Can Tesla’s New Roadster Live Up to Nearly a Decade of Hype?

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0:34Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, October 15th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. When Tesla unveiled the second generation of its Roadster, CEO Elon Musk made big promises for what it could do on the road. Driving a gasoline sports bar is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of keys. Musk said it could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than two seconds. Its top speed would be more than 250 miles per hour. And the new Roadster would be able to travel more than 600 miles without stopping to recharge. The new Tesla Roadster will be the fastest production car ever made, period.

1:13Well, that announcement was in 2017. Nine years later, the Roadster is finally coming on the market. But that market looks very different. WSJ Auto's reporter Christopher Otz talked to drivers who have been waiting nearly a decade for the Roadster's launch. He joins us now. Chris, Musk originally said the car was going to go into production back in 2020. Why all the delays? Tesla hasn't exactly said precisely why, but what various people who used to work there and analysts have said is they were focused on other things. For example, the development of the Cybertruck, which is currently their most expensive sort of halo product.

1:57And the Roadster continually was pushed back. And remember, this was also the COVID period as well. It was supposed to start production in 2020. And we know what a chaotic year that was. At the same time, you know, over all these years, Tesla has accepted reservations for the supercar. off and on since that first announcement. You spoke to some of the people who've been waiting for all this time. How are the Roadster faithful feeling right now? They are eagerly anticipating what will be shown. They have been waiting a long time with very little official communication about what the deal is. So they fall into two buckets.

2:38First, there are people who have paid$50 ,000 to get in line to buy a garden variety Roadster, whatever that will look like. And then there's a thousand places for what Tesla calls the Founders Series Roadster. These people have paid$250 ,000, some as far back as late 2017 to be able to buy one of these cars. So when you think about it, those Founders Series Roadster reservation holders are really in the car for more like$850 ,000 by this time. If you consider they could have just put that quarter million dollars in an S &P 500 and what would it be today? Yeah. Did everyone stick around for all this time?

3:25Not everyone stuck around. I talked to one reservation holder who, after about five months of back and forth with Tesla was able to get a refund of his$50 ,000. We also know that Sam Altman, who's had his beefs with Elon, had a reservation and was also refunded after he said, you know, I'm sure this car is great, but seven and a half years is a long time to wait. So not everyone has stuck with it. And how much is the final car going to cost? Nobody knows that Tesla has not announced the pricing for the vehicle. One Founders Series reservation holder I spoke with said that he hopes that his$250 ,000 would cover it.

4:14But I think the conventional wisdom is that it is going to be more expensive than that. How will the actual Roadster 2.0 compare to what we saw on Tesla's stage back in 2017? This is another unanswered question. We know that they're not in mass production yet. So that's another question is exactly when will the car start being built in the factory and delivered to customers. Over the years, Elon has sort of upped the ante. He's talked about adding rocket thrusters to it. He's suggested that it could fly or hover in some way. There's an integration with Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, that's at work here.

4:58So it's going to be really interesting to see what is revealed today and whether it has been worth the wait and lives up to the hype. I mean, some of the specs that Musk talked about back in 2017, you know, going from zero to 60 miles an hour and two seconds, more than 250 miles top speed. How do those specs compare to other cars in this category? There are other vehicles in this performance category that can achieve acceleration of 0 to 60, less than two seconds. Tesla's Model S Plaid can get there, according to the company. I believe that's 1.9 seconds. There are a few other European vehicles that can do that.

5:40Even Formula One cars are accelerated about two and a half seconds or so. So it's not something that is very common, but not impossible from an engineering standpoint. However, another way that Elon has upped the ante is once on Twitter, he said that it could go zero to 60 in less than a second, which would really be something. And it'd be interesting to see if Tesla can achieve that. How long would you wait for your dream car? If you're a listener on Spotify, let us know in the comments. Coming up, how much has the EV market changed since Tesla first announced the new Roadster? That's after the break.

6:23Weren't agents supposed to take things off your plate? Building another to handle the others is a bit much. Don't make more work out of work. Gemini is one agent that knows all parts of your business and actually gets stuff done. You give it a project, close your laptop, and when you come back, the job's finished. No matter your industry or role, your agent has the skills to help every team stay in their flow. Seriously. Make work less work with Gemini on Google Cloud. Check response. Subscription required.

6:59Welcome back. We've been talking about Tesla's new Roadster EV, which is finally coming out today, nine years after it was announced. Chris, what about other electric cars that have come on the market in the years since? How will this compare to those? We've certainly seen a lot more electric vehicles enter the market since 2017, no doubt. I don't know if there is really a comparison sort of performance halo vehicle. We've seen Porsche enter the market. But this Roadster, with the specs that Tesla is talking about, is really going to be a car of its own if and when it is produced. And is this now going to be just for the Tesla super fans at this point?

7:44Or is there a larger customer base for this car? Obviously, the customer base is going to be pretty limited anytime you're talking about a car that is that expensive. GM has a custom built vehicle called Celestic that is in the$300 ,000 range, and they only build those to order for a very small number of customers. Tesla obviously is going to have customers in the thousands for the Roadster, but there's not a lot of people who can afford that. All that said, it doesn't mean that it won't be a material business for Tesla. A former Tesla president who I spoke with for the story noted that Ferrari makes a lot of money selling not a lot of cars for very high prices.

8:36What's interesting here is that Tesla has been de-emphasizing its core auto business for a few years now, pivoting to AI and robotics as the future of the company. The new Roadster maybe represents a sort of swan song for Tesla's auto business in that it may be the last new model car that the company develops. And so it would be a fitting way to close out the traditional auto business with something that is this special. But at the same time, I mean, it's not like you put out an entirely new model like this just for kicks. What are Tesla and Elon Musk hoping to get out of this? It seems that they are hoping to prove their engineering mettle with this car.

9:26Elon, in every instance, has seemed to really focus on the products and what can be achieved and how unique they are or how differentiated they are from what else is on the market in the auto industry. And another motivation is that they've taken deposits for it for a long time. They announced it a long time ago. So there's probably a reluctance to walk away from this program or just kill it entirely more so than maybe some of the other ideas that they've pursued over the years and not come forward with. So, you know, some of it is just following through. So how much are you expecting your phone to be blowing up from all these long waiting Roadster fans?

10:12Well, I'm glad that I've connected with a few of them, at least, because in true Tesla style, the media is not getting an invite to the event. I hope there'll be a live stream of it, but it's going to be nice to have some eyes and ears in the room there. And I know some of them will be posting on X and other places as to what they can see. So, you know, it's long anticipated and it is going to be very interesting to see what's revealed. That was Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Otts. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by me, with supervising producer Katie Ferguson.

10:53I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode. Thanks for listening.

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