Tesla Roadster Logs New Record of 313 Miles on Single Charge in Oz Green Rally
By John O'Dell October 27, 2009
News crews focus on Tesla owner Simon Hackett after he and bearded co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas piloted red Tesla Roaster 313 miles through Australian outback on a single charge.
Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to us, but the news from Coober Pedy in South Australia is that a Tesla Roadster being driven in the annual Global Green Challenge rally for alternatively fueled vehicles has just set a new Tesla distance record of 313 miles on a single charge - achieved by rolling through the Australian outback at a painfully slow crawl.
Drivers Simon Hackett and Emilis Prelgauskas drove south from Alice Springs, in approximately the geographic center of Australia, to a rally point about 112 miles north of Coober Pedy, famed for its opal mines, at an average speed of around 35 mph.
They had an estimated 3 miles of range on the Tesla's lithium-ion battery pack remaining when they arrived.
The previous distance record for a Tesla on a single charge was 241 miles during the Rallye Monte Carlo d'Energies Alternatives early this spring. That car, which Tesla says was the only entry to complete the entire rally course, had an estimated 38 miles of range remaining.
In both rallies, the Teslas' charging ports were sealed by event judges before they departed, to prevent the contestants from pulling over for a surreptitious top-up at a roadside electrical outlet.
Internet entrepreneur Hackett, the Australian car's owner, sent the following to Tesla Motors in an e-mail, says Tesla spokeswoman Rachel Konrad:
"Emilis and I have decades of experience flying gliders competitively, and we applied the same energy conservation techniques to our driving, with significant results! The car had about 3 miles of range left when the drive was completed. We traveled 501 km on a single charge. Let that sink in for a minute.
"The security seal was applied to the charge port door when we started the journey. As this is being done as part of the Global Green Challenge, we have a full set of official verifiers here who will attest to the results and to achieving the outcome. We were followed along the journey by our support crew and a documentary film crew - so we have it on film.
"It's late here and we have another 541k to drive (with an intermediate charge stop) tomorrow - and another two days of the event left after that. When we're done, we will have driven over 3000 km's in the Roadster over the course of only six days, from Darwin to Adelaide."
More power - figuratively and literally - to them, we say.
John O'Dell, Senor Editor
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Just give it that range at a steady 70 mph and it's ready for the big time.
This makes me curious about the effects of hypermiling techniques on EVs. Clearly the lack of wind resistance at 35mph helps, but what about other techniques?
Depending on the degree of "grab" dialed into the regenerative braking, I'd imagine coasting would be effective in an EV, also drafting.
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