- Tesla may unveil a redesigned Roadster before August ends.
- A SpaceX-thruster edition could debut in McGregor, Texas.
- The production Roadster still lacks a firm delivery date.
If you’re the kind of person who’ll believe Tesla’s next Roadster is coming when Teslas fly, we have some interesting news. A new report says Tesla will unveil a redesigned Roadster as early as this month. The reported event may include a SpaceX-developed cold-gas thruster package that could, at minimum, make the car look like it’s trying very hard to fly. After almost a decade of missed promises, that’s still not quite the same as seeing one actually reach customers.
The event, first reported by The Information and referenced by Reuters, would take place at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site. It could feature a limited-edition Roadster fitted with the thruster package Elon Musk has been talking about for years. It apparently won’t be street legal, could cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and may be remotely operated because the force and noise from the system would make putting a person inside a poor idea.
Read: Tesla Roadster Delayed Again, Weeks Late But Years Behind
If that sounds less like a production car and more like a demo to distract from how far behind schedule this thing is, that’s probably the point. Tesla showed the next-generation Roadster concept in November 2017 and said customer deliveries would begin in 2020. That obviously didn’t happen. At the time, it claimed a 1.9-second 0-60 mph sprint, a top speed above 250 mph (402 km/h), and a claimed 620-mile (998-km) range. Tesla’s Roadster page still displays those same numbers, even though the car has yet to materialize.
The report says this redesigned Roadster has developed into a carbon-fiber hypercar rather than a vehicle built around Model S Plaid hardware. That’s probably good considering that lots of Tesla’s claims at the unveiling are old hat in the EV world now. The standard Roadster and the SpaceX edition are expected to look similar, but only the latter would get the thrusters.
Tesla previously accepted $50,000 deposits for the standard car and required $250,000 for the Founders Series. Those customers have waited long enough that a one-off spectacle in McGregor won’t settle much on its own. The real reveal will be a production-ready car, a firm delivery date, and evidence that Tesla can actually keep this particular promise.
