The Roadster is the most environmentally friendly sports car you can buy. More significantly, it offers ultimate control, unrivalled torque, superb handling and more convenience than cars built on antiquated technology.
The Roadster liberates drivers from some of the biggest inconveniences of 20th century driving, including time-consuming and costly detours to the petrol station, routine oil changes and frequent replacement of engine parts, exhaust systems and other easy-to-break components of petrol-burning cars. Owners frequently say that the Tesla Roadster is the best car they’ve ever owned. Maybe that’s why they are Tesla’s biggest advocates - and many have bought second cars for their lucky spouses!
Living with the Tesla Roadster is different from - and better than - living with a petroleum-burning car.
The Tesla Roadster gets more than 200 miles or nearly 350 kilometers per charge - vastly more than nearly everyone needs for daily driving. Owners drive the Roadster all day long - to work, to errands and on joy rides. In many European cities, they enjoy the added perks of free parking and unrestricted use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes. They whiz through cities and on motorways with taxis and buses, while conventional cars wait in traffic with other polluters. With so much range, Roadster owners don’t think much about how many miles they’ve driven.
At the end of their day, Roadster owners come home and plug the car in. It takes as much time to plug in the Roadster as it does to plug in an iPhone, laptop or any other electronic appliance - a few seconds! And you can plug in the car as much as you like. In fact, Tesla recommends that you plug in the car every night, just like you do with your mobile phone or laptop. While the car is quietly charging, owners eat dinner or otherwise enjoy their evening. They wake up every morning to the equivalent of a “full tank” - without ever going to the petrol station. Our customers joke that owning a Roadster is like having a personal butler fill up your car every night while they sleep.
The Tesla Roadster liberates you from the petroleum-car paradigm, where your car swings from full to empty. Roadster owners merely “top off” whenever it’s convenient, so they never experience that annoying pang of anxiety when the “low fuel” light turns on in their petroleum-burning car. Instead, they get a fresh, fully charged start every day.
In retrospect, the idea of taking a detour to a sketchy petrol station late at night in the middle of a rainstorm... it’s rather “last century,” don’t you agree?
The Tesla Roadster has more torque than almost all other cars, enabling drivers to rocket from 0 to 60 mph, or 0-96 kph, in an exhilarating 3.9 seconds. The Tesla Roadster Sport will get you there in 3.7 seconds!
A growing number of Tesla Roadster owners are professional race car drivers, and the Roadster is becoming the darling of European test tracks and circuits - from the UK’s Goodwood to Italy’s Monza. But let’s be honest: The vast majority of sports car owners never take their cars on timed courses. Roadster owners frequently delight in beating other supercars off the line at stoplights, but where scorching acceleration really comes in handy is overall performance in everyday driving.
This is where the Tesla Roadster has no peers. The Roadster is vastly more powerful at almost all speeds you’d encounter in daily driving. In addition, the single-speed gearbox means that you don’t need perfect footwork to achieve Tesla’s advertised acceleration: Simply punch the accelerator and you’re there! You have total torque and total confidence - whether passing a tractor on a Northumbrian B-road or zig-zagging through the crowded streets of Milan. Whether you are overtaking slower traffic on the motorway or powering out of a roundabout, you have nearly 100 percent torque, 100 percent of the time - without clumsy downshifting and, thanks to regenerative braking, without moving your foot to another pedal. You so much as think about acceleration or deceleration - and the Roadster intuitively delivers you there. Responsiveness is so precise that many people say the Roadster can read your mind!
The Roadster’s legendary torque is available in all weather, at all altitudes. One reason Tesla’s top per-capita market is Switzerland is because even at the highest Alpine passes, Roadster drivers can confidently overtake any other car on the road. By contrast, a typical petroleum-burning car loses about 3 percent of efficiency for each 300 meters of altitude - meaning that even the most powerful conventional sports car is operating at only 70 percent efficiency on mountain passes. While others are downshifting like mad just to stay at a constant speed, the Tesla Roadster driver has arrived -- and is likely already skiing on the slopes!
First Published in Men's Passion Issue @25 October 2010
