Gas Monkey

Tesla’s groundbreaking distinction is under its carbon-fiber skin. The $98,000 Tesla is the first production high-performance electric car. It is powered entirely by electricity, a plug-in that will never use a drop of gasoline. And it’s billed as being able to go 221 miles in mixed city/highway driving on a full battery charge.

It’s not about promises that the Tesla will deliver pin-you-back-in-your-seat acceleration — 0 to 60 miles per hour in a Ferrari-like 3.9 seconds — or its sexy appearance.

The sports car from San Carlos-based Tesla Motors has European sex appeal with power to match that defies the image of electric vehicles as poky carts for golf courses or senior villages.

Tesla is being touted as the first of a wave of electric cars that will bring the most profound change in the auto industry since the first Model T rolled off Ford Motor’s (F) assembly line 100 years ago. From Toyota (TM) to General Motors, (GM) the quest for clean air and independence from foreign oil is leading to the wall socket.

“It’s in the vanguard of the electric car revolution that is coming,” proclaims Elon Musk, the digital-age tycoon who is Tesla Motors chairman and largest shareholder of Tesla Motors.

News piece on the Tesla Roadster Electric Car and Tesla Motors. Originally aired May 15, 2007 on ABC News Nightline.

It goes zero to 60 in about four seconds. Its top speed is 130 miles per hour. And it doesn’t use an ounce of gasoline.

It’s the Tesla Roadster, a new car that’s fueled entirely by electricity and could be hitting the lot just in time.

The Tesla Roadster is named after Nicola Tesla, the largely forgotten genius inventor of alternating current electricity, and it’s the brainchild of Martin Eberhard, who said he designed it because he cares about the environment and because he wanted one for himself.

“It’s time for us to do something about our dependence on foreign oil,” Eberhard said. “It’s time for us to do something about global warming. But I wasn’t ready to go drive around some goofy little car. & Think of how electric cars look. All the ones you’ve ever thought of.”

There haven’t been many electric cars. Early automobiles ran on electricity, as did General Motor’s ill-fated and quickly abandoned EV1, which debuted in the 1990s and died soon thereafter. Eberhard said there’s “nothing beautiful” about the Prius, perhaps the best-known hybrid car. “It doesn’t do anything for me,” he said. “Think of it this way. A world of 100 percent hybrids is still 100 percent addicted to oil.”

Fewer Moving Parts

“The motor [is] tiny by comparison to an engine in a typical combustion car. It weighs about 77 pounds, and you could literally put it in a backpack and walk out of the room with it if you chose to,” Vespremi said, while showing us the car. “What it does is, it has one moving part. It’s an AC motor, so it takes current straight from the battery and turns that into & the power that moves the car down the road.”

Is there anything that a standard gasoline-powered car offers that the Tesla lacks?

“Well, you have all the belts and the hoses and the gaskets and the plugs and exhaust components. None of that exists with this car. The entire drive line consists of 12 moving parts,” Eberhard said, as opposed to thousands in a regular car.

But there are drawbacks: The battery pack is warrantied for 100,000 miles, but after that, replacement could be costly — in the thousands of dollars. Tesla argues that with battery technology improving every year, each successive year’s models will be better. You’re not completely off the grid because it does require electricity, and you can go only 200 miles between charges.

Vespremi said the charging station can be installed by “any competent electrician,” and it allows you “to get that quick charging time of 3½ hours. Most people hook it up to the drier circuit. And then you just treat it like a gas pump.”

The Roadster is still in test mode — the company hopes to start actual production this fall. The car has gone for its first round of safety tests and, according to the company, has done extremely well.

Vespremi told us that part of the reason the car is so safe is because the chassis is made of extruded bonded aluminum, “the exact same kind of chassis that would be used in something like a Formula One car or an Indy car. This is what allows those drivers to wreck at a couple hundred miles per hour and walk away,” he explained.