that litter Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California.
Tesla Motors got their start in July, 2003 when Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, both Silicon Valley veterans, decided that they wanted to create a company that made a fully-electric vehicle that was both efficient and fun to drive. If you spent anytime behind the wheel of General Motors' EV-1, then you would know what a tough task that would be. Electric cars in the past had two things against them, one being a tiny range per charge (usually around eighty to one hundred miles) and the other being a lack of, to put it politely, driving finesse. They were too slow and drove harshly and were not the type of vehicles intended for those twisty roads that enthusiasts prefer to drive.
Eberhard, being an automotive freak himself, knew this and wanted to create a new and exciting vehicle. Eberhard and Tarpenning then partnered with PayPal co-founder and future-leaning entrepreneur Elon Musk, went through three rounds of startup funding and raised $60 million for their dream project, Tesla Motors. They would launch the company with something beyond audacious, their first vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, a 100,000-dollar electric car that was both environmentally friendly, good-looking and a whole heck of a lot of fun to drive.
What you can expect from the Tesla Roadster is a carbon-fiber body, a chassis developed and built by Lotus, a two-speed electrically actuated manual transmission mated to a 3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor with a rotating magnetic field and a "red-line" of 13,500 rpm, which is fairly close to the redline in a Ferrari Formula One car. Plus, so many electronic gizmos and doodads that it makes the Honda Civic in your driveway, technologically speaking, look like Henry Ford's 1908 Model-T in comparison. The Roadster also has a USB 2.0 port, so forget about tuning the Tesla Roadster; this car is all about the hack. In all, a pretty amazing feat for a company about as far west from Detroit, in both spirit and execution, as the continent would allow.
