Photos of a brand new, shiny red Roadster have been released by Tesla, giving fans of the groundbreaking electric car company a sneak peek of the new version of the luxury sports EV.
As soon as we heard, we just had to share – after all, it’s been around 7 years since Tesla stopped production of the original Roadster.
Production of the all electric luxury sports car may still be a few years away, but Tesla has started marketing the 2020 model in a big way.
The first working prototype was launched last year, but since then Tesla has’t been making much noise about the Roadster, presumably preoccupied with other little things like bringing Model 3 production up to speed.
But now, the company has not only debuted a white design shell at the Grand Basel car show just days ago, it has also released images of the Roadster design shell as well as photos of the red Roadster.
GT Spirit’s Earl Karanja captured some images of the design shell at the Grand Basel show earlier this week, listing the specs of the 2020 Roadster – which is touted to be the world’s fastest production car, able to accelerate to 100km/hr in a super fast 2.1 seconds.
Some pics of the new 2020 Tesla Roadster – world’s quickest production car
0-60mph: 1.9s
0-100mph: 4.2s
Top Speed: 250mph
1/4 mile: 8.9s
Torque: 10,000 Nm
Price: $250,000
Range: 620 miles pic.twitter.com/Xi2t5MxxRT— Earl Karanja (@Earlsimxx) September 4, 2018
That’s a 1000km range – yes, 1,000km – for we Antipodeans (no specs are available on the battery size however).
Most of the images released by Tesla are clearly digitally rendered, even several portraying the red Roadster out on the dusty road – but one, we believe, is the real deal.
With a price tag of $US200,000 for the base version we’re not expecting that the Roadster will be Tesla’s most popular model – that will be the Model 3 – but reports by actual people who have had a test ride in the new Roadster are that it is ‘insane’.
Tesla is asking for a $A66,000 deposit from Australians wanting to reserve the base model – which is steep but not surprising.
Even more insane though is that for those wanting the more expensive ‘Founder Series’, a cool $A326,000, 100 per cent deposit will have to be dropped.
When the 2020 Roadster does finally go into production though, it won’t be a moment too soon.
After Tesla ran out of Lotus bodies to build the original Roadster with in late 2011, Musk told Autocar that the EV company would revisit the Roadster without the Lotus chassis by 2014.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.