At the Cannes Film Festival, it's not hard to find Ferraris and Mercedes McLaren SLR and Rolls-Royce on every street. Seems like a good pace to introduce the Tesla Roadster in Europe. Cannes is where a lucky French journalist test drove the Roadster, albeit with British registration plates and the steering wheel on the left. His verdict: Faster than a Louts Exige Cup 255, 1,200 kg for 250 HP (become 300 in April 2009) - he just loved it. He believes that V8s are in real danger because the Tesla offered a more satisfying experience. And here's an interesting figure: a four-hour charge for the Tesla costs €6 and will move you 350 km. Compare that to a Lotus that burns about 10 l/100 km - and knowing that a liter of unleaded costs about €1.5 in France - we find that driving the Tesla is much cheaper.

Watch a video interview (in French) with Tesla's Diarmuid O'Connell after the jump.

As we saw with the Bono pic, Tesla Motors representatives took the Roadster to Europe for a little PR&R recently. Well, as Darryl Siry, Tesla's VP of sales, marketing, and service, writes in a new post about the company trip on the "feel" blog over on the Tesla Motors website, there wasn't as much R as he might have liked. So, for those of use who don't mind that Mr. Siry worked more than played on the old continent, let's see what he has to say (oh, and we thank him for his service, of course).

First up, pricing. The 2009 U.S. version of the Roadster will cost $109,000, up from $98,000 for the base 2008 model. A lot of the increase can be attributed to the weakening dollar, Siry writes, because Tesla pays for much of the Roadster in Euros and Pounds. The limited edition 2009 Euro-spec Roadster will cost 99,000 Euros, and is comparable to the fully-loaded 2009 Roadster. For more on the Euro-spec Roadster, look here.

Siry also gets into production of the current Roadsters, and says that Job 3 has been delivered (Martin Eberhard is still waiting for some custom paint work to be done on Job 2) and that production will be ramping up this summer and fall. Siry's got more for you here.

[Source: Tesla Motors]

We know that the Tesla Roadster is headed to Europe. Part of getting ready for the European market means doing a little bit of promotion, and so Tesla Motors presented the Roadster at the Top Marques Monaco event this past weekend. Tesla's vice president of sales, marketing, and service, Darryl Siry, has posted a few pictures of the event, including one of Mr. U2 himself - Bono - having a seat in the show car. Siry says that he'll be posting a more detailed description of how some of Tesla's first European customers and "potential future customers" reacted to seeing the car in the metal, but for now he just wanted to share the pics. I wonder how Monaco's hydrogen-loving Prince Albert II feels about all of this.

[Source: Tesla]