Ford #1 in Canada for June

[LeonOfTheDead]

Then it'll only help the image of the company. Not a bad idea to do it without the help of the government. I mean, people are rightly annoyed that we help prop up a company that many people didn't want to help.

It shows that you're somewhat competent.



Tesla, of all companies? I consider them to be a vaporware company- behind on their promises, even worse with the delivery of their product.

And electric cars are not the way to go, at least with the technology we have. Production of electricity has to change, as well as the storage of it.

I think Tesla's electric technology isn't a reference for the actual state of art in the field. They used old batteries and a pretty standard motor. Venturi's and other prototypes from Japan are way more advanced, but also far away from production, at least a mass production.
More than Tesla, I hate Musk and his motormouth's BS.

[Matra et Alpine]

Tesla's decision to go with "laptop batteries" is very sound when you look at $/kw.
Getting better density or capacity is still ultra expensive.
The choice of re-use of Lotus designs shows a great vision of not getting carried away with own capabilities and concentrate on pulling toegther KNOWN items to make a new solution.
Their battery redundancy design is quite neat
So IMHO they used the engineering time to get it working and manufacturable and saleable more than a one-off prototype with substantial subsidy and unknown manufacturing.

[LeonOfTheDead]

Tesla's decision to go with "laptop batteries" is very sound when you look at $/kw.
Getting better density or capacity is still ultra expensive.
The choice of re-use of Lotus designs shows a great vision of not getting carried away with own capabilities and concentrate on pulling toegther KNOWN items to make a new solution.
Their battery redundancy design is quite neat
So IMHO they used the engineering time to get it working and manufacturable and saleable more than a one-off prototype with substantial subsidy and unknown manufacturing.

Surely the Roadster is a good product (which may be different from a good car, whatever), still Musk sounds like an ass 9/10 of the times I heard an interview of him or read an article about it.

[RacingManiac]

What I don't particularly like about the whole Tesla deal is that all the presses and "owners" (ie Letterman) are touting it as something that the "small guys triumph over the big corporate" and got something done. The amount of work that was done was nothing revolutionary, and when you can stick a $100K+ price tag on something that is not really 100% finished you get a ton of leeway that bigger company that makes tens and thousands of cars can't get away with. And then on top of that you get their people trash talking about GM's approach with Volt with the plug-in and IC engine to charge the batt for extended range, on top of the whole deal of trying to shunning the Detroit's infrastructure(and people) for supporting a mass production automotive environment for California. All just kinda adds up to a pretty ill-conceive concept for someone's science experiment as opposed to an actual product....

It also doesn't boast well for the US Federal government to buy into the hype and gave them a ton of money for it, when actual companies like A123(major battery supplier) who applied for government grant did not receive a dime.....

I look on with interest expecting to see a pretty spectacular failure in the near future....

[NSXType-R]

Tesla's decision to go with "laptop batteries" is very sound when you look at $/kw.
Getting better density or capacity is still ultra expensive.
The choice of re-use of Lotus designs shows a great vision of not getting carried away with own capabilities and concentrate on pulling toegther KNOWN items to make a new solution.
Their battery redundancy design is quite neat
So IMHO they used the engineering time to get it working and manufacturable and saleable more than a one-off prototype with substantial subsidy and unknown manufacturing.

I wonder how Fisker is doing? Have they unveiled anything? How come the hybrid thingy they unveiled recently haven't gotten any reviews?

Surely the Roadster is a good product (which may be different from a good car, whatever), still Musk sounds like an ass 9/10 of the times I heard an interview of him or read an article about it.

What I don't particularly like about the whole Tesla deal is that all the presses and "owners" (ie Letterman) are touting it as something that the "small guys triumph over the big corporate" and got something done. The amount of work that was done was nothing revolutionary, and when you can stick a $100K+ price tag on something that is not really 100% finished you get a ton of leeway that bigger company that makes tens and thousands of cars can't get away with. And then on top of that you get their people trash talking about GM's approach with Volt with the plug-in and IC engine to charge the batt for extended range, on top of the whole deal of trying to shunning the Detroit's infrastructure(and people) for supporting a mass production automotive environment for California. All just kinda adds up to a pretty ill-conceive concept for someone's science experiment as opposed to an actual product....

It also doesn't boast well for the US Federal government to buy into the hype and gave them a ton of money for it, when actual companies like A123(major battery supplier) who applied for government grant did not receive a dime.....

I look on with interest expecting to see a pretty spectacular failure in the near future....

That's what I said- Tesla is a lot of vaporware.

[wwgkd]

What I don't particularly like about the whole Tesla deal is that all the presses and "owners" (ie Letterman) are touting it as something that the "small guys triumph over the big corporate" and got something done. The amount of work that was done was nothing revolutionary, and when you can stick a $100K+ price tag on something that is not really 100% finished you get a ton of leeway that bigger company that makes tens and thousands of cars can't get away with. And then on top of that you get their people trash talking about GM's approach with Volt with the plug-in and IC engine to charge the batt for extended range, on top of the whole deal of trying to shunning the Detroit's infrastructure(and people) for supporting a mass production automotive environment for California. All just kinda adds up to a pretty ill-conceive concept for someone's science experiment as opposed to an actual product....

It also doesn't boast well for the US Federal government to buy into the hype and gave them a ton of money for it, when actual companies like A123(major battery supplier) who applied for government grant did not receive a dime.....

I look on with interest expecting to see a pretty spectacular failure in the near future....

But the US government ALWAYS has to buy into green hype or they're labled as "the cause of global warming" by their opponents. Anyone who trys to take a reasonable approach instead of chasing fads which often turn out to be pretty wrong gets bashed for not caring or being to scared to do anything about it.

Am I the only one that sees the similarities between Hennesey performance and Tesla?

[RacingManiac]

I think Hennesey at least made demo cars that can deliver on the performance claim, whereas Tesla can't quite even do that....

[blingbling]

It's not Ford topping Toyota, but rather Toyota playing so bad. Ford has improved but not as much as Toyota is "declining".

how is toyota declining?

[cargirl1990]

how is toyota declining?

i actually thought of the same thing as well.

[Ferrer]

Being down 18% last month is quite a decline don't you think?

[RacingManiac]

Toyota's credit rating have also been downgraded by US banks. They are cited to be reacting slower than expected to the worse than expected downturn.

They are expecting to lose 5.5 billion GBP this year, this is based on the claims from the news relating to Fuji Speedway dropped from hosting Japanese GP because Toyota don't want to pay for it anymore(Fuji is currently on an agreement to host Japanese GP on a rotating basis between it and Suzuka, starting last year, Suzuka is hosting this year's race).

[NSXType-R]

how is toyota declining?

I don't think Honda is doing that great either. But none of them are doing well.

[cargirl1990]

I don't think Honda is doing that great either. But none of them are doing well.

explain.

[ThisBlood147]

Toyota's problem for the future is that until now their whole gameplan was to just stay ahead of the Big 3.......which wasn't very hard up until a few years ago. But now that's changing, and their complacency could cost them big in the times to come. Reliability aside, they are going to start suffering more if they don't find a way to remove the "driving appliance" label from most of their car lineup. I honestly think the only thing holding them up from a bigger tumble right now is their reputation amongst the auto consumer population. But that will only hold up so long.

[NSXType-R]

explain.

I don't know specifics, but Honda dropped in sales a bit, just like Toyota did.