Elon Musk said Tesla will unveil the next-generation Tesla Roadster by the end of the month, setting a fresh deadline for a car that has been teased, delayed and redrawn for nearly nine years. The vehicle first appeared as a prototype in November 2017, but the production version has yet to reach customers.
Musk did not offer a detailed launch plan, but he did hint that what comes next is not the same car Tesla showed before. He has described the new version as “very different than what we’ve shown previously,” and has also said the reveal will be “a demo,” language that leaves open whether the company is ready to move beyond presentation into manufacturing.
The timing matters because the Roadster has become one of Tesla’s longest-running promises. In 2017, Musk said production would begin in 2020. That deadline slipped to the next 12 to 18 months in July 2020, then to 2022 in January 2021, 2023 by September 2021, 2024 at the May 2023 shareholder meeting, and early 2025 in February 2024. By October 2024, he said production was delayed to 2025-2026, and by November 2025 he said it would not begin until 2027 or 2028.
Tesla’s original pitch was ambitious even by Musk standards. The company said the Roadster would do 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, travel 620 miles on a charge, top out above 250 mph and start at $200,000. It took $50,000 deposits for a standard reservation and $250,000 for one of the first 1,000 Founders Series units, meaning some buyers have had money tied up for years with no car in hand.
There are signs Tesla has not abandoned the program. In October 2025, the company posted a job listing for a Manufacturing Engineer, Roadster, focused on concept development and launch of battery manufacturing equipment. In February 2026, Tesla filed two new trademark applications with the USPTO and patent applications for an integrated single-piece composite seat. One trademark filing showed an updated vehicle silhouette with a sleeker profile and a squarer roofline than the 2017 prototype.
That activity suggests progress, but not a finished product. The filings and the job listing point to early manufacturing work, not a car ready for showrooms. Musk has also kept moving the target in public: in February 2024 he said the production version would be unveiled by the end of that year and deliveries would start in early 2025, while also raising the design goal to 0-60 mph in under one second and reviving talk of a SpaceX package first announced in 2018 that would reportedly include roughly 10 small cold-air rocket thrusters.
The Roadster has survived as both a symbol and a delay machine. If Tesla shows a credible production version by month’s end, it will be the clearest sign yet that the long-promised car is moving out of the realm of demos and into the factory pipeline. If not, the gap between Musk’s timeline and reality will only widen further.
