Probably still more reliable than your average Ford Explorer.

Haaaaa, Ben's so right. I'll be the stats reflect less risk if all factors are considered.

Besides, the Roadster is so fast you just point the nose down and accelerate until the wind just blows the fire out. I've seen it done in movies a million times!

Now you'll see terrorist with these suckers in Afghanastan no need for IEDs anymore. They'll just have to have a FAT bankroll to buy these at 45.000 a pop.

Very cool.

We would definitely love to own one. However, we can't help thinking the whole exploding Li-ion battery thing (burning laptop videos) would be quite a bit more "spectacular" if it was to happen to one of these puppies.

Fortunately that liquid petrolium people keep pouring into their cars is amazingly safe.

Seriously, which part of the oil / auto industry do you suppose started this vicious battery blowing up rumor?

I think Id feel very comftable diving one of these cars with the list of safty features like the ones below.

To keep temperatures under control, Tesla's engineers have developed an electronically controlled liquid cooling system. They have also included overcharging protection, three layers of fuses, and sensors that will trigger the batteries to disconnect in the case of high-temperatures, a sudden impact, or a roll-over. In fact, the decision to use many small batteries rather than a few very large ones was in part a safety consideration -- each battery and its relatively small amount of stored energy compared with the entire system is isolated and protected within its own steel case. And the entire system is also encased for protection in the case of an accident.

Imagine if batteries were the standard technology and the internal
combustion engine was its replacement. Do you think people would be
more worried about the small risk of a fire in a battery back or the
series of controlled explosions that happened thousands of times a
minute under the hood of an ICE car?

Well, if they DO start to asplode, they can just work that into the marketing.

"Wanna feel like a teenager again? Take a risk, baybee!" They could drag Def Leppard off of the golf course to do "Pyromania" again.

you know the only reason at least i've ever had to hate particular large companies is not because the are dominant, but because particular ones are assholes. If there werent oil and cars companies firmly against this stuff, then by now we would probably have electric/bio diseal cars. know what i realized though, actually my dad said this to me...so yeah. anywayz, politics can only last so long. a company can put all its money into politicians but in the end a bad enough idea will fail. so, though they may greatly prospone it, cars running on biodeasl which is created from sugars, cars running on water, electricity, even maybe air, will one day come true.

OMG... The electric car KILLED ITSELF!

Considering the fact that electric cars are ZERO maintainence, replacing a battery once or twice doesn't sound like much compared to how much maintainence gasoline car requires.

Har @ Daniel K.

In keeping with my (fairly common) belief that you should never, ever, ever, buy the first iteration of any new product, I don't know what kind of reception this car will get at the outset.

I'm sure that in a hundred years, our apprehensions about this car will look hopelessly primative (after all, gasoline is pretty volatile too), but for now I will stick to my Volvo, which does not show any signs of exploding thus far (and isn't so teensy that they could bury me in it if I ever had an accident).

And they're expecting to sell ten million of them when?

They won't sell tens of millions of the roadster. The follow-on models are intended for larger consumer bases.

It's interesting how people forget how dangerous "combustion" cars actually are! I've seen numerous accounts of incidents where people's cars have gone ablaze while driving due to engine overheating, or filling up their vehicles in a gas station (due to static discharge on the pump). And who could forget most of all the exploding FORD PINTO! It had such a bad design that when someone would ream you from behind at a measly 30mph you would find yourself in flames.

Given the chance, I'll take my chances any day with an electric car!

It's interesting how people forget how dangerous "combustion" cars actually are! I've seen numerous accounts of incidents where people's cars have gone ablaze while driving due to engine overheating (and many other engine failures), or filling up their vehicles in a gas station (due to static discharge on the pump). And who could forget most of all the exploding FORD PINTO! It had such a bad design that when someone would ream you from behind at a measly 30mph you would find yourself in flames.

Given the chance, I'll take my chances any day with an electric car!