Tesla Motors Makes the Electric Sports Car a Reality
Gas is expensive; there’s simply no way around it. And with prices continuing to climb, it’s not a particularly good time to own a large displacement sports car; in fact with gas well into the $1.00 range, it’s not a good time to own a sports car, period. But what if you could get all the performance of a Corvette, Porsche 911 or even a BMW M6 without paying a dime at the gas pumps? Well thanks to the genius of the folks at Tesla Motors, you can.
Called the Tesla Roadster, most likely named after the world’s most prolific inventor and humanitarian, Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943; born: Smiljan, Croatia) who once stated “Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity,” this Lotus Elise-like sports car could be the vehicle that blows the conventional sports car off of the tarmac while, in homage to Tesla, doens’t harm and therefore benefits the human condition.
Going from 0-100 km/h in about 4.6 seconds, producing 248 horsepower and with a redline of 13,500 rpm, its specs sound like some sort of race car’s, yet the Tesla is a completely livable and economical way to get to and from the office every day. The secret is its powerplant: a 3-phase, 4-pole electric motor. Completely devoid of any form of internal combustion, the Tesla’s only oil resides in its two-speed electronically shifted manual transmission. Providing the car not only with excellent economy (Tesla reports the cost per mile to be in the one cent range), the electric motor also delivers performance gasoline-powered cars could only dream of. Granted, the horsepower figure isn’t the most astounding spec, it’s the motor’s torque curve that makes the Tesla feel like a high-powered sports car; peak torque literally occurring off-idle. And perhaps even better is that it doesn’t fall off like a gas-powered car’s torque curve; the Tesla’s twist delivery stays almost dead flat until roughly 5,500 rpm, where it begins to decline slowly until redline. That should correlate into furious acceleration that will surely be unrelenting in a way no gas powered sports car’s can.
And don’t think for a minute that this electric car is some sort of useless pipe dream with no interior and a ridiculously short range: Tesla is currently taking orders for what should be a very popular car (the author wishes he could afford one!), and it’s far from useless with a 402 km (250 mile) range. When it does come time to plug it in, the Tesla’s home charger, included, will give the car a complete charge in as little as 3.5 hours, while the trunk-mounted mobile charger is better suited to overnight charges in hotel parking lots.
The Tesla also takes a page out the hybrid book; using regenerative braking to recover some of the energy used when slowing down.
With styling that bears a striking resemblance to the Lotus Elise both inside and out; the Roadster may well use Lotus’ little wonder as its donor car, although if that’s the case Tesla Motors isn’t saying.
With a price tag expected to fall between $85,000 and $120,000 USD, the Tesla won’t exactly be cheap and therefore not for every environmentalist in a hurry. However, given its innovative drivetrain and very un-electric-car-like styling, we’ve got to give this cool car a very big thumbs up.
