Classic pearls of the future - Tesla Roadster
04/20/2015
Of course, it is still a little early to predict whether the Tesla Roadster will one day become a real classic. But there are a few points in favor of the plastic sports car with electric drive.
The Tesla Roadster was built from 2008 to 2012, and only around 2450 of these cars were sold in total. The sports car, powered by an electric motor in the rear, was developed together with Lotus - the company in Hethel also built the car on behalf of Tesla - and many components were adopted from the Elise model, including the aluminum composite chassis. The first Tesla also looked very similar to the Lotus Elise, but there were some differences in the details.
The approximately 300 hp electric motor in the rear was powered by lithium-ion batteries like those found in conventional laptops, except that a car on a scale of 1:1 required a few more of them - 6831 are said to have been needed. All this technology made the Tesla considerably heavier than the Lotus Elise, with an unladen weight of just over 1200 kg. Nevertheless, it is to the car's credit that no additional weight was added during charging. However, this process took a considerable amount of time, a problem that all electric cars suffer from.
Nevertheless, the Tesla Roadster went significantly further than most of its competitors when fully charged. The manufacturer promised a range of 350 km, 200 km even at a brisk pace, only in racing mode, i.e. at full load, did the range shrink to less than 100 km, which led to a controversy between the manufacturer and the British television station BBC, which had carried out a test of the American electric car early on in the Top Gear program.
In any case, the owners were able to live with the Tesla Roadster's weaknesses and were delighted with the brute torque and the almost noiseless driving style, apart from wind and tire rolling noise.
In 2012, production of the Model S was launched, which had little to do with the Roadster, as it was a pleasing four-door model with a design somewhere between the Jaguar XF and Ford Mondeo. This made the new model much more practical and technically better in almost every respect, but it will never be able to compete with its predecessor as a classic.
We maintain that there is a good chance that a Tesla Roadster will be a sought-after collector's vehicle in 20 or 30 years' time, if all maintenance and energy storage supply problems can be solved one day ...
Further classic pearls of the future can be found in the corresponding topic channel.
