Tesla’s wild ride

Building the world’s first electric supercar was never going to be easy – even without the hubris, infighting, and mismanagement that nearly sent Tesla spinning off the road.

Elon Musk backed Tesla to the tune of $55 million – but his micromanaging has alienated some staffers.

Martin Eberhard, pictured in 2007 before his falling out with Musk, now says ‘I have no problem with Tesla the company. I do have a problem with Elon and the way he treats people.’

Musk, pictured in a vehicle electronics simulator referred to as the ‘E Buck’ in the shop, demanded that Tesla engineers push the car’s top speed to 125 MPH.

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(Fortune Magazine) — For Martin Eberhard, there were many obstacles on the path to building the ultimate electric sports car. There was the scientific challenge of creating a lithium ion battery pack stable enough to power a 2,650-pound vehicle. There was the belief that Americans would stick with their gas-guzzlers, no matter what the price of oil. And there was, of course, the considerable resistance in the venture capital community to funding heavy industry.

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Dear MoveOn member,

Wes and Joan have told me that MoveOn members are really jumping on board with our new national challenge—getting 100% of our nation’s electricity from renewable and truly clean energy sources within 10 years. Apparently, more than 150,000 have already signed this MoveOn petition in the last 24 hours.

Thank you! I knew when I issued this challenge that it would take millions of us working together, a whole new movement of citizens, to make it happen. And, once again, MoveOn members are rising to the challenge. It’s very heartening.

I’d like to ask you to join me by adding your name, too. Just click here:

http://pol.moveon.org/gorechallenge/o.pl?id=13302-7881174-wRDkRFx&t=1

There are more details in the email below.

As I said on Thursday, this is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you—each of you—to join me and build this future.

Thanks for all you do,

Al Gore

Al Gore

GM, utilities team up on electric cars

Partnership aims to tackle issues that will crop up when electric vehicles are rolled out.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — General Motors Corp. has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to help work out electricity issues that will crop up when it rolls out new electric vehicles in a little more than two years.

The Detroit automaker said the partnership, which includes the Electric Vehicle Research Institute and large utilities such as Southern California Edison and Duke Energy Corp. (DUK, Fortune 500), will deal with issues from tax incentives for the vehicles to where and when they can be plugged in for recharging.

GM (GM, Fortune 500) is working to bring the Chevrolet Volt rechargeable car to showrooms in late 2010. It’s being designed to run on an electric motor powered by lithium-ion batteries. When fully charged, it will be able to go 40 miles on battery power. For longer trips, a small internal combustion engine will recharge the batteries to keep the Volt moving.

“This vehicle is real. It’s coming into production,” said Britta Gross, a GM engineer who is helping to build the infrastructure for cars of the future. “We know that when the vehicle is in the showroom and ready for sale, it’s got to work seamlessly with the infrastructure. It’s the whole picture. We’ve got to make sure the infrastructure is ready.”

GM and the utilities planned to announcement the partnership Tuesday at a conference on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in San Jose.

The consortium will work on everything from policy issues including tax incentives for purchasing what is likely to be an expensive car to whether the electric generation system can handle the increased power demand.

The cars will have to be designed so recharging them can be timed to low-demand periods for electricity, Gross said. The speed of the recharging, voltage, amperage and other issues all have to be worked out, she said. The group also will address issues such as how apartment dwellers can charge their cars and where the vehicles will be charged at work or on trips – and who pays for the electricity, Gross said.

“We want this to sell in just huge volumes, so we want to get it right,” she said.

A team of GM engineers and designers is working on the Volt, hoping to be the leader in plug-in electric vehicles. Other automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), also are working on similar vehicles.

GM already is showing Volt prototypes to focus groups and is testing a new generation of batteries that can carry enough juice to run the vehicles 40 miles. It is being designed so it can be recharged from a conventional household electrical outlet.

But the car will be priced anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000, far more expensive than most conventional cars.

The group, Gross said, likely will seek government tax incentives for buyers because of the benefits the car brings to society, such as lowered greenhouse gas emissions and reduced dependence on foreign oil.

“The price to the consumer has got to be affordable,” she said.

Utilities, she said, can benefit from the cars because they will sell more electricity during off-peak hours when they have idle generating capacity.

But automakers and utilities will have to work out ways to decide how to stagger recharging so local substations do not become overloaded, Gross said.

The Volt likely will need about 8 kilowatt-hours of energy to recharge, Gross said. The average U.S. utility charges about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, so it would cost the consumer about 80 cents to go the 40 miles, she said.