Correction Appended

WASHINGTON, July 18 — In a new approach to making the electric car a mass-market product, a California company will unveil on Wednesday a model that is very specialized, very expensive and very, very fast.

Tesla Motors, a four-year-old Silicon Valley start-up, has raised $60 million and spent about $25 million developing a two-seat Roadster that will sell for $85,000 to $100,000.

It goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, “wicked fast,” said the company’s chairman, Martin Eberhard. Because it is an electric, the driver does not have to shift into second gear until the car hits 65, he said.

The Roadster comes 10 years after the introduction of another two-seat electric car that was hailed as a breakthrough in technology, the EV-1 made by General Motors. While many environmentalists had hoped that would be the vanguard of a new trend, G.M. withdrew that car as the three-year leases expired, saying that its limited range — less than 100 miles — made it unmarketable.