For years, the Tesla Roadster has served less as a promised production vehicle and more as a highly effective loan program for Tesla, backed by $250,000 deposits from the company’s most optimistic clientele. Originally slated for a 2020 unveiling, the high-performance electric sports car has now received its latest delay.
During the recent Tesla shareholders meeting, CEO Elon Musk pushed the long-awaited unveiling again, landing on the most dubious date imaginable. April 1st of next year. Musk’s comments were a symphony of absurdity. Just last week, he had hyped the demo as coming by year-end, promising more technology than all of James Bond’s vehicles combined.
During the meeting, he followed up by confirming the official presentation date, suggesting it would be “the most exciting demo, whether it works or not, of any product”. Production arrives optimistically at 12–18 months after that, likely pushing the first actual customer cars into 2028. An astonishing 11 years after its initial reveal.
The delay is not merely calendar shuffling. A recent job posting for a Roadster “conceptual development” engineer suggests the vehicle is still in the embryonic stages of design, making even a theoretical 2027 release seem like a stretch of the imagination.
Worse for Tesla, the world hasn’t stopped waiting. The performance EV landscape the Roadster was meant to dominate has been utterly transformed. While Tesla debates the merits of a flying car, competitors have quietly seized the initiative. The Xiaomi SU7 Ultra went from concept to production in a couple of years. The Rimac Nevera R humiliated the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport in top speed. And the Lotus Evija X set a Nürburgring time only beaten by dedicated race cars. The Roadster missed its moment to set the record, leaving others to claim the glory.
Perhaps this is irrelevant, because Musk’s latest commentary suggests the Roadster may no longer be the vehicle people actually put down a quarter-million dollars for. He stated it will be “very different from what we have shown previously”, hinting at radically changed technology or even a different style of vehicle entirely.
