Don’t look now but the stumbling Tesla Motors, the electric car company recently on the receiving end of a $US465 million government loan, has turned a profit for the first time in its six-year history. More »
The Tesla dealership is quiet as a cage of sleeping panthers. A pack of the electric roadsters, in varying degrees of grey, are strewn across the show floor looking 200kph standing still. I imagine most of them are awaiting for a venture capitalist to pick them up and take them from meeting to meeting for the rest of their uneventful lives. But outside is a bright blue roadster ready for the 10 minutes Telsa and God have handed me. This is my long awaited drive in the Tesla roadster.
Popular Mercedes tuner Brabus has designed a Tesla modding package which adds — among other things — fake engine sounds to make up for the Roadster’s silent electric motor. You can opt for a traditional v-8 engine sound, a race car sound or even two “futuristic landscape” settings that may or may not make your Tesla sound like George Jetson’s spacewagon. You also get a few trim additions, some interior tweaks and, oh god, groundlighting. The whole package might be gaudy, but the fake engine sounds take the tacky cake. I’ll say it: they’re the electric supercar equivalent of spinner hubcaps. [NextAutos]
We’ve seen Tesla crashes before, but none as severe as this current one. How did this one happen? A sales director was showing a potential buyer how the super fast, super cool electric gadgety vehicle cannot take wet turns at over 160kph. Better showing than telling, we always say. Luckily neither suffered extensive injuries. Who’s up for trying it again at 150kph? [Wrecked Exotics via Jalopnik]
