Tesla's cars are wildly price inefficient because they cost $100K. For 10K you can get a decent car that has 4 times the range. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster
How many gallons of fuel can you get for 90K?
They are nice toys for rich people. Perhaps there is a market for that. Good luck to them.
But for mass transit unless you can get the price of the batteries to plummet it just does not work.
This doesn't eliminate the tail (we still have to deliver ammunition, lubricating oil, food etc. to the fleet) and it doesn't eliminate replenishment at sea (we still have to get that stuff from supply vehicles to ships), but it does lighten the supply load and create more military options.
1) uranium -> nuclear power -> expensive synthesis -> local transport -> fuel
2) uranium -> nuclear power -> transmission lines -> charging batteries
3) crude oil -> refinement -> transport -> fuel
EDIT: Found a reference from another comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process... It says that the input energy is 2-4 times the stored energy for synthesized hydrocarbon fuel.
Telsa, like many startups, is pursuing a low-volume, price-insensitive market first. That helps pay for all sorts of startup and R&D costs, and lets them work out issues before they scale. Their long-term goal is, per Wikipedia, "eventually mass producing fully electric cars at a price affordable to the average consumer".
There are several fully electric vehicles in production that cost $35k.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_elec...
They have a substantially lower cost of operation than gas-powered vehicles, so they are plausibly cheaper to operate over the lifetime of the car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#Operating_costs
And over the long term, expecting batteries to get better is a pretty good bet. Everybody from Apple to Toyota is eager for battery improvements.
A mass-produced commuter could be much cheaper, but there's a huge risk. Tesla aims to reduce the risk by validating the market, solving technical problems, creating infrastructure (recharge stations) and solving social problems (convincing people that range doesn't always matter, and educating them on the strengths and weaknesses of electric cars).
A low total-cost (including fuel and maintenance) electric car can probably be produced, but it's not the Tesla's top model.
