Tesla Roadster gets a range increase to a truly crazy 400 miles maximum

Tesla Motors has recently been focused on improvements to its flagship electric vehicle, the Model S, giving it a second motor and Knight Rider-like self-driving capabilities. But Tesla was only able to build the Model S in the first place because of the practical experience it gained from constructing and selling the sedan’s predecessor, the Tesla Roadster. The Lotus-derived Roadster has mostly left the spotlight after its limited production run ended in 2012, but Tesla will be giving a late Christmas present to Roadster owners: existing Roadsters will be upgraded with changes that will boost the car’s range by 40 to 50 percent, up to a maximum of 400 miles on a single charge.

The upgrades are described in a post on the Tesla Motors blog and are a combination of an upgraded 70kWh battery pack, a new aerodynamic kit to lower the Roadster’s drag coefficient from 0.36 to 0.31 (still far higher than the Model S’ streamlined 0.24), and new tires to lower the Roadster’s rolling resistance. When combined with a specific "set of speeds and driving conditions" that Tesla says it will demonstrate in early 2015, the Roadster should be able to travel considerably farther per charge than its younger Model S sibling.

After the announcement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that a similar battery pack upgrade isn’t coming any time soon for the Model S, but that it "obviously will happen long-term." The tweet has since been deleted.

There’s no indication yet as to how much the upgrades will cost Roadster owners, who had already paid a minimum of $109,000 for the cars. Only about 2,600 Roadsters were manufactured between 2008 and 2012, so the charges won't have a big impact on the company's bottom line, either.

Tesla built the car around a modified Lotus Elise chassis, and the limiting factor in the car’s production was the number of vehicle chassis Tesla ordered from Lotus. The Roadster ended up sharing a small number of common parts with the Lotus Elise, but is otherwise a completely different automobile with only a superficial resemblance to the UK-built vehicle.

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