Review: Tesla Sport Roadster

To drive the Tesla Roadster Sport is to learn the meaning of range anxiety.

The souped-up version of Tesla's Roadster does not want for range: Apply a feather touch on the accelerator and you'll get some 236 miles on a charge. That's by far the best of the electric cars on the road or on the horizon.

But you're not going to go easy. Stomping that go pedal is too much fun.

The Sport is quick. Even though it uses the same AC induction motor as the base model Roadster, Elon's henchmen tweaked the firmware to boost the battery's output. The result is another 40 ponies, bringing the Sport to 288 horsepower. It'll hit 60 mph from a standstill in a Porsche-like 3.7 seconds.

And then there's the handling. The Sport holds the road like a baby gripping a rattle. It is easy to hustle through corners, and, with a combined 13 settings on the car's adjustable shocks and sway bars, it's easy to tune out the Roadster's tendency toward oversteer. With the upgraded suspension, the ride is firm but not harsh — even on washboard roads. The car is porky at 2,700 pounds (that's what happens when you drop in a 900-pound lithium-ion battery pack), but it's too fast and nimble to be called a pig.

If you leave the car in its superefficient "range" mode and drive like a responsible adult, you'll hit the 236 miles Tesla says the car is good for. We spent most of the day in "standard" mode and were (mostly) judicious in our application of acceleration and we got 189 miles.

The car features a holy-shit-that's-FAST "performance" mode you can select on the fly (and we did, several times). But unless you've got a really long extension cord, it is best reserved for occasional use. Like, say, dusting that Porsche 911 ahead of you.

It's worth noting that a pair of guys competing in an alt-fuel car rally in Australia managed to squeeze 313 miles out of their Roadster, but we're betting they didn't have as much fun driving the car as we did.

Inside, the seats are supportive and comfortable but awfully close together. The Sport is tiny, and it's close quarters in the cockpit even if the two occupants are calorie-starved supermodels (Free Wired T-shirt to the reader who sends us a picture of that, BTW).

You can easily reach across the cabin to the passenger door. Good thing, too, because you have to if you want to adjust the mirrors. The Sport doesn't have power mirrors nor is the wheel adjustable. That might be a bit of a problem since the wheel blocks your view of the top of the gauges. But ultimately it doesn't matter since the numbers are hard to read — and really, if you have to check, you're probably going too fast. That's easy to do in the Sport. It's so smooth and so quiet that 80 mph feels like 50.

The Sport is low, the doors are small and the sills are wide, so anyone but a gymnast is going to look like a klutz getting in. Once you're in, though, the car is remarkably comfortable. The interior is highly refined — our test car was awash in polished carbon fiber.

The leather on the steering wheel is so soft we thought it might be made from kitten skins. But there are some problems. The instrument binnacle and center console — which houses the push-button gear selector and a cool touchscreen that displays system data — are flimsy. The screen on the JVC stereo/nav system is too small, and it's in the middle of the dashboard. Not exactly convenient. And those gorgeous sail panels behind the rear window that give the car a sleek silhouette create a wicked blind spot. Worse, the windshield frame can block your view of streetlights.

Such things would be grudgingly acceptable in the $47,250 Lotus Elise on which the Roadster and Roadster Sport are loosely based. But we're talking about a car that costs almost three times that much. The Sport package adds $19,500 to the Roadster's sticker, bringing the tab to $121,000.

Ours was loaded with options, including the carbon-fiber trim package, the 'Executive Leather' package, the top-shelf electronics package and an orange paint job bright enough to attract every cop in the county. None of them does anything to increase the performance of the car, but they make an already gorgeous vehicle look that much better. Beauty comes at a price — sign off on all these options and you'll pay $141,000.

Still, that kind of money buys you one hell of a car. The Sport is perfectly suited to the high-speed exploration of winding back roads far from civilization. And that's where you'll come face to face with the inherent limitations of the Sport's impressive technology: All batteries, even a beast like the 53-kilowatt-hour pack in the Sport, eventually go dead. And, unless you're lunching at the Googleplex you'll be hard-pressed to find somewhere to charge up. Therein lies the quandary of the Roadster Sport. It encourages you — no, it entices you — to explore that squiggly road on the GPS, and it's so much fun to drive you won't want to stop. But venture too far and you'll inevitably think, Will I have the power to get home?

You will, but even with 236 miles of juice, you'll have to turn back sooner than you'd like.