Motors & Me: Peter Harte - Tesla Roadster
An-all electric Tesla Roadster soft top.
Love before first sight, I ordered on Tesla’s website two years before they went into production, and only saw the car in reality when I picked it up. It looked even better in the flesh, and we haven’t looked back since.
An electric motor powered by a pack of 6,800 laptop batteries. Range is good enough to drive from Cork to Dublin, but charging is about eight hours. You’ll often see me poking around the back of hotels looking for the 30A blue and white sockets. The newer batteries in Tesla’s Model S will do an 80% charge in 20 minutes. The performance is very subtle, no revving, no turbo lag, no peakiness, no gear change, just a relentless push to 100km/h in four seconds flat. It completely rewrites the book in terms of car motive force.
A fan of great engineering, with a sprinkling of save the planet. The Roadster is faster than most Porsches, but the electricity cost per kilometre is half that of a diesel Polo. Electric vehicles are smart about when they charge so they make a great partner for cheap, homemade, wind energy.
An original Subaru Impreza 2.0 Turbo 4WD, the most capable car I’ve ever driven.
Well with only two seats in the Roadster, I reluctantly bought a 7-seater C4 for the three kids. It’s truly awful to drive.
I’d love to drive some of the Alpine passes in it. Smooth roads, top down, bring on the hairpins. And apparently you can flatten the battery on the way up, and it will half recharge on the way down again. That’s got to be cool.
My granddad apparently bought an old Jag and spent years restoring it. He would have got the Tesla.
Jeremy Clarkson slated the Tesla on Top Gear, he will just never get the Tesla.
The Roadster came with a subwoofer, so Tiesto gets an outing most days.
