We sat down tonight to watch Tesla show off the new Roadster with the kind of hope you keep for an old friend coming home after a long time away. By the end of it we were turning to one another and asking the same thing, over and over. "Why?"
Nobody could say it was dull. The car drove up a wall and stayed there, pinned to it by its own suction. Then it drove upside down, the fans underneath holding it to the surface as if gravity had taken the night off. Then it drove off the end, the rocket thrusters fired, and it flipped itself over and landed the right way up. It was a spectacle, and we will not pretend otherwise. We sat up straight for the whole of it.
That was only the first act. For the second, the car took a run at a row of Tesla's own vehicles, the Semi truck among them, and jumped clean over the lot, flipping as it went before it came back down on its wheels. As far as we could tell there was nobody inside, and we were glad of it. A person strapped into that seat would very likely have been hurt, or at the very least walked away with whiplash.
But a spectacle is not the same thing as a reason. When it was over, what we had seen was a dog and pony show for a feature that almost nobody who buys this car will ever use. We have tried, honestly, to picture the day an owner needs to drive across a ceiling, and we cannot find one. Nobody we know wants to be sitting inside a car while it hangs upside down at speed, never mind while it throws itself off a ramp and turns over in the air. In our honest opinion, there is no practical way to use it at all.
So why do it? Perhaps because they could. Perhaps because no one had ever done it before, and Elon Musk has never been able to resist being first at something outlandish. That makes for a good evening on a screen. It does not make the car any better to own.
The shape we fell for is gone
What bothered us more than the stunts was the car itself. The Roadster that people put their money down on years ago was all long curves, a low and lovely thing that looked like nothing else on the road. The car Tesla showed tonight does not look anything like it. It is a white wedge of flat panels and hard creases, with a long glass roof, a nose that comes to a blunt edge and two small triangles for headlights. From the side it looks more like a cousin of the Cybertruck than the car we remember, and for us that change was a real letdown. We kept waiting for the camera to find the car we remembered, and it never did.
The back end is where the rockets live, and it shows. A wing nearly as wide as the car rises up on struts, and four round nozzles sit in a row under the bumper where you might expect exhaust pipes. It is dramatic, there is no question about that. It is also a reminder of what this car was built to do on a stage, rather than on the road home.
Inside, it was the same story. Where we had hoped to find the curved screen we remembered from the first reveal, we found a flat rectangle standing up from the dash like a tablet propped on a stand, and in front of it a squared off steering yoke. On paper that is a small thing. Sitting behind it every day, it would not feel small at all.
What it costs, so far
Tesla has not put a price on the car yet. What it has put up is a reservation page, and the reservation alone tells you plenty. Musk said production starts in 2028, and then he said it again, as if to make sure we heard him, that he really means 2028 this time.
The order page offers three versions. The Performance car comes first, described as road ready with seating for two, with active aero and what Tesla calls a multi mode suction system. Holding one costs $7,000 today, which Tesla says is fully refundable, and another $63,000 within ten days. That is $70,000 down on a car with no price.
Then come what Tesla calls the augments. The Thrust version adds the acceleration thrusters to all of that and is billed as race ready. It is limited to one order per customer, and holding one costs $7,000 today and another $343,000 within ten days, for $350,000 in all, again before anyone knows what the car itself will cost. Above that sits the Rocket, air ready with seating for one and what Tesla calls a full flight system. It is by invitation only, and there is no figure on the page at all.
The car we would actually order
Here is the good news, and it took a closer look at that order page to find it. The car we were hoping for may already be on the list. The Performance model leaves the rockets out and keeps the suction system, and that is the part of tonight's show a driver could actually use. Fans that hold a car to the road are a fine idea when the road is a fast corner rather than a wall, and that is something you would feel every time you took one.
What it does not do is look like the original, and we still wish it did. Give us that Performance car in something closer to the old curves, at a price that makes sense once Tesla finally names one, and we would place our order without a second thought. For now, we will settle for hoping.
The questions nobody answered
Tesla told us when. It did not tell us much else, and some of what it left out matters every bit as much as the date.
Start with the people who believed first. Plenty of buyers put money down on the original Roadster years ago, some of them a great deal of money, for a car that looked nothing like this one. What happens to them now? Do their old deposits carry over to the new car at the old price, or will they be asked to pay more for a car they never ordered? Nobody on stage said, and those buyers deserve to hear it before anyone else does.
And what of the owners who were promised a free Roadster for bringing in new buyers, the referral promotion Musk ran to drive sales? Under its rules, an owner who brought in around fifty buyers earned a free Founders Series Roadster, and by the time Tesla ended the program in early 2019, more than 80 of the cars had been promised. Among them was Electrek's own editor, Fred Lambert, who brought in 69 buyers and earned one. Are those owners getting the car they signed up for, the one with the curves, or the new basic design? They earned those cars, and they deserve a straight answer too.
Then there is the price itself, or rather the lack of one. Today it takes $350,000 to hold a Thrust car, and production is two years away. In two years almost everything will cost more than it does now, because nothing is getting cheaper, not steel, not batteries and not the people who build the cars. Will $350,000 still be the number in 2028, or is it only the opening figure for a price Tesla names later? Buyers are being asked to commit to a sum that may not be the final one, and they have no way of knowing.
Then ask who is going to insure the thing, and at what cost. An insurer looking at a car that climbs walls, drives upside down and fires rockets is not going to quote the same rate as a Model 3, and for the Rocket version, with its full flight system, we would not like to guess. At that point you might as well buy a plane, if you can afford one. That is likely why Tesla has to invite you to buy the flight version in the first place.
We doubt it will be a big seller. There will surely be a sheikh in Dubai who can afford several, and we suspect he will not be held to one. But a car that only a handful of people on earth can buy, insure and find a use for is a showpiece, not a product.
And then the date. Musk said 2028, and then said it again so that we would believe him. We would like to. But this car has had promised dates before, so we will put the question the only way that seems to matter now. Will it be ready in 2028 for real, for real?
Where that leaves us
We were sold the first time around. Tonight, not so much. First impressions have been wrong before, and cars that looked odd on a stage have grown on people once they were out on the street. We hope that happens here, and we would be glad to change our minds. For now, we are disappointed.
There are a great many questions here, and we will be looking for the answers. When we find them, you will read them here first.
That's wattsup, and here's wattsnext.
Sources
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