Tesla Roadster: A car with zip and zab

PHILADELPHIA - On a warm day with the top down, Steven Mortazavi was breezing along when his eyes locked on the rearview mirror.

A Philly police car was on his tail. Mortazavi wasn't speeding, but the cop followed him into a parking lot, paused behind him, and then -- whew! -- moved on.

"He is so dying to give me a ticket," said Mortazavi, an Allentown, Pa., pain-management physician.

It had to be the car: Bright red. Sleek and curvy. Built for speed, it can accelerate from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds and top out at 125 miles an hour.

All on an electric motor.

And all for, oh, $109,000.

Mortazavi came to Philadelphia this month to test-drive a Tesla, the Silicon Valley sports car that may well be the first production electric car to not just get onto U.S. highways, but stay there.

But now it's being reborn, in a dozen ways. Virtually every major auto manufacturer has a version in the pipeline.

Proponents see electric vehicles as a way to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil while countering air pollution and climate change.

Energy experts also see them acting as an array of mini storage sites for electricity, with two-way plugs potentially able to feed energy back into the electrical grid during times of peak demand.

President Obama has said he wants to get a million plug-ins on the nation's roads by 2015. Recently in California, he toured a U.S. Department of Energy electric car test site and announced $2.4 billion in federal funding for vehicle and battery manufacturing.

The most recent progression toward electric vehicles started with hybrids -- not electric per se, but close.

At least seven others -- Saturn, Toyota, Chrysler, Ford, Audi, Hyundai and Volkswagen -- have plug-in hybrids in the works.

Full-electric vehicles are promised from BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Chrysler, which is working on a minivan, a Jeep and a sports car.

Most are due from 2010 to 2013, so prices have not yet been announced.

Eight small entrepreneurial companies are going all-electric, and a Jetson-like three-wheeler, the Aptera 2e, is due this year, ball-parked at $25,000 to $45,000.

"Everyone is saying they're going to add electricity in some way, shape or form," said Jay Friedland, legislative director for the nonprofit advocacy group Plug-In America. "We are absolutely, positively rooting for them."

"The biggest challenge is getting a lot of electric vehicles on the road, reducing costs and seeing how consumers like them," said Constantine Samaras, an engineering researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Tesla's stance, Samaras said, is "We're here. We're real. We have cars."

Now, Tesla faces the challenge of scaling up, Samaras said. But can it? "We'll have to wait and see."

Launched in 2003, Tesla began production a year ago. The plan was to compete not at the economy end of the market, but at the top. Tesla promises pizzazz, not thrift.

Until now, most Americans equated electric vehicles with wimpy cars "that couldn't even get up a hill," said Joe Powers, a Tesla manager who plans to open a New York showroom in months. "Tesla's goal was 'Let's shatter those preconceptions.' "

A 3 1/2-hour charge gives the twin-seater a range of roughly 244 miles.

To reserve a production slot, buyers have to put down $9,900 (until about a week ago, it was $60,000) and wait nearly a year. Tesla has delivered about 265 vehicles, with 1,000 more on order.

The path has been potholed, but Powers said the private firm expects to be profitable by midyear.