Elon Musk says Tesla Roadster is coming as soon as 2025

The successor to the car that started it all has completed final engineering, and if you believe Elon Musk, its “least interesting” feature is a 0-60 time clocking in below a second. 

A street-legal two seater twice as slow would still rank among the fastest on the planet, and even Formula 1 race cars with professionally licensed drivers behind the wheel can’t hit that kind of acceleration. The aerodynamic downforce needed to firmly plant the Roadster’s wheels on the road and maintain grip at that pace would have to be truly staggering.

In short, it’s the kind of claim one might think is better reserved for April 1^st, but Musk appeared to be dead serious when he announced it late on Tuesday.

“There will never be another car like this,” he told fans, “if you could even call it a car.”

The Tesla CEO said the production design has been signed off after performance targets were “radically” increased such that his engineers required help from their counterparts over at Musk’s SpaceX company. 

“Unveil end of year, aiming to ship next year,” he added. 

Tonight, we radically increased the design goals for the new Tesla Roadster.

There will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2024

It was all the way back in November 2017 when Musk first revealed his stunning next-gen sports car, already then claiming it would be the first EV to ever drive 1,000 kilometers on one charge at highway speeds.

Market launch was initially slated for 2020, but—either conveniently or inconveniently—the pandemic hit, and then right after that was the semiconductor chips shortage, which delayed other projects like the Cybertruck that only launched at the end of last year. 

“Honestly, I’m trying not to get too excited,…