Tesla - Electric car with Lotus Elise guts...

[rob13572468]

Originally Posted by Gizmo3000

That's Tesla's version of Bill Clinton's "I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman".

They naturally want to downplay the Lotus connection as much as possible and make it sound like they did everything themselves. But I'd say that little PR spin article goes a bit too far in doing so.

Obviously, the Tesla isn't an electrified/converted Elise.
but there's also no doubt it IS in essence a modified/electric version of the Elise.
from wikipedia:
"The chassis design is licensed from Lotus, based on the Elise chassis, was built using the same Lotus software tools used to build the Elise chassis, and is built by the same Norwegian manufacturer. Similarly, the body panels were designed under contract by Barney Hatt of Lotus Design Studios in cooperation with Tesla, but are manufactured from carbon fiber by a third party vendor. Final assembly of the Tesla Roadster is done at Lotus Cars in Hethel, England by both Lotus and Tesla employees."

The real truth is that (if the tesla becomes successful) it will be largely a result of all the engineering work that lotus put into the elise, building a very light and strong vehicle and developing the manufacturing processes to do so. Tesla knew that they needed a car that started under a certain target weight and was a roadster and had excellent performance and handling so they took the elise and then started making enough changes to the body so they could call it a different car.

Honestly if the elise had never existed we would all be talking about how the tesla looks suspiciously like the EV1.

[pixlpush]

Originally Posted by fpitas

Shouldn't this thread be in the Tesla sub-forum?

No, but do you think they'll make a Tesla submarine too?

[Mattnshilp]

Take an already amazing Atom and put in the fastest electric engine out there and you get the WrightSpeed X1 (pre-production)...

Take a look:

YouTube - Electric Car races V10 Porsche GT and Ferrari 0-60 in 3 sec.

YouTube - Wrightspeed X1 vs. Lamborghini Gallardo and NASCAR

Just WOW!!!

-Matt

[ACE51]

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