Tesla Roadster production delayed again to 2024, four years late
Tesla is planning to finish the design and engineering of the next-generation Tesla Roadster by the end of this year and “hopefully” put the vehicle into production next year, according to CEO Elon Musk at Tesla’s shareholder meeting today.
The next-generation Roadster was originally announced by surprise in 2017 at the Tesla Semi Unveiling event. At the time, Tesla said that the car would “smack down” all gasoline-powered cars with its superior performance.
It’s promised to do 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, a quarter mile in 8.8 seconds, and have a top speed of 250+ miles per hour and a 200-kWh battery. At the time, we broke down whether these numbers were possible in a speculative technical analysis.
Since then, Tesla has released the Model S Plaid, which has some similar performance numbers for its 0-60 and quarter-mile time. But it likely would not be as good at track performance because the Roadster will (presumably) be a slimmed-down version of the sedan.
The Roadster was originally slated to hit the market in 2020 and has been continually pushed back. (The Semi, unveiled at the same event, was supposed to hit the market in 2019 and finally came out late last year.) In 2020, the Roadster was pushed back to 2021. In 2021, it was delayed until 2022 and then later delayed until 2023, which was confirmed again last year.
But otherwise, we’ve heard very little about the Roadster, and it hasn’t shown up on any of Tesla’s product roadmaps. Other than that one public statement last year, it didn’t look like the car would hit the road this year, as we haven’t seen much progress.
Fast forward to today, when an investor asked Musk when we might see the car. Musk’s answer was to push back the car another year, to 2024… “hopefully.”
This mention was a little more detailed than others, so it might actually reflect that this timeline is more concrete than previous timelines. Musk seemed reasonably confident that engineering and design would be completed this year but was less confident of the timeline to start production next year.
Musk emphasized multiple times that this was a “hopeful” timeline and said that “this is not a commitment” that the car would go into production next year. So stay tuned for more news on whether Tesla will follow through or whether this will be another instance of “Elon time.”
Musk also made mention of the SpaceX option package, which he has previously stated would allow the car to “hover” and which Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen has said would make the car an “exciting flying machine.”
Since this is a shareholder meeting, Musk mentioned that the car would likely not contribute much to overall company revenue but would perhaps be a “modest” contributor to profitability. Small production halo cars like this Roadster tend to have higher unit margins, but there are only so many buyers willing to spend $200,000+ on a vehicle.
But despite this likely lack of profitability, Musk did reiterate today that the car would be “sick.”
Here’s the full exchange, which starts at 1:25:50 in the video:
Electrek’s Take
As an owner of the original Tesla Roadster, I am obviously excited about the next-gen one. Ever since it was first announced, I’ve wanted to see and drive this thing. That is, at least, until I launched a Plaid, and my stomach /inner ear decided that maybe two seconds is faster than anyone needs to get to 60 miles per hour…
But that said, I have to say that it’s hard to imagine the car actually coming out in 2024. It’s been pushed back so many times already, and we’ve heard so little about it that this would be a pretty quick turnaround at this point.
If this car is going to come out next year, we would expect to see more about it before it hits the road: sightings of its testing, new tooling at Tesla’s factories, job postings, and all the sorts of normal indicators that we see in the months ahead of production for any car.
We’ve been seeing these for Cybertruck for years now. That model has been delayed a few times but is finally coming to market next quarter, supposedly. And the pace of sightings suggests that it is indeed close to production at this point, so it does feel likely that it will actually hit the road this time around.
So I’d expect to start seeing more about the Roadster at least around the end of this year or perhaps the beginning of next year, if it truly is going into production next year. But I wouldn’t make any bets on it, though it is nice to hear the car at least get mentioned again after a lack of news for quite some time now.
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China just laid out a plan to roll out over 100,000 ultra-fast EV charging stations by 2027 – and they’ll all be open to the public.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) joint notice, issued on Monday, asks local authorities to put together construction plans for highway service areas and prioritize the ones that see 40% or more usage during holiday travel rushes.
The NDRC notes that China’s ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure needs upgrading as more 800V EVs hit the road. Those high-voltage platforms can handle super-fast charging in as little as 10 to 30 minutes, but only if the charging hardware is up to speed.
China had 31.4 million EVs on the road at the end of 2024 – nearly 9% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. But charging access is still catching up. As of May 2025, there were 14.4 million charging points, or roughly 1 for every 2.2 EVs.
To keep the grid running smoothly, China wants new chargers to be smart, with dynamic pricing to incentivize off-peak charging and solar and storage to power the charging stations.
To make the business side work, the government is pushing for 10-year leases for charging station operators, and it’s backing the buildout with local government bonds.
The NDRC emphasized that the DC fast chargers built will be open to the public. This is a big deal because a lot of fast chargers in China aren’t. For example, BYD’s new megawatt chargers aren’t open to third-party vehicles.
As of September 2024, China had expanded its charging infrastructure to 11.4 million EV chargers, but only 3.3 million were public.
Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles
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Tesla is starting to experience some consequences for misleading Full Self Driving customers – at least that’s the finding of one arbitration ruling that has Tesla refunding one customer $10,000 plus legal fees for failing to deliver on their promises. Find out more on today’s legally challenging episode of Quick Charge!
An arbitration “court” found that Tesla misled customers with its Full Self Driving product, and has now been forced to refund at least one person’s $10,000 payment (plus legal fees) for the not-quite autonomous driving software. France, too, is piling on claims of deceptive business practices – but there’s some good news for FSD fans! If you’re still willing to pay for it, Tesla will thrown in 0% financing on a brand new Cybertruck.
Check out the relevant links, below, to learn more.
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