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G. David Felt Alternative Fuels & Propulsion writer www.CheersandGears.com Tesla Roadster 3.0 and 400 mile range reality? Tesla gave a late Xmas present to electric advocates on December 26th 2014. Roadster 3.0 was posted covering the following top 3 topics: 1. Batteries, 2. Aerodynamics and 3. Rolling Resistance. Tesla talks about the how their battery from 2008 was revolutionary in the auto industry and while it was good then and up till now for their current S sedan, lithium ion battery advances have pushed them to get 31% more energy from the same size battery pack. This new cell now gives approximately 70k Wh in the original battery package. Tesla then moves on to talk about their drag coefficient of .36 on current Roadster and how with a new Retrofit aero kit they can drop it to .31 a 15% improvement. The final bit of technology info is how Tesla talks about rolling resistance on the current Roadster which has a 11.0 kg/ton. An upgrade will give a 20% improvement by allowing the Roadster 3.0 to have a Crr of approximately 8.9 kg/ton. With this improvement come additional improvements for residual brake drag and wheel bearing to reduce drag. This last part is particularly noticeable as anyone who has driven a Chevy Suburban and then gotten into a Cadillac Escalade ESV will notice how much better the Cadillac glides showing that the quality of Bearings, brakes, seals, etc. all can help to reduce drag. Tesla's summary of these improvements is that Roadster 3.0 can achieve an estimates 40-50% improvement on Range over the original Roadster. Tesla goes on to say that they expect to prove this in the early weeks of 2015 with a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles that is to be non-stop. Tesla finishes up by stating that they will open up for appointments to be made starting Spring of 2015 for existing Roadsters to be upgraded with these 3 major focus points once the battery pack finishes safety validation. They go on to say this will not be the last of the upgrades for existing and new Roadster owners. As of this writing there were 45 comments posted. As expected they are all positive, and yet many also are giving suggestions for powertrain upgrades for performance rather than battery life, reduced weight for better handling or a combination of them. Seems many want their cake and eat it too. This brings up an interesting question, if Tesla is getting ready to release a battery pack that can go 400 miles on a charge, what will Volt 2.0 be for GM or Toyota have for the Prius family of autos? Could we see a change over from gas to electric faster than people have expected?
