The Tesla Electric Car

Not the type to wait in line for your Tesla electric car? Click here to see if any are available on Ebay.

The news reports I've seen about the Tesla electric car read just like advertising copy. Apparently reporters get within five feet of this car and the sheer testosterone-stimulating magnetism overwhelms them.

Do I sound jealous?

No, it's all right...I admit it. I am.

Here's what you probably should know before you fall hopelessly in love, like the rest of us did. It won't help one BIT, but I'll tell you anyway; )

Two weeks after Tesla started taking orders for the first 100 of these, they were sold out. Customers more or less paid for them up front, to be delivered by the end of the year (hopefully on time, but you know how that goes...).

Oh, yeah, and those lovestruck fools paid 100,000 dollars apiece for them, I should probably add. Up front, did I already say that? Now, to be fair, a hundred grand is not bad in the language of lust-mobile race cars. And she's not your Momma's race car, either...

...not when you can achieve 60mph in less than four seconds from a dead standstill.

(Mah GOODness, Momma's Lotus is still sitting back there at the stoplight.)

And just look at her! A car that looks like that should probably put something on, don't you think? At least a bikini.

Okay, I suppose you could wrap her in a full-length PARKA and she'd still look pretty sleek.

Features? Oh, yes!

I read this on Tesla's blog:

• You have to use a PIN to start her up, for security (sounds like tech support HELL to me, but whatever. Oops, there goes the green-eyed monster again; ).
• There's a VALET mode, so that the high-school kid parking your car outside Palomino won't take your Precious on a two-hour joyride through the University District, doing his own 0-60 in how many seconds research project.
• The noise Precious makes while winding up to her top speed of 135mph (but, her Daddy points out quite sensibly, who's gonna do that, anyway? You'll be lucky to see 90 on the speedometer, not because she can't do it, oh no...but because the roads aren't racetracks. And if you thought your 911 was a cop-magnet, well, Precious is an EVERYBODY magnet. ) whew! Little sidetracked there. As I was saying, the NOISE Precious makes while winding up to her top speed is NOTHING compared to that infernal racket your Jag's dinosaur-swilling 12 bombards you (and your passengers, and your neighbors) with. It's more of a delicious moan, apparently. (Yes, yes, I know, doing it again, sorry.)

What else? Precious has been safety-tested to within an inch of her life, and as lust-mobiles go, she's solid. The charging up process, the batteries, the (lovely, curvy, perfectly proportioned) body, all very safe. There are a couple of neat safety features on the charger-car interface, as in: it won't start or move while plugged in, and there's a smoke alarm with an automatic shutdown in case anything should - heaven forbid! - catch fire.

Forget carrying groceries, but who cares?

• It costs practically nothing to drive it, unlike your Momma's high-octane chugging Lotus.
• It has a range of 250 miles, which frankly EMBARRASSES the rest of the electric cars out there, with their 30-100 mile range.
• It's got lithium ion batteries, some ridiculous number of them like six thousand individual cells swimming in a sea of sensors and snot, but it seems to work.
• Financing is available for up to 75% of the purchase price for American customers from Bank of America.

You know you want one.

How do you get a Tesla electric car, you ask? Real easy. Visit a showroom, or if there isn't one near you, order a Tesla online.

So.

If you've got a hundred grand to spare and that's not enough of a chick-magnet already, a brand new Tesla will make you smell like Cinnabon and look like Russell Crowe.

Or, check Ebay for a slightly used model.