The 2020 Tesla Roadster

The 2020

TESLA ROADSTER

Contents The First Tesla Roadster ‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster

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The New Tesla Roadster First Look

26 Tesla Roadster 2020 The New Roadster Will Be Better Than The Prototype

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The First Tesla Roadster

A Look Back at the Early Adopter’s Electric Car Jay Ramey The original Roadster launched Tesla's image, but its successor will arrive in a different world.

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This month’s surprise debut of the Tesla Roadster prototype was itself full of surprises, and not just due to the claimed specs of this future model. The reimagined Roadster caught even the Tesla faithful by surprise—most assumed the company was planning to focus on Model 3 production for the next few years, in addition to rolling out the electric Semi truck around the end of the decade.

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The First Tesla Roadster For those familiar with Tesla’s Master Plan: Part Deux, the return of a high-priced halo model seemed unlikely, but Tesla plans to sell the first 1,000 examples of the future Roadster for $250,000, and the rest for about $200,000 if and when it goes into production. Enough time has passed that some may not even remember the first Tesla Roadster, launched all the way back in 2006.

When it debuted the Roadster was a pretty ground-breaking vehicle. The base model, the first of four that were produced, featured a range of 244 miles on a full charge and an electric motor that was good for 248 hp and 200 lb-ft of torque.

The chassis and body were based on a Lotus Elise/Exige architecture -- Lotus provided the motorless “gliders” for Tesla.

The debut base model and the upgraded Roadster 1.5, the first of which rolled out in 2008, could make the sprint from 0 to 60 mph in just 4.6 seconds and had a top speed of 125 mph.

The base model started at $109,000, an attractive purchase for reasonably well-funded fans of electric cars. Roadster 2.0, the second version of the model, dialed up the power to 248 hp and 280 lb-ft of torque while keeping the range at 244 miles.

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The First Tesla Roadster

The big leap with the first-gen Roadster came with Roadster 2.5 and 2.5 Sport, which served up 288 hp along with a top torque output of 295 lb-ft in the Sport model. These later variants also featured slightly revised styling front and back.

By this time the Roadster featured a single-speed BorgWarner

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transmission, in contrast to the two-speed transmission of the debut model. Zero to 60 mph sprints were down to 3.7 seconds, but the price was up to $128,500 for the top 2.5 Sport, which offered improved noise insulation, new seats and a larger 7.0-inch optional touchscreen infotainment system.

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The First Tesla Roadster

Four versions of just the first-generation Roadster makes it sound like there were a lot of these cars out there, but production for all versions combined topped out at around 2,450 examples. The Roadster may have been offered in a lot of flavors over half a decade, but it was a very exclusive car even by the metric of the Model S. The second-generation Roadster, promised around 2020, aims to make the original seem like it’s from another century altogether with 0 to 60 mph sprint times of 1.9 seconds, a 250mph top speed and an electric motor capable of producing 7,376 lb-ft of torque. It is also promised to have a range of 620 miles, but probably not all at its top speed. More lurid stats, according to Tesla, include sprints from 0 to 100 mph in 4.2 seconds, and quarter mile times of 8.8 seconds. The new Roadster will be powered by three electric motors—two in the back and one up front—drawing juice from a 200-kWh battery.

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While a 620-mile range sounds plausible given the price and some advances in battery and electric motor technology, it may be prudent to treat some other promised specs with a small handful of salt, if only for the reason of tire longevity in real-world conditions. Tesla neglected to say whether it has fully tested the new Roadster on the open road to record those specs—things are a little different in the real world than on the dyno—or whether the Roadster will be allowed to make 1.9-second launches at will with no software limiters to preserve the drivetrain.

While the next-gen Tesla roadster has a lot to live up to— its promised specs, for instance—it will land in a markedly different time for electric cars, one where modestly-priced everyday EVs are more important to automakers than high-priced, exclusive cars for early adopters.

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The original Roadster launched Tesla's reputation in the automotive world, even if production figures over several years amounted to just over 2,400 cars.

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‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster 766 Million Miles As It Completes First Orbit of Sun Bill Roberson

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The hype was almost overwhelming, but fortunately for SpaceX and its brash boss Elon Musk, the 2018 launch of the first Falcon Heavy rocket system went perfectly, and a most unusual satellite was placed into a near-immortal orbit about the Sun: A brilliant red Tesla Roadster (the original model), piloted by a space-suited mannequin known as Starman.

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‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster

So where is Starman and his electric space car now?

Back home, relatively speaking.

Outlets which track the position of the planet-trekking Tesla report the car and its passenger have now come full circle and completed one orbit of the Sun. But don't look up into the night sky to try and spot it flying by; Starman is now on the opposite side of the Sun from where Earth is now in orbit, but he's on cruise control at over 24,000 miles an hour.

Starman and his red Tesla are in an elliptical orbit that swings the duo out past the orbit of Mars, before it cycles back to Earth's orbital distance and perihelion—its closest point to the Sun, which is where it is now. Since Starman's elliptical path around the Sun is not the same as Earth's (or Mars') orbit, it takes more than a year to drive the whole orbital racetrack.

So how far has Starman driven the red Roadster? Almost 800 million miles so far. You can get an exact running total here.

And while Starman will have some close encounters with the Earth, Mars and perhaps some other objects in the near (and far) future, he’s not coming back to Earth anytime soon—unless someone goes out there to get him.

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‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster The initial video feed from cameras aboard the Roadster was an internet sensation (and pretty zen as well), but the batteries for those cameras and have long died (ironic, considering how much battery power could have been on board), and the car is too far away for the signal to now reach us anyway.

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‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster

Why Did Musk Do It? What’s the point of launching an electric convertible sports car with “Don’t Panic” on the center screen, besides a bit of ego scratching and showmanship? There are actually some good—if simple—rocket science reasons. During rocket flight testing, flight engineers use a “dummy” cargo (usually some boring weights or a research sensor package) to test the rocket’s capabilities, rather than risk blowing up a spendy commercial satellite or precious human cargo. It was the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, and the rocket needed some sort of payload to accurately test it under flight conditions.

While the Falcon Heavy can lift a load much, much heavier than the Roadster, using the car was both a useful payload and a bit of whimsy (and brilliant marketing), which we’ve come to expect from Musk, who heads SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity and other ventures.

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‘Starman’ Pilots Tesla’s Space Roadster

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What Will Happen To Starman And His Roadster?

Left alone, Starman could likely drive the Roadster around the Sun for the life of our solar system, which should keep spinning around for another five to seven billion years.

However, if humanity can manage to survive its technological adolescence, we may someday rendezvous once again with Starman and his by then very vintage Tesla Roadster to see what the effects of billions or even trillions of miles of unprotected space travel close to the sun might be.

Since the Tesla wasn’t “prepped” for the rigors of space travel like a purpose-built satellite or manned spacecraft, the weathering effects on the car should be significant.

In astronomical terms, Starman and the Tesla are very, very close to the sun, as is Earth and Mars. Temperatures on the sunlit surfaces of the car can soar to well over 200 degrees Fahrenheit, while shaded areas can be a frosty 250 degrees below zero.

Since the car is slowly tumbling though space, every part of the car’s exterior will be exposed to this endless and relentless heating/cooling cycle, which will expand and shrink metal surfaces to the point where fatigue may split them off of the car’s frame. Paint, tires, fabrics and most anything else not metallic will likely be slowly boiled away over time, and cast upon the solar wind. Indeed, the most “spaceworthy” part of the whole venture may be Starman’s SpaceX space suit, which was designed, of course, for use in space. How will it hold up?

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Drive safe, Starman. Don’t panic and enjoy the view.

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The New Tesla Roadster First Look Steve Siler Zero to 60 in 1.9 Seconds, 250-MPH Top Speed, 620-Mile Range

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If Elon Musk had been holding a microphone during the big reveal event for the upcoming Tesla semi, he could have dropped it a dozen times, especially when a little red sports car emerged from the back of one of two Tesla semi prototypes on hand.

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The New Tesla Roadster First Look

While being dramatically backlit and surrounded by the haze from a smoke machine, the car crept down the trailer ramp, turned away from the assembled crowd of VIPs and journalists, and rocketed away as if propelled by a silent thermonuclear explosion. With that, Tesla resurrected the Roadster.

When a prototype of the car finally reappeared after a couple of fast, silent passes, Musk provided just a few comments and details, including confirmation that, yes, the long-awaited follow-up to Tesla’s first car was indeed happening. “People asked us for a long time, ‘When are you going to make a new Roadster?’ We are making it now.”

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As they are wont to do at Tesla events, the crowd went wild, clearly not bothered at all by the fact that this version is no “roadster” in the traditional “sporty, two-seat convertible” sense but is, rather, a four-seat sports car with a removable glass roof panel. That makes it more akin to a Porsche 911 Targa than anything else, albeit without the complicated power top.

Nor, for that matter, is Tesla “making it now” in the sense that you can pop by one of the company’s retail centers today and drive one home: the new Roadster supposedly will be available in 2020. Of course, Tesla isn’t the best at meeting deadlines, so it remains to be seen if that target date will indeed be hit.

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The New Tesla Roadster First Look

We may be willing to overlook those semantic inaccuracies if the proffered numbers hold up. Zero to 60 mph could take as little as a mind-bending 1.9 seconds, Musk said, with z­ ero to 100 mph being accomplished in just 4.2. The claimed quartermile time of 8.8 seconds is just as hard to fathom as the top speed of more than 250 mph. “This is the base model,” he said, without providing any hints of what other versions the company might have planned.

Musk didn’t provide any details about the three electric motors the car will use, except that they will provide 7376 lb-ft of torque at the wheels, thanks to torque-multiplying effects of a transmission and at least one differential. That’s an astronomical number but, for context, a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon delivers more than 10,000 lb-ft to the wheels in first gear. With a top speed of more than 250 mph, there is a decent chance that the Tesla will have a multispeed transmission—much like the first version of the Roadster— instead of a one-speed direct drive like in the company’s more recent products. One motor will drive the Roadster’s front axle and two will power the back, which means it will be all-wheel drive.

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The New Tesla Roadster First Look

Musk also asserted that this new Roadster will be the first production car to hit 60 in less than two seconds or cover a quarter-mile in less than nine. The car’s capacious 200.0-kWh battery pack was also touted, enabling, it was claimed, a massive 620 miles of highway range. “Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche,” said Musk.

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The Roadster’s exterior design is quite beautiful, if not as striking as that of, say, a Bugatti Chiron, one of the only cars that may be able to keep up with the thing. It’s also not quite as distinctive as a McLaren 570GT, a car with which it will compete on price, with the electric model already advertised to start at $200,000; Tesla says that $250K will snag one of the 1000 Founders Series launch models, although no other details were given about those.

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“Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche.�

Elon Musk

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Tesla Roadster 2020

Price and Specs for the Plaid-Powered Supercar Mike Brown The futuristic car is about to hit the roads.

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The second-generation Tesla Roadster is set to hit roads as soon as next year. The supercar has been billed by CEO Elon Musk as the “dessert” of the company’s upcoming lineup, and it’s not hard to see why. It has a battery that provides over 600 miles of range, a face-melting acceleration rate powered by a “Plaid” powertrain, and even a performance-boosting extra with SpaceX branding.

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Tesla Roadster 2020 The Roadster was a rather surprising inclusion in an event in November 2017 at the Tesla Design Studio, which at the time was expected to reveal the Tesla Semi electric truck. Musk’s plans for the Roadster include breaking a number of new records, including acceleration times of 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, 0 to 100 mph in 4.2 seconds, and a quarter-mile in 8.8 seconds.

The supercar will offer a top speed of over 250 mph, aided by 10,000 Newton meters of wheel torque from its all-wheel drive configuration. While that may sound like a tall order, one of the few people to drive the Roadster—test driver Emile Bouret— described the figures as “conservative,” and said the car is a “proper weapon.”

On September 12, 2019, Musk gave further details about how the Roadster will form the basis of the new product line.

The “Plaid powertrain” set to provide this incredible performance will enter production in around a year’s time, launching on the Model S, Model X and Roadster. The Model 3 and Model Y will miss this boost, as they form the lower end of the product lineup.

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Tesla Roadster 2020 Musk explained that “the only thing beyond Ludicrous is Plaid,” continuing his love of cult sci-fi movie Spaceballs that emerged while promoting The Boring Company. Ludicrous is the name of the current high-performance mode in the company’s vehicles, while Plaid has been previewed at hands-on events with the Roadster.

Perhaps one of the most surprising additions to the Roadster is the SpaceX options package. This will place around 10 small rocket thrusters around the car and behind the license plate, adding a composite overwrapped pressure vessel on the rear seat that will hold compressed air refueled by spare battery power. The result will be better braking, acceleration and handling. Musk has even suggested the car could show a hover test as early as the end of next year.

The car has been spotted in prototype form regularly since its unveiling. It’s been spotted in gorgeous cherry red, while a September appearance showed the car in an incredible white design, reminiscent of the Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

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Tesla Roadster 2020

These appearances have shown little of the interior, but rare snapshots show a giant curved central touchscreen as well as a weirdly-shaped steering wheel. The wheel was demonstrated at the company’s annual investor conference in the summer.

In a now-public snapshot, the console is set to visualize “Plaid Mode,” yet another Spaceballs reference, which is supposed to be one step up from the “Ludicrous Mode” included with the Model S, X and 3.

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Other users have taken matters into their own hands by photoshopping the car into a variety of colors, including a dazzling blue, toxic green, midnight silver, and even the shade of green chosen by the Australian government to make cigarette packages less appealing. Unfortunately, with Tesla scaling back its color options where it can, these exotic choices may remain a fantasy.

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Tesla Roadster 2020

When Will Tesla Roadster Be Released?

The Tesla Roadster release date is somewhat vague, but Musk promised at the Tesla Design Studio event that it would hit the roads in 2020.

This could change. Musk has since referred to the car as “dessert,” noting that it’s less important than its mass market vehicles. The company also isn’t expected to demonstrate its SpaceX options package until the end of next year. It wouldn’t be the first time Tesla has delayed a car due to its ambitious nature—just look at the “Faberge egg” Model X.

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How Much Will Tesla Roadster Cost?

The Tesla Roadster is expected to retail for $200,000 as a base price, dependent on a $50,000 reservation. A special “Founders Series” model, limited to just 1,000 cars, will cost $250,000 with the reservation dependent on full payment.

Tesla has plans for even more upgrades from these base models. Musk shared a “SpaceX Options Package” in June, which will use 10 small rocket thrusters arranged around the car to improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering. It will use high-pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel bottle, with the air immediately replenished by the vehicle when power draw allows. SpaceX is qualifying the bottles for its NASA crewed missions, set to send astronauts to the International Space Station in April 2019. Pricing is yet to be determined for this feature, but it won’t cost just money: the bottle will take up the two “kid seats” in the rear.

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Tesla Roadster 2020

What Is the Battery Range for Tesla Roadster?

With a battery pack of 200 kilowatt-hours, the Tesla Roadster is set to travel a staggering 620 miles on a single charge.

That’s more than double range found on the Tesla Model 3 long-range edition, which offers 310 miles.

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Musk has teased further refinements, as the current Roadster battery is just two Model S P100 packs strapped together, which allows for Tesla to double the modules without packaging and other components. Musk claims that the company could make efficiency savings of 10 or 20 percent on the 4.5-inch rise in height simply from the bigger packs.

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Tesla Roadster 2020

What Will Be the Tesla Roadster Seating Capacity?

The Tesla Roadster will have four seats. The rear two seats will be smaller than the front two, and Musk has previously referred to them as “kid seats.� The language echoes that used for the Model S seven-seater option, which places two small seats in the back of the car for children. Prototype models show just two doors on the car.

How Will the Tesla Roadster Be Manufactured?

Little is known about how and where the next-gen Roadster will be manufactured. Given its price, which should be significantly higher than Model S and X, Tesla is unlikely to produce the Roadster in mass quantities, meaning fewer than 1,000 per week. It has a higher price than the $108,000 asking price for the original 2008 Roadster, which had a production run of only 500 in its first year. Taken together, it seems more realistic to expect limited quantities of its successor.

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Tesla Roadster 2020

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What has Elon Musk Said About Tesla Roadster?

There’s some evidence to think that Musk and Tesla think of the Roadster as a kind of victory lap to mark the success of their bigger project to create a viable mass-market electric car. Prior to the reveal, Musk said in July 2016 that he “would love to do the next roadster, but that’s gotta be dessert.” That implies it hard to follow the successful ramp of up the “Model 3 production”, though in the meanwhile he has still dropped some early specs.

At the car’s reveal, Musk said the vehicle is a “hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars,” aimed at making gas-powered vehicles feel like “a steam engine with a side of quiche.” He also noted that “this is the base model!” and that “we’re gonna talk about things beyond base maybe next year sometime.”

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A September appearance showed the car in an incredible white design, reminiscent of the Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

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The New Roadster Will Be Better Than The Prototype In ‘Every Way’ Yoni Heisler

Tesla has a few intriguing vehicles in the pipeline, including an all-electric pickup truck and a crossover version of the Model 3 which will be called Model Y. That said, the Tesla vehicle most people are excited about and eager to see is the company’s next-gen Roadster, a vehicle that Tesla CEO Elon Musk boasted “will be the fastest production car ever made.”

Originally introduced alongside the Tesla Semi at an event back in late 2017, the specs on Tesla’s Roadster 2 are absolutely jaw-dropping, to say the least. At the unveiling event, Tesla boasted that the Roadster 2 boasts a 0-60 MPH time of 1.9 seconds and can reach 100 MPH in just 4.2 seconds. What’s more, the car will boast a top speed in excess of 250 MPH and upwards of 620 miles of range.

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The New Roadster Will Be Better Than The Prototype

As impressive as that all is, the production version of the Roadster may be even better than the car Tesla originally introduced.

During a recent episode of the Ride the Lightning podcast, Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen—who can be seen cruising in the Roadster 2 in the image above—relayed that the Roadster is evolving and will likely be better than the original prototype.

“It is evolving, deservedly so, and it needs more time,” von Holzhausen said. “It will be even better than what we unveiled, in every way.”

Though von Holzhausen didn’t go into additional detail, he did say that the car is slowly but surely turning into “the ultimate vehicle.”Now what that this means specifically remains anybody’s guess, but his remarks are nonetheless quite telling given that he’s not as prone to hyperbole as Elon Musk. Put simply, if von Holzhausen is telling us that the next-gen Roadster will be even more mind-blowing than initially imagined, we’re inclined to believe him.

As a final point, there has been a bit of skepticism regarding some of the performance figures initially put forth by Tesla.

With that said, a luxury car test driver named Emile Bouret was able to enjoy a little bit of time with the next-gen Roadster a few months ago and his initial impressions were overwhelmingly positive.

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“I know there’s some skepticism about the figures that Elon quoted,” Bouret said at the time, “and I think can say without getting in trouble that those are actual figures. Those aren’t theoreticals. Those aren’t calculations. We’ve done those numbers. And I probably shouldn’t say that those numbers are even conservative, but they are. That thing is going to be a proper weapon.”

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“That thing is going to be a proper weapon.�

Franz von Holzhausen

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Designed by Gian-Luca Iannace 2019 Proxima Nova Regular 10 pt / 15pt Proxima Nova Bold 16pt / 18pt

All content found in these pages is the original property of its creators and owners. Articles, interviews, photographs, and other texts were collected and organized for the compilation of this book, which was created as a student design project.

Some texts have been condensed, reformated, and edited to increase readability. Photographs have been edited to optimize their printed appearance.

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