It’s sleek, eye-catching and super fast — zero to 95 kilometres an hour in less than four seconds.

But there’s no rumbling engine on this sports car. In fact, when you turn the engine on, it sounds exactly the same as when it was off — virtually silent.

Whistler property owners and long-time friends Todd Laney and Gary Vasseur on Sunday (May 31) took what is believed to be the first trip along the Sea to Sky Highway in a fully electric car.

Laney has had a Tesla roadster since March and drives it regularly around his hometown of Carnation, Wash., and in the Seattle area. But this was the first trip to really test the car’s maximum range of about 390 kilometres.

Vasseur said he believes the trip to be the first time an electric car has travelled to Whistler on the Sea to Sky Highway. “We were the Lewis and Clark of the Age of the Electric Car,” he wrote in an email to The Question.

Laney said the Tesla is the first electric car that can travel at highway speeds — its maximum speed is 200 kilometres and hour — and has a range large enough to make such a trip practical. The pair stopped at a campground just after crossing the border into Canada and charged the roadster for about two hours, adding another 77 kilometres of range.

The 357 km trip took almost five hours of driving, plus the stop to charge, and the Tesla had about 67 kilometres of range left when the pair arrived in Whistler Sunday evening. Laney said a two-hour charge won’t be necessary on the next trip.

“It was a normal drive up here,” he said. “It’s handling and behaving as expected. We didn’t have any problems.”

While the car cost about $100,000 U.S. to purchase, Vasseur estimated it only used about $2 of electricity for the drive to Whistler. And that’s with zero emissions. He compared that to his motorcycle, which uses about $30 U.S. of gas — at American gas prices — to get to Whistler.

Vasseur said he hopes people will read the story of his and Laney’s trip to Whistler and realize that electric cars can be practical, and they represent the ability to stop polluting the environment without sacrifice. He said he’d like to see people demand electric vehicles from car manufacturers.

“Don’t go buy a big, fat, four-wheel-drive, obnoxious truck, because next year you’re going to be able to drive an electric car,” Vasseur said.

Tesla is currently developing a sedan that’s expected to start at $50,000 and have a range of up to 480 kilometres. Charge times are getting faster as well.

Laney said he understood when he sent his cheque for the Tesla roadster in 2006 that his purchase was helping to fund the company’s research and development. Subsequent models will be more practical and affordable, he said.