Tesla Roadster (2011) – Into the Wild

In the more than ten years that Tesla has been active in the Netherlands, it has managed to sell more cars in our country than Dacia since 2005. And that while Dacia is certainly not doing bad business here. No fewer than 74,069 Teslas were registered in our country between 2012 and 2023. Of these, no fewer than 42,988 are Model 3, 14,976 are Model S and 10,0472 are already Model Y. The winged SUV Model X already has 5,571 registrations to its name. And what about the remaining 27 copies? Those are Roadsters!

The Tesla Roadster before the facelift.

Even before Tesla introduced the Model S here in 2013, it also sold a completely different model in the Netherlands. That’s right: the Roadster. Although the Roadster debuted years earlier in its home country, the United States, it was not until 2009 that the first copy was registered in the Netherlands. The Roadster was available in the Netherlands from just under €100,000 and was not only on the price list as a 248 hp electric fun machine, but also as a 288 hp Roadster Sport. The orange copy in the photos is incidentally a so-called ‘Roadster 2.5’, so the sharpened variant that you can recognize by its front bumper, the cooling opening in it with horizontal slats. The Roadster Sport badge on the back shows that this is the most potent variant of the electric two-seater.

Tesla Roadster Sports

Where the Tesla Model S and every model that came after was basically developed entirely by ‘Musk’s club’ itself, the basis of the Roadster is not. Although the drive-technical part – and that was quite a bit – came completely from Tesla, the Roadster was basically a Lotus Elise. The Tesla Roadster here always had a 53 kWh battery pack, good for a range of – according to the fairly accurate American EPA cycle – over 390 kilometers. With its car weight of over 1,200 kilos, the Roadster was of course considerably heavier than its British base, but was nevertheless very fast. You can zoom to a speed of 100 km / h in 3.7 seconds and you can also reach that speed in 3.9 seconds with the slightly less potent basic version. Currently every Tesla model has a faster engine version, but remember that we are talking about an EV from more than a decade ago.

Fun fact: the Tesla Roadster was not only the first Tesla and the first series-produced EV with a range of more than 320 kilometers, but also the first car to be launched into space. Talk about major firsts. Incidentally, Tesla has been calling for a new Roadster since 2017, although it is always postponing the arrival of that car. The new Roadster should go into production at the end of 2024.