Tesla is making news again, but not because of their crazy cool new semi. Now they’re making headlines because their Tesla Roadster is back. Unexpectedly. The specs are kind of unbelievable in many ways. The car speed tops out at over 250 MPH. It can go 0-60 in 1.9 seconds. To clarify, that’s less than 2 seconds. And it has a range of 620 miles on it. These numbers, according to Musk, sound unreal, but they’re not. To put this into perspective, no production car has gone faster to highway speed. Including Ferrari or Porsche.
The speed itself is incredible, don’t you think? There are other cars that can top 250 MPH, sure, but they are powered by gasoline. Other electric vehicles have made it up to 230 MPH, but they’ve got pretty big bodies. So this isn’t completely out of the ordinary. The remarkable part about this is that it can go this speed given the size of the 200kWh battery pack. What does it cost? The base price starts at $200,000 and in order to get one you have to put down $50,000.
What does the car look like? It’s a four-seater with all-wheel drive. Which makes it a rare in the automotive industry. There aren’t a lot of cars with four seats, a removable top and all-wheel drive out there. So what was the motivation behind this car? It wasn’t completely unexpected, as I suggested earlier, as Elon Musk hinted at an updated Roadster. The original Roadster was what established Tesla’s reputation as a performance oriented electric car brand originally. But that car has kind of been forgotten about since production ended for it in 2012.
Let’s talk about the distance it can travel on one battery charge. Musk has claimed that the Roadster can travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back in just one charge. Which is quite the milestone for an electric car. Even most gasoline-fueled cars can’t travel that distance without stopping somewhere to fill up. Which is why this is so incredible. The Roadster proved electric cars could be both fast and attractive, and this new Roadster wants us to think about doing away with gasoline cars completely.
Is this kind of freedom worth the cost? On one hand, I think you could make the argument that it is. I mean, I personally am not in the tax bracket to be buying a Tesla, but I think the argument for one is there. Tesla proves time after time that it makes a really good product. There’s no question about that. In a road test earlier in the year, it proved that it could go faster than a McLaren off the mark. Which is why I think it’s a great car. If you’re the kind of person who is in the market for something like a McLaren, then its a quick leap over to a Tesla. And the nice thing about the Tesla is that it’s environmentally friendly. You’re not burning through gasoline, you’re not stopping every couple hundred miles to fill up your tank. And you’re getting a pretty cool car. Overall, the Tesla Roadster is a win-win.
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