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If I’d have been told five years ago that in 2011 I’d be hitting 160 km/h on the front straight at Queensland Raceway in an all-electric powered roadster called a Tesla those famous words from the movie, ‘The Castle’ would have been uttered: “Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.”
Yet, here I was amid the roar of Maserati bi-turbo, Lotus Exige S and Porsche GT3 doing circuits of the track in the Tesla Roadster 2.5. Why a race track you ask? Try zero to 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds. That is Ferrari fast - supercar acceleration. Yet, as I hit the front straight and flatten the accelerator there is only tyre and wind noise around me. There is no exhaust, let alone exhaust note. Surreal.
Tesla is a Californian tech company first and car manufacturer second. Even the shell of the Tesla roadster has been borrowed from Lotus Elise and re-named. It fitted the criteria Tesla needed to get off the ground: light weight body into which to develop an electric-engined sports car with the accompanying 400 kg of batteries. Power contained in 6831 lithium-ion batteries about twice the size of garden-variety AA batteries.
In addition to Tesla’s own developments - the roadster is the first of a suite of electric cars to come from Tesla, next is the S sedan to be followed by the X SUV - Tesla has a contract to supply associated high tech batteries and equipment to Toyota for use in the US-built Rav 4 electric. This is a company to keep an eye on. While Tesla used the Lotus body for the roadster the sedan and SUV will be ground-up designs and built at Tesla’s own California factory, purchased from Toyota last year.
We were shown over the Tesla Roadster by Jay McCormack, in charge of Tesla sales and marketing in Australia. There is not a lot to see. Open the boot and there is a luggage area, a large box into which external and internal current enters and in front of that the box containing 11 banks of batteries, immediately behind where the cabin is. Oh, and under all that sitting between the rear wheels is the 52 kg electric motor with its one moving part.The motor is hidden by necessity.
Under the bonnet is a radiator with booster fans and leads leading to the cabin for air-conditioning and to the battery compartment to keep the power supply at optimum temperature. If cooling becomes an issue, the batteries get first bite ahead of passengers.
I step into the cabin. The body is slightly wider then the Lotus and is a bit easier to get into. We should mention the Tesla has about the same 0-100 km/h time as the Lotus Exige S, even though the Tesla is carrying around an extra 400 kg and tips the scales at 1200 kg. Not only does the Tesla have 400 Nm of torque, that grunt is on tap from zero speed. This is common with all electric cars and one of the things that people most like about them. There is no lack of green-light go, even in cars like Mitsubishi’s electric iMiev.
It is time to take the car onto the track. The gearbox is simple. There are a number of buttons at the drop of the left hand in the centre console. They are familiar: P for park, N for neutral, R for reverse and D for drive. I push D and release the handbrake and touch the accelerator. You need to be careful because when crawling along the car makes no noise. None, zilch, silent. Careful because what people around the car can’t hear they can’t avoid.
We inch out and are given the green light to get onto the track. I push the accelerator and there’s a feeling you get when using one of those modern lifts in the new super-towers. A feeling of speed, yet it is not breakneck, yet we are going extremely fast. I suspect the lack of an engine note and the open structure of a race track takes away from the experience. On road it would be a different matter with more to judge speed against. We head into the sweeping right hander and without power steering the car fights to go straight ahead. Because there is only one gear there are no gearshifts, so leaving my hands on the wheel it not at issue. The only thing we miss is noise.
After our laps the car was put in for a fuel top-up. Later in the day potential Tesla Roadster buyers - and some looking at the S variant - are along for the day to get the feel of an electric car in what should be a foreign environment, the race track. Tesla claim 394 km per charge, but that is not race-track use but normal driving. Having tamed the track the bottom line with Tesla is that it is not really a track car. It is a high-tech electric car that can go on the track and do nicely, thank you very much. We have no doubt Tesla put the track day on just to prove that point. Tesla buyers are those with plenty of the folding stuff who want the next generation car before anyone else. They will be people into fashion and live in the better suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. Their next car may also be a Tesla, the family sedan variety coming within a couple of years.
Tesla used the exercise at Queensland Raceway to also highlight the lack of Federal Government support for the electric car industry in Australia. This is the only country of the 32 that now have Tesla that has no buyer incentives. Some, like Sweden the Netherlands and Denmark not only have financial incentives through reduced registration fees but also allow electric cars to use bus lanes and have free city parking. Meanwhile Australia is wallowing around debating a carbon tax.
The Tesla Roadster was launched in Australia earlier this year and the S sedan could be here within two years. In the US the S will be launched in three variants, the 260, 370 and 480. What do those figures mean? They are distances in kilometres and the bigger the number the more batteries are involved giving buyers three options, depending on their driving needs. The S will sell in the US for around US$90,000 to US$95,000. High voltage charging will take around 45 minutes.
The Tesla Roadster sells for $206,188 plus on roads. For more information go to the Tesla website, www.teslamotors.com/australia/.
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