Tesla Roadster packs power in a flash of electricity

The motor's 276 pound-feet of torque is converted to dumbfounding acceleration. Total number of moving parts: one.

By DAN NEIL
LA Times
February 5, 2009

I'm bombing around Hollywood on a Saturday night in an all-electric Tesla Roadster, a sick-with-torque, carbon-fiber mosquito with a half-ton of glorified camera batteries behind the seats. It's a perfect night for cruising, cool and moonlit. The city lights drizzle over the silver car like Campari and creme de menthe.

As I nick down Vine, a Porsche Carrera C4 takes up a flanking position to my left and raps his engine -- a thick, ornery staccato rises, a murder of gas-powered crows. I, of course, have no engine to rap. The electric buzz the Tesla produces at low speed sounds like a toaster with a bagel lodged in it. I shrug sheepishly in the direction of the Porsche driver, sequestered behind tinted glass.

I turn west on Sunset and he follows me. He puts the Porsche door-to-door with the Tesla and guns the flat-six again. Oh, I get it. He wants to race to the next light. That's too bad for him.

What transpires in the next 2 seconds is the heart and soul, the essence and spirit, of the Roadster. This is the trick this one-trick pony does better than perhaps any sports car on Earth. We in the business call it "rolling acceleration."

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