Environmentally Inspirational People: Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors are a company I've been following for a while now. They are based in the US and are the first company that I would say are making a 'real electric car'.

When I say 'real electric car' what I mean is a car that people will actually want to use, and a car that is actually practical to use. I think all these small companies out there that are producing electric cars are great, but they seem to be getting it wrong in a few ways. For a start most of the companies seem to be aiming the cars at people who think cars are evil. If you look at the vast majority of purely electric cars available at the moment they look awful. There's no way that a car enthusiast would be seen dead in them, and in these types of emerging markets it's usually the enthusiasts that set the trend. Second, most of the cars are highly impractical. Most offer no comfort what so ever, very little storage space and next to no range what so ever.

This was all true until Tesla Motors came onto the scene. What they have done is to produce a modern sports car, with everything that a modern sports car should have. It has blisteringly fast acceleration, it has comfort, it has looks, and it has range. They have taken all the things that are great about driving at the moment and pushed it up another level by making the car run completely on electricity.

Basically they have created an electric car that car enthusiasts would buy. Part of this is thanks to our guys over here in England at Lotus, who have worked with Tesla for some time on several elements of the car. Some people even refer to it as an electric Elise although it is a lot more than that.

Possible the most exciting part of all of this is the fact that they are currently designing an everyday salon car, and it should be coming over to this country too. So in a few years time you'll be able to buy a practical, exciting, fully electric car, that will be able to compete with the big car manufactures that still seem to be dragging there heals somewhat.

I wish Tesla all the luck in the world, and I hope that when they land over here the pricing will be right and I'll be able to get myself a nice shiny 100% electric car.

All the in-depth details of the car are available from their web site http://www.teslamotors.com/ . They also have a blog which has lots of interesting information about how they put the car together and the research they are doing into battery packs and electric motors.