Comments on: Silicon Valley versus Detroit

By: What I want

What I want — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:37:08 +0000

This will be cool!
I think it can be done now.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:40:54 +0000

This article obviously suffers from a lack of clarity. The author is not focusing on battery technology, fuel cells or any other propulsion system. The aim is to ignite thought on how cars think or can think on behalf of the driver. No need to bury wires in the pavement to have a care that pilots itself just refine GPS and allow it to communicate with other cars and traffic signal systems then it can set speeds and lane changes so that we all get where we want to go without beating on the steering wheel ‘cause the jerk in front of us is driving too slow or recklessly. Obviously some vehicles are playing with minor systems like collision avoidance tech. but that is the tip of the iceberg. Smarten up the car and no matter what is driving it the fuel efficiency will increase by 10% or more and we will not have to sit in traffic jams all day.

By: ex-EV1 driver

ex-EV1 driver — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:45:29 +0000

Factory rat,
I really couldn't care less about Frankfurt, Stutgart, Munich, TC, Seoul, etc. I really want to find a way to save Detroit, once one of our country's greatest strengths. Refusing to understand today's economy along with sowing negative propaganda like DiCiccio and you are is only going to increase the blight in Motor City. They need to start worrying about making cars that people want, not what the top brass want to sell.
The airbag issue which has being blown up by Detroit dinosaurs is just an effort to avoid having to put in the smart airbags initially. This is something that a startup company such as Tesla must put off until their mainstream vehicles. No Lotus vehicles have this either. I don't know about other supercars such as Ferrari's or Lambo's.
You're 100% right about great research being done in Detroit. In fact, Tesla's Whitestar design center is located in the Detroit area because of the plethora of great automotive engineering talent. Now we just need to get Detroit's research made to work and put into the factories. Today it is just being crushed in the desert and its patents used to make it difficult for others to actually use the great technologies developed.
You'll find that Detroit's willingness to believe all the misinformation promoted by the big 3 only made the whole EV1 debacle worse. GM could have been king of the auto business if they had spent their money on improving the EV1 instead of killing it.
Unfortunately, we can talk all we want but only reality will show the real truth.

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:24:35 +0000

>>their third car is the one targeted at the “ordinary budget-minded consumers who seek a greener ride” (code named “Blue Star”) is the Corolla killer. It should go for closer to $30K and should be a force to be reckoned with by the mainstream.

By: factory rat

factory rat — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:29:17 +0000

…you are pretty good at name calling, but you are kinda short on facts….you throw out Detroit like some kind of slur, but why not Toyota City or Frankfurt? Tesla knows something all the auto firms in the world don’t? Fat chance. When the technology is truly mass-market ready, main-line auto firms will bury Tesla. BTW,why is Tesla begging off of the federal air-bag standard – too inflexible to change platforms once the problem is discovered?

Tesla is doing imporatnt work, but even at planned volume levels it is a boutique. Despite your desire to see it prosper, don’t kid yourself – until it can produce high-tens to low-hundreds of thousands vehicles a year it will not move the needle AT ALL on ghg or oil security.

As for your silicon valley thing, look here to discover that bad old GM has more high-quality R&D than any firm based in Silicon Valley – http://www.technologyreview.com/articlefiles/2005_rd_scorecard.pdf

This is a pretty tortured set of subjects, so you are going to have to get beyond name calling if you want to be taken seriously.

By: Phil McCracken

Phil McCracken — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:26:13 +0000

This article must have been written a long time ago. Time to update the website. Check out the Lightning Car Company's "Lightning GT".

LCC partnered with a U.S. firm, which is developing NanoSafe batteries. These batteries can recharge in as little as 10 minutes, have a 12+ year service life and are much more environmentally-friendly and thermally stable than the Li Ion batteries used in the Tesla.

The writings in this site are outdated at best, but my take on what I have read here is agenda. Information has been filtered and shown in a critical light which describes the developing electric vehicles.

It's not that Detroit wasn't capable to develope the electric car, they didn't want to, but they wanted to be able to say they have at least looked into it with their meager efforts to date.

Think about it. If Detroit took EV development seriously, then why are upstart companies with few resources surpassing the Big 3's efforts? It's a no-brainer. Pure EV's set automobiles down a path of simpler design, fewer moving parts, less maintenance... These traits will be INHERENT in pure EV vehicles. Do the research if needed, see for yourself. This is fact and it surely provides motive behind Detroit's unwillingness.

Hey, if someone wants to buy a Hybrid, I'd say "great!". then "You're getting a new one, right?". If he or she says yes, than I'll truly congratulate them on their choice and wish them luck. If they say they bought one that has 100,000 miles on it, I'll just wish them good luck. Fewer non-dealership garages can work on Hybrids. Hybrids have many more parts than conventional gas cars and you know what they can cost to maintain. Now think of tossing a few hundred more parts into your aging ride's complexity.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:09:13 +0000

We can only hope the progress of the development of these cars will follow the same rapid progress of the IT industry.
on a different note the “cars that drive themselves” will require a massive infrasture that is at least at this stage pure sci-fi.

By: ex-EV1 driver

ex-EV1 driver — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:00:01 +0000

I don’t know what rock DeCicco is living under (probably the ruins of an old car company in Detroit) but he definitely has no clue what Tesla is all about.
Tesla is offering their expensive, high priced roadster right now because it is the only thing that is a realistic first step for a Silicon Valley startup (people in Detroit don’t know what a startup is). Tesla’s plan is to deliver a car “for ordinary budget-minded consumers who seek a greener ride”. They only plan to take a lot of business plodding (read: careful, high quality) first to get there. Just like the computer, they are starting out at the high end (how many kids owned IBM mainframes in the ’60s?). Then they will work down the line to the affordable car.
Their first car is the Ferrari-killing Roadster. Great product, well priced in its performance class at $100K
Their second car will be the BMW-killing 4-door sedan (code-named “Whitestar”). Also great product (we hope), well priced in its luxury/performance class at ~$50K
their third car is the one targeted at the “ordinary budget-minded consumers who seek a greener ride” (code named “Blue Star”) is the Corolla killer. It should go for closer to $30K and should be a force to be reckoned with by the mainstream.
Getting to the Bluestar is tough for a startup – Tesla has come up with a way that makes sense though. They’ve sold almost 2 Roadsters at $100K each day since they announced it so they appear to be on track.
See Tesla’s plan at: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=8 for their side of this story.
Its really a silicon valley thing though. Detroit/DiCicco wouldn’t understand.