Before the Tesla Model S ever reached dealerships, there was the Roadster — unveiled at a private, invitation-only event in a Santa Monica hangar in 2006 and eventually delivered to 2,418 owners across 31 countries. By 2013, Tesla’s Model S sedan could hit 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, seat seven passengers, and still return real-world usability that undercut the Roadster’s price by tens of thousands of dollars. Read on for the full numbers behind Tesla’s first decade of building genuinely quick electric cars.
