2008 was a different time for Elon Musk. He hadn’t met Grimes yet, didn’t go on weird Twitter rants and hadn’t publicly called anyone a ‘Pedo Guy. It was also the year that he unleashed his first Tesla vehicle on the world – the Roadster. Jay Leno has reminded us of this after publishing unseen footage of an interview with Musk at the time.
The former talk show host dropped the footage this week as an unseen episode of his YouTube series, Jay Leno’s Garage. We’re not sure why it wasn’t shown the first time around, but are here for this throwback.
It’s actually pretty cool because the video stars the first ever customer model of a Tesla Roadster, which was originally manufactured between 2008 and 2012. Leno himself had taken it for a spin and at the time it had around 800km clocked on the odometer.
Musk talks Leno through the specs of the Roadster, even touching on discourse at the time that claimed that the EV was just a redesigned Lotus Elise due to the originally using the same chassis. In the end, the Roadster didn’t use any of the body parts of the Elise and according to Musk the Roadster was both longer and 30 per cent heavier.
This found footage is probably surfacing now because Leno has recently been testing out the new generation of the Roadster, which he showed off on his channel just a few days ago.
It’s really an interesting watch this throwback, especially considering how far Tesla has come since then. Even just thinking about the sleek design of the OG Roadaster versus the post-apocalyptic monster that the Cybetruck is destined to be is wild.
And let’s not forget that somewhere out in space there is a Roadster that found itself floating beyond Mars back in 2018.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/04/why-teslas-costs-so-much-australia/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Tesla-1-410×231.jpg” title=”Why Teslas Cost So Much In Australia” excerpt=”Elon Musk responded to a tweet recently that criticised the cost of the Tesla Model 3 in Australia. The CEO of Tesla agreed in his response, stating that the price did indeed seem high. While EVs aren’t cheap, the Model 3 has been pegged as a budget Tesla. But when you dig into the costs, it’s quite the opposite here. So why are Teslas so expensive in Australia?”]