Tesla Roadster has just surprised many by going on sale in Australia in early January. While we have been hearing reports from the USA about this high-performance electric sportscar for a couple of years, few anticipated it making its way downunder as quickly as this. We really shouldn't have surprised because Tesla Motors was founded by a bunch of guys from Silicon Valley in California - and everything moves at breakneck speed in that part of the planet.



Tesla Roadster 2.5 is a small, pure electric sportscar that can accelerate from zero to 97 km/h in just 3.7 seconds. This immediately puts the Tesla into the supercar league.  If you read any of our previous reviews of electric cars you will have seen comments about smiles on our faces when we talked about their zippy performance. Our name is high on the list of journalists waiting to do a road test review of the Tesla Roadster 2.5 in Australia and we will report immediately after doing so.

Tesla Roadster is based on the body of a Lotus Elise but is slightly longer. Made from weight saving carbon-fibre it’s very much a two-seater low-slung sports machine. A large Tesla sedan has been introduced in the USA but there are no plans for it coming to Australia at this stage.
Power for the Tesla comes from an AC permanent-magnet synchronous electric motor that produces the equivalent of 215 kilowatts of power. Top torque is 400 Newton metres at zero revs, that’s not a misprint, electric motors produce their maximum pulling power right from the start. Big torque is what drivers love about electric cars.

The electric motor gets its power from 6831 lithium-ion batteries. That’s not a misprint either, the Tesla Roadster is crammed full of tiny interconnected batteries.

A range of up to 360 kilometres is claimed by Tesla Motors. Obviously this depends very much on usage and driving the car in a full-on sporting manner will chop this range significantly. This, of course, also applies to hard-driven petrol cars.

Battery charging is still the biggest drawback of electric cars. Using a special unit the Tesla can be charged in three and a half hours, but a full charge using a standard home/office powerpoint could take as long as 30 hours.

While electric cars produce no emissions at the tailpipe, global warming emissions are created by electricity generators. A streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) of the Tesla conducted by Dr Enda Crossin at Australia’s RMIT suggests the Roadster has about 50 per cent less global warming emissions than a petrol-engined sportscar with similar specifications over the full fuel cycle. The figures are based on the eastern Australian electricity grid.

Now for the bad news. The Tesla Roadster 2.5 has a recommended retail price in Australia of $206,188 plus on-road costs. No more remarks about misprints will be made! … becoming an early adopter has always been expensive. Then again, a Ferrari, Maserati or Porsche with two seats and similar acceleration costs considerably more than the Tesla.

A Tesla dealer network is currently being set up in Australia. In the meantime you can contact the American company directly by way of its website, www.teslamotors.com/.