Tesla Roadster

The Tesla Roadster is a hydrogen fuel cell powered car based upon the lotus elite. Manufactured by Tesla and unveiled just over a year ago at an invite only conference. The aim was to build an eco friendly car with reasonable performance. With the recent fears about global warming and the ozone layer most company's have a “eco friendly” development program. Another key factor in the development of such technologies is also the fear that our fossil fuels are going to have run out some time within the next 75-125 years. With that in mind most large car manufactures are looking for an alternate power source to run their cars. Ranging from water, air, electricity and hydrogen. So far there has been no definitive answer to which will be the next main fuel for cars because of technical hold backs and the technologies being in the early stages of development. The Tesla Roadster its self was in development for around 2 years based off current technologies that Lotus had provided them for a base of the engine systems.

Are hydrogen technologies really that “eco friendly”?

Unfortunately the hydrogen cell is still dependant upon another source of energy. It must be plugged into the “mains” to recharge which in turn means that the power stations must produce the power in the first place which some argue negates the positive impact you have by your car not physically emitting fumes but the power you use that is produced in power stations are just taking over for you. Interestingly Telsa are running a program that helps you to produce your own electricity for your car via installing a solar panel at a cut price through one of their partner's. With this in mind if you choose to take up the option of having a solar panel fitted at your house you would have a completely emission free car from first and third parties. Using the solar panel's would mean that you are using no fossil fuels and give off no emissions to harm the ozone layer.

How efficient is the hydrogen engine?

In comparison to a normal petrol engine a hydrogen engine is very efficient. It equates out to be around 135mpg compared to most petrol engines having around 30mpg. With the range of other electric cars being around 60 miles the telsa roadster puts them to shame. It has a range of 260 miles. To improve the efficiency telsa has come up with a few energy saving techniques such as “Regenerative braking” which means as you apply the breaks it first of all lowers the power output to the engine but ontop of that it takes some of the energy used in braking and turns it back into energy and puts it back into the battery in the same kind of way a dynamo works on conventional cars. According to the telsa's website it states that the car costs roughly 1cent a mile which is roughly 0.5 of a penny.

It has been noted that there are some issues with the batteries causing a reasonable amount of pollution themselves during the production of the batteries.

The issue that this car helps to solve is that of pollution. Transport and more specificity personal transport is one of the biggest contributions to pollution on the planet. If it is possible to cut emissions from transport, such as this car achieves it is possible to cut pollution and stop the erosion of the ozone layer.

Plan of enquiry

To find out more about these technologies I am going to use several secondary research sources. I will first download the technical documentation for the car to find out more about just how effective it really is. I have found several studies (Linked to off of the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_car) and I will study them closer to get more details about whether they are really as environmentally friendly as they lead us to believe. Wikipedia has been a great help during the writing of this article and has been my main source of information. I have compiled a list of some useful websites that may be useful during further research.

http://teslamotors.com/
http://www.efcf.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/
http://www.ca.sandia.gov/crf/research/combustionEngines/PFI.php