Musk thanks “long-suffering” Roadster deposit holders, confirms it’s not a priority

Elon Musk has thanked “long-suffering” deposit holders of the long-awaited Tesla Roadster but confirmed the 250mph electric supercar is not a priority for the electric car company.

Speaking on an investors call, Musk said that while “fun things” were happening with the Roadster – a car Tesla claims will be able to accelerate from 0-60mph in under one second – it needs to come after other projects have been realised.

“I’d just like to thank our long-suffering deposit holders of the Tesla Roadster,” Musk said of customers who originally paid a $50,000 deposit when the car was revealed. “The reason it hasn’t come out yet is because the Roadster is not just the icing on the cake, it’s the cherry on the icing on the cake.

“And so our larger mission is to accelerate the progress towards a sustainable energy future. Try to do things that maximise the probability that the future is good for humanity and for Earth. So that necessarily means things like that [the Roadster] are kind of like dessert.

“We’d all love to work on the Tesla Roadster, it is super fun, and we are working on it, but it has to come behind things that have a more serious impact on the good of the world.

“So thank you to all our long-suffering Tesla Roadster deposit holders, we are actually finally making progress on that, and we’re close to finalising the design. It’s really going to be something spectacular.”

The Roadster was first unveiled back in 2017, when Tesla claimed it would accelerate from 0-60mph in 1.9s, 0-100mph in 4.2s, run a quarter mile in 8.8s, top out at 250mph and feature a 620-mile range. Earlier this year that 0-60mph was revised again to less than a second, with a launch pencilled in for 2025.

More recently, Musk said customers could “expect some rocket-y stuff” on the Roadster, and on this latest investors call hinted once again at a flying car.

The Roadster’s been subject to a number of delays since that launch of course, as Tesla focused instead on the Model 3, Model Y, Cybertruck, the Optimus robot and the new ‘Cybercab’ autonomous taxi.

Speaking of which, Musk also confirmed there’d be no ‘Model 2’ entry-level Tesla, because that space is occupied by the Cybercab. “We’re not making a non-Robotaxi [$25k model],” Musk said. “We’ve made very clear that the future is autonomous. My strong belief – and I believe that is panning out to be true, it’ll be very obvious in retrospect – is that the future is autonomous electric vehicles.“And non-autonomous gasoline vehicles in the future will be like riding a horse. It’s not that there are no horses, but they’re unusual, they’re niche. So everything’s going to be electric autonomous.

“Having a regular $25k model is pointless. It would be silly. It would be completely at odds with what we believe. If you try to make a car that is essentially a hybrid manual automatic car, it’s not going to be as good as a dedicated autonomous car.

“Cybercab is not going to have steering wheels and pedals. It’s design-optimised for autonomy. It’ll cost roughly 25k so it is a 25k car, and you can buy one and own it exclusively if you want, it just won’t have a steering wheel or pedals.

“You don’t need [them].”