Ovidiu Predescu's Weblog

Autocross with Tesla

This Sunday at the BMW GGC autocross event in Marina CA, two guys that work at Tesla brought their cars for a spin. Most of the people present had a run in the cars, after they've driven the course in their petrol cars.

The Tesla is about 1,000 pounds heavier than Lotus Exige, and you can feel that in turns. It felt tail happy, at least on the Yokohama Neova AD07 tires it had on. However the car has unbelievable acceleration, so the straight lines were very fast. We were a lot of autocrossers, so each of us got only one run in the car. I've done 46.650 seconds in the Tesla, compared to the 45.584 secs in my BMW e46 M3 convertible. With more time to get acquainted with the car, I could have easily dropped below 46 secs.

As a sport car, the Tesla is definitely promising, but they need to find a way to reduce the weight. I'm afraid this won't be really possible unless the battery technology improves dramatically. The issue of recharging the batteries is also huge. You cannot really drive a Tesla to an event, ride it there and then back home without risking having no juice in the battery.

More pictures can be found in this album.