2010 Tesla Roadster Sport

2010 Tesla Roadster Sport: Electric chic gets quicker--it's EV with attitude

One thing that surely anybody alive and breathing just about has to love is mashing the accelerator pedal in an electric car--more so if it's an electric car designed primarily to thrill you.

Except for drag racers and guys who regularly pilot those reverse bungee-cord human-slingshot rides at state fairs--and maybe even them, too--the thrill of silently and suddenly ker-thwapping yourself to 60 in a one-speed Tesla Roadster and then watching it zwip all the way up to its 14,000-rpm redline is just about unsurpassed. We spent a couple of hours doing that. Whew!
As if the “base” Tesla Roadster's 0-to-60-mph time of 3.9 seconds wasn't enough, the Roadster Sport model now does 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.
“Nobody ever complained about the power [of the base Roadster],” said Tesla's Jeremy Snyder, manager of the SoCal region for the company. “But there's a heck of a lot of people who wanted it.”
Getting it wasn't all that hard. A hand-wound stator with increased winding density and unique firmware give the Roadster Sport 295 lb-ft of torque, compared with the standard car's 273 lb-ft. That's 288 hp compared with 248, to look at it another way.
The Roadster Sport also has 10-way adjustable shocks with remote reservoirs, three-way adjustable antiroll bars, Tesla's own forged-alloy wheels and Yokohama AO48 Ultra High Performance tires, 195/50R-16s in front and 225/45R-17s in the rear. You even get “Roadster Sport” badging on the doorsills, on the rear deck and under the rear hatch.
How does it work? As we said, in a straight line, it's thrilling. Launching up on-ramps and into open spaces anywhere traffic allows will make you downright giddy. But with nearly 1,000 pounds of batteries inside, the Tesla understeers in corners. It does so less at lower speeds, and we know that you can make just about anything plow into a corner if you enter it too fast. But as you approach what might be called spirited driving, the car feels all of its 2,723 pounds. If you've driven any of the Lotus roadsters from which the Tesla traces its basic structure, you will really notice the extra weight. But if you haven't, chances are you'll find this to be a sprightly ride. And it's definitely the best-handling electric car in the world.

A picture of 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport

The 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport makes electric driving even more fun.

The 2010 models also get a host of improvements: a push-button gear selector, a (dinky) glovebox, an HVAC system that doesn't sacrifice your comfort for the comfort of the battery pack and increased use of sound-deadening material throughout to make what was an almost silent car even quieter.
Tesla quotes range for either model at 244 miles, while pointing out that an owner in Australia recently went 313 miles on a single charge. It depends on how you drive. We chose the “performance” mode instead of the “max range” mode. But you can switch back and forth with a toggle of the key.
On our drive, we started out with the bar graph that indicated battery charge almost all the way to the full side. Our potential range was listed at 184 miles driving as you would on the EPA city cycle. Driven as the car had been in its last 30 miles by Snyder, we were given a range of 119 miles. We started on the freeway at normal speeds, where the dials indicated that we were drawing 20 kilowatts at 65 mph (imagine 20 hair dryers moving your car down the freeway). Later, up on Mulholland, there was some spirited driving, followed by a return on Pacific Coast Highway to the Tesla store in Westwood, mostly done at traffic-induced reasonable speeds. When we got back, after 78.2 miles total, the dash readouts said we had a 99-mile range driv-ing in ideal mode and 110 as driven. The battery charge was just less than half full. Pour those numbers into whatever wacky formula you choose to come up with a mpg equivalent.
Tesla has now delivered about 900 cars worldwide, 300 of them in SoCal. Are they going to make it and be the next General Motors/Toyota/Mercedes or only the next Corbin Sparrow? We like the car and have enjoyed every Tesla we've been in over the years. There will be pundits who say that for our Roadster Sport's $128,500 sticker price you could get fill-in-the-blank: 45 Bugeye Sprites, 400 two-stroke dirt bikes, 10 weeks at a Club Med, hair transplants for everyone you know, etc.
Regardless, it's good to have the choice. And if the price of gasoline goes up and all of the companies that say they're going to make electric cars actually do, the choices will grow exponentially. Choice is good.


2010 Tesla Roadster Sport
ON SALE: Now
BASE PRICE: $128,500
DRIVETRAIN: 288-hp, 295-lb-ft, 375-volt AC induction air-cooled electric motor; RWD, single-speed fixed gear with 8.28:1 overall final drive
CURB WEIGHT: 2,723 lb
0-60 MPH: 3.7 sec (mfr)
FUEL ECONOMY: 244-mile range