The Roadster is a battery electric vehicle (BEV) sports car, evolved from the Lotus Elise chassis,[86] that was produced by Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) in California from 2008 to 2012. The Roadster was the first highway legal serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells and the first production all-electric car to travel more than 320 km (200 miles) per charge. It is also the first production car to be launched into orbit, carried by a Falcon Heavy rocket in a test flight on February 6, 2018 .