Tesla’s chief designer says the new Roadster is coming “very soon.” We are talking about the same car Tesla revealed in 2017 and promised to build by 2020.
Franz von Holzhausen said it on the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. When Leno pressed him on it, he doubled down: “very soon.” Leno’s deadpan reply, “10 years… just shy of 10 years,” said the rest.
What Franz actually said
The exchange was short. As the episode wrapped, Leno said he was “eagerly anticipating the arrival of the new Roadster.” Von Holzhausen answered, “Yes, very soon.” Leno, clearly skeptical, asked again: “Very soon?” Same answer: “Very soon.”
That’s the whole of it. No date, no specs, no new detail. Just “very soon” from the man who’s run Tesla design for coming up on 18 years.
And there’s some irony in where he said it. Von Holzhausen wasn’t on the show to talk Tesla. He was there showing off his 400-horsepower V8-swapped Pontiac Solstice, a gas car he designed at GM two decades ago. “I’m a Tesla guy, but the sound sounds pretty good,” he told Leno.
We’ve heard ‘very soon’ before
Here’s why Leno laughed. The next-gen Roadster has been “coming” for almost nine years, and Tesla has moved the goalpost at nearly every turn.
Tesla unveiled the prototype in November 2017 with production promised for 2020. Then it slipped to “12-18 months” out, to 2022, to 2023, to 2024. In February 2024, Musk promised a production unveil by year-end with deliveries in early 2025. None of it happened.
Last November, Musk set a demo date of April 1, 2026 (April Fools’ Day), a date he admitted gave him “deniability.” That moved to “late April,” then to “a month or so” on the Q1 earnings call, then to August.
We are now in August, and even if this latest “very soon” turned out to be true, we would only get a demo, the second in a decade. Production would be closer to 2027 or 2028. Call it eight delays and counting.
The rocket thrusters aren’t ready
The current holdup is the SpaceX “cold gas thruster” package Musk has teased for years, internally called “A71.” Tesla and SpaceX showed Musk an early prototype in late April, and it still wasn’t ready for a public showcase, so the reveal slipped to August. We’re in August now. It hasn’t happened.
The original pitch was a 0-60 mph time of 1.9 seconds, a 250-mph top speed, and 620 miles of range, starting at $200,000. Founders Series reservation holders put down $250,000 nearly a decade ago. They’re still waiting.
Electrek’s Take
To be fair to Franz, he’s a designer, not the guy who sets production timelines, and “very soon” on a talk show isn’t a Tesla press release. But that’s the point. “Very soon” is all anyone at Tesla ever offers on the Roadster, and it’s become the punchline. Leno didn’t even have to make the joke. He just repeated the timeline back and let it hang.
The most frustrating part is that I believe that Tesla will actually unveil an updated version of the Roadster, but I think it will use that demo to stall for another few years, if not forever, in delivering the vehicle, which is promised to hundreds of long-time Tesla supporters.
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