The Tesla Roadster Has 1,341 HP And Half The Range Elon Musk Once Promised. Here Are The Full Specs

Tesla execs Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen spilled the beans on Tesla’s most outrageous car ever.

Photo by: Tesla

By: Iulian Dnistran

Oct 16, at 8:46am ET

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Tesla’s engineering and design bosses detailed the new Roadster’s specifications on video.
The outrageous EV weighs roughly 3,700 pounds and is rear-wheel-drive only.
It uses a bespoke battery pack that can recharge at 500 kW and enables a real-world range of about 310-320 miles.

Tesla put on a big show last night during the new Roadster’s debut, but it didn’t actually reveal concrete specifications, leaving fans and critics alike wanting more.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Lars Moravy, Tesla’s chief engineer, and Franz von Holzhausen, the brand’s design boss, to give a detailed rundown of the Roadster’s platform, battery, electric motors, and design.

In a nearly hour-long video published by Top Gear, the two execs were adamant that the car will go into production in Texas in 2028 with all the bells and whistles that made big headlines in the past 24 hours. “This one, we’re going to build,” said Moravy, adding that the concept we saw in 2017 would no longer be suitable for today.

So, what is the new Tesla Roadster capable of? First off, it’s based on a completely new and bespoke chassis that combines aluminum and carbon fiber, steer-by-wire, and brake-by-wire with carbon ceramic rotors. It integrates a high-voltage battery pack rated somewhere between 800 and 1,000 volts, which uses nickel-based lithium-ion cells developed specifically for the Roadster.

The Tesla reps didn’t give a number for the energy capacity, but said that in normal driving conditions, the Roadster would be able to deliver around 310 to 320 miles of range on a full charge. That's a far cry from the 620 miles of range Tesla touted when it first revealed the second-generation Roadster in 2017. But the Roadster is clearly meant to be more of a track toy than a long-distance road-tripper.

The Tesla Roadster's 200-liter air tank sits in the trunk.

Photo by: TopGear

It’s the fastest-charging battery ever made by Tesla, with a maximum input of 500 kW from a V4 Supercharger, and a maximum output of 1,000 kW. Going from 15% to 85% should take 10 minutes, according to Moravy. The charging port is hidden behind the rear wing.

Four versions will be available, with the lightest one tipping the scales at around 3,700 pounds (1,700 kilograms). All variants are rear-wheel-drive only, with a pair of electric motors enabling torque vectoring for better cornering.

The base variant delivers over 1,073 horsepower (800+ kW) and 885 lb-ft of torque, while the more powerful versions have a claimed output of over 1,341 hp (1,000 kW) and over 1,032 lb-ft. The top speed is currently 214 miles per hour, but the target is 330 mph.

Design-wise, the car is not actually a roadster, as the name suggests. Instead, the upper glass portion of the butterfly doors can be removed, resulting in a T-top, just like the third-generation Chevy Corvette.

Gallery: New Tesla Roadster

Source: Tesla

Dual-mode active fans in the back suck the car down to the ground, increasing downforce, but can also create a venturi effect by sucking the air from the front through the back. The fans themselves are deployable and can move up and down to get out of the way of road debris

What do you think?

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The Roadster is a two-seater only, and it has a trunk, but on the Thrust version, the trunk is filled with a 200-liter pressurized tank that shoots compressed air through a set of equal-length pipes. The tank can currently be filled in two to six hours with a high-pressure nitrogen system. The company is working on an improved system that could cut down the fill time to less than 30 minutes. One charge lasts roughly five to six seconds and enables the car to accelerate from zero to 60 mph in less than a second.

Plenty of active aero is also dotted around the car, making for a pretty compelling package.