The real Tesla story

Gordon Smith discusses the new Tesla, a $100,000 130 mph fully electronic car that runs on 7000 ordinary laptop batteries. 

I also think this car is interesting, but not as something to buy.   This month's Wired (not yet online) has a more detailed story.  The car has a range of 250 miles and takes 3.5 hours to charge.  So I'm going to pay 100k for a car that gets me to Chicago from Champaign and most of the way back?  Of course I could always use it for commuting.  That 130 mph ride down Kirby to school will be exciting -- at least more exciting than the Chicago suburbanite's crawl down Eden's.

But here's the interesting part: the car was made possible by the wonders of outsourcing.  It's clear proof that we're no longer in the days of Ford's fully integrated Rouge River plant.  The Tesla's main product-specific design features, apparently, apart from the intuition that the thing was possible, are the body and the high-efficiency brazed copper rotor.  And the fundamental intuition or inspiration is from Silicon Valley, not Detroit -- the car's promoter is Martin Eberhard, the guy behind that blast from the past, the Rocket eBook.

The bottom line is that auto development is poised to follow the computer industry model.  Developments in laptop battery efficiency may soon produce a 700 mile range and 160 mph top speed.  Or maybe somebody in Illinois will design a commercially viable corn car.  Will we have a Moore's law for cars?

My own particular interest is in organizational form.  See, e.g., my Why Corporations?  The auto industry was the model for the large, integrated corporate form.  Tesla itself is a corporation, but look for the car company of the future to be a loose affiliation of LLCs, perhaps even privately owned.

Beyond these specifics, those who believe we can confidently predict the technological future -- and that we ought to regulate based on this prediction -- are blowing hot air.

Comments

[Robert Schwartz]

"Will we have a Moore's law for cars?"

No. Electric cars are very old technology as are batteries. The first sources of electricity were batteries. My Great-Grandmother drove an electric car before WWI.

The key problem is that batteries have a density of energy per volume or weight that is two orders of magnitude lower than commonly used liquid fuels. In other words it would take about 3 tons of the best batteries in use now (the Li-ion batteries used in cell phones) to equal the energy content of the average tank of gasoline.

I am not a chemist, but I don't understand that the fundamental problem can be overcome. One way of thinking about it is that batteries, like rocket ships, carry their own fuel and oxidizer.

Engines powered by liquid fuels use air as their oxidizer and need only to carry half of the fuel load.

[Larry E. Ribstein]

My point was based on outsourcing and the theory of the firm, not on any particular technology.