Tesla's Forgotten Step-Child

An excerpt from my memoir, Shades of Resilience

Chapter 3

2018 was shaping up to be the Year of Many Gray Hairs and how true it was. Spurred by the hectic first few months, the quest began to fulfill a host of bucket list items in an effort to live out my final hoorah before parenthood. One was to complete writing the first draft of A Glimpse of Color, the other being a sports car purchase worthy of satisfying the quarter-life crisis cliché. In the fall of 2008 during my first semester of college, a small company in California was making waves in the news over the first deliveries of an all-electric sports car that was to revolutionize the automotive industry. You may recognize the company, who bears the last name of the famed inventor, engineer, and pioneer, Nikola Tesla. Immediately I was drawn to the beautifully designed and sleek Tesla Roadster and followed the company closely ever since. With a price tag of over $130,000 at the height of the financial crisis and recession, dire was the word of the day in describing a tech startup disguised as an automaker. To the benefit of our country, Tesla survived by the skin of their teeth and went on to produce many more models in impressive amounts.

Though as noteworthy as Tesla is today, the original Roadster always held a place in my heart. I even made a forum signature (I’m dating myself, don’t judge) based on the Roadster back then. A decade later, I found myself in a journey to acquire my dream car. Now I did, for the record, tell my pregnant wife of my intentions. Ashley thought I was joking. She never expected me to follow through on yet another wild goose chase. Every once in a while, I do make good on my promises…

In April 2018 I began a good dialogue with an owner of a 2008 Tesla Roadster near San Jose. It was quite the process coordinating with my financing company, PenFed, to buy a vehicle at the other end of the country. Several frustrations in paperwork later, the car was loaded onto the PlyCar enclosed trailer, beginning the trek from California to New York in early May. This particular Roadster had the 3.0 battery upgrade, which was offered by Tesla for a limited timea $30,000 option. The upgrade entailed installing an 80 kWh LG cell battery in place of the original 53 kWh Panasonic cell battery. Most Roadsters with this upgrade had almost 400 miles of range if you drove the car in Range Mode (computer gives preference for economy rather than performance). The owner also installed a rear-view camera, which for a car based on the Lotus Elise, comes in very handy. There is no power steering, no glove box, and absolutely no graceful way of getting out without looking like a clown, dumbass, or both. It’s just a rite of passage when you drive a car that sits as far above the ground as New Orleans is above sea level.

Chapter 4

Our sporty little electric convertible arrived on June 1st, 2018 the day before my father-in-law’s surprise 60th birthday party. Putting myself through the torture of working a day shift after coming home at midnight from my evening shift, I could not contain my excitement when the delivery guy called saying the car was dropped off. Coming home and seeing this masterpiece of modern automotive ingenuity glisten in the evening sun was the quintessential and cliché Hollywood moment.

So, it’s safe to say you probably had no idea there was a car Tesla made before the Model S. It doesn’t have falcon wing doors, no Autopilot/self-driving, no giant iPad in the center console, and in fact it doesn’t even have power steering. The original Tesla Roadster was based on the Lotus Elise, which the co-founders Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard thought embodied the spirit of a true sports car. Lotus cars were lightweight, barebones, and purely dedicated to the driving. Without going on a tangent, as my wife would gladly warn you, in a nutshell Tesla decided to build an electric car using the Lotus Elise chassis and fitting a battery and motor in place of the engine.

“Is that a Lotus?” is probably the most common question I receive when I take Tessie out to shows or just out and about around town. While the frame of the car was provided by Lotus, only about 7% of parts are shared between the two cars. The windshield, steering wheel (minus the Tesla logo), some dashboard trim, hard top and soft top are shared. The hard top on the Roadster is slightly larger as it covers the carbon fiber roll bar. Some of the mechanical pieces were carried over such as the brakes. To accommodate the battery pack, cooling systems, and the motor, the Roadster was longer and heavier than the Elise, almost 800 lbs. heavier. The Roadster has a small touchscreen called the VDS, or Visual Data System, to control things like charging speed and other car settings and also gives readouts of power usage and efficiency. If you’re feeling adventurous, it can give you the g readouts. Tesla updated the Roadster in 2010 by giving it a push button transmission and improved HVAC compared to the 2008 model. They also released a sport version, called the Roadster Sport, which used a hand-wound motor giving 288 horsepower compared to the stock 248 hp. A base Roadster had a quoted 0-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds with the Roadster Sport shaving that down to 3.7 seconds. The 2010 model made some cosmetic changes such as adding a glovebox compared to the simple tray and moved the touchscreen to the middle of the dashboard instead of off to the side. The final model year was the 2011 which offered a larger touchscreen, backup camera, and revised front bumper/grill to give more aggressive styling. Overall about 2,400 Roadsters were produced worldwide from 2008 to 2012.

As Doug DeMuro always likes to point out, here are some of the “quirks and features.” As mentioned earlier, not having power steering can be a pain at low speeds, especially when parking. Since Tesla carried over the stock Lotus brakes designed for a car that weighed around 2,000 lbs., they have horrible stopping power for the Roadster which clocks in around 2,800 lbs. Now with an electric car you do have regenerative braking, which captures the kinetic energy of the vehicle and converts it back into electricity to charge the battery. This helps slow down the car significantly and minimizes brake usage, which is why most EVs can last for a long time, years in fact, on the original brakes due to less wear and tear. However, if you don’t use the brakes in a while they can build up dust and dirt. In the Roadster, you may find yourself in a situation, as I have on many an occasion, needing to stop very quickly and not having the stopping power there to help. I got into the habit of stomping on the brakes every once in a while, to keep them clean and ready when need be. This is especially important in the rain because the car will not stop.

Another issue is specific to the 2008 models in regards to the HVAC. When you are in a, let’s say, spirited, mood and the battery does start to get hot, the Roadster will divert air conditioning from the cabin to the battery pack. It’ll be a sweltering hot day and the cabin starts to get very warm. This was fixed in the 2010 and 2011 models with better HVAC management. Honestly, if it gets bad just take the top down and enjoy the breeze. On the train of thought with the HVAC system, the car sometimes likes to lurch forward when the compressor kicks on. I never really figured this one out, and no matter how many years pass by it always catches me by surprise at a stop light!

The stock JVC head unit is straight out of 2006 and while many Roadster owners have switched them out for more advanced ones with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, I’ve kept mine. To me part of the fun is enjoying the technology of the car in the era in which it was created. The sound system could use a bit more oomph, but with the top down you can’t hear anything anyway. Bluetooth on my Roadster can be finicky, phone calls generally are a bad idea in terms of audio clarity, ingress and egress is a less than graceful affair, and the suspension is tight meaning every little morsel of gravel on the road is felt in your derrière. The cooling fans when charging or if the temperatures are hot can be fairly loud though in the cooler months, the heat dissipated by the fans helps warm up the garage. Before I replaced the original trunk struts, if it was cold outside, the trunk lid wouldn’t go up because of the frigid temperature and how it affects the gas cylinder (refer to the ideal gas law). Every so often, the trunk lid won’t close properly and to fix it, I have to turn the key for the trunk located in the left taillight to reset the lock so it closes properly. All of these may seem like deal-breakers, but such is life in the world of rare vehicles.

Oh, my what a tangent that was, sorry, I get really passionate when I talk about the Roadster. Anyway, to get back on track, the first few days with the car were such a respite from the hectic first few months of the year. Giving test drives to people at the party was quite the treat. Eventually I got a custom vanity plate based on one of my favorite old Sega games, OutRun, a poster of which hangs in my office.

That summer I was zipping around everywhere in Orange County, going to work and back, and car shows, any excuse to take it out for a spin. Somehow, I even managed to take it down to Bear Mountain for a church picnic, fitting a bag of charcoal, gallons of Poland Spring, and other items I signed up to bring. People would stop me and ask about the car, which is one of the best parts, in my opinion, of owning one. If you haven’t noticed, I love to talk and enjoy sharing little tidbits of Tesla history and folklore.