New Tesla Roadster: Price, Reservations, Specs and When You Can Actually Buy It
Update log (1)
- — Two sentences on this page had become false and are the reason for this rewrite. It said Tesla's Roadster page carried no reserve button and that Tesla had removed pricing from its site. Reservations reopened on 19 September: tesla.com/roadster now carries a Reserve Now link alongside the countdown, and tesla.com/roadster/reserve states the terms in Tesla's own words — $5,000 by card today, $45,000 by wire within ten days, fully refundable, and not final until the wire arrives. That also settles something this page deliberately left open. It had two incompatible deposit structures in print and refused to choose between them because Tesla's own page showed neither; Tesla's page now shows one, and it is the $5,000-plus-$45,000 version. Three things are new rather than corrected: the venue is Waco, Texas, next to SpaceX's McGregor engine test site, with an FAA temporary flight restriction of about 1.5 miles and a 10,000-foot ceiling running to 2 October; the invitations are non-transferable and go only to reservation holders; and the countdown was read again and re-derived from scratch, landing on exactly 2 October 00:30:00 UTC. The page's 1 October perish date and its instruction to rewrite rather than patch after the reveal both stand.
Tesla unveils the Roadster on 1 October 2026 in Waco, Texas. Its countdown targets 2 October 00:30:00 UTC, which is 19:30 local. Everything on this page about the car’s price, specs and availability is pre-reveal and is superseded that evening — most of the figures in circulation date from 2017 and the event exists to replace them. The reservation terms may survive the reveal; the car’s numbers will not. Rewrite on 2 October, do not patch.
Everything else on the page is unaffected; the figures below still say when they were read.
- Reservations reopened on 19 September 2026. Tesla’s own page states the terms: $5,000 by card today, $45,000 by wire within ten days, fully refundable, and not final until the wire arrives.
- Tesla will unveil the Roadster on 1 October 2026 in Waco, Texas, next to SpaceX’s McGregor engine test site. The FAA has closed the airspace above it until 2 October.
- The countdown targets 2 October 00:30 UTC exactly — 8:30pm Eastern, 7:30pm in Waco itself, 5:30pm Pacific. Waco is on Central time, so the figure being reported as the start time is an hour later than the local clock will say.
- 🔴 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.
- Car prices have been $200,000 for the base Roadster and $250,000 for the Founders Series, which is sold out. Those are 2017-era figures and Tesla still does not publish a car price — what it now publishes is the deposit.
- This page previously carried two incompatible versions of the deposit and refused to pick one. Tesla’s own reservation page has now settled it.
- 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. Then, on 19 September, a Reserve Now button appeared beside the clock and the reservation page came back with its terms written out. 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 reopened is the queue, not the sale.
What happens on 1 October
| Date | Thursday 1 October 2026 |
| Time | 2 October 00:30 UTC — see the table below |
| Where | Waco, Texas, beside SpaceX’s McGregor engine test site |
| Who can attend | Reservation holders only; invitations are non-transferable |
| What it is | A reveal and demonstration |
| What it is not | The start of sales or deliveries |
What time does the Roadster event start?
We read Tesla’s countdown twice, four seconds apart, and it resolves to a single instant. At 07:37:30 UTC on 20 September it showed 11 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes and 30 seconds. Added to the read time that gives 2 October 2026, 00:30:00 UTC — to the second, on a round half-hour, which is what you would expect a real target to look like.
| Where | Local clock |
|---|---|
| Waco, Texas (Central) | 7:30pm, 1 October |
| US Eastern | 8:30pm, 1 October |
| US Pacific | 5:30pm, 1 October |
| UTC | 00:30, 2 October |
🔴 If you are going, note which time zone the coverage is quoting. Reports giving the start as “8:30pm” are on Eastern time. Waco is on Central time, an hour behind that. Turn up for an 8:30 start in Waco and the event began an hour earlier.
✅ This is the second independent derivation and it agrees with the first. When this page was written on 13 September the countdown read 18 days, 20 hours and 21 minutes at 04:08 UTC, which pointed at the same 2 October 00:30 UTC. Seven days of the clock running down have not moved the target. Tesla still has not published a time in words — every figure in the table above is arithmetic from Tesla’s own clock.
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.
The venue points the same way, and so does the airspace above it. Waco is about twenty minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor site, where SpaceX has tested rocket engines for two decades — not an obvious place to show a car unless the car is going to do something a car does not normally do. The FAA has a temporary flight restriction over McGregor running until 2 October, reported at roughly a 1.5-mile radius and a ceiling near 10,000 feet, which keeps drones and low aircraft out of the ring around the site. None of that confirms what will be demonstrated. It does tell you Tesla expects something worth closing the sky for.
Can you reserve a Tesla Roadster right now?
Yes. Reservations reopened on 19 September 2026, and Tesla publishes the terms itself.
This section previously said the opposite, because on 13 September it was true: the Roadster page had been stripped back to a clock with no price, no specifications and no reserve button. A Reserve Now button now sits beside that same clock, and it leads to a page that spells out what the money is.
Tesla’s own wording on tesla.com/roadster/reserve: “Roadster reservations require an initial $5,000 credit card payment, plus a $45,000 wire transfer payment due in 10 days. Reservations are not final until the wire transfer payment is received.”
| Due today, by card | $5,000 |
| Due within 10 days, by wire | $45,000 |
| Total to hold a place | $50,000 |
| Tesla’s own label on it | Fully refundable |
| When it becomes a reservation | Only when the wire arrives |
🔴 Notice what is still missing. Tesla publishes the deposit and does not publish the car. There is no price, no specification sheet and no delivery estimate anywhere on either page — you are being asked for $50,000 to hold a position in a queue for a product whose numbers the company will not yet stand behind. That was the most useful single fact on this page a week ago and it still is. The reveal on 1 October is where the other half is supposed to arrive.
This settles the deposit question this page refused to answer
Two incompatible versions were in print and we declined to choose. Tesla has now chosen.
The earlier version of this page set out both: most coverage described $50,000 total as $5,000 on a card plus $45,000 by wire, while Electrek’s account of one Founders Series reservation described $5,000 immediately and then a further $50,000. We printed both and said there was nothing to check them against, because Tesla’s page showed neither.
It shows one now, and it is the first version: $5,000 plus $45,000, totalling $50,000. The figure was read from Tesla’s live reservation page rather than from an article describing it.
⚠️ One caveat on how far that goes. This resolves what Tesla is charging today, for the reservation now on sale. It does not retroactively settle what a Founders Series reservation cost in 2017, which is what Electrek was describing. The two accounts may both be right about different things.
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) |
| Car price currently shown by Tesla | Nothing |
| Deposit currently shown by Tesla | $5,000 + $45,000 |
🔴 Read those last two rows together, because that is the whole situation. Tesla is taking $50,000 deposits for a car whose price it does not publish. The $200,000 and $250,000 figures above are the last ones the company put in writing, in an era the 1 October event exists to replace; nothing on tesla.com currently repeats them.
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
This mattered less when nobody could put money down. It matters again now that the button is live.
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 is now taking $50,000 deposits and still publishing no price and no specifications, which tells you what the company thinks of the 2017 numbers. That $50,000 buys a place in a queue that has been nine years long. On the available evidence the money does come back — and getting it back is a phone-call exercise rather than a click.
The interesting question on 1 October is not the price. It is whether the thrusters work.
Tesla’s countdown and reservation terms were read directly from tesla.com on 20 September 2026 at 07:37 UTC. Car price and specification figures are the last ones Tesla published and are labelled with their vintage. This page contains no commentary on Tesla’s share price.