Do you believe it can fly? Tesla Roadster to make debut
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An original Tesla Roadster seen here in 2018. Photo: Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
The big question is ... do you believe it can fly?
State of play: Elon Musk is expected to reveal the long-awaited Tesla Roadster at an event Thursday in Texas, about nine years after first teasing that it will use rocket technology to lift off the ground in some capacity.
- "I think it might be one of the most spectacular demos ever," Musk said in April on an earnings call.
- "The new Tesla Roadster can fly," Musk said on X in 2024.
- He promised in 2017 that the new Roadster would cost $250,000 and would go 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, reaching a top speed of 250 mph, which would be higher than the top recorded speed on the F1 circuit.
The Roadster is expected to be a highly engineered, extremely fast, super expensive version of Tesla's very first car — a two-seat sports car that put the company on the map, proving it could build an EV at a time when industry experts doubted Musk's automotive bona fides.
- Musk first revealed a new Roadster prototype in 2017, saying it would reach the delivery stage in 2020. Some customers placed deposits years ago — and the company is currently accepting $50,000 deposits.
- Even as he readies to show it again, it's still unclear when it'll actually go into production.
Zoom in: Details are thin on what else to expect Thursday when Musk — who axed Tesla's public relations team several years ago — corrals enthusiasts for the launch event.
- Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk has said it'll be "something special beyond a car" — and that it'll be the last new vehicle driven by humans that Tesla will make. The company originally intended to debut the car two weeks ago but postponed the event due to weather conditions.
- There's so much technology packed into the car that "it requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo," Musk said in April on the earnings call.
The intrigue: The Roadster is designed largely as a brand booster — not as a profit driver, with Musk himself acknowledging that "I don't think it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint."
What they're saying: "We think the Roadster reveal could break TSLA's streak of disappointing product announcements and create a level of excitement among consumers that the Robotaxi and Semi reveals failed to generate," CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson tells Axios in an email.
- It "will be more of a high-end trophy case, halo demand driver," Tesla bull and Yorkville Ives & Co partner Dan Ives tells Axios in an email. But "it's important to bring back innovation and new models to the hungry Tesla base."
- Indeed, Tesla hasn't rolled out a new passenger car with a steering wheel since it first revealed the Model Y in March 2019.
- Musk has since turned his attention to humanoid robots and self-driving vehicles without a steering wheel, such as the Cybercab robotaxi, which he revealed in 2024.
What we're watching: Whether Tesla has installed any SpaceX tech on the Roadster, which could signal further collaboration between the two companies on their way toward an eventual merger.
- In 2017, Musk said the Roadster would come with a "special upgrade package" that could "enable it to fly short hops."
- Jon McNeill, a former Tesla president who left the company in 2018, told WSJ that the company was working to add SpaceX thrusters to the vehicle a decade ago.
- "There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car," Musk said at one point.
The bottom line: You might have to look up to catch a glimpse of this one.
