The battery pack manufacturer has released a new solution for the Tesla Roadster with worn out battery packs. It can reduce the car's weight by about 400 pounds, but it's not cheap.
In many ways, the Tesla Roadster sparked the electric car revolution.
It was the first commercially available consumer EV with lithium battery cells – powering a range of over 200 miles on a single charge.
The car had comparable or better performance than many other gas-powered cars in its class.
The Roadster has had its share of problems. It was a flawless solution as it was still heavily based on the Lotus Elise and was not designed from the ground up to be electric, but it did its job as a proof of concept.
Tesla only built about 2,000 of them between 2008 and 2011 before moving on to the Model S and other car models built to be electric from the ground up.
Even though they are 13 to 16 years old, most Roadsters are still in good working order. Electrek's Jamie Dow drives his every day. That's despite Tesla not doing anything about the Roadster lineup since 2017 when it introduced the Roadster 3.0 package instead.
Battery technology has improved a lot since then, and the company has decided to take advantage of that and offer a new battery pack for Tesla Roadster owners.
re/cell, a Texas-based supplier of rechargeable battery packs for EVs, has introduced a new Roadster battery that aims to shed hundreds of pounds from the sports car.
Unlike Tesla's latest vehicles, which are equipped with battery packs on a skateboard-like platform, the Roadster has a pack that sits behind the rear seats and the modules are in the position seen above.
It causes problems with balancing the weight of the car.
The package is able to achieve the maximum power output of the Roadster, but it should be more fun to drive by shaving up to 400 lbs off the vehicle's 2,877 lb (1,305 kg) curb weight.
It comes with a lower energy capacity than the original 53 kWh, but you should be able to achieve almost the same range (over 220 miles) thanks to the effective weight loss benefit.
Here are the full specifications of the new Roadster re/cell battery pack:
- Maximum Power: 260 kW / 285 kW
- Weight Savings: up to 400 lbs / 180 kg
- Savings Capacity: 3.7 cu ft / 100 liters
- Energy Capacity: 38 kWh / 47 kWh
- Estimated range: 220-240 miles / 350-390 km
- Cell Type: 18650 / 3500 mAh
- Cell Configuration: 31p99s / 39p99s
re/cell describes some of the improvements they've been able to make to the package:
The flexible cooling block design is a one-piece molded core with Palladium-class cooling ribbons for improved cooling and temperature control. The heat transfer contact area is 50x larger than the cooling tubes used in the original Roadster sheets and the total cooling and heating surface area is now more than doubled. No more unoccupied cooling spaces allowing hot spots or uneven cooling or heating – the entire cell is now fully covered and temperature controlled!
However, this offer won't be for everyone as Roadster owners need to be willing to invest $28,000 in their old car, which is the price of the pack if you give your existing pack to re/get a cell.
Interestingly, the company is also thinking about offering other upgrades that can be powered by the space released by the new package.
For example, re/cell believes it would be easy to make the pack capable of fast DC charging. PEM and Motor liquid cooling
Electrek's Take
I really enjoyed driving the Roadster 3.0, and I'd be curious to see how much better it handles with 14% less weight.
There are simply no other electric vehicles out there that weigh just 2,400 lbs. Even the Fiat 500e weighs around 3,000 lbs.
I can't wait for the little electric cars that are about 2,500 lbs. They should be very interesting and it sounds like this, despite not being built from the ground up, would be an interesting preview.
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