All-New Tesla Roadster Will Be Faster, Bigger, And Very Different

BOLD RIDE

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Posted by Zach Doell 

 

 

                               

                                      

If you missed out on buying the first-generation Tesla Roadster, the California EV automaker’s first production car, don’t fret; an all-new Roadster is on the way, and it’s said to be both faster and larger than its forefather. 

 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk first teased the second-generation Roadster in 2015 during a press conference call, at which point he reserved the term “Maximum Plaid” (a Spaceballs reference, and one step beyond “Ludicrous” speed) for the new car. However a production timeline and further information were never elaborated upon.

The latest Roadster news comes from an electronics trade fair in Gothenburg, Sweden, where Tesla’s Nordic sales manager, Peter Bardenfleth-Hansen, spoke to IDG of the highly anticipated sports car.

“It will look a little different, a little faster and get a little bigger,” Bardenfleth-Hansen said. And speaking to the original Tesla Roadster, of which only 2,500 were built in collaboration with Lotus, he noted, “we would have loved to build more.”

Though it’s unconfirmed, Tesla is expected to utilize its new (and smaller) Model 3 platform as a basis for the second generation Roadster, rather than the chassis that underpins the larger Model S and X.

Since its discontinuation in 2012, Tesla hasn’t said much about the Roadster’s future, however in a gesture to its early customers who supported the company, Tesla did release a Roadster 3.0 battery pack upgrade which now features 70kWh lithium-ion cells and increases total range by about 35 percent for around 400 miles.

Given the low-volume nature of each hand built battery pack, Tesla says each upgrade is sold at its production cost for around $29,000.


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Though unrelated to the Tesla Roadster, Bardenfleth-Hansen did provide some insight into what working for Tesla Motors is like. “Can you imagine what it is like to jump on a treadmill that spins at high speed, and still seem that everything is as usual,” he questions. “That’s about how it feels to start a company like Tesla.”