The 2020 Tesla Roadster Will Do 0-60mph In 1.9sec, 1/4-Mile In 8.8
0-60mph in 1.9 seconds is one hell of a figure to open with. It’s the benchmark sprint that Tesla says its new Roadster - which had a surprise appearance at the company’s semi truck unveiling - will be capable of when it arrives in 2020, and it’d make it not just the fastest accelerating electric vehicle, but the fastest accelerating production car. Period.
But that’s just a start. Tesla is also claiming a ‘250mph+’ top speed for the all-wheel drive sports car - unusually high for an EV. 0-100mph will happen in 4.2 seconds, and it’ll be able to run an 8.8 second quarter-mile. Oh, and it’ll have a 620 mile range.
It’s made possible by a 200kWh battery pack, but how Tesla will offset the inevitable high weight of such a thing, we’re not yet sure.
It’ll seat four people, and have a removal glass roof panel that can be stored in the boot. It looks like the rear seats are particularly small, but away from Porsche 911s, few super-fast sports cars have rear chairs of any kind.
The Tesla Roadster is a car that makes some very hefty claims, so should we be skeptical? At least a little, we’d say - while this is a tantalising look at an electric sports car of the near future, the reality of the present is Tesla isn’t in the best health. It recently reported its biggest ever loss, and Model 3 production is way, way off the firm’s original targets.
Can it manage to sort out Model 3 ‘bottleneck’ issues, build its new semi-truck and put the fastest accelerating road car the world has ever seen into production? We sure hope so.
If all goes to plan, the Roadster will set you back $200,000, or $250,000 for one of the 1000 ‘Founders Series’ cars.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Nurbugring or bs,otherwise it will be like the other models,all trash talk of straight line but no corners
You missed out one of the numbers:
10,000 Nm of torque
Ten
Thousand
Newton-metres
Of torque
RIP road surface
Its torque its over 9000
*10k at the wheels. Assuming it has a final drive of about 9.8:1 (similar to the Model S), the driveshaft torque works out at 1020Nm - still an awful lot, but not the crazy figures thrown around by Tesla’s marketing department.
Some cars do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, but this car does 0-100 in that much time. Wow.
How much does it weigh?
Bugatti: “We have the fastest car in the world!”
Koeniggsegg sarcastically: “right”
Tesla: “I’ll let you two peasants sort this out then I’ll show who’s boss in a few years”
Well technically, tesla never claimed a speed higher than bugatti or koenigsegg’s cars, although the acceleration is quicker initially.
The back end looks similar to a 911, not that that’s a bad thing!
Holy wow, that’s fast. Tesla needs some serious effort to follow up on those claims
MattRobinson
Spotted a teensy little mistake Matt.
Can we preorder now and wait five years for one to actually arrive in 2020?