Tesla Roadster Update Boosts Battery, 400 Miles on Single Charge

Owners of original $100,000 Tesla Roadster can upgrade to a new battery pack that will increase the car's range to up 400 miles between charges. The current battery offers 245 miles per charge.

"The original Roadster battery was the very first lithium ion battery put into production in any vehicle," Tesla wrote in a blog post. "It was state of the art in 2008, but cell technology has improved substantially since then. We have identified a new cell that has 31% more energy than the original Roadster cell. Using this new cell we have created a battery pack that delivers roughly 70kWh in the same package as the original battery."

The company is also offering new tires for reducing rolling resistance by about 20 percent and a retrofit kit to improve the car's aerodynamics by 15 percent.

The combination of all improvements is being dubbed Roadster 3.0. The company added that the update combining all the improvements could improve car's range between 40 percent and 50 percent.

The improvement means that Roadster could just about travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco on one charge.

The update - full battery replacement - will be done for free for the first 2,500 Roadster owners.