Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) New Tesla Roadster

Tesla have unveiled their new roadster alongside an electric truck. See the article here

Blimey. 600 miles on a single charge, 0-100 in 4.2 seconds.

The range is laughable at 400 miles with the smaller more windy roads in our country will put added strain on mileage. So not for GB market It's a wait and see moment but I won't buy one but would like to drive one!

So they have, brave words.

But an article in Autocar this week suggests that Tesla seriously under estimated the challenge of introducing the Model 3. They are way behind, partly caused by their own engineering commissioning policy: Musk has described the situation as Production Hell Stage 3.

The only Series 3 cars in use are being driven by employees. Production levels are less than 500 a week and the production is far more labour intensive than planned. Reminds me of Longbridge in the 70s.

The article predicts Tesla cannot deliver the cars as planned will either sell out or run out of money and go bankrupt: the author says it is impossible to be sure which way it will go.

Of course, this could all be "Spin", so Musk can claim responsibility for solving a problem all the nay-sayers predicted to be insoluble!

This may not be far off the mark.

You have to admire Musk and Tesla. They really are pushing forward and getting electric trucks in the road should be imperative if emissions are to be reduced. Not sure why you need acceleration of a sports car especially if it impinges on range but then that’s probably all a bit of hype for the launch.

I know little about Tesla or Musk, but from my uninformed perspective, he seems to have called the market quite well, very early too.

Driving a Tesla Model S for nearly 2 years now, it's a joy for driving every day! I think Musk really does it.

Only one real problem till now is that it becomes difficult and expensive to insure them. Mainly because of thefts and expensive repairs. My annual insurance costs nearly doubled from € 1050 to € 1900, and now I will have to install a tracker device, although the Tesla in my opinion is a real time trackable car. I had this discussion with my insurance agent this week and it seems that thieves can go on a stand alone modus while driving the Tesla. Question remains: what can you do with it if you never reconnect it to the internet. Makes the Tesla worthless. And the market/circuit for secondhand spares should be less interesting because Tesla is very selective and restrictive in appointing/authorizing Tesla repair businesses.

It's something different than the Morgan....!😉

I think what he has achieved from a zero start has been impressive. In one generation of the VW Golf he has bought a company to market. Lets not forget he got a bump start from our very own Lotus as well. I see great value for the truck around a couple of things once they are developed more.

No one is mentioning the driver-free element of the truck activities. He is not only giving us an electric truck platform but also one with the best developed automated assistance. Whilst the first couple of driverless dings have been well documented it remains the most effective. Using this will make the trunk root trucks a lot cheaper potentially. When they permit truck to truck communication chaining they will be able to pack them quite tightly on the main routes. I do worry about a train of ten of these things causing hell at junctions as it blocks lane change. Who said rail-freight?

The torque and braking characteristics of electric motors will provide better control over the truck. This will be valuable in rain, slush and snow on congested motorways. With this and the added sensors that Tesla focus on this can only improve safety.

The mostly silent drivetrain will reduce this aspect of road noise which is valuable as we build more homes adjacent to roads in the densely packed UK. We cannot change the ground rumble effect but it all helps. As a lot of the heavy trucks run at night to improve efficiency now this will be doubly useful.

All we need to do now is get the national grid ready for these greedy monsters.

We had Freightliner (MB US Brand) as a customer and they were very nervous when talking about Tesla as this was already a rumour from hiring patterns.

Exciting times...the world is changing.