The elusive Roadster remains stuck in limbo years after its debut, with new promises surfacing while production continues to stall
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- Tesla’s Lars Moravy says the new Roadster will be the “last best driver’s car.”
- The Roadster was first unveiled in 2017 and still lacks a final production version.
- Customers can still place $50K deposits despite no pricing or delivery confirmation.
Even in a world where long-delayed product launches are the norm, the second-gen Tesla Roadster has become somewhat of a running joke in the automotive world. First presented as a running prototype in November of 2017, Tesla had promised to start building the electric hypercar killer in 2020. We’re now more than halfway through 2025, and Tesla has yet to unveil the production version.
Read: 8 Years Later, Tesla’s Still Taking $50K Roadster Reservations Musk Promised For 2020
Despite its prolonged absence, Tesla insists the Roadster remains in development, with ever-growing promises to match. According to Tesla’s head of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, the Roadster will be the “last best driver’s car.” Given how outlandish that statement is, we’re surprised Tesla boss Elon Musk didn’t make it.
New Promises of Progress, But Few Details
Moravy made the comment during the recent X Takeover event, around the 26-minute mark in the video below. He mentioned that Musk was recently shown “some cool demos” of the new model, but didn’t provide any further details about what those demos involved.
“We spent a lot of time in the last few years rethinking what we did, and why we did it, and what would make an awesome and exciting last best driver’s car,” Moravy said. “We’ve been making it better and better, and it is even a little bit more than a car. We showed Elon some cool demos last week and tech we’ve been working on, and he got a little excited.”
Rocket Thrusters and Lofty Goals
Tesla has made some very bold claims about the Roadster. In 2018, Elon Musk said it would be sold with a SpaceX option package that added around 10 small rocket thrusters to “dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering.”
More recently, in mid-2024, he went as far as to say that “the new Tesla Roadster can fly”. Until Tesla demonstrates this publicly, these remarks come off as little more than efforts to buoy the company’s stock price.
As we recently revealed, Tesla continues to accept $50,000 reservations for the Roadster, despite not yet announcing the car’s final price tag or when customers can expect to take delivery.
