Tesla dominated the headlines on Thursday due to a really cool stunt. In saying the redesigned Roadster at its October 15 occasion, the electrical automotive firm put some jet gas within the combine. After driving up a C-shaped ramp on a suction rig till it was upside-down, the Roadster floated to the ground on rocket boosters. We additionally realized that the brand new sports activities automotive is concentrating on a 2028 manufacturing window and that it’s going to value $250,000 to order the “Thrust” trim level with cold-gas thrusters. “We enter manufacturing in 2028,” Musk stated in the course of the occasion. “Really, for actual.”
When you’re feeling a little bit of deja vu, don’t fret — you are firmly inside your colleges. This isn’t the primary time Tesla has introduced the second-generation Roadster, and the corporate hasn’t precisely drawn consideration to that truth with this re-announced model. Nonetheless, the query on many minds is whether or not that is one other paper launch for Tesla’s embattled second-gen sports activities automotive.
The primary Roadster was a milestone for Tesla in its early days. Launched in 2008 and produced in very restricted numbers, the automotive was ideated by considered one of Tesla’s unique founders, Martin Eberhard, earlier than present CEO Elon Musk had purchased Eberhard and his companion, Marc Tarpenning, out of the corporate. It was the concept of the Roadster which initially drew Musk to the fledgling startup in 2004 and prompted his preliminary funding within the firm. He would go on to supervise the manufacturing of that sports activities automotive. Crammed contained in the chassis of a Lotus Elise, it was actually spectacular on the time to see a battery-powered automobile capable of attain 244 miles on a cost.
The redesigned Roadster was first unveiled in November 2017, promising to be the apex of Tesla’s improvements in electrical automobile manufacturing. Musk referred to as it “a hardcore smackdown to gasoline automobiles.” Focused for a 2020 launch, it was proven off alongside the Tesla Semi, a Class 8 electrical semitruck which additionally stalled in production. In Feburary 2018, Musk promised a “SpaceX” bundle that may “embrace ~10 small rocket thrusters organized seamlessly across the automotive” and would “dramatically enhance acceleration, prime velocity, braking and cornering.”
Then the delays started. With Tesla nonetheless accepting deposits beginning at $50,000 and lengthening as much as $250,000, the preliminary 2020 manufacturing window got here and went. In a July 2020 earnings name for Tesla, Musk said manufacturing would start throughout the following 12 months to 18 months. With the globe engulfed in a public well being disaster, the delay wasn’t probably the most surprising of developments. Satirically, Musk noted in an interview with Joe Rogan that very same 12 months that he needed to construct the Cybertruck first — a mission completed after years of that vehicle’s own delays.
However a 12 months and a half after the preliminary delay, there was no Roadster in sight. Musk delayed the car to 2022 in early 2021, however by the top of the 12 months, that projection had slipped to 2023. The CEO introduced additional delays in 2023 and 2024.
And people years have been weird for Musk and Tesla, to say the least. The CEO has undergone a public transformation from public environmentalist to far-right political kingmaker, a interval which culminated in a slash-and-burn of the Federal government as he headed up president Donald Trump’s newly shaped Division of Authorities Effectivity. By July 2025, The Lancet had printed a research projecting the cuts might result in greater than 14 million deaths by 2030. Musk has disputed these numbers, however the reputational harm his stint in authorities triggered spilled over to Tesla, resulting in widespread international protests towards the corporate. As Musk stepped down from DOGE in Might 2025, dogged by allegations of substance abuse and household drama, the Roadster might not have been close to the highest of the billionaire’s precedence listing.
By the point Tesla recommitted to releasing the Roadster this previous April, many had given up hope that the sports activities automotive would ever make it to market. Tesla’s failure to ship the automobile had way back turn into pop-cultural joke fodder, and even Tesla house owners comparable to YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who had interviewed Musk a number of instances on his MKBHD channel, fretted on his Waveform podcast in September 2025, “Tesla has been sitting with my 50 grand for eight years and hasn’t accomplished something with it.” One other high-profile determine to complain about their Roadster reservations included Musk’s erstwhile enterprise companion and present rival Sam Altman of OpenAI.
It is value noting {that a} launch occasion with no agency launch date is not a lot of a launch. Even after Tesla’s spectacular October occasion, Musk and firm might want to persuade potential clients that placing down a deposit for the Roadster is a greater funding than burning a pile of cash with a Boring Company flamethrower.
