DO AS I SAY...DO AS I SAY...DO AS I SAY...: (via The Wife)

Making a Mark with Rockets and Roadsters (David Kestenbaum, August 9, 2007, Morning Edition)

Internet tycoon Elon Musk is now building racecars and rockets.

And not just to make money.

Back when he was in college, Musk laid out what he deemed were two important problems worthy of study. First, the world needed an environmentally clean method of transportation. And, he thought, it would be good if humans could colonize another planet. Not an unusual late-night conversation for a science major. [...]

I meet Musk by arrangement in the lobby of a San Diego hotel. The first things out of his mouth are "Hi" and "Have you seen the car yet?"

Waiting does not seem to come naturally to him, and I have to catch up outside where Musk is standing by a red sports car with a small metallic "T" on the front of the hood. He goes over the car in technical detail in a way that is reminiscent of those scenes in James Bond movies where "Q" explains the latest gadget. Finally we get in and he turns the key. There is no sound, but the car moves.

The Tesla Roadster has no tailpipe and no gas tank. It is powered by 7,000 lipstick-size lithium ion batteries, the sort that powers some laptops.

The cost in electricity to drive a mile? One or two cents, Musk says.

Musk pulls the car onto a straight section of road and presses the pedal that has nothing to do with gas. The acceleration throws my head back. I'm startled and Musk is pleased.

In tests, the Roadster has gone from 0 to 60 mph in under four seconds. Musk slows when we get to 100 mph.

"I probably shouldn't go any faster than that," he says. This car is a prototype, and makes some odd sounds. Production versions are due out later this summer.

A Vision of the Future

Musk is charming and funny, but also relentlessly logical. He has a way of talking that makes his vision of the future seem inevitable.

Take electric cars. Some car companies are studying the idea of vehicles that run on hydrogen — Musk thinks that's stupid.

He points out that there is currently no capacity for making huge amounts of hydrogen, no infrastructure for shipping it and no easy way to store it densely enough to drive great distances.

But electricity? We make it, we distribute it and you can charge a Roadster in a few hours from the outlet that powers your washing machine. Tesla says a full charge can carry you more than 200 miles. The catch is that then, your car will need some alone time with a power cord again.

When the folks behind Tesla Motors approached him, Musk quickly invested $37 million, enough to get the company off the ground. He intends to make the money back, and then some.

"I am not Mother Theresa," he has said.

The Tesla business plan is to start at the high-end, establish electric cars as more than golf-carts, then move down market. At about $100,000 the Roadster is beyond the economic means of even most car enthusiasts, though an impressive list of people have pre-paid for the first round.

It's not an impressively long list — just impressive. Musk ticks off names that include George Clooney, the founders of Google and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

On the way to the airport Musk speaks on his cell phone with Jay Leno, which puts Musk — a multimillionaire — in the odd spot of being a car salesman. Musk tells Leno that ideally, Tesla will be a great American car company, like Ford or GM, though his voice gets quiet when he says this.

The Wife heard this one on the way to work, with the supposedly environment-minded Mr. Musk hopping in his Gulfstream for a flight within California...

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2007 5:02 PM