New Tesla Roadster: Price, Reservations, Specs and When You Can Actually Buy It
- Tesla will unveil the Roadster on 1 October 2026. Its own page is now a countdown and nothing else — no price, no specs, no reserve button.
- The countdown targets about 5:30pm US Pacific on 1 October. That time is our arithmetic from the clock, not something Tesla has written down.
- 🔴 This is a reveal, not a sale. Musk’s own guidance is production 12 to 18 months after the reveal, which is 2027 or 2028.
- Tesla first showed this car in November 2017 and said deliveries would start in 2020. Six years of promised dates have passed.
- Reservations have been $200,000 for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series, which is sold out. Tesla has since removed pricing from its site.
- The deposit is reported two different ways by different sources, and we print both rather than pick one.
- Almost every spec you will see quoted — 1.9 seconds, 620 miles, 200 kWh — comes from the 2017 presentation and has not been reconfirmed.
Tesla will unveil the new Roadster on 1 October 2026. You still will not be able to buy one.
Elon Musk announced the date on 12 September, Tesla posted a teaser captioned “Go for launch”, and the company’s Roadster page turned into a countdown clock. That is genuinely news — this car was first shown in November 2017.
But the event is a reveal, and Tesla’s own guidance puts production a year or more after it.
What happens on 1 October
| Date | Thursday 1 October 2026 |
| Time | About 5:30pm US Pacific — see the note below |
| Where | Expected at SpaceX’s test facility in McGregor, Texas |
| What it is | A reveal and demonstration |
| What it is not | The start of sales or deliveries |
⚠️ The time is our arithmetic, not Tesla’s. We read the countdown on 13 September at 04:08 UTC, showing 18 days, 20 hours and 21 minutes. Added to the read time, that lands on 2 October 00:30 UTC — 1 October, 17:30 Pacific. It landing on a round half-hour suggests the derivation is right, but Tesla has published a date and not a time.
The teaser points at the thrusters. Tesla’s graphic hints at the SpaceX-developed cold gas thrusters that have been part of the Roadster pitch for years, and which are widely reported as the reason for the delays — the system is said to be internally codenamed A71 and not to have been ready.
Tesla’s own page is now just a countdown
We checked it. There is nothing else on it.
No price. No specifications. No reserve button. The page that used to carry the 2017 numbers has been stripped back to a clock.
🔴 That is the most useful single fact on this page. If Tesla itself will no longer stand behind a price or a spec sheet three weeks before the reveal, neither should you — and neither should any article quoting them as current.
Price and reservations
The numbers below are the last ones Tesla published, not the ones it is publishing now.
| Base Roadster | $200,000 |
| Founders Series | $250,000 — 1,000 units, sold out |
| Deposit | $50,000 (but see below) |
| Currently shown on Tesla’s site | Nothing |
⚠️ Two different deposit structures are in print and we are not going to pick one.
- Most coverage: $50,000 total — $5,000 on a card, then $45,000 by wire within ten days.
- Electrek, describing one Founders Series reservation: $5,000 immediately, then $50,000 within ten days, with the balance at delivery.
They may describe different tiers or different eras of the reservation system. Tesla’s page no longer shows either, so there is nothing to check them against.
Reservations have reportedly raised around $250 million. Some coverage suggests a price increase may come with the reveal. That is speculation about an unannounced price and this page is not going to put a number on it.
Getting the deposit back
The documented problem is the process, not the money.
The best-known case is Marques Brownlee, who cancelled a Founders Series reservation after eight years of waiting. Tesla initially refunded $45,000 of his $50,000 deposit and withheld $5,000.
✅ He later said Tesla sent the $5,000 as well. So the deposit was returned in full.
What was not easy was cancelling. By his account there was no cancel button — only a phone number and an email address — and the first representative he reached did not know how to process it. It took repeated calls and arrived as a cheque in the post.
If you are holding a reservation, that is the realistic picture: the money appears to come back, and getting to that point is a phone-call exercise rather than a click.
The specs, and how old they are
🔴 Almost everything you will read about this car’s performance was said in November 2017.
| Claim | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds | 2017 presentation | Not reconfirmed |
| Under 1.0 second with the SpaceX package | Later claims | Not reconfirmed |
| 620 miles of range | 2017 presentation | Not reconfirmed |
| 200 kWh battery | 2017 presentation | Not reconfirmed |
| 250+ mph top speed | 2017 presentation | Not reconfirmed |
| SpaceX cold gas thrusters | Teased again 12 Sep 2026 | The one live thread |
Nine years is a long time in electric cars. A 200 kWh pack and a 620-mile claim were extraordinary in 2017; the engineering, the cell chemistry and the competition have all moved since. Tesla has not restated any of it, and the 1 October event exists precisely to replace these numbers.
Treat any article presenting them as current specifications as recycling a press release from the year the first iPhone X shipped.
Eight promises since 2017
This is the part the question “when can you actually buy it” turns on.
| Announced | Deliveries promised |
|---|---|
| Nov 2017 — prototype shown | 2020 |
| Jul 2020 | “next 12–18 months” |
| Jan 2021 | 2022 |
| Sep 2021 | 2023 |
| May 2023 | 2024 |
| Feb 2024 | Early 2025 |
| Q3 2024 earnings call | 2025–2026 |
| Shareholder meeting | Demo 1 April 2026, production 12–18 months later |
| Apr 2026 | Unveil pushed — “maybe in a month or so” |
| Aug 2026 | Pushed again |
| Sep 2026 | Unveil 1 October; production still 12–18 months out |
⚠️ One row is uncertain. Coverage places the shareholder meeting that set the 1 April 2026 demo at either November 2024 or November 2025. We could not resolve which, so the year is left off rather than guessed.
So when can you actually buy one?
Nobody can tell you, including Tesla.
Here is what the published record supports. The reveal is 1 October 2026. Musk’s own stated pattern is production beginning 12 to 18 months after the reveal. That arithmetic gives late 2027 at the earliest, and 2028 more realistically — and it is the same arithmetic that has produced a wrong answer every year since 2017.
What would make the 2027–28 estimate credible is the thing the delays have been blamed on: the cold gas thruster system being finished. The 12 September teaser pointing at the thrusters is a signal on that, and the demonstration on 1 October is where it either works in public or does not.
🔴 What nobody can honestly give you is a delivery date. Not us, and on the evidence of the table above, not Tesla either. If you see a confident month attached to this car, check which year it was written.
The bottom line
1 October is worth watching. It is not worth planning a purchase around.
Tesla has removed its own price and specifications from its own page, which tells you what it thinks of the 2017 numbers. A $50,000 deposit currently buys a place in a queue that has been nine years long, and the money does appear to come back if you ask persistently.
The interesting question on 1 October is not the price. It is whether the thrusters work.
Tesla’s countdown was read directly on 13 September 2026. Price, deposit and specification figures are the last published ones and are labelled with their vintage. This page contains no commentary on Tesla’s share price.