The Future Is Here - the Tesla Roadster

Ben Oliver gets behind the wheel of the Tesla Roadster, the world's first electric supercar 

Plainly, investors weren’t getting this excited over a handful of high-priced electric supercars. They were buying into Musk’s plans to build 20,000 of his new US$50,000 Model S electric saloons each year from 2012 in a huge Californian factory bought from Toyota and funded with nearly half a billion dollars in low- cost federal loans. And they were buying into the even greater potential for Tesla to licence its electric-car technology to the big carmakers; both Daimler and Toyota have taken stakes, and Tesla will work with both on new, affordable electric city cars.

So are electric cars the answer? For now, the technology is still hugely expensive; at a US list price of at least $101,500 it’s no surprise that the Tesla Roadster’s first customers included George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The first Tesla sold in Hong Kong went to Philip Liang, CEO of medical device maker General Sensing. The Hong Kong list price is HK$1.2m, but the first registration tax is waived, saving you around HK$1m. Tokyo will get Asia’s first Tesla store later this year, with Hong Kong likely to follow next year.

Pages