With the second generation Tesla Roadster sitting on the drawing board, the Texas company has breathed new life into the original Roadsters, while improving their handling.
Re/Cell, which specializes in remanufactured EV battery packs, recently introduced a Roadster battery pack that is 400 pounds lighter than the original and takes up less than 3.7 cubic feet of space—making it about half the volume of the original pack.
With 47 kWh of total capacity, Re/Cell expects the replacement pack to return a range of 220-240 miles, matching the factory pack. But instead of just matching factory specs, the new package's weight and volume reductions are said to help make the Roadster a better car.
Re/Cell battery pack for Tesla Roadster
“Roadster shift packages are expensive and burdensome, with an unnecessary focus on performance and range,” Re/Cell president Chad Maglaque said in a statement. “The focus should be on handling and speed, to match the racing pedigree of a world-class performance chassis.”
The Roadster was based on the Lotus Elise, and Lotus founder Colin Chapman, with the principle of “simplify, then add light,” would probably agree with this emphasis on handling straight-line acceleration.
Re/Cell says its package also helps lower the Roadster's center of gravity and allows more mass to be moved to the center of the chassis—which improves handling—while making room for DC fast-charging hardware and the engine's liquid cooling systems as well. power electronics module (those features are optional, however).
2010 Tesla Roadster Sport (photo via Hagerty)
The battery itself gets an improved cooling system that includes a molded core with attached ribbons, allowing a 50 times larger contact area for heat transfer compared to the factory cooling system, as well as consistent temperature control, Re/Cell claims. The company has stuck to the 18650 cell format, however the chemistry has evolved significantly.
Re/Cell has priced the pack at $27,895 for the high-performance version, after an $11,500 core credit for their existing pack. It uses those original Roadster cells in recycled battery packs and can be used with solar systems or as backup power. Of the more than half a million Re/Cells used this past year, 150 were discarded or recycled, the company told Green Car Reports.
The last Tesla Roadster was built in December 2011, just before the Model S was introduced. This was the car that launched Tesla, but Elon Musk didn't have much, and he didn't start Tesla. He became the CEO in late 2008, after the Roadster had already entered semi-production.
Tesla hasn't been consistent over the years in terms of providing factory support for early Roadsters. But since the introduction of the sports car, EV battery costs have dropped, creating more openings for aftermarket companies like Re/Cell to offer other solutions.