Can Tesla’s New Roadster Live Up to Nearly a Decade of Hype?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Danny Lewis (0:19)

Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, October 15th. I'm Danny Lewis for the Wall Street Journal.

When Tesla unveiled the second generation of its Roadster, CEO Elon Musk made big promises for what it could do on the road.

Elon Musk (0:32)

Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche.

Danny Lewis (0:38)

Musk said it could go from to 60 miles per hour in less than two seconds. Its top speed would be more than 250 miles per hour, and the new Roadster would be able to travel more than 600 miles without stopping to recharge.

Elon Musk (0:51)

The new Tesla Roadster will be the fastest production car ever made, period.

Danny Lewis (0:58)

Well, that announcement was in 2017

Nine years later, the Roadster is finally coming on the market, but that market looks very different. WSJ Auto's reporter Christopher Otts talked to drivers who have been waiting nearly a decade for the Roadster's launch. He joins us now. Chris, Musk originally said the car was going to go into production back in 2020 Why all the delays?

Chris Otts (1:21)

Tesla hasn't exactly said precisely why, but what various people who used to work there and analysts have said is, they were focused on other things. For example, the development of the Cybertruck, which is currently their most expensive sort of Halo product. And the Roadster continually was pushed back. And remember, this was also the COVID period as well. It was supposed to start production in 2020

We know what a chaotic year that was.

Danny Lewis (1:56)

At the same time, over all these years, Tesla has accepted reservations for the supercar off and on since that first announcement. You spoke to some of the people who've been waiting for all this time. How are the Roadster faithful feeling right now?

Chris Otts (2:10)

They are eagerly anticipating what will be shown. They have been waiting a long time with very little official communication about what the deal is. So they fall into two buckets. First, there are people who have paid $50,000 to get in line to buy a garden-variety Roadster, whatever that will look like. And then, there's a thousand places for what Tesla calls the Founders Series Roadster.

These people have paid $250,000, some as far back as late 2017, to be able to buy one of these cars. So when you think about it, those Founders Series Roadster reservation holders are really in the car for more like $850,000 by this time. If you consider, they could have just put that $250,000 in an S&P 500, and what would it be today?

Danny Lewis (3:07)

Yeah. Did everyone stick around for all this time?

Chris Otts (3:10)

Not everyone stuck around. I talked to one reservation holder who, after about five months of back and forth with Tesla, was able to get a refund of his $50,000.

We also know that Sam Altman, who's had his beefs with Elon, had a reservation and was also refunded after he said, you know, I'm sure this car is great, but seven and a half years is a long time to wait. So not everyone has stuck with it.

Danny Lewis (3:41)

And how much is the final car going to cost?

Chris Otts (3:44)

Nobody knows that Tesla has not announced the pricing for the vehicle.

One founder series reservation holder I spoke with said that he hopes that his $250,000 would cover it. But I think the conventional wisdom is that it is going to be more expensive than that.

Danny Lewis (4:05)

How will the actual Roadster 2 compare to what we saw on Tesla's stage back in 2017?

Chris Otts (4:11)

This is another unanswered question. We know that they're not in mass production yet. So that's another question, is exactly when will the car start being built in the factory and delivered to customers?

Over the years, Elon has sort of upped the ante. He's talked about adding rocket thrusters to it. He's suggested that it could fly or hover in some way. There's an integration with Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, that's at work here. So it's gonna be really interesting to see what is revealed today and whether it has been worth the wait and lives up to the hype.

Danny Lewis (4:52)

I mean, some of the specs that Musk talked about back in 2017, you know, going from zero to 60 miles an hour and two seconds, more than 250 miles top speed. How do those specs compare to other cars in this category?