A Tesla roadster with rocket thrusters - Sweet!

[SlugSlinger]

The all-new Roadster will be able to travel 620 miles (1000 km) on a single charge, a new record for an electric vehicle

The first 1,000 of the new Roadsters will cost $250,000 (£190,000) each, paid in full up front, with later models starting at $200,000 (£150,000). It will be available in 2020, Tesla claims

During a recent shareholders meeting, Elon Musk revealed plans to reduce charge times at Tesla Supercharger stations, promising three- or four-fold improvement for newer vehicles, like the upcoming Roadster

Powering the car is a 200 kilowatt hour battery pack. Musk claims drivers will be able to drive from LA to San Francisco, and back, at highway speed without recharging. Pictured: The futuristic steering wheel for the 2020 Tesla Roadster

The all-new Roadster can travel 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge – a new record for an all-electric vehicle.

The Roadster can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour (0 to 100 km/h) in 1.9 seconds and boasts a top speed over 250mph (400 kph).

This would make it the quickest electric car ever sold to the public, beating the Chinese-made NIO EP9 all-electric hypercar, which has a top speed of 194 mph (310 kph).

It also makes the vehicle the fastest production car ever, with a 0 to 60 miles per hour acceleration quicker than any non-electric vehicles, including the record-breaking Bugatti Chiron, released this year.

It’s unclear whether the Roadster’s top speed was achieved using the so-called Space X option, or whether the rocket-assisted version of the vehicle will be even faster.

'You’ll be able to travel from LA to San Francisco, and back, at highway speed without recharging,' Elon Musk said during the launch event last November.

‘These numbers sound nutty, but they’re real. The point of doing this is to just give a hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars.

'Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche.'

The first 1,000 cars will cost $250,000 (£190,000) each, paid in full up front, with later models starting at $200,000 (£150,000).

It will be available to buy in 2020.

Powering the Tesla Roadster will be a 200 kilowatt hour battery pack.

WHAT ARE THE TOP FIVE FASTEST PRODUCTION ELECTRIC CARS IN THE WORLD?

The electric supercar market has ramped up in recent years, with several companies - many of them small startups - vying to build the quickest.

Electric cars have rapid acceleration largely because combustion engines cannot produce immediate torque, while electric engines can.

This means that many of the world's fastest production electric cars, which are road legal, accelerate faster than most Formula One vehicles.

Here are the top five fastest production electric cars.

1) Rimac Concept Two: 0-60mph (0-100kph) in 1.85 seconds

2) Tesla's next generation Roadster: 0-60 in 1.9 seconds

3) Aspark Owl: 0-60 in 1.921 seconds

4) Faraday Future FF 91: 0-60 in 2.39 seconds

5) Tesla Model S P100D: 0-60 in 2.4 seconds

 

[CGS1]

Well for that price we should all buy two.

 

[SlugSlinger]

I can only dream of owning a car like this. The closest I will ever get is renting and driving the Ferrari F430 at Hallett. What a rush!

 

[beastep]

I just cant wrap my head around a car that can 0-60 in the sub 2 second range. I had a bike that would do it in 2.7 stock and I did a few things to it. I just cant see how a car can do it under 2 and things not break in half or explode.

 

[deerwhacker444]

Are we still giving Tesla Gov't subsidies? If so, that needs to stop ASAP.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Tesla to cut 9% of jobs in 'difficult but necessary' reorganization

Tesla told employees Tuesday it will cut about 9 percent of its workforce, trimming mostly salaried positions.

Since the start of the year, Tesla has added roughly 8,000 jobs and currently employs approximately 46,000 workers. Through this reorganization, it will shed about 4,100 jobs.

In mid-May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had warned the company was undertaking a "thorough reorganization" and that it would flatten its management structure.

"To be clear, Tesla will still continue to hire outstanding talent in critical roles as we move forward and there is still a significant need for additional production personnel," Musk said in a letter to employees on Tuesday. "I also want to emphasize that we are making this hard decision now so that we never have to do this again."

Musk echoed this sentiment in a tweet he sent Tuesday, saying the cuts were "difficult, but necessary."

CFRA analyst Efraim Levy took the news as a sign Tesla is maturing and prioritizing profitability.

"There is a normal ebb and flow of hiring and firing in a business," he said. "Nine percent is a big chunk to do at once, but there comes a time when a company grows up and they have to cut out the fat to become more efficient."

In the email to employees, Musk said "profit is obviously not what motivates us," given the company's nearly complete historical lack of it. But, he said, now Tesla needs to reduce costs and make money.

Ahead of the layoff announcement, Tesla shares had been trading up 5 percent and the stock was on pace to show its best month since February 2014. After the news, the stock gave up some of its gains, but was still on pace for its third-straight day of gains.

While sentiment has been warming, at least as far as the stock is concerned, Tesla has recently shown signs of being a company in turmoil. It has been burning through billions of dollars as it tries to scale up production of its Model 3 sedan, Tesla's lowest-priced vehicle and its first attempt at making a car for the mass market.

It has been criticized for missing production targets, even after these goals were revised. Tesla currently is trying to reach a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 cars in a single week by the end of this month.

Separately, Musk has said he expects Tesla to be profitable and cash flow positive in the third quarter. But some analysts think the company will need to raise more capital by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

The company has also seen quite a bit of turnover in its ranks, and several senior executives have left over the last several months.

Meanwhile, Tesla has defended itself in court on Monday against complaints from the National Labor Relations Board that Tesla was intimidating employees involved in union activities.

Tesla's advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot, has also drawn federal scrutiny, following its involvement in some high-profile crashes.

Also disconcerting, has been Musk's combative attitude toward Wall Street and the press, which rose to a head during its first-quarter earnings conference call.

But in recent days, there has been a growing conviction that Tesla is making progress on Model 3 production. On Monday, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brad Erickson raised his second-quarter Model 3 delivery estimate to 30,000 from 20,000, based on conversations with staff at Tesla stores.

And some analysts think Tesla can achieve gross margins of 25 percent on the Model 3, which Tesla is still targeting. Others have been skeptical the company can pull in profits that high on a vehicle that starts at just $35,000, compared with Tesla's far more expensive Model S and X sedans. Indeed, Tesla has been prioritizing the production of more expensive Model 3 versions.

Tesla has grown rapidly in recent years. Even with the work force reductions announced Tuesday, Tesla will still employ more people now than it did at the end of 2017.

In its email to employees, Tesla noted that there had been some duplication of roles and job functions as it scaled quickly. Those are the areas that will be targeted with cuts.

Tesla said no production associates were impacted by the restructuring.

The company also has decided not to renew its residential sales agreement with Home Depot as it focuses its efforts on selling solar power in Tesla stores and online.

A copy of Musk's email to Tesla employees follows:

As described previously, we are conducting a comprehensive organizational restructuring across our whole company. Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplication of roles and some job functions that, while they made sense in the past, are difficult to justify today.

As part of this effort, and the need to reduce costs and become profitable, we have made the difficult decision to let go of approximately 9% of our colleagues across the company. These cuts were almost entirely made from our salaried population and no production associates were included, so this will not affect our ability to reach Model 3 production targets in the coming months.

Given that Tesla has never made an annual profit in the almost 15 years since we have existed, profit is obviously not what motivates us. What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable. That is a valid and fair criticism of Tesla's history to date.

This week, we are informing those whose roles are impacted by this action. We made these decisions by evaluating the criticality of each position, whether certain jobs could be done more efficiently and productively, and by assessing the specific skills and abilities of each individual in the company. As you know, we are also continuing to flatten our management structure to help us communicate better, eliminate bureaucracy and move faster.

In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we've decided not to renew our residential sales agreement with Home Depot in order to focus our efforts on selling solar power in Tesla stores and online. The majority of Tesla employees working at Home Depot will be offered the opportunity to move over to Tesla retail locations.

I would like to thank everyone who is departing Tesla for their hard work over the years. I'm deeply grateful for your many contributions to our mission. It is very difficult to say goodbye. In order to minimize the impact, Tesla is providing significant salary and stock vesting (proportionate to length of service) to those we are letting go.

To be clear, Tesla will still continue to hire outstanding talent in critical roles as we move forward and there is still a significant need for additional production personnel. I also want to emphasize that we are making this hard decision now so that we never have to do this again.

To those who are departing, thank you for everything you've done for Tesla and we wish you well in your future opportunities. To those remaining, I would like to thank you in advance for the difficult job that remains ahead. We are a small company in one of the toughest and most competitive industries on Earth, where just staying alive, let alone growing, is a form of victory (Tesla and Ford remain the only American car companies who haven't gone bankrupt). Yet, despite our tiny size, Tesla has already played a major role in moving the auto industry towards sustainable electric transport and moving the energy industry towards sustainable power generation and storage. We must continue to drive that forward for the good of the world.

Thanks,
Elon

 

[dennishoddy]

I just cant wrap my head around a car that can 0-60 in the sub 2 second range. I had a bike that would do it in 2.7 stock and I did a few things to it. I just cant see how a car can do it under 2 and things not break in half or explode.

Electric motors hit full speed in about two revolutions or so. Much quicker than anything with pistons.

 

[TerryMiller]

Well, I'd have to say that the Tesla might be OK in California, but maybe not elsewhere. The RV park where we are camp hosts is listed in Tesla's "book" as being a charging station. (Basically, they are plugging into an RV electrical box. Depending on whether they use the 50 amp socket of the 30 amp one, the charging times differ."

However, we are getting people coming in (and looking at some kind of app on their phone) and saying that they only need to charge for 10 minutes to be able to make it to the next charging station (114 miles.) I don't think I'd want to trust a phone app for how far I could go. Nor would I want to be severely limited on fueling stations when one gets away from major metropolitan areas. Even with the possibility of using any RV park's electrical system, there is no guarantee that electricity is available, especially if the park is full.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Electric motors hit full speed in about two revolutions or so. Much quicker than anything with pistons.

They also hit 100% torque rating at zero rpm. Chew on that one for a while.