Almost nine years ago, a tanned, relatively well-rested-looking CEO named Elon Musk announced that his electric car company would make a new sports car, the Tesla Roadster 2. It would be “the fastest sports car ever made, period,” Musk said on stage in 2017. “The point of doing this is to give a hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars.” Lights flashed, and the red prototype did a few speedy laps behind him.
Times have changed. Musk is the leading donor to a political party that last year nixed buying incentives for electric vehicles and last month adjusted fuel-economy standards to make it easier for automakers to skip making EVs altogether. Musk has said he’s not even in the business of making cars anymore, instructing investors to think of Tesla as a robotics and autonomy company. On Thursday night, Tesla will host what it has billed as its last unveiling event for a human-driven vehicle. Six years after it was supposed to roll into driveways, the Roadster 2 is finally here. Tesla is slated to start deliveries next year.
“EVs exist today in a massively different environment than when the Roadster was introduced,” says Ed Kim, president of AutoPacific, an automotive research firm. When Tesla announced the car back in 2017, electrics were “toys for early adopters,” he says. By 2020, other automakers saw Tesla’s sky-high valuations and lawmakers’ plans to transition vehicles to batteries and made big electric promises, investing heavily in the shift. China began to dominate EV-making. Now, after the Trump administration reversed the US’s course on the powertrain, EV sales are shrinking, not growing.
Still, lots more options are available now. In 2017, research firm Cox Automotive says, US customers had 15 EVs to choose from; today, that number has jumped to nearly 90. Potential EV buyers are more likely to be normies, and so their needs are more practical. “People are looking for range, performance, charging ability, resale value,” says Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox.
What success looks like for the Roadster, then, is a bit complicated. It’s a hypercar targeted squarely at, well, non-normies—people who like to show off and go very, very fast. Some of them want that signature gasoline-engine power and roar. That’s why some luxury automakers have taken pains to reproduce the sound of a V-8 without one present. And it’s why others—Porsche and Ferrari among them—have said they’ll keep developing gas engines. Lamborghini said earlier this year it would shelve electrics altogether. Even Bugatti’s CEO, who founded his own electric hypercar company, said he expects loud ICE cars to become a status symbol among the wealthiest car buyers.
“EVs in this space really have to wow the shopper with a lot more than practical things,” says Kim. “Great range, really quiet, charging at home—none of that matters.” In 2017, Tesla said the car would start at $200,000; reservation holders put down $50,000 deposits.
In 2017, Musk promised a then-record-breaking sub-2-second 0-to-60 acceleration time. Now that a handful of other production cars have broken that barrier, Tesla will have to meet a high bar. One option: Musk has suggested several times over the years that the new Roadster will fly, and reports suggest that the automaker will get help from Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. (In 2018, SpaceX used its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the first Roadster into space.)
Going that fast “is not terribly comfortable," says Shea Burns, a partner in the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners. “The laws of physics are catching up with them, outside of the rocket piece.” It would be an interesting way for an EV-maker to exit human driving.