Tesla’s next Roadster is back in the spotlight, and this time the headline is bigger than another delayed launch promise: Elon Musk says it will be the company’s last car with manual control. He also says the long-awaited model could be shown in about a month, though the usual Tesla asterisk applies – there is still plenty of testing left before anything public and cleanly demo-ready.
The Tesla Roadster has become less of a car announcement and more of a rolling statement about where Tesla thinks driving is headed. If the company really does retire manual control with this model, it would turn the Roadster into a bridge between the old-school sports car playbook and the autonomous future Tesla keeps selling. That is a neat piece of branding, even if the customer experience still has to catch up.
What Musk said about the new Tesla Roadster
During Tesla’s first-quarter 2026 results call on 22 April, Musk said the new Roadster would be the only manual car in Tesla’s long-term lineup. He added that it may be unveiled in about a month, while warning that the company needs more testing before any demonstration.
That timeline is classic Tesla: ambitious, slippery, and just vague enough to keep fans waiting. Roadster reservations have already stretched for years, and a fresh tease is unlikely to calm anyone who has been holding a deposit since 2017.
SpaceX-style speed claims are still attached
The most eye-catching claim remains the same one that has hovered over this project for years: possible SpaceX rocket technology that could help the car hit 100 km/h in 1.1 seconds. Tesla has not exactly been shy about making the Roadster sound absurd in the best possible way, and that is part of the appeal.
- Claimed 0-100 km/h time: 1.1 s
- Starting price: 200,000 dollars
- Founders Series deposit: 250,000 dollars
Musk once went even further in a 2021 interview with Joe Rogan, saying he wanted the car to hover. That is either glorious overreach or the most on-brand Tesla joke ever delivered with a straight face.
A decade of waiting has already been built in
The uncomfortable part is not the hype. It is the calendar. Some reservation holders paid their deposits in 2017 and are still waiting, which puts the Roadster in rare company even by Tesla standards. Production is now expected to start no earlier than 2027 or 2028, so the car remains both Tesla’s boldest promise and one of its longest-running delays.
That gives Tesla a strange problem and a useful one. The Roadster keeps the company’s performance mystique alive, but every new tease also reminds buyers that the company’s moonshot products can take forever to arrive. The next reveal will likely be less about a spec sheet than about whether Tesla can finally turn a legend into a real car.