Hilux 4x4 Forum

Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla, wants more manufacturers to develop electric cars. He announced in June that his company would open up Tesla's patents to all, suspending enforcement of the patents.

In his blog post dated June 12, he wrote that "Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world's factories every day."

Interesting.
I've been travelling Norway the past 3 weeks or so and took this pic of the Tesla in Oslo. Look at the electrical cable plugged in at the back of the car. BTW these Tesla's look very nice cars.

Electric BMW - also in Oslo

Nissan plugged in....they provide free electricity at the roadside.

Those Teslas are awesome. Nether saw one, only read about them. That is one car I would love to own.

In China and Thailand there are many cities who are converting their public transport busses to electric.

Nissan plugged in....they provide free electricity at the roadside.

Imagine that setup in SA, you will have hundreds of people around each charging point, some powering their juke boxes, others powering food stalls, ........................ and then another will come along and steal the charging point to sell as scrap metal

pietpetoors wrote:

Nissan plugged in....they provide free electricity at the roadside.

Imagine that setup in SA, you will have hundreds of people around each charging point, some powering their juke boxes, others powering food stalls, ........................ and then another will come along and steal the charging point to sell as scrap metal

Hehe yes, but in South Africa we don't have a reliable electricity supply remember so it won't work in any case.

Daai kopper draad gan mos nie lank hou hier in SA nie. Die cargaurd sal dit sekek leen om sy iPhone te charge. :lol::lol::lol:

Do yourself a favour and go read the features of this car, it is mouth watering.

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/features#/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was impressed with the specs of these vehicles five years ago (roadster) but they're even more impressive now! The one thing that I wonder about is why they haven't incorporated photo-voltaic cell panels somewhere on the upward facing panels. This would extend the range of the vehicle a little, reduce charging times and save electricity costs - the car would charge up on it's own during the day while parked.

Good point Andy, I always wonder the same.

Imagine something like an electric bus, you can do the whole roof with solar panels.

Guess on the Tesla on a 85Kw battery a solar panel will not mean much.

Also imagine, you can run two pipes (one on each side) from the front to the back of the vehicle with nice big air intake at the front. Inside the pipe you can add a couple of small generators powered by wind.
The outlet at the back can look like an exhaust pipe.

I guess these guys have done their maths to see how much you can really gain.