Anthony Doesburg: Electric cars get a boost from Toyota tie-up

Tesla's electric Roadster. Photo / Supplied

The Kiwi co-founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors is enthusiastic about the California company's tie-up with Toyota. But Ian Wright, who spent a year at Tesla before starting his own electric vehicle venture, Wrightspeed, doesn't think it means electric vehicles are about to become mainstream.

"I think it is great news for both Toyota and for Tesla," says Wright, an electrical engineer who has lived in California for more than a decade.

"Like Elon [Musk, Tesla's chief executive], I have enormous respect for Toyota, especially its manufacturing prowess, and Tesla has done an awesome job of engineering on the Roadster.

"I expect to see some very interesting vehicles built as a result of this partnership."

The Roadster is Tesla's first production car, the result of seven years' effort. Its acceleration is the match of Ferraris and Porsches, its lithium-ion battery is good for about 400km of mixed city and open-road driving and it recharges in as little as four hours.

If it sounds like the car for you, you're out of luck. The Roadster is only available in the US, Canada and Europe and, even if you have the necessary US$100,000 ($149,200), you'll wait up to five months for delivery.

The Toyota deal, which will see the Japanese company sinking US$50 million into Tesla, should speed up delivery and lead to wider vehicle choice.

The two companies will co-operate on electric vehicle (EV) development and production, with Tesla taking over a factory used by Toyota until a month ago, with production capacity of 500,000 cars a year.

The plant, handily situated near Tesla's Silicon Valley headquarters, will produce the S1, a family sedan due on the market in 2012.

The S1 is slightly more sedate than the Roadster - it will do zero to 97km/h in 5.7 seconds - and half the price, but will seat seven people.

Even so, Wright thinks it will be years before EVs are more than a rounding error in the overall world market for cars and light trucks that is worth close to US$2 trillion a year.

"Nothing in the automotive world changes that quickly. The positive way to look at that is the enormous growth potential."

He doesn't think the Obama presidency will make much difference to the rate of uptake of fossil-fuel alternatives because of the dire state of the US economy. The billions of dollars of support that have gone to the US automotive industry are largely passing innovative companies by.

"Instead, there seem to be machinations to give the US$16 billion balance to GM and Chrysler," says Wright, for whom GM means Government Motors.

Wright's view of how to cut America's transport fuel bill is not to convert the car fleet to EVs but to tackle the vast number of gaz-guzzling light trucks and pickups.

Since leaving Tesla - he remains a shareholder - he has been developing a power train for commercial vehicles.

Called a series hybrid design, it has a turbine that will run on almost any available gas or liquid fuel, although not petrol, to charge the battery, trebling the range. The battery is also mains-chargeable.

Wright says the design saves enough fuel to achieve a three-year payback of the increased vehicle cost. He won't comment on whether any are on the roads yet.

His other preoccupation is extreme performance cars. Wrightspeed has made headlines around with the world with its X1, an open sports car that leaves Tesla's Roadster for dead.

Wright, who is in his 50s, raced cars in his younger days and still gets around Silicon Valley in an X1. He doesn't pretend he has a green goal in building performance EVs.

"We can deliver really radical performance with better control. Fuel saving doesn't really come into it. Watch this space, it will get interesting."

The market for 500-horsepower and bigger cars in the US is worth up to US$3 billion, Wright says, but petrol cars of that power are a test of their drivers' abilities.

High-performance EVs have better driveability, with the added property of no trade-off between speed and efficiency. "But efficiency is more a social stigma issue than a cost of fuel issue for buyers of US$250,000 and up supercars," he says.

Wright, who makes regular visits to New Zealand, says Wrightspeed has both a New Zealand customer and supplier, but non-disclosure agreements prevent him from naming them.

With Tesla seemingly on the brink of breaking through to a wider market, Wright has no regrets about having struck out on his own.

"I certainly learned a lot in my time there; I'm proud of that. I was there at the beginning, I sincerely hope they succeed wildly, and I think they will. But I have my own vision to follow and it's quite different from Tesla's."

Electric Toyota

Toyota, the world's largest carmaker, is buying a US$50 million stake in electric-car maker Tesla Motors.

Toyota is the world's biggest seller of hybrid cars, and Tesla is the only company selling US highway-legal battery-powered cars.

Tesla, which hasn't made a profit in the six years since it was founded, is planning to raise US$100 million in an initial share sale. It has also been approved for a US$465 million government loan to help produce its Model S sedan, and intends to start volume production in 2012.

Tesla's investors include Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the government of Abu Dhabi.

- BLOOMBERG