The occasion was Australia’s Global Green Challenge, a rally for electric and experimental vehicles through the sun drench Outback.
Roadster owner Simon Hacket says he used energy conservation techniques learned while flying gliders
The drivers were Tesla Roadster owner Simon Hacket and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas. The distance covered: 313 miles on a single charge with 3 miles of energy left in the battery.
In a press release, carmaker Tesla Motors claimed a new record for production electric vehicles. A Roadster set the previous record in April at the Rallye Monte Carlo d’Energies Alternatives, where it covered the entire 241-mile course and had 38 miles left on the charge. Tesla’s marketing materials boast a 244-mile range.
Hacket provided updates of the drive on a blog.
“Emilis and I have decades of experience flying gliders competitively and we applied the same energy conservation techniques to our driving, with significant results!” he wrote. “We traveled 501km on a single charge. Let that sink in for a minute.”
The red Roadster traveled from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy in the dry Australia heartland.
Tesla said it has sold 900 Roadsters to customers.
