Photo: Jester994 on E-Bay
If electric cars do become the norm in the future - and it sure looks like it - then the Tesla Roadster will become something of a proto-EV: the Adam and Eve of a completely new type of vehicles.
Yes, there have been electric cars built before it, some even more than one hundred years in advance, but they have failed to kickstart the revolution the Roadster seems to have ignited. That, together with the relatively limited number that Tesla built, will make the Roadster a pretty valuable car in the future.
Which is kind of ironic considering on the outside, it's nothing more than a slightly modified Lotus Elise - not exactly the type of car you would expect anybody to pay big money for. The Roadster is nothing spectacular, and it doesn't even have that luxury feel that the following Tesla models brought.
That's why asking $1,000,000 for such a car might seem odd at this time. However, the E-Bay listing we're referring to doesn't ask one million, but one million and 32 dollars. And the Roadster it is advertising isn't just any model, but a validation prototype, making it a proto-EV of the proto-EV.
As a prototype, this car wasn't supposed to be sold, but its current owner somehow managed to get hold of it. It is currently registered in California and only has 18,000 miles on the clock. He claims it has been kept in near perfect condition and that the battery pack can still offer a 160-miles maximum range.
But whoever is going to buy this Roadster - if anyone - won't do it so they can drive it. You don't pay $1 million for a car you can have for much less than that and risk having it dented, scratched or worse. As the ad suggests, this is an investment, but the real question is, is it a potentially profitable one?
Who knows? The seller thinks that in 30 years time, it could be worth a few times more than the one million he's currently asking, and he might be right. At the moment, though, it means paying an awful lot of money for a 2008 car - admittedly, a validation prototype, but not one of the early ones - that isn't all that special in itself. Still, somebody with enough money and a nice car collection might take the very expensive gamble.
Which is kind of ironic considering on the outside, it's nothing more than a slightly modified Lotus Elise - not exactly the type of car you would expect anybody to pay big money for. The Roadster is nothing spectacular, and it doesn't even have that luxury feel that the following Tesla models brought.
That's why asking $1,000,000 for such a car might seem odd at this time. However, the E-Bay listing we're referring to doesn't ask one million, but one million and 32 dollars. And the Roadster it is advertising isn't just any model, but a validation prototype, making it a proto-EV of the proto-EV.
As a prototype, this car wasn't supposed to be sold, but its current owner somehow managed to get hold of it. It is currently registered in California and only has 18,000 miles on the clock. He claims it has been kept in near perfect condition and that the battery pack can still offer a 160-miles maximum range.
But whoever is going to buy this Roadster - if anyone - won't do it so they can drive it. You don't pay $1 million for a car you can have for much less than that and risk having it dented, scratched or worse. As the ad suggests, this is an investment, but the real question is, is it a potentially profitable one?
Who knows? The seller thinks that in 30 years time, it could be worth a few times more than the one million he's currently asking, and he might be right. At the moment, though, it means paying an awful lot of money for a 2008 car - admittedly, a validation prototype, but not one of the early ones - that isn't all that special in itself. Still, somebody with enough money and a nice car collection might take the very expensive gamble.
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