Electric Sports Car From 0 To 60 In 4
What if your car could accelerate from zero to sixty miles per hour in four seconds? Would you be happy? What if your car could handle like a sports car? What if you could outrun almost any car on the road, including the majority of all Porsches? Now, what if you could do this without a single drop of gasoline? Does that spark your interest? Then maybe you should consider an electric sports car.
In particular, you should consider the first mass produced electric sports car on the market. A Silicon Valley auto manufacturer, Tesla Motors, is now offering their first and only vehicle, an all electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster.
The Tesla Roadster is not a gasoline-electric hybrid, but rather, is an all-electric plug-in car that has a battery range of 250 miles. Tesla Motors claims that the Roadster is "first and fundamentally a driver's car." This is a claim that both Porsche and BMW make when advertising their vehicles.
The company is named after Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American who studied the phenomenon of electro-magnetism and invented the rotating magnetic field. The name is appropriate as the rotating magnetic field is the phenomenon that allows the electric motor to propel the vehicle. Electric motors rely on the repulsion and attraction of magnets to propel the vehicle. As the drive system is initiated, certain parts of the electric motor become magnetized with a positive charge to attract the opposite charge of the rotor. It is this phenomenon that can allow electric sports cars to travel at extremely high rates f speed. The magnetic coupling of the rotor to stator is a highly efficient process, almost 95% efficient. Because of this, whatever energy is applied is used effectively in propelling the vehicle forward. On the other hand, in an internal combustion engine, the efficiency is around 25%. The majority of the energy in gasoline is converted both into forward motion and into heat. How? Well, all of the moving parts used in getting the turning motion of the engine's piston suffer from the forces of friction, which converts the kinetic energy of the pistons into heat. In an electric car, those move parts are non-existent. The only heat lost is caused by the electrons moving through the wires to get voltage, and thereby power, to the electric engines. All other power is routed directly to the electric motor, which then magnetically couples, at close to 100% of, that power to causing forward motion. The only downside to this electric sports car is its range. With a range of only 250 miles, as opposed to about 350-450 miles for internal combustion engines, the Tesla Roadster may be at a disadvantage to other high priced sports cars. But when environmental conscience is place in the equation, it is a solid winner.
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