Tesla built the Tesla Roadster, the first production car to use lithium-ion battery cells.
The Roadster was based on the Lotus Elise sports-car platform and entered production in 2008. Its battery pack used thousands of relatively small lithium-ion cells, a chemistry more commonly associated with consumer electronics at the time.
The car helped establish Tesla as a manufacturer rather than merely an electric-powertrain developer. It also demonstrated that an electric car could offer sports-car acceleration and a substantial driving range. The Roadster’s advertised range was about 245 miles under the then-used EPA test cycle.
People sometimes confuse the Roadster with the Nissan Leaf, which arrived later as a mass-market electric hatchback. The Roadster was much lower-volume and far more expensive, but its battery technology made it an important milestone in modern electric-car history.