Tesla, Lotus, Proton, Mitsubishi: This Car Business Appears Complex

A little more research on the Tesla Roadster is promising, but with typically complex business:
The Tesla Roadster is already selling the first 100 models, at $100,000, due next summer. Designed and organized in the Bay Area, by Googleaires in cooperation with Lotus (neat!), the cars will be built by Lotus in Norwich, England. Tesla's private held, but Lotus is owned by the Inodensian car company Proton, which I think is publically held. The Lotus car-group has taken advantage of the multi-source part reassembly nature of car manufacturing, sort of like Boeing stapling the 787 together now in Everett from bits all over the world. Proton company is now trying to re-partner with Mitsubishi.

I bring this all up on a suspicion that there is a real chance that since the technology is this close to practical, non-U.S. government resources may eventually be going to go into it, as the sedan model is already under development. The company is counting on steady battery improvements over the next two years from Laptop companies. If 1000 of these are on the road in America, the pressure to mass produce may become huge in three or four years, with a revivial of the zero-emission requirement from California (which just negotiatied a carbon emission agreement on its own), a spate of heat waves, a couple three wars coincindently occuring near huge oil reserves, and the strong position of American car companies weakening. The potential involvement of large non-U.S. car companies is already there.

So goes the artist's analysis. I can't even renegotiate my Visa bill.

But the aesthetics are critical. The Tesla doesn't look like a watered-down, emasculated VW. It looks like a powerful machine. It taps the primordial desire for the first time - the step even more necessary than effective technology. I am still blown away by the brilliance of making an electric car sexy and fairly expensive - make the assholes want it and the assholes won't stand in your way.

California can point to the real car and say: "why not? You want it already. "

There seems to be only one serious technical issue: the batteries have to be made just right, as laptops have been exploding recently. 6000 laptop batteries and the statistics of failure rates gives one pause.