Throwback: Elon Musk With First 2008 Tesla Roadster - Jay Leno’s Garage

you know the great thing about electricity is you get full torque from zero rpm it's eerily quiet it's amazing it doesn't make any noise watch we take off what another episode of Jay Leno's Garage the crime standing next to 1909 Baker electric this is not the car we're featuring today today we're going to feature a very early Tesla Roadster you know it's interesting I was going back through the archives and I found some footage of Elon Musk when he first came to my garage 13 years ago to show me the Tesla Roadster this is never aired on my youtube channel and I thought oh this is kind of cool let's take people back because now those cars are coming on the market their used cars are they holding their value we evaluated one on my CNBC show and you'd be surprised because they're very easy to update you can take a Tesla Roadster from you know what 2010 they're 8 or 9 and put the more modern batteries in it to double the range you can put a more powerful engine so it's really kind of cool but to have Elon drive it over to my garage it was such an honor at the time because although he was a visionary then he wasn't the visionary we know now I mean he was getting started with a new idea and there was a lot of skepticism and people are saying that's stupid that's not gonna work and of course it's revolutionized the electric car market I mean the Tesla I have whether Model S is the fastest accelerating four-door sedan you can buy that used to be the Bentley Turbo R back in 1988 when I bought my turbo R that was the fastest accelerating sedan you could buy in America now it doesn't even come close but anyway I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing a younger Gelineau and a younger Elan and oh don't worry I'm still still wearing the same clothes in fact I can't prove it but I think this is the exact same shirt I had on when I talked to you on here take a look [Music] well this is very exciting this is a car that you've you've seen in all the magazines you've heard about this is the first production model this is the first customer car this is the Tesla Roadster you know the all-electric zero emission roadster if it looks a little dirty it's because been driving it it's got 500 miles on it and very exciting you know there's been so much speculation about this car and so many myths and all that kind of stuff but here it is in the flesh and we're gonna take it out on the road and you'll get to see it and possibly hear it if your hearings real good but you have to listen very carefully because it's electric and the man behind the whole project is here Elon Musk Elon come on in here how you doing hi well congratulations thank you I mean I know this has been a long gestation period and then ups and downs and you know people will never work and all the kind of stuff you go through but this is the first customer car right yes this is production unit 1 Wow Wow very very neat take us through it now I know we've we've read about it in all the magazines but it's always been from a writer's point of view you're the guy behind it tell us exactly what we have here we started with an Elise chassis mm-hmm but this car is 30% heavier about 6 inches longer than a release so we're actually had to modify the chassis extensively and we also lowered the door so the wheelbase is about 3 inches long okay and how much heavier is it been a standard Elise it's about 30% heavier this is a twenty six hundred and fifty pound car approximately wow that's 2,600 pounds you still thinks of 700 pounds lighter than the Corvette there's nothing circling for that yeah you kind of bristled people oh they've just modified a lotus but that isn't at all no this really is a brand new car that's part of the reason why you know people say it's Lou Tiffany and convert Lotus well it's flat-out untrue yeah there's not a single body panel in common with the Lotus this is an old carbon-fiber body it's not a sermon made by Lotus it's made by sortir in France we did a count of unmodified loose parts only about 8% okay the parts in the car are actually lotus heritage the powertrain basically the battery the motor power electronics and the transmission are all Tesla design manufactured components and what we do is we actually have Lotus just to assembly of the glider which is assembly of everything except the powertrain then they ship it to California where Tesla installs the powertrain so Tesla is actually the at the end manufacturer of the of the car it's considered a California made car because the majority of the value is actually manufacturing California I have my 1909 Baker electric car next door well I have the original Edison batteries the alkaline but I run it on deep cycle battery essentially golf cart batteries rhinos when you charge them fully all the way up and then you run them all the way down and then you charge them all up again this you always want to keep what between 40 and 80 percent charge something like that you know this really doesn't it doesn't actually care about the state of charge all you could leave it at 5% you could leave it at 90% it's capable of doing a full charge from zero to five percent to three and a half hours you can actually plug it in anywhere just need extension cord in fact it'll take different averages and use how many things I'm correct 6,831 batteries [Laughter] amazing to me those 6,831 cells will assemble it to one pack and then inside the pack there are blades the advantage of having so many small cells is that we can we can isolate each cell is that even if something bad happens to that cell it catches on fire or anything it's isolated there's not that much energy in each individual cell so we can protect that you know ensure that one cell is in course a cascading effect another cell you know the thing that's fascinating me about this cars you've eliminated all the negatives of an electric car a lot of times when people would convert existing cars to electric they be slower it didn't have the range less safe so what do you got really I mean you've managed to make essentially a true sports car you know I'm instinctively looking for dual exhaust and I'm not gonna find it you got a splitter back there and of course you have the four-wheel disc brakes and else as well with the electromagnetic braking you really don't have to put much work here on the brain okay in fact this part should be a very very low maintenance car because there are no tune ups required Noel changes alright because the fact that you use regenerative braking where you recapture the energy of motion put it right back you actually won't even wear out the brakes now I heard originally there were a one speed now you've got the two speed transmission correct for the first initial cars we really we're like talking about the first hundred cars or so they will be provided with the two speed transmissions but fixed in second yeah what we have in development is an upgraded motor and power electronics right which will with a single speed exceed the specifications of a two speed car gotcha is there anything to see under the hood as a car guy I just want to look under there Wow look at that Mill yeah there's really nothing to look at here this ola this is at the power electronics module right this is the back this is the core of the battery pack here okay and what is this here instead of water by combing or the liquid cooling the battery pack okay actually have the trunk set up such that you can have a set of golf clubs you know actually I buy sports cars like this so I don't have to play golf okay look at this cool and it has air conditioning as well oh yeah the a/c system is both for the passenger section as well as for the battery pack I think we're expecting somewhere in the order of 100,000 miles for the battery pack Wow let's take it for a spin you know the great thing about electricity is you get full torque from zero rpm you know with a gas car you'd have to sort of bring the revs to like 3 grand or 4 grand pop the clutch to get what you get right off the line with this you know most electric cars you drive feel bottom heavy because they're carrying a lot of batteries that I don't get that feeling from this it's eerily quiet it's amazing it doesn't make any noise all you hear is the wind noise I liked it it's a sports car not some dorky little Ford or a condo box I mean it's something that's pretty cool and it's environmentally safe so there's something to be said for that you can kind of imagine that electric engine noise it's a supercharged of wine you know what you can do you can get like a CD of like car noises like a Bugatti Oh a Ferrari pop that in so when you pull up the lights and stuff kind of help you get over make the transition to the electric having driven my 1909 Baker electric a lot I know how reliable electrics can be I mean I've had my Baker now 10 to 12 years and I've had no trouble nothing all I do is charge the batteries in it so here we are 100 years later it's pretty impressive nice interior and I'll be honest and not many cars quicker off the line than this watch how quickly I can pull away like a steam car you've got a tremendous amount of torque at any rpm or at any speed watch the acceleration to rush we're just pulling away from the Mercedes we got traveling as I have to pull over and let him catch up it's an eerie feeling not feeling any internal combustion stuff happening but it's fun to watch a tachometer go to 13 grand handles nicely my 1909 Baker electric had two bad jokes you could make it's shocking how good it is and I'm getting a charge out of driving it and you can feel the electricity in the air but I'm not gonna do though I just want to say it's a real sports car it handles good it's fast and and this is the future I'm not that worried see you next week watch we take off I hope you enjoyed this look back at a piece of footage that never aired on this YouTube show that's what was amazing to me and I thought people might get a kick out of seeing how far Tesla has come since those modest beginning so it was interesting to me I hope was interesting to you let me know in the comments section and what you think and maybe we'll go through the archives and see we got other stuff in there that hasn't aired but don't worry we got plenty new content coming every week so see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,281,217

Keywords: Elon Musk, Tesla, Roadster, first drive, SpaceX, Lotus Elise, California car, TSLA, stock, EV, electric vehicle, Made In America, future, technology, motonerd, first Tesla, throwback, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: jjZf9sgdDKc

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/curryeater259]

This is footage from 2008 with Elon demoing the first Tesla Roadster to Jay Leno.

First time it's been uploaded to YouTube, so probably new to many of you.

Edit: Check out /u/pupeno's subreddit for the Tesla Roadster - https://www.reddit.com/r/tesla_roadster/. Just found out it existed and seems pretty cool.

[u/firstrival]

Must be warming up for the Cybertruck episode.

[u/MVMEV]

This is a nice watch in anticipation of the Cybertruck being featured on Episode 1 of Jay Leno's Garage next season.

[u/sadpartypodcast]

From way back when, before Elon had a full head of hair.

[u/hkibad]

It's about 10% too small, but still a lot of fun.

[u/martijnonreddit]

Nobody:

Jay Leno:

It's like a steam car!

[u/francescodimauro]

I always thought the two-speed transmission was just a failed experiment, did it make it in the first production cars?

[u/pupeno]

Almost 2 years ago I created a subreddit exclusively for the Tesla Roadster, in case anyone else wants that sort of thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/tesla_roadster/

It hasn't received much attention, but I've been posting interesting stuff I find about the Roadster, both the old on and the new one. I think they are both gorgeous cars.

[u/[deleted]]

Is this the same Roadster that is now in orbit?