Recently in Tesla Category

A review of the Tesla Roadster electric car has been posted over at SmartPlanet. 'Getting into the Roadster is a little awkward if you're not used to driving a sports car, which I'm not -- it's very low to the ground -- but once you're in, the car is well laid-out and very easy to operate. Shifting is almost completely automatic. On your right, where a shifting lever would be, there are four brightly lit buttons -- P (park), D (drive), R (reverse), and N (neutral). Turn the key, press the D button, and you're off.'

The Car Connection have published a "test driven" review of the Tesla Roadster. 'Occasionally on full stomp from a stop, the traction control light would flicker. But as we headed west of Palo Alto, up Sand Hill Roads twisties and switchbacks, the wet and TC allowed me to explore what the car felt like when it began to move around. To do that on a dry day, I'd have to be entering and executing those tight, blind bends a LOT faster - somehow not wise in someone else's $129,000 roadster. (Go ahead, say it. Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.) What the blast up and down the hill did uncover was an incredibly balanced car. On occasion, while entering or accelerating through a corner, the traction control light would catch my eye just as Id feel a hint of squirm from the front end (never from the rear).'

Inside Line have publsihed their "Test driven" review of the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport. 'The Tesla Roadster's single-speed Borg Warner transaxle (drive ratio: 8.27:1) now has a push-button interface that thinks almost as fast as our fingers can press the gumdrop-colored P, R, N and D buttons. While this one ratio might not deliver the explosive acceleration from a standstill of the now-abandoned two-speed transaxle of the prototype Roadster, this is a choice that's both more durable and more civilized. Once you get rolling to about 10 mph there's plenty of explosive acceleration thereafter. Tesla claims the Roadster Sport accelerates to 60 mph from a standstill in only 3.7 seconds, though it feels like 3.5 seconds to the seat of our collective pants. Top speed remains limited to 125 mph, since battery juice leaks away like a flood from a broken dam once you indulge in illegal speeds anyway.'

CNET have published a review of the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport. 'The Tesla Roadster Sport drives like nothing on the road today. If you've driven a bumper car you'll have some idea of how the Roadster Sport operates. You push the accelerator and it goes. But unlike bumper cars, the Tesla Roadster Sport gets pushed by a robust motor making 295 pound-feet of torque. That high torque figure comes on almost as soon as the motor starts spinning, and carries all the way up to 6,000 rpm. To put it in nontechnical terms, when you hit the accelerator a ram slams into your back, pushing you inexorably forward, not letting up until your eyelids are peeled back by the wind and the first moments of your life come into vision.'