Electrifying New Tesla Roadster
by Perry Stern
There are a number of sports cars on the market that can reach 60 mph in around 4 seconds -Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Vipers, Corvettes�and all of these cars make this acceleration run with great fanfare. With their powerful V8s, V10s and V12s, roaring sounds come from the engine as the gas pedal goes down, and the waste from burning fuel is expelled out as exhaust.
Imagine a car that can provide that same acceleration and performance, yet there’s no powerful rumble from under the hood, no burning fuel and therefore no exhaust. This car is real and it’s called the Tesla Roadster.
“The dream behind this car was to build an electric car for people who like to drive,” Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors told MSN Autos. “The result is a very high performance roadster that gets the equivalent of about 135 miles per gallon.”
The Tesla is quite different from the most recent U.S. production electric car, the EV1 from General Motors. That car went on sale in the late 1990s, could travel about 100 to 120 miles on a charge, reached 60 mph in around 8 seconds, and had a top speed of 80 mph. Special low-resistance tires made for a better economy, however they did not help in the car’s handling ability. But the EV1 was not built as a performance car, and while it was advanced for its time, it became too expensive for General Motors to support.
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