I could have saved them all a lot of money on this idea. Simply go to Smokey Yunick’s website and purchase the man’s autobiography. In it you will learn all sorts of things about the early days of NASCAR, getting high in the jungles of Peru, getting laid at Indy and his experiments on replacing spark plugs with other flame sources.

From Smokey’s account of the Carrea Panamerica :

In Mexico City we work on car at the Hudson dealership. We can’t speak Spanish, but the dealer’s got a 15 or 16 year old son. A real nice guy and helper. He’s going with us as our interpreter. (Good idea as it turned out.) Gotta have a place to stay for five days. Taxi driver says “Go to Angel’s, best place in town” Angel’s is a big house, 15 bucks a day for room and three meals…free booze part of rent…free hookers and dirty movies all day and night…all for 15 bucks a day. Yes, it was all good… for a dose of the crabs…quite an interesting place.

Now we have word that Tesla got its government loan to develop a car using the same stuff it has already developed. Huh? Can I get a loan to learn how to walk, talk and not crap my pants? Now Tesla has a loan to match it ridiculous valuation – they have doubled their money! – and so the cure of the environment is now complete. Ahh, happy times. To be fair, Tesla has delivered hundreds of cars. Hundreds. The US market for cars and trucks and suvs is currently around 10 million units per year, so if we divide 500 by 10,000,000 we get a …. really small number. So the impact of the Tesla is less than a rounding error of current automotive emissions. It sure is a good thing that people are so darn proud of it.

Tesla will soon be in another game. A real game, where the fanboys who love them so much on the internet will soon have to reverse course and start calling a spade a spade. The realities of making a niche sports car are much different than the realities of making a mid-volume sedan. Sports cars aren’t driven often and usually not for long distances. The electric car can fit this bill. How many high mileage Ferraris do you ever see for sale? A family sedan is typically driven daily, every day, to and from work, soccer practice and to go get groceries. This car needs to be reliable – very reliable. A little inconvenience in the sports car will become a major nightmare when you can’t get to work in your family car. This is the trick that is the hard part – make it good, make it cheap and get people to buy it. Toyota’s spectacular growth has been built on this – I don’t personally think that Tesla has a chance.  Neither do some engineers.

If Tesla was really clever, they would start a racing series and open it to all the other manufacturers. It seems strange to me that will all this hype about electric cars for so long, there never was a series that got off the ground. Leave it to the motorcycle guys to do it first – there will be a motorcycle series as part of the  FIM world championships in 2010.

My rant is over – what do you think?