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Washington State governor signs pro-Tesla bill

Maybe Tesla should build its proposed gigafactory in the Evergreen State. Last week, Washington Govermor Jay Inslee signed a bill that will allow Tesla to keep selling its electric vehicles through its showrooms and not have to work through third-party dealerships, Automotive News says. That means the California-based electric-vehicle maker can keep its showrooms in Seattle and Bellevue open. Oddly, the bill appears to more-or-less grandfather Tesla into factory-to-customer legality, allowing Tesla to expand its number of showrooms while preventing any other automaker who didn't have a state dealership license as of January 1, 2014, to do the same. The news isn't exactly stunning, given the state's largely pro-green attitude and progressive approach to plug-in vehicle technology. A fast-charging-station network has been built along Interstate 5 in both Washington and Oregon, and, as of late 2013, Washington's I-5 stations were getting used about twice as much as they were in 2012. Still, the bill represents a substantial victory for Tesla, whose representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from AutoblogGreen. Last month, New Jersey said Tesla would have to close its two factory-owned stores in the state. Tesla lost a similar battle in Texas last year, while the company has made some headway in states like Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Ohio. Last year, Tesla chief Elon Musk went as far as saying he'd go to the federal government to try to overturn such laws, but that avenue of attack has not yet been attempted.

2014 Corvette Stingray meets Tesla Model S in drag strip showdown

They come from two different worlds and have little in common. The Tesla Model S P85 is the sportiest version of this paradigm-punching sedan from California, while the 2014 Corvette Stingray Z51 is a performance-enhanced version of Michigan's recently-updated sports car stalwart. The West Coast car seats five adults and eats electrons like Popeye eats spinach, the Easterner has two passenger places and, surprisingly, sips gasoline like one might bourbon. An attribute they do happen to share is extreme quickness. This similarity is all the excuse Drag Times needed to set the vehicles beside each other at the Palm Beach International Raceway for a bit of mano-a-mano quarter-mile combat. Fortunately enough, cameras were rolling for each of two bouts down the blacktop and the results recorded for our edification and enlightenment. The winner? We won't spoil it for you, but let's just say it's really, really close. How close? Scroll below and watch the video for yourself. Just be warned, the results may surprise you. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Silly dyno, that Tesla doesn't have 2,000 lb-ft of torque

Torque. Lots of torque, right off the line. That one benefit presented by an electric motor over its internal-combustion sibling, and the Tesla Model S delivers it in spades. 443 spades, to be precise, or about as much as a Bentley Continental GT or McLaren 12C. But when one Emmanuel Chang put his electric sedan on a dyno up (way up north) in Edmonton, Alberta, it registered a whopping 2,000 pound-feet!
Of course that number isn't correct, as no car on the road produces that much torque. Even a Bugatti Veyron produces "only" 1,000 lb-ft, give or take. Clearly something's amiss here, but the problem the dyno had in reading the Tesla's torque apparently doesn't come down to its electric powertrain. (Nor does it have anything to do with the northerly latitude or the interference of polar winds.) It comes down to the shiny, ten-spoke alloys.
Apparently this type of dyno measures torque by running horsepower and wheel revolutions through an algorithm. It measures horsepower at the wheel (which, at 436 hp, wasn't far off of Tesla's own rating of 416 hp) and uses a stationary optical sensor interfacing with a reflector on the wheel. Every time the reflector passes the sensor, it counts one revolution. But since the Model S has shiny ten-spoke wheels (and we presume because it was taken outdoors under bright sunlight), the sensor thought that each passing spoke was one revolution of the wheel... when it was, in fact, ten times too much.