Electric Cars

The Tesla Roadster

The Tesla roadster is an all-electric sports car that has the performance to battle a Porsche. At the hart of this car is a very large battery pack used to store energy or ESS (Electric Storage System). Most people think that an electric cars and their batteries consumes more energy to make and create more toxic waste that a standard automobile. The battery in the Tesla Roadster must be very large to propel the car to a 0 to 60 time of 4 seconds and have a range of 200 miles (the largest range of any electric vehicle) Containing 6800 AA sized Lithium-ion cell weighing about 450kg. These cells are manufactured in Japan where there are relatively strict environmental laws, and meet the RoHS standards. They are mostly made of lithium metal oxides with zero lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBBs or PBDEs. It is less toxic than the lead-acid batteries that are in regular cars, and at the end of its life it is recycled. Tesla Motors is working with Kinsbursky Brothers, Inc. (KBI)/Toxco to recycle the vehicle’s batteries. They want to maximize the amount of material that can be salvaged, (cobalt, aluminum, nickel, and copper, etc) to reuse in future batteries. It is uncommon for manufacturers to take such a stance in the recycling of their product, but they stand to benefit if they can reuse the materials to create more cars.