The head of vehicle engineering at Tesla says the US automaker’s long-awaited Roadster performance flagship, unveiled in concept form back in November 2017, hasn’t been cancelled and that it will be “the last best driver’s car” when it eventually arrives in showrooms.
When it was revealed almost eight years ago, the two-seat electric sports car was claimed to offer 0-60mph (97km/h) acceleration in just 2.1 seconds, a stratospheric 400km/h top speed and a long 1000km driving range.
The Roadster’s price on Tesla’s website remains $US66,000 ($A101,352) and the company has taken $US50,000 ($A76,782) deposits since 2020, the year production was originally scheduled to start.
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But the American EV-maker is yet to unveil a final showroom version of the Roadster, or confirm timing for the launch of the production version, let alone when or indeed whether it will become available in Australia.
Now, Tesla’s engineering chief Lars Moravy says the Roadster is still on the way and development is continuing.
“We spent a lot of time in the last few years rethinking what we did, and why we did it, and what would make an awesome and exciting last best driver’s car,” Moravy said in Tesla’s takeover of social media platform X.
“We’ve been making it better and better, and it is even a little bit more than a car. We showed [Tesla CEO] Elon [Musk] some cool demos last week and tech we’ve been working on, and he got a little excited.”
Mr Moravy’s “more than a car” comment could reference Mr Musk’s 2018 statement claiming “The new Tesla Roadster can fly”.
No firm launch timing or technical details were offered, but to become the world’s quickest and fastest EV the Tesla Roadster would have to topple the Aspark Owl SP600 – a Japanese EV with record-setting 0-97km/h time of 1.74 seconds and a verified top speed of 439km/h.
The Owl was shown as a concept in 2017 – the same year as the Tesla Roadster – and entered production in 2020, before its gob-smacking performance earned it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2024.
The same year, Mr Musk said the Tesla Roadster would accelerate from 0-97km/h in less than 1.0 second, although the company’s website still quotes the previous 2.1-second figure.
There’s also the Rimac Nevera, a quad-motor electric hypercar that makes 1570kW and has a top speed of 412km/h, which set EV records at tracks including the famous Nurburgring in Germany.
Chinese brands are also getting into the electric hypercar battle, with the Yangwang U9 – a quad-motor EV made by BYD – boasting 960kW, a 0-100km/h time of 2.36 seconds and a 392km/h top speed.
Earlier this month, GWM showed the silhouette of a new sports car it has in the works. It claims it will be “better than a Ferrari” and the unnamed model could employ a plug-in hybrid powertrain.
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