After driving 1,000 miles in his newly delivered Roadster,Tesla Founder Martin Eberhard Gives His First Impressions of the Roadster. In short, the suspension on the car is pretty stiff, and San Francisco's roads make for rough riding; there's no place to store spare change for parking meters, and he doesn't seem to like the mirrors on the car very much. What he seems to hate the most however is the stereo/nav system:

The JVC radio-CD player-nav system-vegematic thingy is horrible. The thing runs some Microsoft operating system (really!), and it behaves just like you might expect. Or more like a Mac-righteous Apple fan might expect it to behave. You basically can't operate it at all while you are driving - even changing stations is a pain, and it is really easy to flip open some random menu by mistake. And you can barely operate it when you aren't driving. The nav system gives goofy directions. With all its features, it can't pull the radio station name from the broadcasted RDS signal, so the largest writing on the screen usually says NO NAME/NO NAME. How very useful. The iPod interface doesn't work with an iPod. The Bluetooth interface doesn't work with an iPhone. Blech.

... with the use of time lapse photography and directed by Michel (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind, Rewind)and Olivier Gondry.

Lacquer's Behind music video:

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is what makes things cool. It's a lot like the current websites that are considered cool. I'm not on facebook, I don't use twitter, and I don't really understand the appeal of myspace with the kiddies (the pages are an eyesore, and filled with noise).

One of the cars I thought was ugly from it's inception is the Scion XB. Apparently for teenagers, this is the cool car. I really don't see the appeal, but this is what kids like these days.

In my day, this was the car most teens worshipped: the Lamborghini Countach. Sleek, beautiful, exotic, it was a car that none of us would probably ever own, but it was a dream car, and it was cool.
. Of course, my tastes definitely skewer towards the sleek and beautiful cars, as my current cool car is the Tesla Roadster.

It's fully electric, it goes 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, and it's wonderfully sleek. I want one. Eventually. But I've sat in the second prototype. It's really low to the ground, both inside and outside -- you are sitting on the floor, and I can't imagine this thing not getting scuffed up anytime there's a dip or a speed bump.

Tesla Motors gave a presentation of their soon-to-be-released electric car the Tesla Roadster.

It was half-presentation, half Q&A session. While some of the questions were very technical, a lot of the concerns presented by the audience seemed to revolve on the batteries and range of the car.

How long do the batteries last?

The battteries are warranted for 100,000 miles. Batteries should be good for 500 zero-to-one-hundred percent cycles.

How far can the Tesla Roadster go?

The Tesla can go 200 miles (according to EPA standards for driving). This is enough for most commutes, but the Tesla Roadster is NOT a roadtrip car.

Is the car cold-startable?

The car has undergone testing in +40 degree down to -40 degree weather. It's also undergone testing on all sorts of roads as well, including ice and cobblestone. There's a HVAC system to keep the batteries at an optimuum temperture. In a -40 degree condition, it might take a few minutes for the batteries to get to the optimuum temperature.

Why aren't you sharing more parts with the Elise?

Contractual obligations prevent them from using too much of Lotus' parts. They use the same suspension system, but the aluminum chasis is Tesla's own. The cost of a car where they needed to develop everything themselves would have been prohibitive.

While I was hoping the Tesla would be a replacement car, there are a number of factors that would relegate the car to being a second vehicle -- especially when traveling long distances or with more passengers or in need of more cargo space.

Flickr: Tesla Roadster

Smart is coming to the US in 2008, and they're taking $99 reservations for their vehicles. Very popular in Europe, these tiny cars are basically Daimler-Chrysler's ultra compact fuel-efficient cars, and they've attained something of a cult following. Getting around 40 miles per gallon, the smaller footprint of the Smart fortwo allows it to park perpendicular to the curb (like a motorcycle).The smart fortwo basic starts at a mere 12,000, while the cabrio convertible is only 17,000.

Today at the Geneva Car Show, BMW unveiled the M3 Concept, which features a V8 engine and a carbon fiber roof. I don't like the design -- while it's taken me 3 years to warm up the design of the 3-series, and on the new M3 Concept, the rise on the hood, and the design of the front aero bumper leave me ice cold. It feels too much like a BMW imitating a 1990 era Mustang.

A few months ago, David Beckham made news with his problems with his BMW X5 -- it seemed that everytime he left it parked somewhere, someone would manage to steal his armor plated SUV. Police suspected the work of high-tech car thieves using a laptop and a transmitter to crack BMW's keyless entry system, but it seems that there is a much easier way to break into a BMW, and it involves a 900 Euro toolkit. The Google video below shows just how easy it is to open a BMW's lock.

(The first part of the video is in German, just keep watching, it's subtitled for those parts, and then switches over to English):

Who Killed the Electric Car?

by Sony Pictures

The first part of the movie tells the history of the EV1 through engineers, salespeople and drivers of the vehicle, and then halfway through turns the movie into a murder case, examining the suspects behind the destruction of the car. The movie is a lesson on how corporate decisions on marketing a product, government regulations and consumer decision processes interact.

At the end of the movie, we are left with a feeling of waste, and that we should all be running clean, electric vehicles instead of the gas-polluting cars that we drive today. It's also somewhat sad that GM (which is now in massive financial trouble) who was a pioneer in the field of electric vehicles essentially threw away the costs of research and development on the EV1 as well as a potential 10 year lead on the competition in the electric vehicle marketplace.

A really well done montage of Jeremy Clarkson on TopGear about his dream car, the Ford GT:

It's an excellent reminder that sometimes, the dream is better than the reality.

According to Autoweek, the Pontiac Solstice bested the Mazda Miata in sales. This is a big deal, as the Miata has been the top selling two-seat sports car since its premiere in 1989. The Pontiac Solstice (which was featured as a project in the Apprentice), managed to outsell the Miata by almost 2,500 cars this year (18,361 Solstices vs. 15,873 Miata), with over 300 of those in the month of November. Both cars were released in 2005.

I've always found the Miata to be a really great car to drive -- the small size and the excellent handling combined with the drop top just makes you realize just how much fun driving can be.

The two cars are pretty similar to each other -- two seat roadsters priced near 20,000 (Solstice: 22,115, Miata: 21,030) rear-wheel drive, 4-cylinder engines (Miata 166hp, Solstice 177hp), with mpg that are nearly identical (Miata is 25/30, while Solstice is 20/28) to one another. Even the way their features are listed on the website are similar:

I'm not a big fan of this latest version of the Miata -- the car is uglier than the previous generation, and heavier too. The Solstice isn't easy on the eyes either -- every time I see one, I suddenly feel the need to lose my lunch. (Remember, the Solstice comes from the company that made the Aztek.

I have a suspicion that given the style changes on the Miata for this model, that people who are looking for a roadster, are looking elsewhere -- used 350z roadsters can be had for less than the cost of a new model of either of these two, and used Miatas can sometimes be found for no more than a couple thousand dollars.

The Solstice has a crazy upgraded version set to release next year -- priced at $27,000, the GXP model promises 260 hp and mpg of 25/31 -- making the Solstice GXP one of the most powerful compacts out there that still manages good gas mileage.

As for me and my roadster choice? I'm saving my pennies for an electric Tesla.