The First Teslas in Australia
Ever since I drove a GM EV I in California in the mid 1990’s, I yearned to buy and drive, in Australia, a production EV that didn’t suck.
In 2008, having met Elon Musk at a conference the year before, I found what I was looking for. I purchased and took delivery of Roadster V1.0 Serial # 186, and brought it to Australia just in time to run some demo laps with it on the Adelaide “Clipsal 500” track that year.
I couldn’t get it permanently road legal (left hand drive modern cars are a challenge in that regard) but I did run it in various events including alongside the Solar Cars in the 2008 World Solar Challenge, where I broke the (then) production distance record for an EV (501 km in a car specified as being good for something in the 300-400 range). There’s some video of that fantastic life experience here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eaxl7i2wn-Y
I then took delivery of the first road legal RHD Tesla Roadster Sport (since sold on), and after that I bought the last RHD drive car Tesla ever delivered, a bright orange Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5 (and later added the R80 battery pack upgrade). I still have this car, and I love it. Its still going great.
The first two Model S vehicles sold in Australia were delivered to my wife and I in a delivery event in Sydney. We’ve since turned them over and our stable of cars these days is a Model X P100D, a Model S P100D, that orange Roadster, and multiple Model 3’s that are driven by us and various of our kids. I wanted our driving age kids to be in Model 3’s simply because that puts them in the car most likely to save their life in a road accident.
We’re not interested in owning anything else. When you’re driving the future, everything else feels like the past.
Simon Hackett