Hi was just wondering what others think of Tesla Model S. By others I mean non-journalists (there are lots of reviews there, I know) but the average EF Joe.

Would you consider buying one? I mean the car is great, accelerates like a Ferrari and is silent, spacious and so on.

But what about range, would you rely on the promise of more charging stations to appear in the next years or would you rather wait.

Looking forward to an interesting discussion.

I think the only problem with Tesla is the noise. It doesn't make enough of it!!
So for a fairly expensive car that makes it rubbish!

No chance, for us. It would barely manage - in fact at our normal speeds [1] it probably wouldn't - a round trip from home-office-ski home for the weekend.

[1] Not particularly high, normally setting cruise to a real 125kph or so on the autoroute, occasionally a real 140 on 'safe' sections.

I don't agree.
Whenever I see one driving I am surprised by the noise: these tires are way too wide.
If I would have an electric car, I'd prefer it to have no noise at all.

I've looked into this car, I mean really, a lot. Elon sends me his personalised motivational emails and everything.

My conclusion is that the Model S's range is not as great as advertised and can drop by up to 10% p.a. as the battery ages. I think Tesla will come good with charging stations, but when? And I suspect they will be limited to autobahns only.

The car is quite expensive for what it is; there are more and more challengers in the marketplace and they are entering with some aggressive pricing.

In any case I prefer the Model X -- but with the same reservations. For me, the biggest issue is range. And Ace1 has hinted at the fact that range drops alarmingly at higher speeds.

I got to drive it at the Zurich motor show and it was very nice to drive, I guess a lot depends on what your average daily driving distance is if it's less than the range then possibly worth it.

A car i really like the concept of is the chevrolet volt, which is a hybrid but done differently to all the other hybrids on the market in that the wheels are only driven by electric motors and the petrol engine is only used to recharge the battery, which means the petrol engine is only ever operating at it's most efficient. Just a shame about the styling of the volt it's typical american in that it has a very plastic mass produced feel.

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This obviously works but I don't understand how, since when converting from petrol to electric there must be a major loss of efficiency (heat, friction etc..).

It's been a standard means of locomotion on railways for decades, the idea being that an internal combustion engine designed to run at a single engine speed will be able to produce a high maximum power per unit fuel. In reverse you could think of it like a highly-tuned two-stroke motorbike, with a very narrow power-band. Outside of this range it's almost useless, but within it the power is amazing.

So by running the engine at at constant speed, and converting it to electricity with a minimum of losses (e.g. no gearbox, transmission etc.) it's theoretically possible to be less inefficient than a more flexible (and therefore less fuel-efficient) engine and normal transmission. In the case of railway engines it has the added advantage of being able to work on multiple wheel/motor sets to maximise traction.

I think they're just about almost there with this latest generation, but the additional weight and space requirements are significant, and in practice such a car is only more cost-effective if the majority of driving is done within the normal battery range and the petrol engine only used occasionally. And recharged from mains power most of the time.

I would also opt for a range extender in the model S. If they could fit a small (maybe wankel) engine in the front luggage compartment, that would greatly increase the cars appeal (at least to me).

That's not what you thought a year and a half ago.

You are right, a year ago I did not yet drive the Tesla. It is quite different to the hybrids before (I know it is not a hybrid, but if it had the range extender I wished for, then it would be)

so you'd have better range but would not be able to take any luggage for your weekend in Madrid?

toothbrush and deo would have to do?

The model S has storage space at front and rear, the front space is relatively small but could fit a small range extender. The rear storage is probably more than the equivalent petrol car of the same size, the display model they had at the motor show showed it with two extra rear facing seats in the rear storage compartment and you'd could have still squeezed in a bag or two.

As the tesla was designed from the ground up to be an electric car the battery is located between the front and rear wheels giving the car a very low C of G.

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Just bought a conventional petrol engined car. There is no way I'm going to pay 30+% more for a battery powered experiment that will need the batteries/hybrid system completely replacing in 8 years.

Until batteries can be vastly improved or fuel cell powered car compete in price with petrol one, they are all none-starters in the main stream market...

I think I'd be more worried about the fires than noise or wheels.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25003911

http://www.dailytech.com/Third+Tesla...ticle33720.htm

And a quote from a researcher at Cornell:

“Electric cars have been in the U.S. since the 1890s,” Wheaton said in an e-mail. “One hundred and twenty years later, they are still too expensive, too heavy and too energy inefficient.”

http://cornellsun.com/blog/2013/11/2...ist-for-tesla/

Tesla is back with new model D(P85D)

- 0 to 60 in 3.2 Seconds
- Max Speed of 155 MPH Vs 130 for model S.
- Range is 275 Miles.

Very impressive, although I can't stop thinking ... the machines are taking over ...

My neighbour has a Type S.

It's pretty cool to have a Coupé that seats 7 !

A note on range - if you mess about with the sliders on the Tesla website you quickly realise that the "advertised" 550km range quickly drops to 300km if you do 120-130kmh cruise. Which make a trip to the UK just about possible based on supercharger locations.

This should improve during 2015 - and Kudos to Tesla for pushing this and delivering a stylish useable product - but for me, although I don't a huge number of high km drives, that flexible is still important (and one of the reasons why I own cars).

Or, "half a lap of the Top Gear track."

I'd still take the Roadster though. Or preferably the Lotus it was based on