Finally! Hopefully? Very likely?
Tesla says it’s set to re-unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 15. The event was originally scheduled for October 1, but the automaker postponed it due to inclement weather.
The new event is scheduled for 7:55 p.m., Central Time, and is strictly limited to reservation holders who received direct tickets. Tesla says it will livestream the event.
Thursday’s event has been years in the making. CEO Elon Musk first revealed the rebooted halo vehicle nearly nine years ago, in November 2017, making this its second unveiling.
In September, Tesla shared a teaser of the high-powered EV, captioned “Go for launch,” showing a Roadster in a shaft of light with “10.01” at the bottom. Musk added that the car is “out of this world.”
It’ll be a unique offering in Tesla’s lineup — with an eye-watering price tag.
The automaker has promised a sleek convertible with a 0-to-60-mph time of 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, up to 620 miles of range, and a 200-kilowatt-hour battery pack — roughly the same size as the battery in GMC’s gargantuan Hummer EV.
Those are all old-school, driver-oriented performance metrics from a company that is increasingly betting on an autonomous future. Musk has also teased a SpaceX collaboration that could give the Roadster cold-gas thrusters — “rocket-y stuff,” as he put it — that could briefly lift the car in the air.
Online, there’s a ton of speculation about what Tesla’s teaser image actually shows. A popular theory: the image, when flipped upside down, could be showing the car floating in the air.
In September, Tesla’s post quickly got the meme treatment, with some joking about how long they’ve waited to see the high-priced car.
Tesla began taking reservations in 2017, asking for a $50,000 deposit for the base car and $250,000 upfront for a Founders Series. Musk has acknowledged the long wait in recent years, thanking the vehicle’s “long-suffering” deposit holders on an October 2024 earnings call.
Some big-name early reservation holders have removed or altered their booking from the Roadster’s queue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman openly canceled his reservation, while YouTuber Marques Brownlee, commonly known as MKBHD, canceled one of his two reservations.
“Well well well,” Brownlee wrote in September after the Roadster teaser.
