Tesla v2.0, er, v1.5 Hits the Road
Tesla Motors has released the much-awaited upgrade to the gearbox in the all-electric Roadster, and in typical Silicon Valley fashion calls it Powertrain 1.5 -- even though it's a different transmission and so ought to be called v2.0.
Nomenclature aside, the slick one-speed Borg-Warner transmission joins a stouter power inverter and revised engine in a package said to deliver 30 percent more torque and 10 percent more range. That lets the Roadster make good on its promised zero to 60 time of 4.0 seconds while squeezing 244 miles from the battery. "The new setup is superior in almost every way," says J.B. Straubel, Tesla's chief technology officer.
Tesla says it's already putting Powertrain 2.0, er, 1.5, in Roadsters that have made the trip from the factory in Hethel, England to San Carlos, California, for final assembly. So what's different about Powertrain 1.5, and what happens to the 27 people driving Roadsters with Powertrain 1.0?
The new one-speed transmission weighs 17 pounds less and creates less drag on the motor, increasing efficiency and bumping the car's range. A revised power inverter puts out 850 amps, up from 650, and the motor had redesigned terminals to reduce resistance. It's beefier, too, and torque rises from 211 foot-pounds to 280.
Tesla started developing Powertrain 1.5 after realizing the two-speed transmission it planned to use "had many durability, efficiency and cost challenges," Straubel wrote on the Tesla blog. Eager to start building cars, Tesla slapped an interim one-speed transmission in the Roadster when it fired up the assembly line at the Lotus plant in Hethel, and although early reviews of those cars were positive, the stop-gap tranny significantly cut into its performance. Early adopters got a car that did zero to 60 in 5.7 seconds -- about as fast as the Toyota Tundra pickup. Powertrain 1.5 cuts that to the promised 4.0 seconds, putting the Roadster on par with the Porsche 911 GT3.
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