Analysis
Tesla staged its long-delayed second-generation Roadster reveal at an event outside Waco, Texas, on October 15, nearly nine years to the day after the car's original 2017 unveiling. The car drove up an inverted ramp, spun around, and eased down to a landing using high-powered fans and rear-mounted thrusters, then used the same thrusters to lift and hover over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y and Model 3 parked on the demo floor. Elon Musk called it "the best of the last of the human-driven cars," and Tesla showed a 0-to-60-mph run in under one second on the range-topping trim, a run The Verge also clocked from the demo floor.
When Will The Tesla Roadster Actually Ship?
Tesla first unveiled the Roadster in November 2017 and originally targeted 2020 production. The car has slipped every year since, and this specific event had already been pushed once: Tesla tried to hold the reveal on October 1, but severe weather forced another delay, the latest in a string of postponements Pulse has tracked. Tesla now says deliveries begin in 2028, meaning the production car will arrive 11 years after it was first shown to the public.
“Tesla first unveiled the Roadster in November 2017 and originally targeted 2020 production.”
The lineup has three trims. Performance, described as "road ready," gets active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system for $50,000 down. Thrust, the "race ready" two-seater, adds rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters for the sub-one-second 0-60 run and runs $250,000. Rocket, a one-seat, invite-only configuration, carries all 10 thrusters fed by 600 liters of rechargeable compressed air. Every trim is rated for roughly 300 miles of range and speeds above 230 mph.
No production hypercar on sale today uses compressed-air thrusters for acceleration or aerobatics; Tesla's closest rivals compete on batteries and aerodynamics alone. The Rimac Nevera has posted 0-60 runs around 1.7 seconds, the Lucid Air Sapphire sedan around 1.9 seconds, and the Pininfarina Battista in a similar range — all quick, but all meaningfully slower than what Tesla showed on stage. That gap is the entire point of the thruster system: Tesla is selling a car whose headline number comes from aerospace hardware, not battery chemistry, which is also why regulators haven't weighed in yet. It's unclear whether the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will require a separate review for compressed-air thrusters on a street-legal car, a question that will matter more to the 2028 delivery date than anything on the spec sheet.
The bigger counterweight is Tesla's own track record on this exact car. A vehicle unveiled in 2017, delayed past its original 2020 production target, delayed again from an October 1 demo date, and now pointing to 2028 delivery is not a company that has priced in schedule risk conservatively before. Reservation deposits of $50,000 to $250,000 are fully refundable, Tesla has said in the past, but they still represent real capital sitting against a delivery date three more model years away.