VP1 Arrives
Tesla Motors has reached an important milestone. This month the first of our second-generation prototype Tesla Roadsters was delivered to our San Carlos, Calif., headquarters. The car was initially assembled in the U.K. and then airlifted to the United States, where our engineers installed its motor and battery pack (or Energy Storage System, as we like to call it). We took our first test ride in the car this week. Exhilarating!
We call the second-generation prototypes Validation Prototypes (VPs). These cars include a number of modifications as a result of months of tests on the first-generation prototypes. Testing is taking place at top-notch facilities worldwide, such as the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) in the United Kingdom.
The green VP Tesla Roadster, pictured below, is one of 10 cars we plan to build by the end of spring 2007. They are much closer in design to the final production vehicles and so enable us to do much more refined testing and validation.