Twenty-Seven Roadster Owners Turn Out for First-Ever Tesla Road Rally
By Scott Doggett June 15, 2009
By Scott Doggett and Mike Austin, Contributors
No matter how one cuts it, the road rally Tesla Motors held for owners of its all-electric, zero-emissions Roadsters earlier this month in curvaceous countryside northwest of downtown L.A. was a glorious trip.
The route mostly wound through 60 miles of breathtaking canyons, beginning at Tesla's West Los Angeles showroom and making a stop at The Rock Store diner/bar/hangout before ending with a barbeque in Malibu at Greener Pasture Ranch, a stunning spread overlooking the Pacific that's the private home of a wealthy Tesla customer.
Held to commemorate the EV-maker's 500th Roadster delivery and the one-year anniversary of Tesla's first retail store, much of the journey took place on Mulholland Drive, a nicely banked mountain road that's appeared in countless Hollywood movies and is a local favorite with bullet-bike and sports-car enthusiasts.
Just behind the Kawasaki Ninjas and Honda Hurricanes in quickness on Mulholland two Saturdays ago were the Roadsters, which accelerate silently from a dead stop to 60 miles an hour in under 4 seconds, are six times as fuel efficient as rival sports cars and have a driving range of 240-plus miles per charge in ideal conditions.
Standard Roadsters - as if there's anything "standard" about them - redline at 248 base horsepower at 14,000 rpm, wear Yokohama AD07 tires on cast alloy, uni-directional, split 5-spoke wheels and start at $109,000. For another $19,500, buyers get an even quicker Roadster with custom-tuned suspension and ultra-high-performance Yokohama A04k tires on black forged-alloy Tesla-designed wheels.
Tesla Motors, based in San Carlos, California, is the only production automaker selling highway-capable EVs in the United States or Europe. The Roadster - the young EV-maker's first model (two more are in the works) - beats nearly every other car on the road in quickness yet is twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius. It costs roughly $4 to refuel and can be completely recharged in as little as 3.5 hours.
In addition to the West L.A. store, which opened a year ago, Tesla has a showroom in Menlo Park in the heart of Silicon Valley, about an hour's drive south of San Francisco. The company expects to open regional sales and service centers within months in New York, Chicago, London, Seattle, Miami, Washington, Monaco and Munich.
Go to the jump page to see a gallery of click-to-enlarge images from the road rally. Return to the gallery Tuesday afternoon to see additional pics and the inclusion of caption information.
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Click here to comment on this entry.Now that there are quite a few on the road, any word on how valid a range of 240 miles is?
All the claims like..." yet is twice as energy efficient as a Toyota Prius" are based on it going that far. If it only goes 120 miles on a charge then that claim is wrong.
I also wonder how they do the miles per gallon conversion. Miles is easy enough but electricity isn't measured in volume.
Are they going by price? i.e. $4.00 electricity charge equals 2 gallons of gas.
I still like Edmunds to get one to do an unbias test.
Nice story, I really like to corral photo. Tesla will always have my respect for bringing to market the first viable all electric sports car, sure wish one of those beauties was mine :). Electricity is 'winning the race' in alternative fuel development for good reason.
To firstwagon:
They are currently saying the range is about 220 miles.
"Actual range depends on driving style and conditions. During testing of prototypes cars, Tesla Motors has seen between 170 miles per charge for very spirited driving to 267 miles per charge for city driving that makes use of the Roadster's regenerative braking. Our most recent EPA driving cycle tests, conducted February 2008, at an EPA-certified facility, resulted in the following numbers:
* 231 mi EPA city
* 224 mi EPA highway
* 227 mi EPA combined (city/highway) "
Their claims about energy efficiency are based on the unit MPGe (Miles Per Gallon Equivalent)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPGe
And what they call the "Well to Wheel Efficiency"
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
That chart shows more than twice the km/MJ than the Prius or VW Jetta. And that assumes the source for the electricity is natural gas.
The beauty of electricity is that it's a true 'flex-fuel'. If the electricity is generated by renewable energy (solar, wind, tide, wave, geothermal, hydro) instead of fossil fuel, how would the efficiency comparison look then?
thanks telesar
Those appear to be Teslas number though. I'm looking for numbers generated by people who don't have a vested interest in having the numbers as high as possible.
The Wikipedia page on the Tesla Roadster explains how the miles per gallon equivalent is calculated,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_roadster#Petroleum-equivalent_efficiency
They compare the efficiency of the electrical grid to the efficiency of using gasoline in your car.
But if you use solar panels on your house's roof to charge the car the efficiency goes way up, and these systems are now reaching economical sense.
The solar panels would be a good way to top up the batteries but you would need a huge one to charge. Either that or not use your car much.
If I remember correctly, a square metre panel produces about 120 watts. I think that works out to 36 days to charge assuming 12 hours of sunlight.
All this technology shows a lot of promise but everything revolves around bringing costs down.
"All this technology shows a lot of promise but everything revolves around bringing costs down."
Exactly. And that gets to the core of the Tesla Motors business plan.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=8
1. Build sports car
2. Use that money to build an affordable car
3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car
4. While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
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