Last year, many of you may recall that my Christmas wish was for one of those cool trapper skin hats Roots provided to our Canadian Winter Olympians. Well last year Santa stiffed me.
So in keeping with this tradition of not getting my Christmas gift request, I thought I would share this years request. I know it won’t be under my tree, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
Some guys want Ferraris. Some guys want Porsches. Others want a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW.
Me? I want a Tesla.
Tesla Motors is a start up auto company based in Silicon Valley and it was started with seed money from the owners of Google, Ebay and Paypal. Pretty good business partners, I would say.
They build an electric car, that unlike Toyota’s, uses standard off the shelf laptop batteries to power it. I imagine they avoid Sony batteries. They take advantage of the high volume, low cost laptop battery market which is constantly improving itself in terms of capacity, recharge speed and weight. This utilization of the high volume consumer market will help them as a company.
The car can go from 0 to 100kph in less than 4 seconds and it can go about 400km on a single charge. The average fuel cost is 1 US cent per mile according to their website.
I remember reading an article about them in Wired magazine and recall that the car does not generate heat from operation. So the company put an electric heater in it which begins working right away (but does limit the driving distance). This is an interesting feature for the Canadian winters. It may end us having to assume the ‘winter position” of being hunched over with our hands wedged between our legs as we wait for the car to heat up.
This company sold out of their 2007 models in a mere four months and they are taking orders for their 2008 models now. You can get yours for a cool $92,000 US (base price). I suspect the price will eventually come down as more Ontario MPPs, unionized teachers and the head of Hydro One snatch them up.
Oh, and did I mention, that other than a slight whining of the rotor, the car is pretty much completely silent. No engine revving, no gears shifting. It’s truly 100% electric and packs a whallup. This car can theoretically hit about 13500 rpm and go 130mph and takes as little as 3.5 hours to charge up.
Today I wrote our Prime Minister asking him to invest in getting a Tesla manufacturing plant in Canada. A nice green move, jobs and a great looking car for the press photo op.
But, alas, for now I will just have to keep staring at the pictures of this car and dream. If anyone out there is interested in donating to the “Get Mulder A Tesla” fund, let me know.
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Pretty cool car, I must say.
I want equal treatment under the law for all citizens.
Oh, and a Lord and Burnham conservatory, if that’s OK.
Merry Christmas, Mulder and friends!