By Miles Downard
A short while back Elon Musk announced the introduction of a surprise model in Tesla’s line up, the Roadster. Yes it comes at an opportune moment in trying to divert attention from the woeful production delay surrounding the Model 3 (the company expected to have rolled 1,500 off the line by now but only 260 have actually materialised). But let’s take nothing away from the Roadster as a pure exercise in what electric vehicles can achieve.
So, the stats then. The Roadster will go from 0-60 mph (96.5 km/h) in 1.9 seconds making it the first car to accelerate to this speed in under two seconds. It doesn’t stop there either. 0-160 km/h will take just 4.1 seconds and it’ll cover a quarter mile in 8.9 seconds. Provisionally the top speed has been set at 400 km/h.
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Being an electric vehicle the question of range is always a big one. With near 1,000 km available on a single charge, thanks to its 200 kWh battery, it’s safe to say the Roadster is as complete as a performance oriented electric car one can get.
Those are all just numbers on a page though. Until you’ve seen this video below it’s very difficult to quantify just how electric (see what I did there) the Roaster’s performance really is. It’s mind bending stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogbo0Vg5huM
I’ll leave you with a final thought from Mr Musk alluding to the belief that the Roadster is capable of even more…
Should clarify that this is the base model performance. There will be a special option package that takes it to the next level.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2017
