Tesla dominated the headlines on Thursday thanks to a very cool stunt. In announcing the redesigned Roadster at its October 15 event, the electric car company put some jet fuel in the mix. After driving up a C-shaped ramp on a suction rig until it was upside-down, the Roadster floated to the ground on rocket boosters. We also learned that the new sports car is targeting a 2028 production window and that it will cost $250,000 to reserve the “Thrust” trim level with cold-gas thrusters. “We enter production in 2028,” Musk said during the event. “Actually, for real.”
If you’re feeling a bit of deja vu, don’t worry — you’re firmly within your faculties. This is not the first time Tesla has announced the second-generation Roadster, and the company hasn’t exactly drawn attention to that fact with this re-announced version. Still, the question on many minds is whether this is another paper launch for Tesla’s embattled second-gen sports car.
The first Roadster was a milestone for Tesla in its early days. Released in 2008 and produced in very limited numbers, the car was ideated by one of Tesla’s original founders, Martin Eberhard, before current CEO Elon Musk had bought Eberhard and his partner, Marc Tarpenning, out of the company. It was the idea of the Roadster which initially drew Musk to the fledgling startup in 2004 and prompted his initial investment in the company. He would go on to oversee the production of that sports car. Crammed inside the chassis of a Lotus Elise, it was truly impressive at the time to see a battery-powered vehicle able to reach 244 miles on a charge.
The redesigned Roadster was first unveiled in November 2017, promising to be the apex of Tesla’s innovations in electric vehicle manufacturing. Musk called it “a hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars.” Targeted for a 2020 release, it was shown off alongside the Tesla Semi, a Class 8 electric semitruck which also stalled in production. In Feburary 2018, Musk promised a “SpaceX” package that would “include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around the car” and would “dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering.”
Then the delays began. With Tesla still accepting deposits starting at $50,000 and extending up to $250,000, the initial 2020 production window came and went. In a July 2020 earnings call for Tesla, Musk said production would begin within the following year to 18 months. With the globe engulfed in a public health crisis, the delay wasn’t the most shocking of developments. Ironically, Musk noted in an interview with Joe Rogan that same year that he wanted to build the Cybertruck first — a mission accomplished after years of that vehicle’s own delays.
But a year and a half after the initial delay, there was no Roadster in sight. Musk delayed the car to 2022 in early 2021, but by the end of the year, that projection had slipped to 2023. The CEO announced further delays in 2023 and 2024.
And those years have been bizarre for Musk and Tesla, to say the least. The CEO has undergone a public transformation from public environmentalist to far-right political kingmaker, a period which culminated in a slash-and-burn of the Federal government as he headed up president Donald Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. By July 2025, The Lancet had published a study projecting the cuts could lead to more than 14 million deaths by 2030. Musk has disputed those numbers, but the reputational damage his stint in government caused spilled over to Tesla, leading to widespread global protests against the company. As Musk stepped down from DOGE in May 2025, dogged by allegations of substance abuse and family drama, the Roadster may not have been near the top of the billionaire’s priority list.
By the time Tesla recommitted to releasing the Roadster this past April, many had given up hope that the sports car would ever make it to market. Tesla’s failure to deliver the vehicle had long ago become pop-cultural joke fodder, and even Tesla owners such as YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who had interviewed Musk multiple times on his MKBHD channel, fretted on his Waveform podcast in September 2025, “Tesla has been sitting with my 50 grand for eight years and hasn’t done anything with it.” Another high-profile figure to complain about their Roadster reservations included Musk’s erstwhile business partner and current rival Sam Altman of OpenAI.
It’s worth noting that a launch event without a firm launch date isn’t much of a launch. Even after Tesla’s impressive October event, Musk and company will need to convince potential customers that putting down a deposit for the Roadster is a better investment than burning a pile of money with a Boring Company flamethrower.