IT CAN keep up with a Ferrari, travel 250 miles on an empty fuel tank and is completely silent.

The latest boys’ toy for Silicon Valley multimillionaires is a full-blooded American sportscar — only its blood is electricity, not oil. The Tesla Roadster, which can reach 60mph from standstill in about 4 seconds, is named after the late Serbian electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current.

The car is assembled in England at a factory run by Lotus Cars. The electric motor is imported from Taiwan. After assembly, the vehicles are shipped to America, where they will be sold only in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Miami. The first deliveries are expected to begin next summer, after the car passes rigorous federal safety tests.

Martin Eberhard, who founded Tesla Motors in 2003 with Marc Tarpenning, said: “This is what we hoped to achieve when we started the company – to build a car with zero emissions that people would love to drive. It didn’t make sense to sell a car that only goes 90 miles on a charge.

“You’d spend more time charging the old EVs [electric vehicles] than driving them. Lithium-ion technology, which has been proven in many different applications, has allowed us to achieve exactly what we thought it would in terms of power, range and efficiency.”

The Tesla marks a resurgence in electric car development in California, after the state quietly dropped a law that would require car companies to develop models with zero emissions. Infamously, this resulted in General Motors recalling and destroying its fleet of EV1s – a pioneering electric vehicle, widely beloved by owners.

Other electric car companies operating in California today include Phoenix Motorcars and Universal Electric Vehicles, which also makes convertible sportscars.

Even petrolheads, however, may struggle to understand the specifications of the Tesla Roadster. Unlike a traditional V8 engine, with its eight pistons, eight connecting rods, crankshaft, valves, oil pumps and other mechanicals, the Tesla’s engine has only one moving part. This gives it an efficiency rating of about 95 per cent, compared with the 20 per cent (or less) of an internal combustion engine. As for torque – the sweet spot of power for an engine, most loved by car enthusiasts – the Tesla’s has been described as virtually instantaneous. The car is powered by “3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor” and a “two-speed electrically actuated manual transmission”. Instead of a fuel tank there is an energy storage system, with 6,831 non-moving parts – all of them lithium-ion cells, regulated by a cooling system and a computer that shuts the entire battery pack down in the event on an emergency.

Those who part with the $100,000 (£52,000) for a Tesla will be given a home charging system (including an automatic safety disconnection system), which, the company claims, will fully charge the car in about 3½ hours.

Tesla Motors hopes to sell between 500 and 800 of its sports cars next year, eventually ramping up to 2,000 a year.

POWER TRIP

1897 The London Electric Cab Company begins a regular service: 70 Hummingbird cabs carry passengers at up to 9mph

1900 US produces 1,575 electric, 936 gasoline cars, and 1,681 steam cars

1904-13 Ford’s Model T has reduced vibration and noise and an improved petrol engine start. It outsells all electric cars

1973 The oil crisis helps the makers of the CitiCar, Sebring Vanguard, briefly to become the sixth largest car manufacturer in the US

1996 General Motors launch EV1, an electric car that can reach 80mph. The car is recalled in 2003

2002 Ford abandons Think electric car after British demand peaks at 50

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