Wait, how's this different from the original Tesla?

Looks like this one has a good bit of Lotus DNA.

Looks exactly like a Lotus Exige to me.

If just for giggles and grins we put up against a 87 Testarossa at Nurburgring racetrack how many laps would the SP.01 complete before running out of juice.

always negative Slowburn, it is called evolving technology, things change, that is why Gizmag is here, word I hate, dude why must you always be negative?

Great technology and performance but it is such an angular and ugly body design, maybe just my taste but to my way of thinking, it could have looked prettier and sexier with smoother lines. Electromotive propulsion is certainly the way to go and with the new generation of air batteries we are looking good for the future.

Of course it is Lotus body! Wrong GIZMAG, you should not misinform your readers! For Detroit it is normal. At least two years ago before the Detroit electric in small Croatia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Automobili

This is such a blatant copy of the Tesla. Why do they think we need another Tesla ??
Detroit would be better off sticking with it's roots and making an electric truck with 500 miles range rather than a poor copy of a not that successful electric sports car with a tiny battery.
How about an RV with a big bank of cells to get you 1000 miles of range? All RV parks have multiple electric hook-ups too, so you can always charge it overnight wherever you end up.
While I'm here, why haven't these people used "4" batteries and four plug points instead of "1"? Wouldn't that 1/4 the charge time? (I can charge 4 phones at home at the same time, why not 4 "different" car batteries?)
Sorry Detroit.
Fail.

I quite agree Bill, and also a stupidly inane (and wrong) example. An '87 Testarossa has a 28 gallon fuel capacity, and on a track would get about 6mpg, if you're lucky, giving it a range of 168 miles, or about 2 laps less than the SP.01.

Wait a moment now, this is a very interesting development. I enjoy driving my Toyota Prius Plug-in. Because it performs much better around cities in full electric mode compared to running on the engine when the small battery is depleted. The lithium-ion battery for this Prius Plug-in weighs 80 kg (180 lb) for just 3.4 kWh), which is grossly under-dimensioned: Electric top speed is limited to 55 mph and range to 10 (winter) or 14 miles (summer). This Detroit sports car can drive full throttle on a 37 kWh battery which only weighs 300 kg / 660 lb. That is an astounding 10.9 times as much capacity for only 3.75 times the weight. The estimated miles per kWh is probably optimistic or only valid for 55 mph speed though. At full throttle driving it might be depleted in 15 minutes. That is 35 miles on a deserted salt plane or 20+ miles racing on the Nurnberg ring ;-). Anyhow, this is clearly a big step up for practical driving circumstances. Although I don't know how heavy the battery of the sparsely available Volvo plug-in is ( car weight 4300 lb, electric speed 75 mph, range 31 miles).