LIGHT SPARKS

How does the electric Tesla Roadster compare today?

- Robert Coucher

hat incredible sensation of whoosh is still there after ten years! With 295lb ft of instant torque and 288bhp on tap, the Tesla Roadster Sport is dramatically fast in otherworldly fashion. Amazing to think that this is pretty much the first of the current wave of electric cars, having sprung out of the trap in 2006 and launched Tesla into the vanguard of automotive technology. Its performance remains, ahem, electrifying, if slightly weird.

That equally weird but smart billionaire, Elon Musk, decided to back internet pioneers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning's all-electric car and approached Lotus to help with the design and engineering, using its lively and lightweight Elise sports car as a template.

Again, a bit weird - you'd think an electric vehicle should be practical for ostensibly urban use, and the low-slung, two-door open Elise is hardly that. Musk obviously knew what he was doing - grabbing attention - as he now owns the world's most valuable automotive company ($71.9bn in June 2024). He later admitted that the Lotus was not the best starting point, as only about 7% of the donor was retained for the Tesla Roadster and just 2456 examples were manufactured between 2008 and 2012.

The first prototypes were released in Santa Monica (where else?) in 2006 and Musk received the first road car. It is 2in longer than the Elise, with a stiffer chassis to take its greater weight being packed with lithium-ion batteries (in a world first for a car), at 1237kg it's a lot heavier than the flyweight Elise. Its induction motor is air-cooled, and the Borg Warner transmission has a single ratio, which gets the Roadster to 60mph in just 3.7sec.

Range is claimed to be 244 miles.