Tesla Motors, a name that won’t appear in the vocabulary of most petrol heads. However, this brand is making waves in the USA as well as in the UK where it just opened it’s first UK store in London. What’s so special about this brand? Well, it just happens to be the world’s first fully electric production car. If your idea of hybrid or other eco-friendly cars is an ugly boxy looking thing, think again.
Pictured above is the Tesla Roadster. A car that runs purely on electricity supplied by a battery. It takes 3.5 hours for a full charge and this gets you 244 miles (393km). More than enough a weeks worth of city driving. It has 288hp for the Sport version in a car that just weighs 1220kg. Not much if you were to compare it to a Ferrari or Lamborghini but this car goes from 0-100km/h in just 3.7 seconds!! (equivalent or faster than most Ferrari’s or Lamborghini’s) All this on pure green energy! No risk of an increasing carbon footprint while blazing up the track.
The car costs US109,000 with an extra US19,500 for the Sport version. Cheaper than a Ferrari or Lamborghini and just as sexy. With performance to match any supercar, the next best thing about the Tesla Roadster is that there is NO road tax to be paid!! For countries that have their road tax system based on engine size anyway, until they come up with a system for taxing electric cars. It just doesn’t get any better than this, a good looking, eco-friendly car with the performance to scare the other supercars in the market.
For those looking for a more practical car, Tesla had just launched a sedan, the Tesla S. It offers a further range of up to 300 miles (483km) with faster charging time of only 45 minutes. It claims sufficient space for 5 adults as well as 2 children. It’s no slow poke as well with a 0-100km/h time of just 5.6 seconds. The starting price for this model is US49,900.
Those wishing to get their hands on one of these beauties will have to either live in the USA or London. Another 2 stores will be opened in Monaco and Munich this year. If you are a proud owner of a Tesla, you are part of a select group which counts Larry Page and Sergey Brin (co-founders of Google) as members. Should this be the future of automobiles, if they look and perform this good, count me in!
