Tesla Goes 313 Miles on Single Charge

It looks like this could be a new record: A Tesla Roadster has squeezed its battery for 313 miles.

The red Roadster competing in Global Green Challenge traveled through the Australian outback from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy and rolled into town with three miles left on the battery. Owner Simon Hackett and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas covered 501 kilometers — 313 miles — on one charge.

And that, Tesla Motors says, appears to be a new record for a production EV.

Yes, Down Under is a long way to go with a Tesla, but then, the Roadster is a pretty sweet ride. Hackett’s feat was done on a single “fill up,” too. There were no clever battery-swap stations, and no Teslas were harmed during the run through the middle of the Australian continent. The car’s charging port was sealed at the start of the run, as the pic at the bottom shows.

Hackett and Prelgauskas were competing in the 10th annual Global Green Challenge, one of the most high-profile rallies for alternative fuel cars. The two provided updates about the red 2008 Roadster’s progress in real time on Hackett’s blog after leaving Alice Springs, in Australia’s Northern Territory, and proceeding south.

For the record, the Roadster’s 53 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery has a claimed range of 244 miles. The record claimed by Hackett and Prelgauskas shattered the previous all-time high 241 miles, also held by a Tesla Roadster that set the benchmark in April during the Rallye Monte Carlo d’Energies Alternatives. That particular Tesla had an estimated 38 miles left in the battery by the time it crossed the Monte’s finish line.

In an e-mail sent to Tesla, which shared it with us in a release, Hackett said:

Emilis and I have decades of experience flying gliders competitively and we applied the same energy conservation techniques to our driving, with significant results! The car had about three miles of range left when the drive was completed. We traveled 501 km on a single charge. Let that sink in for a minute.

The security seal was applied to the charge port door when we started the journey. As this is being done as part of the Global Green Challenge, we have a full set of official verifiers here who will attest to the results and to achieving the outcome. We were followed along the journey by our support crew and a documentary film crew — so we have it on film.

It’s late here and we have another 541 km to drive (with an intermediate charge stop) tomorrow — and another two days of the event left after that. When we’re done, we will have driven over 3000 km in the Roadster over the course of only six days, from Darwin to Adelaide.

The two guys didn’t provide any specifics on their driving style, but we’re betting they didn’t do a lot of smoky burnouts or test the car’s 3.9-second zero-to-60 time. If we get more info, we’ll be sure to pass it on.