Eight years is a long time to wait for a car long enough for an entire EV generation to come, peak, and go yet that’s exactly how long Marques Brownlee, or MKBHD as he’s known, maintained one of his Tesla Roadster holds before he finally canceled. What started in 2017 with a $50,000 deposit for what Elon Musk described as “the fastest production car ever made” ended up being a protracted cancellation process that exposed as much about Tesla’s production struggles as it did about the car’s engineering aspirations.
Brownlee’s initial orders were two Roadsters: one Founder Series one won for free through Tesla’s referral program, and a second, much cheaper due to saved-up points, purchased with a $5,000 deposit and a $45,000 wire transfer within ten days. The rest taking the total up to around $250,000 would have been paid when the vehicle was delivered. That never happened. The Roadster, which debuted in 2017 with a reported 0–60 mph time of 1.9 seconds, 620-mile range, and over 250 mph top speed, has been pushed repeatedly beyond its initial 2020 production estimate.
Tesla’s website still boasts the $50,000 reservation model, but the vehicle has slipped unobtrusively from the “Vehicles” tab. In earnings disclosures, its status has changed from “in development” to “design development,” a discreet but significant difference. Musk has in turn promised production “next year” and said the Roadster is “the cherry on the icing on the cake” with priority given to other projects. The vice president of engineering at the company, Lars Moravy, has said it is “the last best driver’s car” and hinted at aerospace-inspired technologies such as the optional SpaceX package cold-gas thrusters aimed at enhancing acceleration, braking, and cornering. That model, if it materialized, would require cautious mass delivery and safety concerns, but theoretically could drive acceleration to Musk’s current boast of sub-one-second 0–60 mph.
It was harder to cancel the reservation than it had been to make it. There was no online “cancel” button for Tesla’s other models; Brownlee had to dial a sales hotline, leave voicemails, and work through reps who were not aware of the Roadster program. “There was a pretty long silence, and they were like, ‘A Roadster?'” he remembered. Finally, two weeks later and after multiple calls, Tesla offered to refund the $45,000 wire.
At first, the $5,000 deposit appeared to be gone forever, but Brownlee subsequently confirmed that Tesla refunded that too. The engineering tale behind the delay of the Roadster is complex. Tesla has been working on a bespoke EV platform for it, with an all-wheel-drive configuration and torque vectoring one motor up front, two in the back delivering 7,376 lb-ft of wheel torque. The 200 kWh battery in the prototype, based on Tesla’s new 4680 tabless cell form factor, would enable 350 kW DC charging and possibly wireless charging through a garage-mounted pad. But squeezing such a large pack into a small sports car with weight and performance goals in mind is a daunting task that is made worse by Tesla’s issues getting multiple new cars to market at once.
Over the past five years, the company has managed to release only one all-new model.
Financially, the delay had a stark opportunity cost. In an interview on Brownlee’s “Waveform Podcast,” co-host Andrew Manganelli estimated that if the $50,000 deposit in 2017 had been put into Tesla shares, it would today be worth $747,000. That statistic highlights the disconnect between Tesla’s stock-market performance and its production timelines for halo models like the Roadster.
Brownlee maintains the free Founder Series reservation, one of only 1,000 units planned, but his optimism is measured. The Roadster has been a joke among Tesla observers, with occasional hints from Musk or chief designer Franz von Holzhausen providing no fixed timelines. In the meanwhile, rivals like the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore and the forthcoming Polestar 6 are progressing towards production, setting Tesla’s long-hypothesized supercar up for embarrassment. For the time being, the Roadster is an intriguing combination of record-breaking performance figures, aerospace-like engineering, and slippery timelines a car worth waiting eight years to axe, in Brownlee’s estimation.
