[bane]

Tesla, here's what I want.

- $30k base (I buy around $20k, but can justify the delta because of the fuel savings), could care less what the top end is, but probably no more than $45k.

- Accord or Sonata size. I'd even settle for a BMW 3-series or C class size.

- For the base price I want 300 mile range.

- Seats 4-5 adults

- don't need leather seats or other fancy stuff, just a/c am/fm/hd/xm radio with an Aux in. Don't care about touch screen nonsense, GPS nav, maybe just give me a place to put my phone and it'll fill in for all that stuff. I don't even care about a CD player, the phone will handle it all through aux.

- Cruise control is cool, but I won't pay a dollar more for it

- 0-60 in under 6 seconds.

- 5 star crash ratings all around

- sell it with civic/accord like reliability for 5 years

- then I'll buy it

everything else is cool, hell I'd love to plunk down on a top of the line model-S, I drool when I watch Veyron top speed runs, I love this stuff, but honestly when I get down to it, I think of cars like rapidly depreciating transport appliances. They have to be cheap and reliable, utilitarian and just reasonably comfortable (not luxurious). I don't care if the car is 50/50 weight balanced, or the car can park itself, or the cup holders retract into the dash. I don't give a shit about this. It's not that I can't afford it, it's just that I'd rather do other things with my money. This is not a value judgement on those that do spend on cars, but it's not what I spend my money on.

I'm the type of car buyer that buys 1 car every 10-12 years and drives them for over 250k miles or till the wheels fall off. I buy in the segment of cars that sells something like a quarter million cars a month in the U.S. alone. There are a lot of us.

(and yes, the model-S and X are probably among the most beautiful production cars in the world today)

[sliverstorm]

I think that was about as useful a list of demands as mine:

- $30k base price

- Be a Ferrari

You're basically asking for the performance and size of an M3, the reliability of a Civic, the range of a Japanese gasoline car, all for the price of... well, a Civic. Presumably all while maintaining electric's 200mpgE+. Of course it would sell; it would be the biggest bargain in automotive history.

*mpgE = miles per gallon equivalent

[bane]

I don't think so. I'm basically asking for them to sell me an all electric replacement for a V-6 accord with the absolute minimum trim level (which runs around $25-27k) But with the inconvenience of having to spend several hours charging it instead of a few minutes refueling it.

[Me1000]

I won't pretend to be an expert on internal combustion engines, but I don't think the demands are that bad. Electric engines have 100% torque all the time, which isn't true of gas engines. I believe that essentially implies a fast take off speed isn't that difficult for an electric car, and would have very little affect on it's overall distance per charge.

[engin21]

Any light weight electric vehicle could be a Ferrari.

And I believe Shai Agassi said his goal is to get a car down below $10,000 (without the battery). If safety wasn't a concern, it'd be easy to build such a car.

[patrickk]

Look at the technology adoption lifecycle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Technology-Adoption-Lifecy...

The reason Tesla aimed upmarket first is to sell a somewhat mass-market, high-quality product (Roadster and Model S), when the underlying tech is still somewhat expensive - meaning the early products will be relatively expensive (think of early laptops, iPods, solid state drives, anything really). So you're getting a great product, just not cheap. Other electric car manufacturers try to make cheap, small, slow electric cars that are a joke and no one takes seriously:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REVA

Elon Musk is using rich dentists to finance the R&D of the mass-market, affordable electric car that regular middle class people could buy.

It's a very smart plan, in my opinion. Ensures high-quality products throughout the adoption curve, meaning that investors, future customers and even competitors will take Tesla seriously. Having rival car companies sit up and take notice is great, meaning competition. Look at the rash of MP3 players on the market after the iPod launched - this forces prices down, for both the raw materials and the finished products. We're at a tipping point.