Feb 13, 2008

Tesla Motors Gears for Production

The buzz recently revolving around Tesla Motors has not been good. Its former head, Martin Eberhard, left the company a bit acrimoniously and its first production vehicle, the Tesla Roadster P1 has been dogged by a pre-manufacturing transmission glitch that has prompted the company to go to the unprecedented step of building early production units with an "interim transmission." But now, Tesla has announced that it has received all regulatory approvals to import the first production Tesla Roadster P1 for sale, including all necessary EPA and DOT approvals, plus completion of all Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS.)

Series production of the Tesla Roadster is scheduled to begin March 17, and early production units will be equipped with a single-speed transmission rather than a two-speed transmission. The single-speed transmission is said to meet the durability requirements that the two-speed has failed to meet but limits the vehicle's acceleration to 5.7 seconds from zero to 60 mph, rather than the previously advertised four seconds.

The new transmission is labeled "interim" because Tesla Motors engineers have designed a permanent solution for mass production that they expect will result in a four-second zero-to-60 acceleration time. "Instead of a complex two-speed transmission design, Tesla will achieve the original performance goals with a simpler one-speed unit mated to a higher rated Power Electronics Module (PEM,)" the company said in a release. The existing motor will be modified to have advanced cooling capabilities to handle the additional power, and the permanent transmission unit will be engineered to handle the higher torque of the powertrain, a really good idea.

"The upgrade from the interim solution to the higher power, permanent solution will be provided to our customers free of charge when available later this year," the company said.