You’ve perhaps heard of the original Tesla Roadster, the car that started Tesla and the EV revolution. Now, a Roadster you probably haven’t heard of is for sale – a one-of-a-kind prototype for a performance package that never saw the light of day.

Recently, we got an email tip about an original Tesla Roadster which the owners were about to put up for sale.

Normally, we wouldn’t write an article just because someone is trying to sell any old car, even a Roadster (that said, I’m thinking of selling mine). But this email stood out because it came from Jamison Cummings, Tesla’s Chief Technician from the Roadster days, and it was about a particularly special Roadster – and one which most people haven’t heard of.

The car, a Tesla Roadster Sport with VIN #1124, was originally bought from Tesla in 2012, then was damaged in an accident and reacquired by Tesla. Tesla’s VP of Service at the time, Joost de Vries, acquired the car and it was repaired and rebuilt under the supervision of Carl Medlock, who at the time was the manager of Tesla’s Seattle service location, and who now runs one of the only third-party Roadster repair shops in the US, Medlock and Sons (Medlock currently co-owns the car along with Cummings).

After being repaired internally by Tesla, de Vries had the idea to develop a performance package for Tesla Roadsters, with the goal of coming up with a way that service could be made profitable – a directive leadership had established for him. An after-purchase performance package would be a way to bring revenue in through service departments.

The project never ended up being released as an option to the public, but the Roadster in question, which was going to be called either “Roadster RR” or “Roadster E-Sport” still assembled a large list of custom cosmetic and performance modifications:

• Tarox Italian Performance Brakes Front and Rear (only 1 of 3 cars known to be equipped with this system)
• Custom ABS Flash engineered to work seamlessly with the Tarox Braking System, developed by Continental (also 1 of 3)
• Hollinger Limited Slip Differential customized for EV torque (one of 2)
• Custom Tuned Bilstein Performance Sport Suspension (sole unit)
• Custom Roadster RR camber plates and handling package
• Hand-laid raw carbon bodywork, making it the only raw carbon Roadster in existence

The most striking feature is that last one, with the entire body clear-coated rather than painted, making the fibers of the carbon fiber visible on all body panels except the bumpers (which are plastic). The Roadster has a carbon fiber body normally, but it’s usually painted, with the carbon fiber only visible on the roll bar (and possibly a few other parts of the body, depending on option kits).

The package was proposed to cost $30,000, and would include several performance upgrades. But the project never finished due to changes in leadership, so it was never offered to the public, and this ended up being the only prototype.

While there are other customized Roadsters out there, this one occupies the unique space of being “factory customized,” at least to some extent. While it didn’t originally come out of the factory like that, the work was done under Tesla’s purview after the fact, with the intent of being an official manufacturer upgrade package – though the project was also controversial within Tesla, as there were accusations of overspending and the package never ended up seeing the light of day.

The car went on to be owned by de Vries until it was bought by Cummings and Medlock in 2022. Since the battery had died, the car was given a new “Roadster 3.0” 80kWh pack, and has been driven less than 100 miles on the new battery. Otherwise, the car has around 31,600 miles total, most of which was applied before the rework was completed.

To find out more about this special Roadster, visit the car’s website (or see it displayed at The Shop in Seattle, sometime soon™). It is for sale right now, and interested buyers can find contact information on the website. Internal documentation about the project will be provided to the buyer.

The US government is reportedly set to announce wider tariffs on several categories of Chinese goods, including various green products like solar panels and batteries, medical goods, and in particular an increase of tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100%.

The rumors were first reported late Thursday that tariffs would be extended after a multi-year review of “section 301 tariffs” that had been implemented under the previous administration.

Then today, Wall Street Journal reported that these tariffs would not just be extended, but expanded, with tariffs on Chinese-made EVs quadrupling from previous levels.

Currently, all cars made in China are subject to a 25% tariff when imported to the US, on top of an additional 2.5% tariff that all foreign-made cars are subject to, totaling 27.5%. This large tariff has had the effect of excluding Chinese autos from the US market, as it’s easier to export to countries with lower tariffs first.

However, given Chinese EVs are incredibly affordable, even a 25% tariff might still result in competitive prices. For this reason, it has been considered inevitable by most observers that eventually Chinese EVs would make their way into being sold in the US.

It seems that Biden has also decided that the 25% tariff wouldn’t be enough to forestall the advance, and has decided to instead quadruple it to 100%, meaning that Chinese EVs will effectively sell for double the price they would otherwise if brought to the US. While this has not been announced yet and the White House has declined to comment, an announcement on the new tariffs is expected on Tuesday.

Tariffs have been called for by several entities in the US (and Europe), as Chinese EV manufacturing has rapidly ramped in recent years.

China was originally somewhat slow to adopt EVs – in 2015, EV market share was just .84%, similar to the US market share of .66% and well below California at 3.1% at the time. But in 2023, US market share had risen to a meager 7.6% and California to just 21.4%, whereas China’s EV market share was a whopping 37%, leapfrogging several other leading countries in the process (and it was just 5% in 2020, so the turn upwards has been very rapid over the last 3 years). It caught foreign manufacturers by surprise, leaving ICE car values plummeting in China as consumers are simply not interested.

Despite the massive swing upwards in Chinese EV interest, EV manufacturing has risen even more rapidly. This has left Chinese automakers with more than enough vehicles for the export market, and they have started exporting so many to Europe that they can’t find enough ships to carry them.

Those EVs haven’t made their way to the US yet, but most think that it’s inevitable that they will soon. But with these increased tariffs, that makes it a little less likely that US consumers will gain access to these cheap, high-tech Chinese EVs.

This isn’t the first move that Biden has made to limit the ability of the Chinese auto industry to operate in the US. The Inflation Reduction Act which updated the US EV tax credit included protectionist measures to disallow Chinese-sourced EVs from taking advantage of the credit. To qualify, EVs must be assembled in America and must have a certain percentage of components sourced in the US or US free trade countries, and can’t include parts from “foreign entities of concern” (though there are some ways around this).

The net effect of the regulation is that batteries sourced from China have a harder time getting access to US tax credits, thus reducing their competitiveness in the US market.

GM has a new suite of energy products that allow you to share power between your car and your home, and we got to see them in action.

GM invited us to a swanky house in Beverly Hills to demonstrate its new home energy products, including vehicle-to-home (V2H) backup power that allows you to power your house off of your EV battery.

These products include its new bidirectional EV charger, which it’s calling the GM Energy Powershift Charger ($1,699), and the GM Energy V2H Enablement Kit ($5,600) which comes with AC-DC inverter, Home Hub (the computer which manages loads through the house), and dark start battery (provides a small amount of power as the system starts up and shifts from home to vehicle power).

The systems can be bought separately or bundled together for $7,299. Installation is separate (and costs can vary widely), and GM has partnered with Qmerit, a national EV charging installation company, to make it easier for customers to find an installer.

GM set up its system and brought out two new Silverados to demonstrate both their vehicle-to-load (V2L) and V2H capabilities. One Silverado was connected to the outdoor speakers and screen running the presentation GM gave us on its products, and the other was connected to the house to show what happens when the V2H changes over from home to truck power.

To do so, GM flipped the main breaker for the house, then showed us the process of of the car taking over. It took around 35 seconds – much longer than other battery backup solutions, but quicker than sitting puzzled in the dark, stumbling to find a flashlight, going to the breaker box to flip switches uselessly and then concluding that you’ll be spending the rest of the night reading by candlelight.

But once the takeover happened, the whole party was being powered by the truck. The lights and music in the garage and throughout the house were powered by the truck, along with the kitchen where the hors d’oeuvres were being prepared.

The car is capable of putting out 9.6kW – enough to power most of your everyday needs, but not high simultaneous loads (i.e. don’t run the pool pump and the dryer at the same time as everything else), though all of this depends on how energy-hungry your house is. And the Silverado’s massive 200kWh battery pack can power an average American home for around 5-6 days. GM told us the system was powering about 60% of the 10,000 square-foot house the demonstration happened in.

GM says it is working to reduce the amount of time the switchover from grid to car power takes, but that it will inevitably be slower than home battery solutions (which can respond in only a couple seconds, or even less than a second) because those stay continually energized, whereas the car requires more communication and a wake-up process.

Speaking of home battery solutions, GM Energy also plans to sell one of those, though that unit won’t be for sale until later this year (same with solar integration, which will also come this year). Batteries will be available in 10, 17, and 35kWh packages. The systems are built with stacks of modular units, each 1.7kWh, so the packages come with either 6 or 10 stacked units.

This battery backup solution will take “less than 5 seconds” to take over, though we think (or hope) that GM is being conservative with that. Competing home energy products like Tesla’s Powerwall can take over as quickly as around 200 milliseconds, and we’ve heard of others coming that might be even faster. But the battery wasn’t connected for the purposes of this demonstration.

GM wants to see this product rolled out in as many houses as possible, and in service of that, plans to have V2H support on all of it’s electric vehicles by 2026. It told us that these cars would all be capable of 9.6kW output, so you won’t need a 200kWh Silverado to power your house, you’ll also be able to do it with the $35k entry-level Equinox, or eventually with Chevy’s upcoming “Boltium” next-gen Bolt EV.

This is a contrast to most other EV makers – Hyundai and Kia have V2L on their vehicles, but only up to 1.8kW; Ford has its Intelligent Backup Power system, but only on the F-150 Lightning; Tesla has Powershare, but only on Cybertruck; Rivian wants to get around to offering bidirectional charging, but isn’t there yet – and so on. GM does seem more committed on this front than anyone else at this time.

GM’s electric vehicles will be compatible with GM Energy’s products, though won’t be cross-compatible with other battery backup and bidirectional charging systems in the short term. Eventually there will be cross-compatibility, but first the ISO 15118 standard, which governs Plug & Charge & bi-directional/V2G communication, needs to be finalized, which is taking quite some time (read a little more about that here).

GM also plans to build a virtual power plant, as we’ve seen other energy services companies do, which aggregates the energy available from hundreds or thousands of customers and discharges it to the grid when needed. These can be quite lucrative for owners of battery backup systems, though GM hasn’t decided exactly how it will offer these products to its customers yet, and is exploring various financial possibilities to encourage usage.

That’s important, because the system isn’t cheap. As mentioned above, even without the battery, the whole thing costs $7,299 before installation (installation can be very costly – though that was an exceptional case). That’s quite steep just for the gimmick of being able to run your house off of your car, so offering incentives to make that more palatable will help increase uptake. It’s a bit more expensive than Ford’s competing V2H product, comparable to the cost of home generators, and cheaper than home battery backup systems.

But while it does seem a little gimmicky at first glance, the dream of widespread bidirectional power has been talked about among EV advocates for some time, and could solve a lot of energy issues.

Even just V2H (which allows powering a home, but not feeding energy back into the grid – that’s V2G) can reduce loads when the grid is most stressed, and reduce energy costs for a home by allowing energy arbitrage, charging a battery at times when power is cheap and then running the house off of the battery when power is expensive and dirty. It leads to lower energy bills, and can help grid resiliency by having distributed battery backup in a large percentage of homes.

It’s an exciting possibility, but to get there, we need to get a lot of batteries in homes. And whether they’re stacked on the floor in the garage or parked and plugged in inside of it, GM’s ready to sell you those batteries (*car sometimes included).

You can find out more about GM’s home Energy products at its GM Energy website. At first, availability is limited to California, Florida, Michigan, New York and Texas, but GM plans to expand beyond those boundaries over time.