INTERVIEW INTERVIEW
after our customers take ownership. They end up driving their Roadster for a couple of months and realize that it is vastly more convenient than any sports car they have ever owned. The Roadster doesn’t need trips to the pump, oil changes or new spark plugs or pistons or fuel belts or exhaust systems. The Roadster gives you more acceleration than some supercars that cost twice as much – yet it’s extremely easy to drive. It’s quiet and easy on the senses. It has no clutch or stick-shift. And because it has a single-speed gearbox, you don’t have to be a professional driver to achieve 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds. So for all these reasons, many of our customers – particularly those who buy it with the intention of keeping it in the garage most of the time – drive the Roadster vastly more than they thought they would. For many of them, it becomes their daily drive – and, as an added bonus, they don’t have to pay congestion fees if they are commuting into London’s city centre.
When you set about designing the Tesla Roadster, was the focus on creating something that could completely replace an
equivalent petrol car?
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Tesla’s entire goal is to produce mass-market cars for mainstream consumers – cars that enable everyone to replace their petrol car with a clean and convenient EV. But Tesla started with a premium product – the Roadster – to capture the interest and enthusiasm of affluent “early adopters”. This is how the technology industry introduces products: you start with a premium product that incorporates significant research and development work and then you use the cutting-edge technology developed for this product to produce more and more affordable products aimed at a wider and wider audience. Sometimes people erroneously perceive Tesla as an elitist company catering only to the rich but, in fact, we targeted affluent people in order to build more and more affordable models for everyone.
Have tax rebates played a large role in the sales of the car?
To be perfectly honest, the biggest cost savings do not come from government incentives but from the relative value of electricity vs. petrol: the Roadster costs about 1.5p
THE -ELEVATOR.COM THE -ELEVATOR.COM
ABOVE: THE
ROADSTER GETS PUT THROUGH ITS PACES TO PROVE ELECTRIC CAN BE AS GOOD AS PETROL
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