A trio of untouched Tesla Roadsters is up for sale after sitting abandoned in a shipping container in China for over a decade. They’re the closest thing to a new Tesla Roadster that one can get any time soon it would seem but their operating condition is yet unknown.
Each car is slightly different from the others. One is a Very Orange base model, another is a Very Orange Sport version, and the third is a Radiant Red Sport version. According to the listing, all three were purchased by the original buyer, shipped to China, and then abandoned for unknown reasons. Over the years they’ve continued to accrue storage charges that the seller is now going to pay for.
Any vehicle that sits for over a decade, regardless of how new it might be when parked, can suffer serious degradation. However, in this case, we couldn’t think of a much better environment than safely stored inside a shipping container. With electric vehicles, the buyer doesn’t have to worry about the same issues that might be found in a car with a combustion engine.
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Still, that doesn’t mean that these Tesla Roadsters are going to be ready to roll once they’re charged up. In fact, the selling firm, Gruber Motor Company, says that they’ll need to investigate their running condition in person to know what if anything they need. “What we do not yet know is if the ESS pack Service Plugs were pulled before shipment, and even more intriguing, if they were, is there any life left in the packs after 13 years of storage,” it says.
Sometimes these cars could suffer from bricking if the battery pack had a failing cell or if it had gone flat altogether. Gruber is one of the nation’s top Tesla Roadster repair shops though so if there’s a problem, these cars are in good hands.
Gruber says that if nobody buys the cars while they’re there in China that the trio will end up shipped back to the USA sometime in mid-May. For now, the seller is “accepting bids at this time only and is trying to sell them as a set.”
