Amidst an EV slowdown, Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave an unexpected announcement regarding a hotly anticipated future Tesla (TSLA) car on social media.
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In a thread of consecutive posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, in the early hours on Feb. 28, Musk announced an update regarding the Roadster – its flagship electric sports car.
Tonight, we radically increased the design goals for the new Tesla Roadster.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2024
There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.
“Tonight, we radically increased the design goals for the new Tesla Roadster,” Musk said. “There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.”
Additionally, the Tesla mogul denoted that the car would be a "Tesla/SpaceX collab," and said that the end product could amount to being "the most mind-blowing product demo of all time."
Musk said that the completion of the car's production design and its unveiling will take place at the end of the year, and that he aims to begin shipping the car next year.
Tesla's optimism and delays:
Tesla
In November 2017, Tesla grabbed the EV world's attention when it initially introduced the Roadster – an evolution of its first production model. During the presentation, Elon promised a wish list of performance benchmarks such as a zero-to-60 miles per hour time of 1.9 seconds, 620 miles of range and a top speed of at least 250 miles an hour.
At the time, he said that producing a car capable of producing those numbers seemed unreal, but promised that the car will be available in 2020.
The actual timeline of events since the 2017 event proved that developing the car has been a continuing challenge for the automaker – as it has been six years and a few months since Tesla started taking $50,000 reservations for the car.
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In a tweet from September 1, 2021, he blamed "super crazy supply chain shortages" for the Roadster's delay, and said that it should ship in 2023.
As the product timeline is pushed back even further in present day 2024, Elon remains optimistic. In a reply to his posts that evening, he said that the hypothetical Tesla Roadster will have a zero-to-60 mph time of "less than one second."
This is not the first major product to be delayed by Tesla. Most notably, the Cybertruck missed key deadlines since its November 2019 reveal, only for production to formally commence in November 2023.
The news from Elon came at a very convenient time for Tesla. Recently, one of its chief rivals, BYD, introduced their own supercar - the Yangwang U9.
Though the U9 promises slightly slower performance numbers, lower range and top speed, it has one advantage over Tesla's Roadster: it has a concrete delivery date.
BYD expects to begin churning up cars later this year, and expects the first units to be delivered to customers by summertime this year.
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