Tesla
unveiled a redesigned Roadster on Thursday equipped with
thrusters, nearly nine years after it first showed a
next-generation version of its electric sports car and said it
would start production in 2028.
Tesla demonstrated the two-seater vehicle, developed in
collaboration with CEO Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX,
showing it driving upside down on a ramp using a suction system
and turning in the air and landing using in-built thrusters. The
use and legality of such features on public roads were not
immediately clear.
The Roadster can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour
in less than one second and can hit a top speed of over 230 mph,
Musk said at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas.
Tesla revealed a prototype of the car in 2017 and said then
that deliveries would begin in 2020.
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 had set expectations in 2017, saying a four-seat
Roadster would travel 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge.
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.