Tesla has been busy meeting production targets for the Model 3 and dealing with fallout from CEO Elon Musk's tweets, so we haven't heard much recently about the next-gen Roadster that's due in 2020. That is, until today. At the inaugural Grand Basel car show in Switzerland, Tesla brought out a white Roadster to celebrate the sports car's European debut.
Tesla tells us the car on display at the show is still a prototype, so we're no closer to learning more about a potential production version. When the second-gen Roadster was announced last November, Musk gave no hint as to where the car would be produced, saying only that it would arrive by 2020. But we did get a seemingly never-ending spew of bold performance claims, ranging from the car's 1.9-second 0-60 mph estimate to a sub-9-second quarter-mile to a 250-plus-mph top speed to a 620-mile all-electric range.
If the car's specs are to be believed, those claims might be possible thanks to a 200-kilowatt-hour battery pack and three electric motors making more than 7,000 lb-ft of torque. Still, we'll believe those numbers when we can confirm them in our own tests. On the night of its announcement, the Tesla Roadster was available to order as a special Founders Series model, limited to 1,000 copies and priced at $250,000 each.
But even if this isn't the production Roadster, at least we get to see the prototype in a color other than red. Tesla also released a handful of new Roadster photos (above), which show the car doing its thing on a mountain road. The Roadster will be on display at Grand Basel through September 9.
Source: Tesla
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