New car news

19 January 2009 - 10:00

Charge up

Shock news (see what we did there?) - the Tesla Roadster is getting even faster. And more expensive.

Deciding that the standard all-electric Roadster - which develops 248bhp and hits 60mph in 3.9 seconds - just wasn't sufficiently quick to hold its head high as the poster child of the green movement, Tesla has given it a big old power boost.

Thanks to a new hand-wound stator that increases torque (nope, us neither) the Tesla Roadster Sport now develops 288bhp and hits 60mph in 3.7 seconds. That's lightning quick, that is.

The Roadster Sport also gets sticky Yokohama tyres - as seen on the Exige - reworked suspension with adjustable dampers and new forged black alloys (which don't do anything for performance but look deeply cool).

The price for all this extra fastness? About £106,000 - that's around £12,000 more than the non-Sport Roadster. Ouch.

"This car can beat nearly anything in its price class," says Tesla VP Michael van der Sande, which is sort of true, given that the Caterham R500 is considerably quicker but a mere third of the price.

Nonetheless, we can't imagine there'll be a shortage of takers for the Roadster Sport when it goes on sale this summer. Join the 1,000-long waiting list, chaps.