lithium ion battery pack Tesla's wild ride

(FORTUNE Magazine )--
For Martin Eberhard, there are many obstacles on the road to building the ultimate electric sports car.
Create a lithium ion battery pack that is stable enough for 2,650-pound vehicle.
People believe Americans will continue to use their gas.
No matter what the oil price is, oil is very expensive.
Of course, the venture capital industry has considerable resistance to funding heavy industry.
But for Eberhard, early June was the most outrageous time.
Just a few days ago, he was finally supposed to have his Tesla sports car, a gray beauty with orange racing stripes on it, and he has been working on architecture for the last five years, A technician driving it on the 101 highway revealed some bad news.
The most advanced cars on Earth have rearended a truck.
Instead of getting into Eberhard's driveway triumphantly, the sports car was dragged back to Tesla's headquarters south of San Francisco, it will be fixed under the stern scrutiny of Elon Musk, the company's chairman and financial supporter.
Even if it's carbon
The fiber front end of the car was broken.
Eberhard named the car for Nikola Tesla, a quirky late-19th-and early-20th-
The century inventor, whose name has become synonymous with genius, is linked to an extraordinary ambition.
(His legacy includes the AC power system that we still use today, and the "death ray" program that helps the army fight war with electricity.
Tesla itself-
400 volt potential wrapped in carbonfiber body -is as far-
Appears in the form of the same name, the style is like the car you used to only see in the cartoon, but by a high
The electrical outlet in your garage.
Stepping on the accelerator and thick cable connecting the liquid
Send the cooled lithium ion battery pack to the printed circuit board and send all the current to a series of silicon transistors, just like your little nails.
They are able to switch the current up to 850 amps, thus driving the AC motor up to 14,000 rpm and turning the rearwheel-
Driving a sports car screaming out of the line can drive 220 miles on a single charge.
Acceleration is so fast (0 to 60 in 3.
9 seconds) you will be pushed back to your seat as long as you dare to put your feet on the aluminum pedal.
The existence of Tesla is a small miracle.
For car enthusiasts, electric cars seem to be the cars of the future --
Always.
Electric vehicles (or electric vehicles) were repaired for the first time in the 1800 s, and by 1900 its fate had been determined by internal inventions
The internal combustion engine is cheaper than any battery and can run furtherpowered model.
During the 1970 generation of energy crisis, a series of developments in electric vehicles emerged, and in the early 90 s, electric vehicles re-emerged due to a series of regulatory guidelines to control emissions.
But after 90 s, California has dismantled its power system.
Part of its zero vehicle
General Motors (GM, world top 500), Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), Ford (F, world top 500) after the emissions mission) they all shut down their electric car project.
For GM's EV1, the most dramatic ending will come when the Detroit carmaker famously took the car from an ecstatic owner and sent it to the crusher, who Killed the Electric Car in the movie?
This background makes Tesla's story even more compelling.
The car was conceived by engineer, serial entrepreneur and inventor Eberhard (his name is on the battery)
Cooling, motor and power electronics patents applied for by Tesla Motors ).
He believes that if he can install a lot of laptop batteries on the existing sports car chassis, it is feasible to build it, and he will find a lot of buyers in speed. loving, planet-
Conscious Silicon Valley and other places.
But given that he has no experience in the automotive sector, and the price of gasoline is relatively cheap for $1.
Eberhard, 48, 50 gallons a gallon, could not find a venture capital firm willing to give him enough to build a car.
That's how he came to Elon Musk. The 37-year-Old Musk once
PayPal was created and forced out of the network
Payment company, but cashed in cash when sold to eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) and gave him enough money to start SpaceX, a private rocket company, the goal is to start transporting people to the International Space Station by 2011.
In other words, big ideas are Musk's expertise. After a two-
At the one-hour meeting on February 2004, Musk agreed to invest $6.
3 million from Tesla.
He will become the chairman of the company.
Eberhard will be CEO.
In a sense, the timing of the two could not be better.
Just as oil prices and concerns about global warming hit everyone, Tesla has begun to deliver cars --time highs.
All car manufacturers who have put their plans on hold have restarted their plans.
Boutique companies such as Nissan (NSANY), Mitsubishi, Daimler, Subaru and Fisker Automotive are all frantically developing new models --some all-
Electric, other range-extended EVs -
But it won't be available until 2009. 13.
GM's Bob Lutz even attributed the company's restart to Tesla.
"If some startups in Silicon Valley can solve this problem, no one will tell me again that this is not feasible," he told Newsweek . ".