Autoblog

Click above for high-res gallery of Tesla Roadster v1.5

Last January we landed an exclusive first drive of the Tesla Roadster. We were impressed, but well aware that the particular two-gear model we drove that wet afternoon wasn't identical to the version set to land in customers' hands later in the year. Last week, we were invited back to briefly test drive a genuine production model with the latest transmission and software updates (aka "powertrain 1.5"). Check out our round-two impressions after the jump. (Ed. Note: Sorry for the lack of live images, but we literally had about half-hour to drive the car before it was whisked away.)

The General Motors EV1 has turned into one of the largest scapegoats in the automotive industry. Many people believe that the futuristic electric car was put to pasture long before its full usefulness had been met, a controversial viewpoint supported by the Chris Paine film, "Who Killed the Electric Car." To those conspiracy theorists, Angus MacKenzie at Motor Trend has another take to offer: blame CARB. While the California Air Resources Board has been blamed for many things, the death of the electric car is not often one of them. But MacKenzie quotes Howard Wilson, a man deeply involved in the EV1 program, as suggesting that the engineering team wanted to make the electric car a hybrid using a small gas turbine engine which could make enough electricity for the electric motors without a large battery. This could have reduced the weight of the vehicle and increased its range exponentially. Why didn't they do it? CARB had mandated that the automakers needed to offer at least two percent of their fleets as zero emission vehicles, which effectively sealed the fate of the hybrid EV1. These happenings left the door wide open for other companies, Toyota in particular, to carve out the hybrid niche for themselves. The rest, as they say, is history.

[Source: Motor Trend]