With all the excitement surrounding Tesla’s Model S upgrades and their soon-to-be-released Model X, we often forget that the Tesla Roadster is a car. Released in 2008, the Tesla Roadster was the companies first vehicle and was created to gain interest from wealthy investors because it was sold as a high-performance, limited-production motor vehicle that you had to be extremely rich to buy. Well Tesla has recently shown some love for their somewhat dated vehicle, allowing Roadster owners to upgrade the vehicles battery…for $29,000 dollars.
Now normally car modifications aren’t that expensive, but the Roadster is not your average vehicle. When it was initially released, the Roadster was the first production vehicle that used lithium-ion batteries and was the first all-electric car to drive over 200 miles on a single charge. Based on the Lotus Elise, the Roadster not only looked cool and was futuristic, it offered solid performance as well. Depending on the specific model (later editions had more power), the Roadster could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph between 3.9 and 3.7 seconds, and it had an electronically limited top speed of 125 mph. At the time it represented the bleeding edge of electric sports cars, and that came at a price. The initial model started at $109,000 dollars and they went up from there. Now that the car has been out for a number of years and the fact that batteries have gotten better, this new upgrade is very attractive.
The “Roadster 3.0 Battery Upgrade” as it is called will offer drivers around 40% more energy and it will increase the overall range of the vehicle by 35%, which definitely are noticeable improvements. In total, the Roadster should be able to travel some 400 miles on a single charge. However the battery pack is a bit heavier, so while Tesla has not mentioned this yet, I’d imagine that overall performance in terms of acceleration and top speed will take a hit. So it’s up to the driver to weigh the pros and cons of this upgrade. But again, at $29,000 dollars, this battery upgrade is extremely expensive as you can even buy a variety of new cars for that price. However when you consider the types of people that already own Roadsters, they are probably wealthier than the average car owner as the Roadster was fairly expensive when it came out.
Current Roadster owners can already reserve their battery upgrade, provided that they drop $5,000 dollars for the initial deposit. Tesla tells us that they don’t intend to make a profit on the battery upgrades, and the reason the battery pack is so expensive is that it is almost entirely built by hand and they will be producing somewhere between two to three each week. However it is important to note that even though this is a costly upgrade, it still will not make the Roadster compatible with Tesla’s Supercharging stations. That’s quite disappointing, but if you’re a Roadster owner who has already worn down the battery or wants to go further, this $29,000 dollar upgrade is perfect.
Photo from Tesla
