I got to drive one of the first Teslas ever made! See how the original 2008 Tesla Roadster stacks up against the next-gen Roadster coming in 2022.

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After driving the original Tesla Roadster it made me even more excited to get the 2nd generation Roadster, and I thought it would be fun to go over some of the biggest differences between the 1st-gen Roadster and 2nd-gen Roadster to really get an idea of the innovation that Tesla has shown in the past decade which is more than any other car manufacturer on the planet.

The original Roadster was produced from 2008 to 2012. It was a 2-seater sports car based on the Lotus Elise chassis and was the first highway legal electric vehicle to use lithium-ion battery cells. It was also the first EV to have more than 200 miles of range. It has a 53 kWh battery which is the same capacity as the Model 3 Standard Range Plus. Tesla only produced 500 Roadsters in 2008, and the one I drove was VIN# 351 which was cool and yes it’s the same exact model that Elon launched into space in 2018. According to the EPA, the original Roadster can travel 244 miles on a single charge and can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds with a top speed of 125 mph. The original Roadster’s efficiency was reported as 120 MPGe which is right around the same exact efficiency as a 2020 Model 3 Performance. The price of the original Roadster was $109,000. As far as the technology goes, there’t not a whole lot of tech inside the cabin. It has a normal instrument cluster behind the wheel with a very small and simple touch screen display on the left-hand side where it shows the battery level and charging status but nothing like what we see today even in the cheapest Model 3.

Less than 10 years after the original Roadster’s debut, Tesla announced their next-generation Roadster in 2017 and it looks downright incredible. I was lucky enough to see it in person at the Model Y event, and let me say this again for the people in the back: the Tesla red is just out of this world especially on this next-gen Roadster. There’s no official release date for this yet, but production should start in late 2021 with deliveries starting sometime in 2022. When it does officially come out, the next-gen Roadster will be the quickest production car in the world with a 0-60 speed of less than 2 seconds which is twice as quick as the original Roadster. That is just insane, and it will have a 200 kWh battery which is 4x the capacity of the original Roadster, and the top speed is over 250 mph. I mean, does it really matter how fast it goes at that point? Is anyone going to go that fast? Probably, but the really exciting part, if that wasn’t exciting enough, is that if the next-gen Roadster has the new 4680 tab-less batteries and the structural pack it could very possibly have 700 miles of range on a full charge which is nearly 3x the range as the original Roadster. That’s not confirmed, but Tesla said the range will be at least 620 miles, and that was before Tesla’s battery day event so we’ll see what the final number is. The base model starts at a cool $200,000 which is twice as expensive as the first-gen, and Tesla is also producing 1,000 Founders Series editions which will cost a quarter of a million dollars.

And if this car wasn’t already bizarre enough, one of the optional upgrades is called the SpaceX package which would include about ten small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around the car according to Elon. This package will supposedly give the Roadster dramatic improvements in acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering which I mean come on it’s just not even fair at this point. But the best part is Elon said it could even give the Roadster the ability to fly.

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