2 Comments

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  Pedal Power 7/24/2009 11:32:27 PM

  1. Like it or not appearance does sell cars and to me the Tesla looks really good. 2. I'd be surprised if the grill increases drag that much; the front gets the attention but it's the rear that gets results, (and I'd really be amazed if Tesla hadn't considered that trade off). Look at Automobile_drag_coefficient on Wikipedia and you may be surprised, (and check out the ugly but eficient Rumpler Tropfenwagen). 3. Cooling is a necessary evil. Any time you have a lot of power, even with high efficiency, you need to consider energy dissipation so some parasitic cooling air flow (over and above pure body drag) is likely needed for the motors, transmission and batteries, not to mention dealing with heat dissipated by friction brakes (I'm assuming regenerative braking can only go so far).
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  ZeeBruce 7/23/2009 4:40:21 PM

  Sexy beast but the opening for a radiator looks out of place for an all electric vehicle. This cosmetic touch doubtless greatly increases the car's drag coefficient. Sad to see the people in Silicon Valley are following in the footsteps of Detroit and letting the marketing folks drive product design and engineering.