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Tesla is set to unveil the redesigned Roadster on Thursday after the EV-maker first previewed a next-generation version of its electric sports car nearly nine years ago.
The automaker first revealed a prototype of the $200,000 Roadster in 2017 and the company said at the time it would begin deliveries in 2020. While the price of the Roadster hasn’t been updated, reservations cost buyers $50,000 apiece.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has downplayed the importance of the Roadster to the company’s finances, saying in 2023 that it’s a “small potato situation” that wouldn’t “move the needle in a major way financially.”
While the Roadster may not be a key part of Tesla’s auto lineup from a financial perspective, high-performance luxury sports cars can serve as platforms for the automaker’s technology.
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Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein said in a note last month that “Tesla does not currently have a halo car, or high-performance luxury vehicle designed to showcase an automaker’s best engineering and technology. The Roadster will be Tesla’s new halo car.”
Musk said in 2017 that a four-seat, next-gen Roadster would be able to travel 620 miles on a single charge, though he said in a 2024 post on X that the car had been redesigned.
In his update, Musk said that the new Roadster would accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than a second, which he explained was the “least interesting part” as he added the vehicle was a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX, the space exploration company Musk also leads.
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Goldstein expects Tesla will sell about 2,000 Roadsters a year, which would represent a small fraction of the 1.6 million vehicles the company sold last year.
Tesla’s original Roadster was released in 2008 and on sale until 2012. It was the company’s first EV and was built on a Lotus Elise chassis, and paved the way for Tesla’s Model Y and Model X SUVs and its Model S and Model 3 sedans.
The reveal of the second-generation Roadster comes amid Tesla’s shift in focus to artificial intelligence (AI) to power self-driving technology and robotics.
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Tesla stopped selling Model S and Model X vehicles to make space for production of its Optimus humanoid robots.
The company also launched Cybercab, a two-seater robotaxi that doesn’t have manual controls like a steering wheel, pedals and mirrors.
Tesla’s event for the next-generation Roadster is scheduled to start at 8:55 p.m. ET on Thursday at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas.
Reuters contributed to this report.
