Tesla's luxury EV sedan confirmed for Oz

Californian EV maker Tesla’s second car, the Model S, will launch in Australia mid next year, as we reported back in March, at a starting price of around $85K – well below half that of the company’s snappy two-seat Roadster.

The Model S will be available with three battery packs of varying capacity – the chief determinant of performance and range. Asked about pricing, Tesla Australia spokesman Jay McCormack told motoring.com.au that while exact prices are yet to be set, Australian buyers can expect an entry price of around $85K. That will get you a 40kWh pack delivering up to 260km on a single charge. A midrange 60kWh battery, likely to sit in the low $100Ks, extends the range ceiling to 370km, while the top-spec 85kWh pack will push it out to 500km for a starting price of around $130K.

Importantly, those battery packs are swappable, giving buyers access to substantial performance and range upgrades without having to invest in a whole new car.

Performance is sprightly across the lineup. The base pack pushes the car from 0-100km/h in a claimed 6.5 seconds, the 60kWh in 5.9 and the 85kWh in 5.6, dropping to 4.4 seconds with the Performance pack upgrade.

Beyond colours and trim, options will be relatively limited. There will be a Technology Package adding a reversing camera, xenon headlights, a powered tailgate, rear USB ports and a 16Gb media hard drive. A 12-speaker audio upgrade will be optional across the range, as will a panoramic sunroof. Active air suspension will be optional on the base model but standard up the range.

The S’s centrepiece will be its 17-inch touchscreen making up the centre stack, the central ops point for most of the car’s functions beyond basic drive – media, communications, HVAC and vehicle settings.

Its operating system, written by auto computing specialist Tigra, will extend to functions like web browsing and the installation of apps as they come on stream. Along with the battery upgrade system, this is shaping up as a crucial part of the Tesla value formula: high tech cars helped by software to stay fresh and stave off obsolescence.

With more than 10K firm orders on its books, Tesla has brought forward US delivery of its first Model S to June, a month ahead of schedule.  Or, as worldwide sales boss George Blankenship puts it in his blog: “The Tesla Factory will begin customer deliveries on June 22nd!!! … My heart is racing just thinking about it!”

Breathlessness aside, the delivery announcement is important for the Californian startup EV specialist, to maintain the momentum it built up with the release of its first model, the Lotus Elise-based Roadster. That car has done more than its share of the work in drawing public attention to EVs. Now, four years after its release and having reached the end of its 2500-unit supply deal with Lotus, Tesla has put the Roadster out to pasture and moved on to developing its own platforms from the ground up.

The Model S, a swoopy five-door hatch in the Audi Sportback league, is the first such effort. It’s to be followed by the Model X SUV. They’re the set-in-stone product lineup for the time being, but founder and CEO Elon Musk is setting a cracking pace for the marque, with declarations of a new model announcement a year over the next few years. That will likely extend to a new sports model, developed in-house, by mid-decade.

Not that they’ve finished with the Roadster yet. A couple of hundred remain up for grabs worldwide, up to four of them available to Australian buyers, priced at $191,888 plus on-road costs. That’s the standard RRP. No runout mode going on here.

The life-cycle of the Roadster, and doubtless many of its ilk, seems set to run a very different trajectory to the average fossil-fuel powered car. By that we mean a longer one, extended by power pack upgrades as improvements to battery technologies boost performance and range, and by software upgrades to power control systems. Herein lies the answer to one of the bigger questions hanging over the EV: that of how makers will differentiate their product. But that’s for another page.

The company plans to put the Model S into RHD homologation by mid-2013. Tesla Australia spokesman Jay McCormack says once that happens, there’s no pecking order among RHD countries. “Doesn’t matter where they are – it’s simply first come first served among buyers wherever they are, be it in the UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, wherever,” he told motoring.com.au.

There are no deals – everyone right up to Musk pays full MRLP on any car they buy. In a smart marketing move, the only buyers to get dibs on new models are existing owners. An old-boys club? “We figure we owe them the loyalty they’re showing us,” Mr McCormack smiled.

Asked about the Model X SUV, he said it will likely go into RHD form a year after the S, meaning Australians can expect to see it mid-2014. Pricing? “Way too early to tell.”

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