The Tesla Roadster Story
Автокөліктер мен көлік құралдары
If you were to point to one car that started the electric car revolution, it would be hard to choose between General Motor’s EV1 and the Tesla Roadster. Its stats look quaint now, but in 2008 when it was launched it was nothing short of a transportation revolution. Electric cars were slow with limited range. This car could go over 200 miles on a charge and get to 60mph in under 4 seconds. Tesla had created the first practical and thrilling electric car. But it nearly drove the company into bankruptcy.
Part 1 (1960's to 1970s): • Before Tesla... 1960s/...
Part 2 (1980s): • Before Tesla... 1980s ...
Part 3 (90s and GM EV1): • When GM was ahead of t...
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Пікірлер: 304
If I ran an American car company, I wouldn't let Jeremy Clarkson within five miles of my car. Maybe Richard Hammond, but only if I could drive Oliver.
@lynwestwood1762
4 жыл бұрын
Sterling Crockett you are not wrong,i like the way you think 🤔
@panzerkami2381
3 жыл бұрын
He was sometimes nice to American cars but if you sell electric cars you certainly shouldn't let Jeremy Clarkson within 10 km. Under his stint at Top Gear they were caught red-handed, pants down, faking "tests" where electric cars "ran out of juice" twice (Tesla and Nissan) to satisfy his urge to throw shit at EV's. Which of course satisfied his beer-belly neanderthal fans.
@ABrit-bt6ce
3 жыл бұрын
If you let The Hamster near it then your car would have a firey death.
@priesermax
3 жыл бұрын
@@panzerkami2381 Also the Robin with extra weight at certain points to let it roll over.....
@Grulaz
Жыл бұрын
What about James May?
"Hey Elon, would you like to invest in us?" _"WhY yEs, I wOuLd LoVe To OwN a CaR cOmPaNy"_
I previously commented on the preview for this. A wealthy friend of mine was an early adopter of Tesla technology and had a roadster S. I got to go in it a couple of times and it was a surreal experience at the time. Very quick and of course virtually silent. Build quality was not the best for the £95k he paid for it but it was his only car for a couple of years which he used to travel between Nottingham and Essex a couple of times a week. Completely impractical but it was more of a test bed as this was the car that laid the foundations for the electric revolution we are seeing today.
All the lucky people who actually own a first gen Roadster, wow, a piece of automotive history in their garages!
@tripleo4255
3 жыл бұрын
Did you know that YOU could be one of those lucky people for only ≈$70,000? Since the release of the First Gen Roadster Elon Musk has become one of the most well known and well liked people in the world (as well as the richest at one point) and Tesla has become the most successful and valuable EV car company in history and yet even after that seemingly unattainable amount of success in such a short amount of time the car that started it all is only selling for $70k..
@rowaystarco
Жыл бұрын
From the window at my old office, I could see a Tesla Roadster parked outside every day. Someone was using as their everyday commuter car. But this was 9 or so years ago, so who knows if it's still "alive" today.
I loved this electric car series. I've watched each video 3 times lol. subbed.
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Thank you!
@petrosE75
4 жыл бұрын
You might find the Ford Sierra XR8 interesting.
This was a great and much-needed retrospective on the Roadster. However, a couple of little niggles… The 2009 interior update did not introduce the tiny touch screen, which had been in the car from the beginning. They did relocate it from an awkward position next to driver's door to the center console at that time. On the instrument panel they also replaced the useless tachometer with a power gauge, and they replaced the stick shifter with a push-button shifter - both changes that made sense after switching to a single-speed gearbox. "Tesla offered an open top for the first time…" I have no idea what you were even referring to there, since every Roadster was produced with the same targa-style open top design.
@briancronan3489
2 жыл бұрын
Ñ
I love the leanring the histroy about these cars. The history is often more interesting than the car itself. Also I did not know it was a lotus elise, I thought it was an evora.
@EVMYT
4 жыл бұрын
It's neither it was mostly modified and then the car was completely type approved in its own right. As he said it only shared 6% of its parts with lotus in the end. Lotus just built the modified car as a glider platform. On the log book it's a Tesla not a modified lotus (like a Hennessey).
@bangerbangerbro
4 жыл бұрын
I was directed to this video to prove it wasn't an Elise.
I’d no idea the Tesla Roadster actually was part-Lotus. You really can learn something new everyday day. Keep up the excellent work!
Also a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide with "Don't Panic" on the centre screen at the end of the Vid.
@ChimeraActual
2 жыл бұрын
I assume it's well known that the car-in-space reference is from the movie Heavy Metal. That was a dramatic opening to the movie and the Tesla-in-space has almost identical references.
Great video, makes me feel proud to own a VX220 as it kind of shares some of its history.
Would like to see Citroën CX story on this channel.
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Me too! I was doing some research into the XM, and also looked at the CX. That car was seriously cool. I will do it at some point.
very substantial .... one of my top5 favourite channels. keep up the good work mate!
I almost forget about this car. this is my favourite car in NEED FOR SPEED cause of no noise on roads. thinks for this video.
Brilliant video as always, thank you for the time, effort and love you put into making them - it really shows.
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Thank you Dan!
Awesome mini-documentary (no pun intended). Well narrated and put together, so will be hitting the subscribe button.
Great channel - thrilled to see its continued growth!
Quality content as usual. Love watching your insightful videos.
Brilliant video keep up the Amazing work :)
Bloody brilliant video, mate.
All while starting Space X at the same time! Tesla Roadsters can still be had for reasonable money.
@MarquosXoloVanda
4 жыл бұрын
Haha, reasonable for those rich enough to throw $200K on them.
@markdavis2475
4 жыл бұрын
@@MarquosXoloVanda £80k in the UK😀 Sorry I meant the original model not the new one
@darkling6655
4 жыл бұрын
yeah and around the same time he lost his 3rd rocket and was about to give up on spacex too but one thing is for sure elon never fucking gives up even if he has to lose everything just make one thing that he Believes in work.
@darkling6655
4 жыл бұрын
@James Smith yeah but in the dark times of jesus when he was being killed but elon survived just by a sliver. that day was almost the death of both tesla and spacex and would have been 100% dead if they where made by a different founder.
Brilliant as always. Thank you
I watched this video and felt the need to rewatch it in my model 3. Its incredible how far Tesla has come as a car company! The first tesla i ever saw was a model S in 2013, the car looked like something from the future, now im pleased to be sitting in a tesla of my own! But the sendoff of the first roadster is such a fitting end for the first production car from the company!
Bloody outstanding video. Thank you.
Increddibly interesting video. Well done. Thank you.
Astrostig at the end there. Well made and interesting video!
Really love the coil voltic
@moonshade99
4 жыл бұрын
More fun to drive in gta5 than any other car
@FEVERNOVAA
4 жыл бұрын
@@moonshade99 yeah,sadly only the OGs will remember how great it was for 150k, in current gta 150k can get you a jacket and a sprite
Great video. My 2010 Roadster will still put a smile on your face :-)
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Did you get the battery pack upgrade?
A very instructive story! Elon Musk managed to resist and save the dying company, and now it is No. 2 in terms of capitalization among automakers in the world. We wish him good luck and the achievement of all his goals!
It's hard to deny EVs are the future now that Porsche, Audi, GM, Ford, Hyundai and others are about to release their own EV models in a year or two
@MICHGO1
3 жыл бұрын
THEY ARE ALL STILL BEHIND TESLA.
@admrsh
7 ай бұрын
@@MICHGO1😂 Tesla is overpriced shit what are you taking
Very interesting and well presented. I still watch Starman on raw space.
Love the shirt!! Awesome episode!
Top Marks bro , Top marks 👍🏿
Love your videos, thank you
Didn't recognize you without the helmet
4:41 Ah Lotus that one homey who always helps in the need of time ;)
Thank you great video (:
Great video!
Fascinating to see that Elon Musk didn't really have that much to do with Tesla, except giving them money.
Great video.. I remember seeing the roadster being tested by a magazine or the company before production here in Santa Barbara. I was trying to figure out what the car was back then..
Did not know that about Elon's Roadster in space. THANKS !
@campkira
4 жыл бұрын
you mean one he don't bother to service... waiting list to just fix the car can take years....
@dennispremoli7950
4 жыл бұрын
that's surprising... it was possible 2018s biggest internet/media event
Thank you for making this video. Cheer’s
Brilliant ... Thank you!!!
Tesla has given the car industry the boot up the arse it needed.They werent too fussed until Tesla proved Electric cars would sell.Their next generation of cars will be better built and go further than the original generation.If it makes an affordable car for all,it will be a gamechanger all over again.
You are worth more subsribers and views than what you have. Hope The best for you. Greatings from SWEDEN.
@BigCar2
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks Hultgren!
Excellent story as always!
@jamesengland7461
Жыл бұрын
Oh look; it's me again.
THANK YOU!!!
You should add history to the title Very Good!
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the feedback.
They sent the car into space in Feb of 2018?!? Jesus Christ the time flies by...
Nice one. Shows very well that Tesla has been through boot camp.
Really good video thanks, loads there I never knew about Tesla. How about a Model S video?? :)
This is a story in his book. Thanks for this..
Looks beautiful
Nice!
The way I see it is EV1 is the catalyst for early ev like roadster, and roadster is the one who change the perception from weird looking and slow ev to that ev can be can be a sexy looking sports car too.
Nice look back at the beginnining of the new beginning. How many ns in beginning,again?
The main problem with early EVs were they didn't look like a "regular" car. They made them look like these super-futuristic, "alien" looking things. That turned off the average consumer. Tesla made their first model look like a car that an average person would want to drive.
Sterling clean production
The stats are still fairly good today just not for the price. 2:08 I thought AC propulsion used li ion batteries? In the video about the T-Zero they say there is a lead acid version and a a version using laptop batteries, presumably li ion. The switch to carbon fibre would be something I would have thought would have come later when they tried to further reduce mass. I can't see getting rid of GRP being urgent.
I am a great fan of you, but i am sure that you are indeed the STIG!
very good.
Not all EV1's were crushed. Jay Leno found one at a very famous man's home few years back. Great story.
Gotta love the Tesla Roadster in space!
Bravo....!!!
The cheese wheel may have been a Monty Python reference but the Don't Panic on the roadster in space is a Hitchhiker's Guide reference. And Douglas Adams who wrote that also wrote for, and occasionally appeared in, Monty Python.
I've got to wonder what would've happened if they'd stuck to the original concept of retrofitting an ICE car with a motor and batteries instead. Maybe a regular carmaker would've bought them and failed to do anything with the work? Or maybe they could've sold a lot more and cheaper? Would've been cool for AV's own car to have gotten off the ground. If there were 2 or 3 new companies making the same type of EVs all appearing around 2000, that might've had interesting effects on innovation via competition. By the way, thank you for doing proper subtitles!
I'm going to buy a Tesla model 3, a car ahead of its time
@BigCar2
Жыл бұрын
Mine is very fun. I wouldn’t change it (except maybe for a Hyundai ionic as you can use it as a backup generator in case of power outages).
I test drove this car. I drove it for 30min and used half the battery power. I covered less than 20km. I drove it hard. ;)
+Big Car can you do a video on the failure of GM's Oldsombile 5.7L Diesel from 1977-1985. Recall in the double digits and GM had to replace engines due to weak head bolts and gaskets. The Diesel also lead to a massive lawsuit as well The single engine almost bankrupted GM back in 1981. Please do, a video on the notouries Oldsombile 5.7L 350 Diesel this would be a good video as these were sold in most countries.
I never saw the 2009 version of the roadster with a different dash
have they seen topgear? they were the only car magazine big enough to shit on models without losing ads and good will
All roadsters had removable soft tops. The sport had a slightly higher power motor
And the rest as they say is history. It hasn’t been smooth sailing for Tesla though, with issues with build quality and paint for example, but for a new car maker it has done a lot to improve quality and the company is now bigger than its competitors in such a small time as well. Elon has the Midas touch.
Best video yet. I'm a huge Tesla fan and I'm sure every other Tesla fan will want to watch this too. Bet it gets your highest number of views. Keep up the good work on Big Car and Little Car.
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
😃 Thanks Martin! I also love what Tesla have done. Next after Big Car / Little Car - Medium-sized Car?!?
Slight off track but bear with me, I have been a big fan of lotus cars since being a kid. Always remembered how lotus struggled over the years with productions and going thru many owners. One of problem was the getting the right engines. They didn't make enough cars to warrant making their own (yes,they did their own V8). So they brought in their engines. Now jump to the present(ok a decade ago or so), It's good that Tesla took the Elise body and stuck their battery and motor on it. I hope lotus can now see what an electric motor could do for them and they could release their constraints and head upwards. Yes I know they are making what looks like a brilliant Evija. Alas that's £2m car. Just saying, lotus can now have a electric motor(s)that they could manufactured in quantity and power that suits their needs for their "normal" cars. And yes there's batteries to contend with buts that isn't surmountable. My hats still goes off to Tesla and what they have pulled off.
The Tesla Roadster, The Predecessor to the New Lotus Evija. Or as i hope Reason why we need an Electric Elise.
No mention of *why* Tesla actually sued Top Gear? Because the main gripe was that the review said that it broke down when it never did. That was something Clarkson & Co completely made up and only won because they successfully argued that Top Gear is an entertainment show, not a factual one, so they can just make things up like that.
@bob15479
4 жыл бұрын
Did you see this guy's shirt? He probably believes Clarkson's side of the story.
@mostlybrokenbritishcars3220
4 жыл бұрын
Ugh this again. - The Roadster DID have a range of 55 miles on the track (as confirmed by Tesla) - The Roadster DID suffer brake failure - The Roadster DID overheat and go into low power mode - The script was NOT already written before they received the vehicle to test - it was partially written with things they already knew about the vehicle and with room to add their impressions on the day about how it performed. The one thing I concede to be slightly iffy was that they showed it being pushed and implied that it had ran flat. It actually hadn't, but personally I give that a pass as a creative decision to hyperbolise its lack of range. In the same vain I wouldn't get upset if they pretended to need to push a Ford GT since its fuel tank is tiny. Whether you think that's fair is up to you though. In the end, Tesla sued, and lost. Sued again, and lost again. The Top Gear Tesla Roadster test was not rigged or unfair.
@LAG09
4 жыл бұрын
@@mostlybrokenbritishcars3220 The review very clearly stated that it broke down completely and couldn't be driven. As I said this is not what happened and Tesla sued for it, but lost because Clarkson & Co successfully argued that what they portray in the show doesn't have to be factually correct. Regardless of how you feel about it, they really did win in court based on the argument that they're an entertainment program, not a factual one, so they can just make stuff up. That's a really dick argument to make for a show that does product reviews.
@mostlybrokenbritishcars3220
4 жыл бұрын
L_A_G Did you watch the same review as I did? They never said it broke down completely. They said the brakes broke - which was true, the fuse for the brake booster blew and if you’ve ever driven a modern car when the booster isn’t working you know how ineffective they become. They never said the motor overheated and went into reduced power mode, which was true also. Pushing the car implied not that it had broken, but that it had run out of electricity. That may not have been true, but it’s no different than if they had pushed an ICE car to illustrate a point about how small the tank is or how much of a gas guzzler it was. It’s creative license. They won the case based on them not having to be factually correct not because they weren’t factually correct (they completely were), but because under British law that was the best defence available to them to win the case. There wouldn’t have been any point fighter a harder battle by demonstrating that they were in fact factually correct when a valid argument under British law is that they did not have to be.
@LAG09
4 жыл бұрын
@@mostlybrokenbritishcars3220 You do know that Teslas and modern cars in electric general will warn you well ahead of time that the battery is about to run out? They even go into a kind of limp home mode that maximizes range so you can definitely make it to charger unless you're doing it on purpose or are completely stupid. A factual show doesn't know the term "creative license" and they don't make stuff up like it totally breaking down and needing to be pushed. The whole review literally ended on a talk about how electric cars will just break down all the time. So the argument about the "Well we can just make stuff up"-argument wasn't just chosen because it was the strongest defense, it was chosen because they really did make stuff up. Try to remember that Top Gear with Clarkson & Co was a *very* heavily scripted show.
Can we see the Skoda story? Pretty please :)
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
I’m sure you will at some point.
@mthraves
4 жыл бұрын
@@BigCar2 I helped develop their production line software back in the 80s. At that time, part of the factory in Czechoslovakia used local prisoners to spray the cars. In fact I believe that the factory employed most of the local village!
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
@@mthraves Wow! Interesting. BTW, I've made the video since I originally wrote this: kzread.info/dash/bejne/mKGIt8mPedTPqrg.html
This automobile is the repetition of the MVS Venturi Fetish which is the first electrical super-car. Tesla ows a lot to the French and Hydro-Quebec as they started in the 90s.
Yeah about the 2020 roadster you briefly mentioned…
@BigCar2
3 ай бұрын
One day!
Finally the Stig himself from top gear
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
How did you guess I was the Stig?!? 😜
The tZero concept headlights make it look like it was in distress.
I’d love to see a video on the Nissan Leaf.
@BigCar2
3 жыл бұрын
Me too. There's a guy in the north of England who takes the innards and uses them to convert old cars, and he's been keen to help me out with it.
You didn’t talk about how Elon stole the first roadster that was promised for Martin
It takes a man from Pretoria to show the world how to change how we should do things. Great video, as always!
@whiterottenrabbit
Жыл бұрын
And also call a child rescuer a pedophile... **slow clap**
@petrosE75
Жыл бұрын
@@whiterottenrabbit I don't think a few words out his mouth about an idiot refusing assistance negates everything else he has done. Well, you're commenting on a two year old post. Today he is the richest person on the planet. Guess my remarks were spot-on. Wouldn't you say. Geniet jou dag. With love from South Africa.
"swordesenegga" hahaha
I eally don't care for or about this cat, but because the video was made by Big Cat I watch it and enjoyed just as much as ever other video
@S-Ltd1000
4 жыл бұрын
Meow.
With new technologies, the line between success and failure is often a fine one. Tesla didn't invent electric cars, but they did make them cool and desirable.
Interesting
finally, the helmetless stig ...
"Having a celebrity go up in flames would be bad "......Having ANYONE go up in flames would be bad. Good video good informations. And ..,.no you're not 😉
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
Indeed!
Nothing like developing a car on a fully costed dynamic Bill of Material....
I always thought Tesla was Elon from the start!
@Chamieiniibet
4 жыл бұрын
Well, Elon says it was *after* he joined that the name "Tesla motors" was chosen and the company was incorporated.
Hello could you do a story on the decline of Saab motor cars REASON why it failed thanks
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
kzread.info/dash/bejne/pYmAm5V8Yq3ckdY.html
The roadsterr goes to heaven.. LOL.
I liked the idea of owning a Tesla a lot more before Elon Musk discovered Twitter.
How do you charge that Roadster in outer Space?
@BigCar2
3 жыл бұрын
I'm sure there's a punchline to a joke in there if I could find it.
@h-j.k.8971
3 жыл бұрын
@@BigCar2 ooooooh.
Hmm nice but no segue into the new upcoming Roadster. Would have been much better.
In French, Fétiche (pronouced fetish) means amulet. Venturi is a French manufacturer, so it makes sense to understand it as that. Quoique.
So you are the Stig!!!
@BigCar2
4 жыл бұрын
What clued you in? I demand answers! 😜
@maus3454
4 жыл бұрын
@@BigCar2 The helmet i guess :)
Crazy enogh it was so big, and then nothing, good luck tying to repair one with Tesla mechanics.