The 2008 Tesla Roadster Is the Cool Tesla Before Tesla Was Cool

this is a 2008 tesla roadster and it's the other tesla everybody knows the model s the three the x the y but tesla's roots go further back to this this was tesla's first real car the ultra rare tesla roadster and today i'm going to review it [Music] before i get started big news this tesla roadster is currently listed for sale being auctioned live on cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website this tesla roadster has less than 15 000 miles it's been in california its whole life and it is a very rare early roadster effort from tesla these do not come up very often but you can get this one on cars and bids so after you finish watching this video click the link in the description below to check out the auction for this tesla roadster where you can bid on it and buy it only on cars and bids.com so let's talk tesla roadster the roadster was tesla's first real effort to make it as a car company this came out in 2008 and this is a first year model with vin number 162 one of the very first tesla models ever built now tesla eventually built around 2500 units of the roadster before they switched production over to the model s which of course became the car that would launch tesla into global success but before that success there was this the tesla roadster which is based on the lotus elise but like other tesla models it is fully electric it has about 250 horsepower which is good for 0-60 in under four seconds pretty impressive and the range back when it was new was around 250 miles which was then and still is a pretty good figure back then these had a sticker price of a little over a hundred thousand dollars when they were new and now it's time to take a look back at old school tesla first i'm going to take you on a tour of this tesla roadster and show you all the quirks and features of the original tesla the one you don't hear about all that much then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the original tesla roadster by talking about getting in and that means discussing the key and yes there is an actual metal key an old-school looking car key this surprises me so much because after the roadster tesla has like led the industry revolution in getting rid of keys to get into a model 3 you use your cell phone and you have as a backup key a card that looks like a hotel room key it is so far from a traditional car metal key but that's what the roadster has on the back it even says tesla motors like they're proud of their key but anyway you turn it over you have three separate buttons on this key lock and unlock those are pretty self-explanatory and a button that is simply marked tesla if you press the tesla button then the rear hatch in the car pops right open take another look at that press the button the hatch opens up so since it's open let's go back there next all right when you get into this back area the first thing you notice back here is there's a storage area in back a fairly sizable one actually goes the entire width of the car you can put some stuff in here you can see right now there's this black bag in the storage area that contains the soft top for this car which you can just install in case it starts raining but you have a pretty sizable storage compartment back here which is nice but that's not the only thing under this rear cover you also have a lot of the componentry that powers this car you have battery stuff back here battery packs sharing this compartment with your luggage and you can see them here and you can also hear them the car is off right now but take a listen to the sound this battery stuff is making you can kind of hear sort of a pump and then like a liquid sound almost like trickling water i suspect that is to keep the battery cool i've just driven the car it's fairly hot today and so it's cooling down the battery and that sound continues even though i've turned the car off many minutes ago trying to keep the battery cool an interesting thing you don't hear that on modern electric cars but like i said this was sort of a beta testing first effort other interesting quirks back here there's this little tape on the battery component and it says warranty void if seal broken i guess they don't want you to get in there and tamper with stuff and so that seal is intended to make sure you won't because if you do that you'll void your warranty also back here another interesting item there's this yellow cover and it says on an emergency srs disable so you flip this up and i guess there's an emergency switch here to disable your airbags which i've never really seen before i'm not sure if other cars have that not exactly sure why you would want to do it but you can disable your airbags in the back of a tesla roadster one of many strange controls in this car next up another interesting item under here if you look on the underside of the trunk lid you can see a little bottle over to the side sort of tucked into a little holder that is a can of fix a flat this car doesn't have enough space like underneath it or in the storage compartment for a spare tire so instead they give you a fix a flat and tell you good luck actually this isn't unique to the tesla roadster a lot of sports cars that don't have room for a spare tire do the same thing but anyway since i'm talking storage i wanted to discuss the front compartment in the tesla roadster as well now to access this front compartment you go to the left of the steering wheel there's a little lever that you pull you pull that and it unlatches the front compartment to this point and from there you just kind of lift it up and open it it's very light very easy to lift up and once you get under here you discover there's no storage in this front compartment in fact there's a warning label under here that specifically says do not use this area for storage for putting anything in here because that's not what it's designed for your exterior luggage compartment in this car is purely the one i showed you in back nothing up front for that instead up here you can see you have some fans some mechanical components you can add some fluid up here but no room for any storage in the front of the tesla roadster instead this is what it looks like now of course when you are done doing whatever you need to do in the front you pretty much just slam this back down and then you're good to go and next up we move on to getting into the tesla roadster which has a very very interesting quirk worth covering now the door handles in the road store are not mechanical instead there's an electronic release you walk up you touch this little rubber button on the door and then it pops open electronically you can hear the release different from the mechanical door handles in most every car but if the battery is dead then how do you get into your car because the electronic door handles won't work well tesla has thought of that there is a hidden mechanical release on a keyhole underneath the door you go under the door and you can see this little keyhole hidden here and this is how you can get in you stick the key into this keyhole you twist it and the door opens mechanically instead of using the little release a lot of people don't know this a lot of tesla roadster owners don't know this but there is a second way into this car's doors in case the electronic release has failed or the battery is dead or whatever a hidden keyhole under the door that's a pretty neat quirk but anyway now i'm inside the tesla roadster before i go any further though i want to go back to the lotus connection i mentioned earlier this car was based on the lotus elise and in fact it was heavily based on the elise lotus would even go so far as to build the chassis of this car for tesla in the uk and then ship the chassis to california where tesla finished all the rest of the assembly and there was a lot of stuff shared with the lotus elise in this car one of those things is the setup of the front and rear compartments the lotus elise also had the rear compartment with an engine and a trunk and the front compartment with no storage and that's obviously carried over to the tesla roadster but when you get in this car there is a lot more lotus stuff in here for instance the turn signal stock straight out of the lotus elise same deal with the windshield wiper stock also straight from the lotus elise the parking brake it is straight from the lotus elise so is the whole dashboard design panels materials all that stuff comes out of the lotus at least including the speedometer binacle area these seats are also straight out of a lotus elise they just shared the lotus seats of course because they fit in here they were already designed for this car so they put them in the windshield is shared with the lotus elise the body panels were all different but the windshield was the exact same part i guess because it fit in this space fit around the dashboard and it made sense to use that if you had an elise and i did a lot of this stuff will seem very familiar to you probably my favorite elise shared component though is the steering wheel straight out of the lotus elise with no modifications except there was a problem lotus's logo is circular in the center of the steering wheel and tesla's isn't so they adapted you can see the tesla logo has been placed on a circle in the center of this steering wheel in order to fit the space that the lotus logo had previously occupied it's just funny to see all of that lotus stuff in here and some of the adaptations they had to make but anyway aside from all the lotus components in here let's talk through some of the other interesting quirks and features of the tesla roadster starting with starting it which is very unusual you stick the key in a little ignition and then turn it just like you would on a gas car again this is crazy to imagine now because you get in a modern tesla and you just basically sit down put it in drive and go there's almost no key interaction at all but back in the day they probably thought that would confuse people so they wanted to make it like a gas powered car so you stick the key and you turn it and then it's on even though there's no engine to turn on and then you can shift it into gear and let's talk about shifting it into gear the gear lever is absolutely bizarre you can see it has like three little parts where it can go r and d obviously for reverse neutral and drive and you move it very easily to those little pieces once the car is on and it sort of feels like a joystick you would move at an arcade like a lever in an arcade game that's the gear lever for the tesla roadster now going through some other interesting controls in this center console area for one thing you have a button marked tc and i assume you press that and turn off the traction control this is after all the sports car if you wanted to get the tail out you could turn off traction control and slide it around you also have some other buttons and controls in here mostly for the climate controls you can see all of your usual climate control butts nothing particularly unusual or special in here air conditioning change the fan speed the direction of the air you even have heated seat controls the very top of all these controls these little buttons will turn on or off your heated seat a nice luxury but then keep in mind this car cost over a hundred thousand dollars back in 08 so heated seats were fairly expected at that price point but anyway next up let's go back to turning the car on you turn the key in the ignition switch and then the car makes some odd noises there are some unusual warning chimes in here my very favorite strange warning noise it makes is the door lock so you press the door lock button once and you get this beep you press the door lock button again and you get two beeps now you don't hear the doors locking and unlocking because it's all electronic the door mechanisms like i showed you earlier but it is a little confusing because which is lock and which is unlock one beep or two beeps lock or unlock i don't know i still don't know it doesn't really make any sense and it doesn't show you anywhere else that it's locked or unlocked you just hear the beeps and you have to know the code of the tesla door lock beeping but anyway some other interesting things happen when you start up the car for one let's go into the gauge cluster where on the left you have a tachometer which is odd because this is an electric car it shows rpms but there are no rpms there's no engine to turn it's strange to see attack an electric car and i wouldn't be surprised if this is pretty much the only electric car that ever had one now the reason for the tachometer is that the original tesla roadster was going to be made with a two-speed transmission and so a tachometer was going to be necessary but in the end i think all of these got a single speed transmission maybe some early ones were built with a two-speed but it was replaced later with the one speed and so the tachometer is pretty much useless and i guess it really just shows kind of the power you're using of the battery as you drive along you can see there's a 13 red line and it goes up to 15 but 15 what it really doesn't make a lot of sense to the right of that you have a speedometer of course which is self-explanatory there's also a little screen in the corner of this gauge cluster area that shows most importantly your battery level you can see a little battery and it's mostly charged up and that lets you know how much battery you have left but in this car by far the most interesting controls are over to the left of the steering wheel on the dashboard below the climate vent next to the door you have this screen here you can see this is a touch screen that is intended only for the driver's use because in the center of this whole dashboard you have your stereo and obviously you use that to control music whatever but the touch screen to the left of the steering wheel controls all of your car functions and i'll take you through its interesting quirks now in its default screen you can see there's like a top-down view of the car and also the time that's a clock showing you the current time the top-down view will change if you open up a door it will show you that a door is open by showing you know which door on that top down screen has been opened up so that makes sense but there are also a few like little buttons you can press around this touch screen to go into various different menus in the upper right you see like a tuxedo looking thing that enters valet mode which i imagine like restricts the speed of the car you put in a pin and then it's in valet mode in the bottom right you can see there's a little lock button and that also lets you put in a pin to lock out i guess this screen and then people can't i guess adjust stuff or change your settings or whatever so it's like a little security measure and by the way also on this default screen you will notice that it gives a range estimate in addition to showing like your approximate battery life with a graphic like in the gauge cluster screen it also tells you actually how many miles it thinks you have left based on your current driving style but the most interesting things in this screen are in the two little button areas on the left we'll start with the bottom left where you have a wrench you can use that to adjust vehicle settings and there are some unusual ones for one thing you can adjust the tesla button on the key remember earlier i showed you press tesla and it pops open the little rear hatch in your storage well it doesn't have to do that it's programmable you can program it to arm the alarm for instance if that's what you want or somehow use the homelink system to open a garage door or whatever different configurable items on that key fob button never seen that before that is a pretty cool idea also in this little wrench settings menu you can adjust your charging mode so it tells you you know do you want to charge very quickly which will deplete your battery life faster or do you want to charge slower which obviously will take longer but then your battery life will be preserved more you can choose that in this little touch screen and it tells you sort of which is which depending on your preferences now also in this little settings menu some less interesting stuff your usual car settings like you can change the clock in here or you can change the units like if you want the odometer display in miles or kilometers that sort of thing i think particularly unusual in the rest of the settings menu but there's one more interesting menu in here to the upper left of this screen there's a button with an eye on it for information and there is some very interesting information displayed in here for one thing you click vehicle info and it gives you like a side profile of the car and your vin number but it also tells you your build date and of course where it was built tesla very proud of making these in california that is a pretty cool little touch a more interesting item in this info menu is the fuel saved section you tap on that and it tells you exactly how many gallons of fuel have been saved throughout the life of this car your odometer rating here's how many gowns you've saved and how many barrels of oil you've saved during the driving of this car which is a pretty neat touch also that was a big reason why people bought these to save fuel to save the environment and it actually gave you an update on how much environment you were saving you also have a little space in here that says energy history which tells you how much energy you have used while charging the car in its lifetime and how much energy you have regenerated by braking by slowing down there's regenerative energy capturing in this car of course and it tells you how much you've regen and that also is a pretty cool little thing to see and one more interesting item in here your charge history which actually shows you all the last times you've charged how long your charge was and how much energy each charge used you can see that right in this little screen in case you're wondering you know how long you had it plugged in how much charge you put into it how much energy that kind of stuff it's all displayed in here now this stuff is all really cool but let's be honest it is a far cry from tesla screens that came later this tiny little screen that is only accessible to the driver the passenger can't touch or see any of it and it's just in the corner very small a far cry from the model s with its massive screen that was coming in only a few years but this is like i said sort of the beta testing beginnings of tesla and that screen was the beginnings of one of the things that tesla would become so known for its in-car screen technology interesting to see where it started but anyway beyond the text some other interesting things in this interior for one you don't have a glove box in here the lotus elise didn't have one also and this car doesn't either you do have like a storage tray underneath the dashboard where you can keep stuff if you want but obviously not particularly useful if you want to keep stuff hidden or out of view now next up under the dashboard you had an ipod connection down here and this little cubby beneath the climate controls which of course was nice to have and you also had your cigarette lighter outlet down here so you could plug something into that and charge devices in the car so those features were in here just sort of hidden and out of the way now on the door panel you had power windows in this car although these switches are not the ones they used in the lotus elise i'm trying to figure out what car they were used in and i just can't quite place it maybe a ford it'll hit me on the drive home i'm sure of it but these window switches were obviously borrowed from something else but they did have power windows another control in here relatively simple is below that screen to the left of the steering wheel you have your headlight control if you just flip this switch turn on the headlights again probably borrowed from something else and definitely pretty simple easy to turn on now next to the headlights you have a little button with a car and a trunk you press that and it pops open the rear trunk that storage compartment i showed you before you can open it on the key or you can open it by pressing that button and it'll pop it right open another notable item in this interior is the orange accents this car is finished in a color called very orange and they carried that color into the interior you have orange accents on the seats and on the door panels just to remind you of how orange your car is and by the way speaking of the seats check out on the side of the seat you have this little pump that is to adjust your lumbar support in the seat a lot of cars is a little switch you press it your lumbar support automatically electronically adjusts not in the tesla roadster you had to pump it squeeze this pump a bunch of times and that would adjust your fire support which is kind of an old-school way to do it crazy to imagine a hundred thousand dollar car with a pump for lumbar support but hey at least it had adjustable lumbar and next up we moved back outside the tesla roadster to go over some other exterior quirks and features but first i want to talk styling and specifically lotus elise connection out here you can see a similarity to the lotus elise for sure but this definitely isn't a lotus tesla redesigned the car restyled that kind of made it its own design you see one sort of at a glance you think is that a lotus but when you look closer you can tell that it definitely has a distinctive look to it separate from what the lotus elise had but you can see the lotus influence in this car since it had the same chassis the same hardpoints they had to all fit and so there are some similarities but not identical now some interesting quirks on this car on the outside one is the tail lights you can see a few different circles and they're all clear when they're off they're just sort of clear lights until they have to light up and you can see like the turn signals red the brake lights red whatever but when you have them off they go back to being clear which is kind of a cool look or at least it was in vogue back in 2008 when this car was new also back here you can see tesla written across the rear although the a is partially missing kind of a sad thing but it does say tesla to let people know exactly what this is probably a pretty confusing thing to see on the road back in 2008. now the other interesting item on the outside of this car is the fuel door you can see just behind the driver's seat on the outside there's your fuel door i think that's the same place it was in in the lotus but obviously this car doesn't take fuel so you open that up and it's the charge port door that's where you stick the charge port in to charge the car now most later electric cars moved the charge port to the front mainly so people could pull into their garage and then easily hook up a charger mounted on the wall to the front of their car but in this one either tesla hadn't thought of that or that location just made the most sense since it's where the lotus fuel door was so they went with it one other interesting quirk in the rear area you can see a keyhole back here this is like an auxiliary keyhole for the rear compartment same deal with the doors in case the electronic popper mechanism fails or the battery dies you stick your key in here you turn it and then you can get into your rear compartment even if your battery is dead this one though not integrated like under the car in quite as weird of a way as the emergency keyhole on the doors and so those are the quirks and features of the original tesla roadster now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right drivin the tesla roadster the original tesla roadster now if you've been watching my channel for a long time you probably know i have actually already reviewed one of these it was i guess about five years ago now i reviewed one uh from a private owner who was in syracuse new york he's a really nice guy and he was one of the very first people to reach out to me and offered me to review his like privately owned car back then i hadn't like done any super cars or hyper cars it was kind of a risk on his part to trust me uh but that was one of my first like car reviews five years ago and it was a really cool experience and so i drove one once before then but my channel has changed so much i now get so much more in depth that i really wanted to review another one plus this one is on cars and bids and it's bright orange and it's local it just seemed like a great opportunity so let's talk driving experience this is a very interesting car i actually owned a orange 2006 lotus elise and this is an orange 2008 tesla roadster there are a lot of similarities one of the similarities is the steering this car has the lotus's non-power steering very direct steering feel and that means that it just darts around and i suspect one of the reasons that tesla wanted to use lotus as a basis for their car is lotus had already established themselves as a pretty good manufacturer well-respected manufacturer of sports cars and this is a pretty good sports car the elise was and as a result the roadster is too and a lot of the weight in the tesla roadster is in the same place as the weight was in the lotus elite so in the middle directly behind the seats and as a result you can kind of fling it around like a lotus elise you get some of the same feedback you get some of the same cornering and handling abilities and this car always drove pretty well and frankly it's pretty quick for it whoa this car is fast they said 0-60 in like 3.9 seconds which doesn't sound that fast considering the price point at the time was like 110 000 but this was a different era 2008 the bugatti veyron was the only hyper car it wasn't common for vehicles to do zero to 60 in the three to three and a half second range and this was pretty impressive at the time for being able to deliver that obviously now not quite as impressive although values have come down and it feels to me to be still a pretty thrilling experience and the other big benefit in terms of the thrill is you're very low to the ground the road is right there and so it feels it feels a lot faster than it probably is to be frank now with that lowness to the ground i got to tell you it is low in this car i'm directly next to a giant truck and i feel a little that was always how i felt in the lotus at least too just little and kind of scared at any given moment that you might be killed but the best sports cars tend to be small and you know live you can throw them around that was lotus's philosophy you know instead of adding more power and complexity just take everything out and this car obviously is part lotus it is very interesting now to drive this car and see not only an early tesla but an early electric car i remember when this came out the reputation of tesla was kind of a joke it was like a lot of other ev startups it was like okay they're using a lotus and they're charging that much money it was just kind of stupid um and it wasn't until the model s came out and validated tesla as a brand that this car sort of started to seem oh that was an interesting beginning for this company that was that was really legit everybody knew even back then that these cars drove pretty well but at just 110 120 000 for this startup brand you never knew what was gonna happen but in the end i actually now think these cars are severely undervalued because it was like this low production run 2500 units of a brand that later became an icon and i i'm really surprised and i suspect one day we'll see these on concur delegates you know lawns as like oh wow an original tesla you know this brand that has become so popular and so successful and so that's the original tesla roadster what an unusual vehicle from a technology standpoint this is way behind other tesla models it almost seems like a beta testing early effort which frankly it kinda was but it helped pave the way for tesla's future success and for that reason i think it's pretty cool that and the performance which is actually pretty thrilling anyway now it's time to give the tesla roadster a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling this looks cool not amazingly beautiful but cool enough and head turning and it gets a seven out of ten acceleration to zero to sixty and three point nine seconds and it gets an eight out of ten handling is pretty sharp although it can feel a bit light up front still it's quick to turn and responsive and it gets a six out of ten fun factor is surprisingly high this is quick it feels really quick and it turns sharply it's a real thrill to drive and it gets a 7 out of 10. finally cool factor and this is cool the general public doesn't really know what's cool which bumps it down a bit but if you know you know and people who know find it very cool and it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 35 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features it has some stuff like power windows a power trunk opener keyless entry it's not totally featureless but it's also pretty low on good features in tech and it gets a 3 out of 10. comfort is not great getting in and out is a challenge and ride quality is harsh and gets a 3 out of 10. quality is average build quality is acceptable maybe better than newer tesla models honestly but materials aren't very nice inside reliability i know early cars had some issues but i haven't heard of any real problems in years still it gets a 5 out of 10. practicality is low normal for a car like this and it gets a 2 out of 10. finally value and frankly i think these are great values the car that started tesla i can't believe these aren't more valuable and i suspect they will be someday and it gets an 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 21 out of 50. added up and the doug score is 56 out of 100 which places it here against well truthfully i have no idea what to compare it to here it is against some other tesla models and some other sports cars from its era but really the tesla roadster stands alone there's not much like it and frankly i think it's a very cool and special car especially given tesla's success in the years since the roadster appeared [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,349,497

Keywords:

Id: YKDqhWwzzgo

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Infinite-Age]

I wonder how much this'll go for on carsandbids

[u/Alexander_Hamilton_]

The disable airbags feature is so you can operate on the steering wheel/other airbag locations without them going off.

Usually you just disconnect the battery to cut power to the airbags but im guessing this was a work around to meet some regulations because of the weird electric nature of the car.

[u/Cessnaporsche01]

Doug... do you not know that electric motors rotate..!?

That tach says "rpm" right on it!

[u/realtomatocatsup]

Crazy to think Tesla has been around this long already.

[u/pryan886]

I’ve always really liked the Roadster. It was the first car that showed EVs could be cool. And it was reasonably quick.

It does fly in the face of the Lotus Philosophy: “Simplify, then add lightness” - Colin Chapman

Batteries and a motor are definitely a simple powertrain, but the Lotus Elise designers never envisioned strapping a thousand pounds of batteries to the chassis.

[u/Activehannes]

Does doug not know that electric engines also.... spin? Or what does he mean when he says that rpm doesn't make sense or what "15" means? And his idea that this could mean battery power.

Like, 15 x 1000 rpm means that the electric engine spins with 15.000 revolutions per minute

[u/pryan886]

The way he rattles of the Tesla model names...

The S.
The 3.
The X.
The Y.

Not chronologically (SX3Y), but in the order that Elon’s inner nine year old intended.

[u/Michelanvalo]

Now if only Doug could get his hands on the one remaining tZero to see just how far the electric car has come in the last 24 years.

[u/GOA_AMD65]

I knew he reviewed this before. Wow, his videos have changed over the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=511wnXSnoa4