What does it say about a car when its CEO tells listeners to walk away if safety comes first?
In a recent appearance on a tech podcast, Elon Musk has made a refreshingly candid positioning statement for the long-awaited next-generation Roadster from Tesla: “Safety is not the prime is not the main goal,” he said, before reiterating the point in more straightforward fashion: “If safety is your number one goal, don’t buy the Roadster.” This is a quote that resonates in part because it goes against the Tesla mainstream brand as EVs sold on software smarts and best-in-class crash test ratings, and in part because the Roadster has been living in a world of promise rather than product for so long.
Musk attempted to put a positive spin on the statement as a true reflection of the supercar mentality: Customers are cross-shopping exotic performance cars with different sets of priorities. He also included a statement that appears to be a minimum viable mission statement: “We’ll aspire not to kill anyone in this car.” On the same breath, he introduced the Roadster as a symbol of the end of an era: “The best of the last of the human-driven cars,” while Tesla is touting autonomy on other models.
This is important because safety engineering for EVs is not a climate; it is a set of trade-offs. The latest EVs come with high-voltage battery packs that are low and wide, and therefore the pack has to be a structural component that can withstand crash loads without being compromised or undergoing thermal runaway. The best practices in the industry are CAE crash simulations, thermal simulations, and protective enclosures that ensure the pack is safe while the passenger compartment handles energy in the right way. The Roadster, on the other hand, has been more of a challenge than a project.
Tesla’s original prototype reveal dates back to 2017, with production delayed multiple times. Musk has most recently announced that it will come out on April 1, 2026, with production set to begin in 2027. This April Fools’ Day release has become part of the narrative in and of itself, particularly in the context of performance plans that have continued to evolve from “fast EV”” into “physics presentation.” But at the core of these rumors is what has come to be known as the SpaceX option package: the idea of using cold gas thrusters powered by high-pressure gas tanks.
A closer examination of the 1.1-second 0-60 mph solution would be a system that might be feasible but cumbersome, with massive compressed gas storage tanks and long refilling times an engineering solution that would transform a road car into something more akin to a protracted demonstration than an actual event.
Even without thrusters, the acceleration would quickly reach the limits of tire grip, and actual acceleration measurements may differ depending on the standards of measurement, such as rollout. This is not to say that a high-performance EV cannot be engineered to be safe. It only means that when the main selling point is acceleration, the safety discussion moves from “best-in-class crash structure” to how the batteries, controls, tires, and stability systems interact with each other when pushed to the limits of what road surfaces can withstand. Musk’s own words effectively encapsulate this: The Roadster is being sold as a show of capability first, with safety as a constraint to be managed rather than the organizing principle.
