Tesla set to unveil next generation Roadster sports EV after years of delay

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 15 — Tesla is set to unveil its redesigned Roadster on Thursday, nearly nine years after it ​first showed a next-generation version of its electric sports car.

Tesla revealed a prototype of the $200,000 car in 2017 and said deliveries would begin in 2020. The price ‌has not been updated but reservations are still $50,000 each.

Chief Executive Elon Musk has played down the car's importance to Tesla's ⁠finances, describing it in 2023 as a "small ​potato situation" that would not "move the needle ⁠in a major way financially."

But the car still carries symbolic weight.

"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," Morningstar analyst ⁠Seth Goldstein said in a note last month.

Musk set expectations in 2017, saying a four-seat Roadster would travel 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge. In 2024, he posted on X that it had been redesigned. The new Roadster would accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (100 km per hour) in less than a second. "And that ‌is least interesting part," he wrote, adding it was a ​collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX, the rocket company Musk also leads.

Goldstein expects Tesla to sell around 2,000 Roadsters a year — a fraction of the 1.6 million vehicles Tesla sold last year.

The original Roadster, released in 2008 and on sale until 2012, was Tesla's first-ever EV and used a Lotus Elise chassis. It helped change the world's view of what an electric vehicle could be. The company has since been known for its Model ​Y and Model X SUVs and Model S and Model 3 sedans.

The reveal of the second-generation Roadster ‌also comes amid ‌a sharp shift ⁠in Tesla's focus to artificial intelligence-led self-driving tech and robotics, from manufacturing cars for human drivers.

This year, Tesla stopped selling Model S and X vehicles to make space for production of its Optimus humanoid robots. It also launched Cybercab - a two-seater robotaxi that comes without manual controls ‌such as a steering wheel, ​pedals and mirrors.

The Roadster event is set to start ‌at 8:55 p.m. EDT (0055 ⁠GMT) on Thursday at ​a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas.

(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Peter Henderson and ​Chris Reese)

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