Scary Fast, and Green Too!

Innovation: The act of introducing something new.

I think there is plenty of innovation happening at Yahoo!, but it's always worthwhile to take a look outside of your industry for inspiration. Today, some of that was brought to our front door, via a speaker series held on campus. Tesla Motors is a start-up company based here in the Bay Area, but rather than building the latest internet widget, they build cars. But not any cars, mind you-- very, very fast cars that oh-yea-by-the-way, also are electric. The CEO of the company and some of the staff members came into Yahoo! today to talk about their work in progress and allow those of us who are car geeks to marvel at what they have created, and also get the chance to take a look at one of the 10 prototype cars that have been built so far.

It sure looks like a modern day sports car, with many Lotus/British references, but still maintaining a unique look. It is run by a battery that sits in the trunk (that's the white box in the pic to the left here) that is smaller than a car battery, and that is all there is for power. It can do 0-60 mph in 4 seconds, faster than pretty much every sports car out there, including big names like the Corvette and Porsche 911. It has a range of up to 250 miles on one charge, well enough to get around town and for all but the longest commutes. Simply plug it in when you get home, and the next morning, its ready to go- it gets the equivalent of 135 mpg (!) and costs a penny per mile to operate. Amazing stuff, despite the accompanying $100k price tag.

The inspiration for all of this? The desire to want to be environmentally conscious while also wanting to actually enjoy driving that car have thus far been totally separate. Yes, we can all marvel at how nifty the Toyota Prius looks and that it gets 50+ mpg, but by pretty much all accounts, its about as fun to drive as a Corolla. And while all of the sports cars out there are no doubt fun to drive, the sub-teen mpg is hard to swallow for any environmentally-conscious car enthusiast. Thus, the Tesla Roadster.

Obviously there are hundreds of innovations in the design, build and engineering of this car. However as a person who likes to drive cars fast but also would like to be as socially responsible as possible, this car creates a new niche and potentially a new market altogether. Tesla still faces many hurdles to see if it will ultimately work in the marketplace. They won't even ship their first car until next year, and have ambitious plans for a sedan to follow in 2009/2010.

But the innovation of introducing something so immediately understandable yet at the same time so new, to me, is the real revelation of the Tesla. Motor on!

** Read more about the Tesla on their official site