Tesla Roadster 3.0 upgrade package: OFFICIAL

Tesla has revealed the Roadster 3.0 package for the Tesla Roadster which upgrades the batteries, aerodynamics and rolling resistance of Tesla’s first car.

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Just before Christmas we revealed that Elon Musk was promising some significant upgrades for the Tesla Roadster – Tesla’s original foray in to electric cars – and here it is – the Tesla Roadster 3.0 package.

As expected, the upgrade package for the Roadster takes much of what Tesla has learnt in recent years with the Model S and applies it to the original Roadster to make it a more practical car.

The original lithium ion battery pack in the Roadster was an impressive piece of innovative kit, but things have moved on since the Roadster was first launched in 2008, so Tesla is offering a new cell that has 31 per cent more energy than the original Roadster cell and allows the creation of a battery pack that is the same size but delivers roughly 70kWh.

Additionally, Telsa are expecting to improve the original Roadster’s drag coefficient of 0.36 by 15 per cent to 0.31 by using computational methods to create a retrofit aerodynamic pack, fitting new tyres that improve rolling resistance by 2- per cent and making improvements in the wheel bearings and residual brake drag to improve performance further.

Tesla say the improvement the Roadster 3.0 package brings will improve efficiency by 40-50 per cent, and will demonstrate the Roadster’s new efficiency – and range of up to 400 miles – with a non-stop real world trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the early weeks of 2015.

Tesla will be taking bookings for the new package in the spring, once safety validations have been completed, and proclaim this will not be the last upgrade for the original Roadster.

We wonder how many of the 2,400 owners will be willing to dig deep for the upgrades?