Interview with Tesla CTO JB Straubel: The $35,000 200-mile Electric car

Nice interview with Tesla CTO JB Straubel in the MIT Technology review. In it he talks about how doing the technology internally rather than outsource in key areas like digital motors, laptop Lithium cells and Superchargers allowed them to innovate faster.  And that allows them to make the next big step:

[JB:] People think the battery accounts for most of the cost of an electric car, but that’s not the case at all. For the Roadster [Tesla’s first car], the battery was already down below half the cost. Now we’re down to a quarter of the cost in most cases. We’re on track to getting to costs that will allow us to make a $35,000 car [the cost of the GM Volt] with a greater-than-200-mile range. It doesn’t require some mythical invention. All the pieces are fundamentally there.