Here’s a question that you may want to ponder…what do you give the man who has easy access to every possible Toyota and Lexus ever made?
The answer: A Tesla Roadster of course.
Today in Japan Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla motors handed over the keys to a burgundy-red Roadster 2.5 model to Toyota’s Akio Toyoda, the head of the Toyota, as a nice gift to seal the two men’s friendship and their business partnership.
According to Reuters Toyoda seemed pleased with both the car and the color:
“I love the color,” Toyoda said as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the car in the showroom in the fashionable Aoyama district. “You know, it happens to be the same color as my helmet,” Toyoda, a licensed racing car driver, told Musk.
Toyota and Telsa formed a partnership earlier this year to build electric powered cars leveraging Tesla’s battery technology and Toyota’s extensive car building expetrise.
At next week’s LA Auto Show the two companies will display their first car from this joint development venture, an electric RAV4 based on Toyota’s popular SUV.
Toyoda, grandson of Toyota’s founder, told reporters that he had learned valuable lessons from the Tesla partnership.
“The speedy decision-making that’s part of its makeup is what we really want to absorb,” he said at a Tokyo Lexus showroom. “Toyota began as a venture. I think this will give us an opportunity to bring back that spirit.”
Check out the video below as we take a Tesla Roadster on a road trip through Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.
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