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A Dream Comes True For years I have yearned for a Tesla Roadster and have followed the company closely. After finishing the Jeep project I knew I had to get another electric drive. To my amazement there were several used Tesla's for sale on Ebay and other sites. And while still quite expensive I convinced myself I could swing a used one. 40 months and 29,000 miles later I am still glad I did it and am convinced electric drive will soon be a big part of our future. I believe this because oil is costing more and more, oil is getting harder to find and the environmental impact is large and growing. One question that often comes up is the batteries and how long will they last. The jury is still out as the cars are just too new. But my measurements are encouraging as after a year of keeping records and 29,000 miles the battery is quite stable as can be seen in the graph below. Normally you only see 74% of the battery capacity. Tesla does this to help preserve battery life as they try to keep you from having a fully charged, or fully discharged battery. If I plan to dive a long distance just a few taps on the charge screen will allow me to fully charge the battery give me access to the top and bottom of the battery. The range plotted below are ideal miles. Ideal miles are about 220W/mile and can be achieved driving about 55 with the top off. If you drive faster or with the HVAC then you will get less than ideal miles. While I have averaged just above 220W/mile, that can vary greatly from 200w/mile in easy town driving to 500W/mile if I am having fun showing off the substantial acceleration. As the specs say it will do 0-60 in less than 4 seconds and I have done the 1/4 mile in as fast as 13.1 seconds and 104 MPH.
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