I just had the opportunity to try a really intriguing car – the Tesla. I was passing through California staying in a hotel in Menlo Park. The Tesla showroom was right next door so it would have been rude not to have a closer look.
From driving past – the cars looked quite sexy – somewhere between the Lotus Elise and the VX220 and a little wider.Plenty of carbon fibre and great bottom hugging seats. They have some pretty impressive stats too – 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Woof woof.
So here’s the weird thing – they are electric cars – under what looks like the petrol cap is where you plug the extension cable and the back end is pretty much all battery. They are great to drive – the road hold and handling are excellent (turns out that whilst the Tesla folk are keen to emphasise that the Tesla chassis is not a Lotus chassis – the cars are build in Hethel at the Lotus factory – so go figure). They aren’t automatic as such but they only have one gear – you put your foot down and it keeps on going and going. That’s really peculiar – it seems wrong that there isn’t a gearbox and it is so strange not hearing a throaty exhaust. It really does sound like a milk float which is slightly disconcerting given the whiplash acceleration.
There was quite a lot of traffic when I drove it – but actually I really liked it. THe range is not bad unless you drive it like a total nutter so it could be workable. But here’s the rub – it costs $100K. That puts it in with the real supercars – you can buy a nice Masa, a 911 Turbo and even quite a lot of Ferrari for that. So why would you buy this? It doesn’t feel like a supercar (in fact the inside is pretty sparsely finished using cheap plastics) and you’d have to be really bought into the whole green thing to even consider. They are still shipping to people who preordered as long as 18 months ago but I think 100k is just too much. For $50Kyou’d place it as an alternative to an Elise, an S2000 or similar. For twice that there isn’t a chance it can compete with the big boys.