Male: Cars.com auto review.

Joe Wiesenfelder: Hi, I’m Joe Wiesenfelder with cars.com. I have here with us basically the only battery electric car sold in the American market. It’s a Tesla Roadster 2010 here.

It has a range of about 200 miles per charge which is more than double what you’ll get in the mass market affordable cars that are coming soon. They get about 80 to 100 miles per charge and it also drives as well as it looks. Now this is a quick, quick car. People that are not accustomed to super cars and high performance cars will probably be shocked by how quick it is, zero to 60 in less than four seconds.

Now this is the Roadster sport which adds almost $20,000.00 to the price. It also gives you more torque out of the electric motor. It goes extremely quickly and very quietly but as soon as you reach an appreciable speed, 30, 40, 50 miles an hour, the wind noise gets to be quite overbearing.

The Roadster has manual steering so if you’re not accustomed to that at parking lot speeds or basically from a standing start, you’ve got to fight it pretty hard especially because the steering wheel is quite small but the good thing is when you’re driving any speed you know more than a few miles per hour, it actually feels fine and its encumbered by extra hardware and stuff like power steering and so the steering feedback is terrific.

There’s no stability system in the car but there is tracks and control and that seems to keep things from getting out of hand. Generally speaking, the driving experience in this thing is excellent. Now in terms of ride quality, that’s a different story. This car again being a Roadster sport has an adjustable suspension that means the dealership can adjust it for you. It has firm and comfort settings. This is in comfort setting and I find it quite firm if you get the regular Roadster that’s not the sport, it’s going to be firmer than this. It’s going to be kind of in the middle.

As you might expect, we’ve got a pretty snag interior especially left and right, you’re very close to the person next to you. Now I’m six feet tall and I have enough leg room. I wouldn’t mind a little more and there is a seat adjustment forward and backward and that’s it. You can’t adjust the backrest, passenger seat doesn’t do anything. The most you can do is order a lumbar pillow, and a battery electric car ranging side is always an issue right?

Thankfully with over 200 miles of range kind of full battery, it’s not that bad in this car. One thing I notice is the estimate of how much range you have left is actually pretty good. It seems more accurate than some electrics that we’ve driven prototypes and such. And one interesting thing is it gives you the ideal range here and it also gives you the estimated range.

We will report separately on issues of charging the battery and things like value especially because we think about that this car starts at a $109,000.00, almost 20 grand more for the sport version and the options on this car, another five figures, the whole thing has option up to about $156,500.00 but if you put out -- aside issues of you know cost value, in terms of the driving of this car, it’s really, really impressive and just the technology and the driving experience, it’s pretty exciting.

Male: For more car related new, go to cars.com or our blog, kickingtires.net