On January 22nd, JB Straubel, CTO of Tesla Motors gave a talk on The Tesla Roadster and Tesla Motors at Stanford University.
Imran Akbar lifted out some great points made in the talk:
- The battery pack in a Tesla roadster costs around $25,000
- Battery technology is improving at 8% per year in terms of gravimetric or volumetric energy density
- There are approximately 12,000 fuses in the battery pack
- In terms of well-to-wheel efficiency, electric cars can currency reach 85% efficiency.
- Hydrogen systems eke out 32% efficiency, through combined losses from electrolysis (70% efficient), hydrogen compression during storage (90% efficient), and fuel cells (50% efficient)
- An acre of solar cells can take a car 36x the distance than an acre of ethanol
- Quoted Sheikh Yamani, a former Saudi oil minster stating “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
Thanks to Doug at TeslaMotorsClub for picking up the story.
You can also listen to a very distant mp3 here
Posted
01-30-2009 9:38
by
MPT