I maintain that the entire event was to create a trail of evidence that justifies merging Tesla and SpaceX. No car will ever ship.
You can hear it in the voices of the creators, when they're giving an overview of the car to MotorWeek and other car media outlets. 99% focused on the rocket and battery tech/innovation, almost zero about the actual driving characteristics of the car, or that it -is- a car. Seems more like a rolling marketing mule.
The specs of the base (non-rocket-powered) car are pretty mediocre: RWD-only with 320 mile range. That's not terribly impressive in 2026, by 2028 it will be obsolete on delivery. The styling can charitably be described as generic. I agree, I don't think they have any intention of making this car.
To be fair the claimed ~1.6sec 0-60 acceleration speed is impressive - this is the benefit of electric - although if you have enough money you can already do that today in the way sexier looking Rimac Nevera R.
I guess you could rent a trace track to give it a try, but yeah ... Supercars are more for posing than being very practical. Bughatti Veyron tire life at top speed is 15 MINUTES.
You're right, this is a very fair point. But if you had a choice between two sports cars with similar performance specs and one had 400+ mile range, you'd probably be inclined to take that one, all else being equal. This is a highly optimized version of older battery technology, which will be even older by the time it goes to production; you'd think that a car with a rocket option would also include a cutting edge battery.
The original 2nd-gen Roadster reveal claimed a 200kwh battery pack and 600+ miles of range. There were analysts arguing at the time that the state of the art in battery tech could not possibly allow for that much capacity in that size car. This smacks of the same BS that happened with the Cybertruck — the originally announced range/pricing was far, far better than what actually shipped.
There should be legal investigations into this practice, because it’s extremely deceptive.
In a contemporary interview with Marques Brownlee, Musk said they didn’t currently have the technology and the specs were an extrapolation for what they expected to be available on release.
> In a contemporary interview with Marques Brownlee, Musk said they didn’t currently have the technology and the specs were an extrapolation for what they expected to be available on release.
That’s even worse then, because it was supposed to be released by 2020. Here we are in 2026 and I still don’t think it’s possible to cram 200kwh into a sports car. I take this as an admission straight from the horse’s mouth that either: 1) they were lying and had no intention of shipping the car as specified when it was announced, or 2) they’re completely inept at making predictions about the trajectory of technology core to their products. Both are extremely bad.
The first (much nicer looking!) Roadster Version 2 prototype was announced ~10 years ago (2017), and was never released, and has now been replaced with this, so it's a matter of faith to say it'll ever be released. It'd never sell in sufficient numbers to move the needle for Tesla, probably not even sufficient to recoup development costs.
Note that the only version of the car that could conceivably be street legal is the base one with downforce fan only, and no cold thruster launch (boost) - NTSB is never going to approve throwing out a condensation cloud smokescreen on the highway!
The "other side of that bet" would be betting that ordinary consumers will be driving it in 2028, which is what Elon claimed. A lot can happen in ten years---if Tesla ends up selling a clean-sheet sports car called something else by 2036, would that still count? Or are we talking about this specific model with these specs?
> if Tesla ends up selling a clean-sheet sports car called something else by 2036, would that still count? Or are we talking about this specific model with these specs?
Yes, and note that this has already happened: the original Roadster v2 from 2017 never shipped and was replaced with this one.
$250k USD invested today is ~$400k to ~$600k in 2036.
And that $50k deposit made 9 years ago? That could have been nearly $300k in 2036.
"A fool and his money..."
I don't have any particular problem with a modest (a few 10s of thousands) deposit on a ~3 year timeline that's reasonably confident. But six figures on a 100% speculative consumer good (ie not even remotely an investment)? Oof, no thanks.
Did we invent a new logical fallacy? If you believed that you'd bet money on it and since you aren't betting money on it then your argument is invalid!
If you mean one that can do the stunts from the demo I'm in, but not for $10k: that's more than I'm willing to bet with people I don't know. How about $100, since most of the point of a bet is formalizing a disagreement and showing that you're serious?
So, this new promise negates the original 3-year delivery timeline promised in 2017? That timeline, taken alongside Musk's recent "we're no longer a car company" statements is... well, you do you, I guess, but I'm not in the business having handing piles of cash to a billionaire.
As much as I dislike Tesla, a lot of this feels like pretty standard legalize that would be in most reservation or pre-order documents to protect the company. Can anyone speak to if this is truly unique for in this case?
If there's anything we've learned in the US in the past ten years, is that this new breed of corporations and government officials will gladly take the "standard" set of rules that everyone has been operating in in good faith and exploit the gaps as hard as humanly possible.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, no one has taken delivery of the Roadster announced 9 years ago; all of your examples are cars having more demand than supply (and in the case of the Trabant and the Lada, fewer years); as for the Morgan Plus 8, Morgan make a deliberate choice to keep the production figures where they were, despite the high demand. The key difference seems to be between little supply (your examples) and no supply.
Usually, if you had been unable to deliver a product in that time, it's probably about time to cancel it. Of course, I may be wrong, but my understanding is that 9-year-ago-announced Roadster has not been cancelled, and people have not been refunded.
Gotcha, essentially, unique in that the supply has remained zero, and no fulfilled orders/deliveries thus far, despite a nine year duration between initial announcement and the current date. I guess if that bothers you, cancel your order and get a refund? MKBHD has reportedly done so and gotten a full refund[0].
> Usually, if you had been unable to deliver a product in that time, it's probably about time to cancel it.
Why? Seems like demand (in this case) is sufficient enough to still launch the product. If a business has the demand for the product and sufficient capital to continue investing in an area they deem to have a viable product, isn't that their prerogative?
Fair, I'll take notion that it's their prerogative. However, my understanding is that it's not trivial to cancel one's order[0], though as both your and my source points out: it is possible, though an unnecessary hassle (particularly for a company that was partially made famous by making ordering their cars so easy).
Fair point. There’s an absolute asymmetry between ease of placing an order and difficulty to cancel it. ISTR Nassim Taleb making a similar point on twitter, alleging he made a deposit for a car, on his phone, whilst in his pocket. Definitely worth keeping in mind.
This is a completely different car than the one that was announced in 2017. So they cancelled it, and replaced it with a new one, which is likely never going to ship and will serve as a way to prop up whatever merger scam the CEO has cooking in his drug-impaired brain.
During the pandemic, Canadians were told that to order a new Toyota Sienna or a Rav4 Prime may require between 3 and 5 years. This is from Toyota and both cars were in full production. If you preordered they would not even guarantee the price, and reserved the right to increase it.
It was so ridiculous that people would buy the car in the US and bring it here. Other people gave up and started importing 30
year old Japanese minivans — I see JDM minivans relatively commonly now.
As such an X year wait for a car isn't new even outside the dysfunctional communist block.
However I'm pretty sure Toyota will deliver eventually, can't say the same for the Roadster.
Sure, a space-age flying car which isn’t in production yet might have a waiting list. But what about eastern bloc econoboxes like the Trabant or the Lada? That are literally made of cardboard?
You’ve got to be kidding. If your point is that waiting lists for cars can exist, I concede that. I see no other parallels.
This has to be a satirical response. Please tell me it's satire. If it's satire it's actually a pretty bad caricature of elon fan boys.
Because I can't believe anyone would seriously make a comparison to a 55+ year old car manufactured in a communist country.
It's like saying that an email server that takes a week to send emails is fine because the wait times for a posted letter in the 1960s could take 2 weeks.
Getting tired of all the bystander commentary. It's a toy for rich people. If there's 0 chance you're going to buy it, who really cares about your opinion.
You think nobody cares about their opinions, but somebody cares about your fatigue?
It's like a sucker's (or a fraudster's) war cry to say that the people who are already hooked into a venture are the only ones who should be allowed to point out that it might be a scam.
one one hand, i think showmanship can be used to generate interest for something that is far off and thus allow humans to pursue long term goals and i think elon has used this tactic in the past for the right reasons but these days it seems like he just uses this tactic to deceive people - almost like trump.
While I understand your thinking, he rolled Twitter into SpaceX. He absolutely uses it as a financial vehicle, regardless of how legitimate the space business is.
It is standard practice for companies to have some of their businesses subsidize other parts of the overall business. Not sure why people are so fixated on this case. It is also not unique to technology at all.
X is less of an "other part of the overall business [SpaceX]" and more of a bolted-on, completely unrelated part merged together b/c of financial difficulties.
Presumably the tax payers subsidizing SpaceX and now twitter, and soon Tesla, and perhaps also anyone where their retirement is being risked because Elon Musk/SpaceX are trying to game and manipulate the index funds.
Because the sky high IPO valuable was mostly based on SpaceX being an AI company that has a huge TAM. Things that have nothing to do with space (please don't say space data centers).
> > Not sure why people are so fixated on this case.
> Because the sky high IPO valuable was mostly based on SpaceX being an AI company that has a huge TAM
OK, but why do you care so much about that? Are you disadvantaged or harmed in some way? I'm truly trying to understand because it seems to me many of these arguments are not really oriented around deepening understanding or changing minds, but rather about the boring business of standing one's ground and repeating the same arguments (and I'm thinking both of FOR and AGAINST positions). It is just so dull.
Yes, because this position is being leveraged into things that significant public funds are being put into - SpaceX is on the receiving end of huge tax breaks, notable government contracts, extensive environmental impact waivers and so on and on. Yeah, I can be annoyed that a non-zero part of this is a shell game that is likely to leave taxpayers holding the bag when its considered "essential infrastructure" because of the all too cosy Trump-Musk relationship.
Geezus_42, why do you and others care so much about that?
Is it because you are a SpaceX shareholder and you feel your interests as a shareholder are undermined? If you have not vested interest in SpaceX, why would you care that it supports some shitty venture like Twitter/X?
a) to understand why people are so worked up about this man and his antics. I think it is very interesting because it can also reveal something about myself.
b) interesting, novel conversation that broadens understanding
I don't care about the man or his antics or predictable conversations that are boring.
But I think you've hit on something true: I should just move on and let people churn on this stuff and don't get entangled myself. Thanks for pointing it out.
> to understand why people are so worked up about this man and his antics.
(1) because he is currently (I believe) the wealthiest man in the world
(2) because he uses that wealth to influence politics across the globe, from Germany and the UK to the United States
(3) that - and this is my opinion - this influence should be illegal
(4) that he has a long history of lying, overpromising, under delivering, not withstanding his other achievements
(5) that he is in bed with the current US administration which is doing a lot of damage inside the United States.
(6) that he personally took on roles in that government and did a lot of damage outside of the United States
(7) That he was very much a darling of the left leaning portion of society and used that position to enrich himself and then did a 180 and aligned himself directly and openly with various extreme right parties all over the world. Some people feel betrayed.
So Musk elicits a lot of emotions, for better or for worse.
For his latest cowardice (spot my bias), it seems a few days he agreed to Trump's demands to weaken Starlink so Ukraine's use was restricted, making them less able to defend against Russian jet-powered drones hitting civilian targets. How is that an action of a man worthy of any praise?
I assumed he ordered his Starlink-lackeys (also a group of self-serving cowards, in my opinion from the point of view on my high horse) because he wanted to remain/get back on Trump's good graces...
They're passing the buck between them because a bunch of people in Ukraine got killed because of this and they don't want to be stuck with the responsibility for that. The aiding-and-abetting link has never been that clear and direct. There is also still an outside chance that this was a solo action by Hegseth.
I wonder how those employees feel and why they didn't refuse the order. Let him do it himself.
It’s all about how you frame it. He could have framed it as a technology demo instead of as a new car that will ship. That would have been equally impressive and more honest.
That'd be funny. An insurance where if you want to make a claim, you just get met with a Grok-bot that'll do the airbnb-style fucking to you (ignore the complaints, minimize them, be as stupid and slow as possible, and offer 10% of the refund that the complainant will frustratedly take as "at least it's something").
There's probably going to be a single trick car someone can demo remotely (no passengers) somewhere like an hour away from LA, it will very often be down for maintenance, and everyone will only be able to buy the street legal version of the car which won't be available for another 3 years
"We are here at SpaceX's uh rocket test and development center in McGregor, Texas. It's 4,000 acres. Thank you for having us. Thank you for hosting us, SpaceX."
Establishes SpaceX as a giant.
"we're 20 years from when Elon first introduced the Roadster to the world. And it was really a proof of concept that proved EVs were viable product, fun to drive, could go the distance."
Establishes Elon/Tesla as an innovator. Spells out clearly the context "proof of concept." Associates "demonstrations" with "proof." Introduces the concepts of "fun", "viable", and "longevity" aka "distance."
"They were real cars. And look at how far we've come in those 20 years."
Compares introduction of a car, with current demonstration, and establishes the idea that todays "flying car" is going to be just as successful, given time.
"But you know, the last time we had Roadster and SpaceX together, we put Elons's into orbit."
Establishes "the sky as the limit" as to what these two companies can do together. The heart of the entire sales pitch.
"And you can see there, and you know, Starman is still out there somewhere. Amazing feat."
Defines "creating more space junk for publicity stunts" as an "amazing feat."
"you're going to see the results of what happens when you have a collaboration with the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company."
Repetition of the sales pitch to cement it.
"The future is autonomous, Elon, right? Yes. But this is not an autonomous car. It is the last. Well, it it is technically autonomous for this demo to make sure we don't kill anyone. Correct. So, just in case. Uh, but uh this will actually be long-term the only uh manually driven car that Tesla makes. You're going to have some fun sometimes. Yeah. And so, if you're going to have only one manually driven car, let's uh let's take it to the limits and way past the limits."
Confusion. Establishes autonomous with inevitibility. Claims demo car is not automous, then claims it is autonomous, because its dangerous to drive it manually. Plants the idea that its the only car you're gonna need, you can drive it manually, and its the ultimate experience.
Then, as everyone is confused, they start the countdown, and the magic show commences.
Either you see the scripted psyop aka sales pitch or you don't.
We all watched the same demo.
Some of us saw an amazing future.
The rest of us saw a circus selling timeshare condos.
Tesla and SpaceX are "engineering companies." Engineering is at the heart of what they do.
Wouldn't you have more confidence, if they had engineered something useful for a demonstration as an investor, instead of the song and dance ?
Companies are supposed to produce useful products to generate profits, which is why investors invest, right ?
To me it looks like they are out of actual real useful ideas. If they had a new useful idea why didn't we see it ?
I think this might have lowered institutional investor confidence because it looks like a vegas show and smells like a tourist pump and dump intended to capture the "retail publics" money.
You can do better Elon. I know you can.
ps. I am a Starlink subscriber, and I love the service. Please don't cancel me.
To be clear, my intention was not to throw shade on SpaceX or Tesla as companies, or on any of their USEFUL products. I like both companies, and their products. I'm a customer.
My intention was to demonstrate the intent behind the demonstration, as physics says this is 100+ times more inefficient than a business jet, and will never fly more than 5 miles given its current size. Thats not me, thats PHYSICS.
This was a sales pitch for a corporate merger, not a product launch.
This is financial engineering.
So by "do better" I meant, think longer term, solve a real problem. They have the resources, and the talent, and we got a donkey show.
It climbed the ramp very slowly. It doesn't require insane acceleration at all, just a reasonable amount of power at the wheels combined with a fan that can hold it to the track.
I maintain that the entire event was to create a trail of evidence that justifies merging Tesla and SpaceX. No car will ever ship.
You can hear it in the voices of the creators, when they're giving an overview of the car to MotorWeek and other car media outlets. 99% focused on the rocket and battery tech/innovation, almost zero about the actual driving characteristics of the car, or that it -is- a car. Seems more like a rolling marketing mule.
The specs of the base (non-rocket-powered) car are pretty mediocre: RWD-only with 320 mile range. That's not terribly impressive in 2026, by 2028 it will be obsolete on delivery. The styling can charitably be described as generic. I agree, I don't think they have any intention of making this car.
To be fair the claimed ~1.6sec 0-60 acceleration speed is impressive - this is the benefit of electric - although if you have enough money you can already do that today in the way sexier looking Rimac Nevera R.
The new motor does seem like good tech. But not enough to overcome the other shortcomings, IMHO.
Which in practice you will never ever do...
You're probably not a car enthusiast. Most people with performance cars love going 0-60mph, at least here in the USA.
> You're probably not a car enthusiast.
That's your conclusion.
> Most people with performance cars love going 0-60mph, at least here in the USA.
I drive in traffic and I care a lot more about handling than I do about 0-60 which you rarely if ever will do without a car in front of you.
I guess you could rent a trace track to give it a try, but yeah ... Supercars are more for posing than being very practical. Bughatti Veyron tire life at top speed is 15 MINUTES.
How much electric sports car owners care about increasing range beyond 300 miles or so? It seems hard to believe that such a car would be obsolete.
You're right, this is a very fair point. But if you had a choice between two sports cars with similar performance specs and one had 400+ mile range, you'd probably be inclined to take that one, all else being equal. This is a highly optimized version of older battery technology, which will be even older by the time it goes to production; you'd think that a car with a rocket option would also include a cutting edge battery.
this is one point I agree on.
It's about right there with other sports cars rated ranges; 911/M4 get around 300-350 and the Corvette hits 400ish.
a road rally from LA to LV is 270ish miles. What else do you need a hyper-car-thing for?
Now we just need to get some goofy Musk tunnels involved so there's a reason to have the fan suction.
(aside from breaking the windows of traffic behind you with road debris)
The original 2nd-gen Roadster reveal claimed a 200kwh battery pack and 600+ miles of range. There were analysts arguing at the time that the state of the art in battery tech could not possibly allow for that much capacity in that size car. This smacks of the same BS that happened with the Cybertruck — the originally announced range/pricing was far, far better than what actually shipped.
There should be legal investigations into this practice, because it’s extremely deceptive.
In a contemporary interview with Marques Brownlee, Musk said they didn’t currently have the technology and the specs were an extrapolation for what they expected to be available on release.
This isn’t a comment on your broader point.
> In a contemporary interview with Marques Brownlee, Musk said they didn’t currently have the technology and the specs were an extrapolation for what they expected to be available on release.
That’s even worse then, because it was supposed to be released by 2020. Here we are in 2026 and I still don’t think it’s possible to cram 200kwh into a sports car. I take this as an admission straight from the horse’s mouth that either: 1) they were lying and had no intention of shipping the car as specified when it was announced, or 2) they’re completely inept at making predictions about the trajectory of technology core to their products. Both are extremely bad.
100 percent agree... PR stunt to assist acquisition of Tesla so Musk can gain control of Tesla
I assume you mean de facto and de jure.
Similar to the solar roof debacle when bailing out SolarCity.
Yeah, that’s also the conclusion I arrived to. It’s a clear step to justify the merger
If you will know them by their fruits, then the merger is objectively awesome.
Elon:’This is a car people will be able to own and drive’.
Someone add that to the list of bullshit he said.
I’d take the other side of that bet. $10k USD says that normal consumers are owning and driving Tesla Roadsters within 10 years.
If you believe what you write, it’s easy money for you. Deal?
Just bet on Polymarket or Kalshi so we can all take your money instead. Post a screenshot of your position so we know you’re not full of baloney.
The first (much nicer looking!) Roadster Version 2 prototype was announced ~10 years ago (2017), and was never released, and has now been replaced with this, so it's a matter of faith to say it'll ever be released. It'd never sell in sufficient numbers to move the needle for Tesla, probably not even sufficient to recoup development costs.
Note that the only version of the car that could conceivably be street legal is the base one with downforce fan only, and no cold thruster launch (boost) - NTSB is never going to approve throwing out a condensation cloud smokescreen on the highway!
The "other side of that bet" would be betting that ordinary consumers will be driving it in 2028, which is what Elon claimed. A lot can happen in ten years---if Tesla ends up selling a clean-sheet sports car called something else by 2036, would that still count? Or are we talking about this specific model with these specs?
> if Tesla ends up selling a clean-sheet sports car called something else by 2036, would that still count? Or are we talking about this specific model with these specs?
Yes, and note that this has already happened: the original Roadster v2 from 2017 never shipped and was replaced with this one.
do you normally commit to - and pay a sizeable deposit - ten years before you take deilvery of a new car?
$250k USD invested today is ~$400k to ~$600k in 2036.
And that $50k deposit made 9 years ago? That could have been nearly $300k in 2036.
"A fool and his money..."
I don't have any particular problem with a modest (a few 10s of thousands) deposit on a ~3 year timeline that's reasonably confident. But six figures on a 100% speculative consumer good (ie not even remotely an investment)? Oof, no thanks.
Can I take that bet on the one that does flips?
Yeah, I don’t gamble. Just make a mental note that, in 2036 when there are no flying Roadsters for sale, you’re a moron.
"Tesla Roadster" in name, maybe. Tesla Roadster as a flying car that drives up walls? 0% chance of that seeing the light of day.
Did we invent a new logical fallacy? If you believed that you'd bet money on it and since you aren't betting money on it then your argument is invalid!
If you mean one that can do the stunts from the demo I'm in, but not for $10k: that's more than I'm willing to bet with people I don't know. How about $100, since most of the point of a bet is formalizing a disagreement and showing that you're serious?
Within 10 years of today, or within 10 years of when it was announced 9 years ago?
From when the statement in question was made, obviously.
So, this new promise negates the original 3-year delivery timeline promised in 2017? That timeline, taken alongside Musk's recent "we're no longer a car company" statements is... well, you do you, I guess, but I'm not in the business having handing piles of cash to a billionaire.
There's a website dedicated to Elon's predictions.
He tweeted back in 2019 there would be a flying roadster.
Promises made, promises kept?
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1083095876392964096
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1083128521801822213
Broken clock, etc.
https://elonmusk.today/#flying-roadster
At this level of tortured language, he could have shot the car out of a fucking cannon and it would count as flying.
Except it doesn't fly, it falls gracefully.
Looks to be more falling with style to me
Same same. Lol
As much as I dislike Tesla, a lot of this feels like pretty standard legalize that would be in most reservation or pre-order documents to protect the company. Can anyone speak to if this is truly unique for in this case?
If there's anything we've learned in the US in the past ten years, is that this new breed of corporations and government officials will gladly take the "standard" set of rules that everyone has been operating in in good faith and exploit the gaps as hard as humanly possible.
well, people are waiting since 9 years, i think that's unique
Unique in what way?
The Trabant often had wait lists of ten or more years[1][2].
The Soviet Lada often had wait times of five to ten years[3].
Even the Morgan Plus 8 had wait lists of (reportedly) a decade long as recently as 1990[4].
[1] - https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbp016 [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant [3] - https://theses.gla.ac.uk/71079/1/10390647.pdf [4] - https://www.morganville.org/history/the-waiting-list
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, no one has taken delivery of the Roadster announced 9 years ago; all of your examples are cars having more demand than supply (and in the case of the Trabant and the Lada, fewer years); as for the Morgan Plus 8, Morgan make a deliberate choice to keep the production figures where they were, despite the high demand. The key difference seems to be between little supply (your examples) and no supply.
Usually, if you had been unable to deliver a product in that time, it's probably about time to cancel it. Of course, I may be wrong, but my understanding is that 9-year-ago-announced Roadster has not been cancelled, and people have not been refunded.
Gotcha, essentially, unique in that the supply has remained zero, and no fulfilled orders/deliveries thus far, despite a nine year duration between initial announcement and the current date. I guess if that bothers you, cancel your order and get a refund? MKBHD has reportedly done so and gotten a full refund[0].
> Usually, if you had been unable to deliver a product in that time, it's probably about time to cancel it.
Why? Seems like demand (in this case) is sufficient enough to still launch the product. If a business has the demand for the product and sufficient capital to continue investing in an area they deem to have a viable product, isn't that their prerogative?
[0] - https://podscripts.co/podcasts/waveform-the-mkbhd-podcast/wh...
Fair, I'll take notion that it's their prerogative. However, my understanding is that it's not trivial to cancel one's order[0], though as both your and my source points out: it is possible, though an unnecessary hassle (particularly for a company that was partially made famous by making ordering their cars so easy).
[0] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/sam-altman-wants-a-refu...
Fair point. There’s an absolute asymmetry between ease of placing an order and difficulty to cancel it. ISTR Nassim Taleb making a similar point on twitter, alleging he made a deposit for a car, on his phone, whilst in his pocket. Definitely worth keeping in mind.
This is a completely different car than the one that was announced in 2017. So they cancelled it, and replaced it with a new one, which is likely never going to ship and will serve as a way to prop up whatever merger scam the CEO has cooking in his drug-impaired brain.
First time I've seen "longer queues than the soviet union" used as a defence.
During the pandemic, Canadians were told that to order a new Toyota Sienna or a Rav4 Prime may require between 3 and 5 years. This is from Toyota and both cars were in full production. If you preordered they would not even guarantee the price, and reserved the right to increase it.
It was so ridiculous that people would buy the car in the US and bring it here. Other people gave up and started importing 30 year old Japanese minivans — I see JDM minivans relatively commonly now.
As such an X year wait for a car isn't new even outside the dysfunctional communist block.
However I'm pretty sure Toyota will deliver eventually, can't say the same for the Roadster.
Exceptional situations should not be compared to normality.
Sure, a space-age flying car which isn’t in production yet might have a waiting list. But what about eastern bloc econoboxes like the Trabant or the Lada? That are literally made of cardboard?
You’ve got to be kidding. If your point is that waiting lists for cars can exist, I concede that. I see no other parallels.
This has to be a satirical response. Please tell me it's satire. If it's satire it's actually a pretty bad caricature of elon fan boys.
Because I can't believe anyone would seriously make a comparison to a 55+ year old car manufactured in a communist country.
It's like saying that an email server that takes a week to send emails is fine because the wait times for a posted letter in the 1960s could take 2 weeks.
Getting tired of all the bystander commentary. It's a toy for rich people. If there's 0 chance you're going to buy it, who really cares about your opinion.
Is this a super-serious discussion amongst committed prospective buyers? I don’t see much evidence of that.
As for the rest, this is the Internet, and a cat may look at a king.
But you HAVE to get karma for having the right opinion.
You think nobody cares about their opinions, but somebody cares about your fatigue?
It's like a sucker's (or a fraudster's) war cry to say that the people who are already hooked into a venture are the only ones who should be allowed to point out that it might be a scam.
Yes, it's common legalese but you expect something like that from a shady Kickstarter campaign rather than a trillion dollar company.
The media will turn anything into a story if they sense it can be framed in a way that draws clicks.
one one hand, i think showmanship can be used to generate interest for something that is far off and thus allow humans to pursue long term goals and i think elon has used this tactic in the past for the right reasons but these days it seems like he just uses this tactic to deceive people - almost like trump.
He's using it to hype his case for SpaceX acquiring Tesla.
Elon's M.O. is to roll his tapped-out prior ventures (including debts) into the current white-hot thing.
> He's using it to hype his case for SpaceX acquiring Tesla.
> Elon's M.O. is to roll his tapped-out prior ventures (including debts) into the current white-hot thing.
SpaceX is the long game. It started before Tesla. It is not a fly by night operation.
While I understand your thinking, he rolled Twitter into SpaceX. He absolutely uses it as a financial vehicle, regardless of how legitimate the space business is.
It is standard practice for companies to have some of their businesses subsidize other parts of the overall business. Not sure why people are so fixated on this case. It is also not unique to technology at all.
X is less of an "other part of the overall business [SpaceX]" and more of a bolted-on, completely unrelated part merged together b/c of financial difficulties.
Who cares?
Presumably the tax payers subsidizing SpaceX and now twitter, and soon Tesla, and perhaps also anyone where their retirement is being risked because Elon Musk/SpaceX are trying to game and manipulate the index funds.
"It's standard practice"
"It's completely different than what you're talking about"
"Guys...who even cares?"
Because the sky high IPO valuable was mostly based on SpaceX being an AI company that has a huge TAM. Things that have nothing to do with space (please don't say space data centers).
> > Not sure why people are so fixated on this case.
> Because the sky high IPO valuable was mostly based on SpaceX being an AI company that has a huge TAM
OK, but why do you care so much about that? Are you disadvantaged or harmed in some way? I'm truly trying to understand because it seems to me many of these arguments are not really oriented around deepening understanding or changing minds, but rather about the boring business of standing one's ground and repeating the same arguments (and I'm thinking both of FOR and AGAINST positions). It is just so dull.
Yes, because this position is being leveraged into things that significant public funds are being put into - SpaceX is on the receiving end of huge tax breaks, notable government contracts, extensive environmental impact waivers and so on and on. Yeah, I can be annoyed that a non-zero part of this is a shell game that is likely to leave taxpayers holding the bag when its considered "essential infrastructure" because of the all too cosy Trump-Musk relationship.
Because Twitter has nothing to do with the actual functioning of SpaceX.
Geezus_42, why do you and others care so much about that?
Is it because you are a SpaceX shareholder and you feel your interests as a shareholder are undermined? If you have not vested interest in SpaceX, why would you care that it supports some shitty venture like Twitter/X?
I don't understand.
You seem to care more than they do with this many comments saying people shouldn't care.
I'd say I care about two things in this case:
a) to understand why people are so worked up about this man and his antics. I think it is very interesting because it can also reveal something about myself.
b) interesting, novel conversation that broadens understanding
I don't care about the man or his antics or predictable conversations that are boring.
But I think you've hit on something true: I should just move on and let people churn on this stuff and don't get entangled myself. Thanks for pointing it out.
> to understand why people are so worked up about this man and his antics.
(1) because he is currently (I believe) the wealthiest man in the world
(2) because he uses that wealth to influence politics across the globe, from Germany and the UK to the United States
(3) that - and this is my opinion - this influence should be illegal
(4) that he has a long history of lying, overpromising, under delivering, not withstanding his other achievements
(5) that he is in bed with the current US administration which is doing a lot of damage inside the United States.
(6) that he personally took on roles in that government and did a lot of damage outside of the United States
(7) That he was very much a darling of the left leaning portion of society and used that position to enrich himself and then did a 180 and aligned himself directly and openly with various extreme right parties all over the world. Some people feel betrayed.
So Musk elicits a lot of emotions, for better or for worse.
Does that help?
For his latest cowardice (spot my bias), it seems a few days he agreed to Trump's demands to weaken Starlink so Ukraine's use was restricted, making them less able to defend against Russian jet-powered drones hitting civilian targets. How is that an action of a man worthy of any praise?
I assumed he ordered his Starlink-lackeys (also a group of self-serving cowards, in my opinion from the point of view on my high horse) because he wanted to remain/get back on Trump's good graces...
They're passing the buck between them because a bunch of people in Ukraine got killed because of this and they don't want to be stuck with the responsibility for that. The aiding-and-abetting link has never been that clear and direct. There is also still an outside chance that this was a solo action by Hegseth.
I wonder how those employees feel and why they didn't refuse the order. Let him do it himself.
It’s all about how you frame it. He could have framed it as a technology demo instead of as a new car that will ship. That would have been equally impressive and more honest.
No insurance will touch that car with a 10-foot pole.
Doesn't Tesla offer its own insurance...
That'd be funny. An insurance where if you want to make a claim, you just get met with a Grok-bot that'll do the airbnb-style fucking to you (ignore the complaints, minimize them, be as stupid and slow as possible, and offer 10% of the refund that the complainant will frustratedly take as "at least it's something").
Wouldn’t be a first
Conversely, I can guarantee they won't get the functionality demoed.
Even the Cybertruck reservations took years to materialize, at a much higher price.
100k people will be driving Tesla Roadsters on Mars in 3 years
There's probably going to be a single trick car someone can demo remotely (no passengers) somewhere like an hour away from LA, it will very often be down for maintenance, and everyone will only be able to buy the street legal version of the car which won't be available for another 3 years
A grifter scamming money from fools, I almost want him to do more of this.
Why? He’s using his wealth to destroy US institutions
... because it was always a PR stunt.
The dialog of the event spelled it out.
"We are here at SpaceX's uh rocket test and development center in McGregor, Texas. It's 4,000 acres. Thank you for having us. Thank you for hosting us, SpaceX."
Establishes SpaceX as a giant.
"we're 20 years from when Elon first introduced the Roadster to the world. And it was really a proof of concept that proved EVs were viable product, fun to drive, could go the distance."
Establishes Elon/Tesla as an innovator. Spells out clearly the context "proof of concept." Associates "demonstrations" with "proof." Introduces the concepts of "fun", "viable", and "longevity" aka "distance."
"They were real cars. And look at how far we've come in those 20 years."
Compares introduction of a car, with current demonstration, and establishes the idea that todays "flying car" is going to be just as successful, given time.
"But you know, the last time we had Roadster and SpaceX together, we put Elons's into orbit."
Establishes "the sky as the limit" as to what these two companies can do together. The heart of the entire sales pitch.
"And you can see there, and you know, Starman is still out there somewhere. Amazing feat."
Defines "creating more space junk for publicity stunts" as an "amazing feat."
"you're going to see the results of what happens when you have a collaboration with the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company."
Repetition of the sales pitch to cement it.
"The future is autonomous, Elon, right? Yes. But this is not an autonomous car. It is the last. Well, it it is technically autonomous for this demo to make sure we don't kill anyone. Correct. So, just in case. Uh, but uh this will actually be long-term the only uh manually driven car that Tesla makes. You're going to have some fun sometimes. Yeah. And so, if you're going to have only one manually driven car, let's uh let's take it to the limits and way past the limits."
Confusion. Establishes autonomous with inevitibility. Claims demo car is not automous, then claims it is autonomous, because its dangerous to drive it manually. Plants the idea that its the only car you're gonna need, you can drive it manually, and its the ultimate experience.
Then, as everyone is confused, they start the countdown, and the magic show commences.
Either you see the scripted psyop aka sales pitch or you don't.
We all watched the same demo.
Some of us saw an amazing future.
The rest of us saw a circus selling timeshare condos.
Tesla and SpaceX are "engineering companies." Engineering is at the heart of what they do.
Wouldn't you have more confidence, if they had engineered something useful for a demonstration as an investor, instead of the song and dance ?
Companies are supposed to produce useful products to generate profits, which is why investors invest, right ?
To me it looks like they are out of actual real useful ideas. If they had a new useful idea why didn't we see it ?
I think this might have lowered institutional investor confidence because it looks like a vegas show and smells like a tourist pump and dump intended to capture the "retail publics" money.
You can do better Elon. I know you can.
ps. I am a Starlink subscriber, and I love the service. Please don't cancel me.
Worlds richest nigerian prince wants list of most gullible people.
I would pay you to write executive summaries for me.
That was perfect.
That's racist, he's South African!
(How many layers of sarcasm does this comment have...)
Serious question, do better how? What if reusable rockets and S3XY cars were the breakthroughs and everything after is just meh?
To be clear, my intention was not to throw shade on SpaceX or Tesla as companies, or on any of their USEFUL products. I like both companies, and their products. I'm a customer.
My intention was to demonstrate the intent behind the demonstration, as physics says this is 100+ times more inefficient than a business jet, and will never fly more than 5 miles given its current size. Thats not me, thats PHYSICS.
This was a sales pitch for a corporate merger, not a product launch.
This is financial engineering.
So by "do better" I meant, think longer term, solve a real problem. They have the resources, and the talent, and we got a donkey show.
It will never fly more than 200 meters.
Tesla isn’t interested in building cars. They canceled SX in order to build the Cybertruck. I expect they’ll let 3Y just get really old.
Instead of S3XY cars we get stunts. Solar roofs, Concept car roadsters, and of course humanoid robots.
If only Tesla would be interested in cars again.
Literal Skynet may be something, but "meh"?
Grok? Lmao
Edit: Starlink is cool
A million AI server satellites.
How are they AI servers? Afaik they’re really fancy wifi repeaters with possibly some discrete fancy sensing for military co use.
I'm not talking about current Starlink satellites, but rather the server satellites they're planning.
Musk treating delusional fans like an ATM as always, lovely.
There's 1000 people that preordered their Roadster in 2017 for 250k $....
And they are rumoring now 2028 production, which in Tesla style will be deep in 2030s. If it ever happens.
It has vapor thrusters to glide above the ignorant fools who didn't buy one.
You'll have about 4 to 11 seconds to gloat.
But I can do it every 6 to 8 hours!
Very briefly, before coming back down to earth.
Great way to get $250k interest free loans from suckers with too much hopium and not enough class to get the Mission S.
I love that the FSD feature still hasn't been delivered while they're demonstrating they're next idiotic product idea / stunt...no one mentions it.
Wasn't it purpose built for the Hot Wheels demo?
Insane acceleration to get up the ramp and enough fuel to land safely.
Unless you have a giant ramp or a penchant to drive off cliffs who is lining up for this?
> Insane acceleration to get up the ramp
It climbed the ramp very slowly. It doesn't require insane acceleration at all, just a reasonable amount of power at the wheels combined with a fan that can hold it to the track.
Sorry, I'd only heard a 0 to 60 mph in 1 second and assumed. =[
I suppose the Fast and Furious guys are work shopping a scene around this.
If you have not watched the ramp video, I really recommend it. It's very impressive, even if it doesn't make any sense in a consumer vehicle.
It's copying the McMurtry Spéirling - a production race car that can also hold it's own weight upside down via the same fan mechanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lJVHdWHK8M
And: they put a person in it.