Tesla weighed down with "several hundred" pounds
Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley maker of the all-electric roadster due out this year, said the vehicle won’t be able to travel as far as previously thought without a recharge.
The Tesla will now have a range “greater than 200 miles,” less than the 250 originally promised — because of design changes made to fulfill safety regulations and for other reasons. From a new transmission to new stereo subwoofer, the alterations have added “several hundred pounds” to the car’s weight, the company said in a letter to people who had put down a deposit for the car. Instead of a curb weight of 2,500 pounds, it is now over 2,600 pounds.
No change, yet, on the promise it will go 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds. No one has yet asked for their deposit back, the company tells the Mercury News’s Matt Nauman (see full story).
The Tesla is backed by a number of high-profile investors, including Google co-founders and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and has been touted by folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been pushing an eco-friendly agenda more aggressively lately. It is part of a wave of investments in new clean technology companies. Investments in such clean-tech North American and European companies totaled $903 million during the first quarter, a strong 16.5 percent increase over the $775 million invested in the previous quarter, and a 42 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago, according to the Cleantech Venture Network yesterday.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
