Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk called the second-generation Roadster “beyond movies, beyond imagination, beyond human” on Thursday, hours before a demonstration the company has rescheduled repeatedly this year.
“New Roadster is beyond movies, beyond imagination, beyond human, yet still made by humans on Earth,” Musk wrote on X earlier on Thursday.
A minute later, he added “The whole world will watch this,” quoting a fan’s post comparing the anticipation to Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the first iPhone.
Tesla will stream the event on X from 7:55 p.m. Central time on Thursday, nearly nine years after it showed a Roadster prototype in November 2017 and promised production for 2020.
Thursday is the fifth target Musk or Tesla has publicly given for the demonstration in 2026, after April 1, late April, “a month or so” from late April and October 1.
Tesla shares were down 2.8% at $357.05 at 10:21 a.m. New York time on Thursday, after closing at $367.16 on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq Composite was 0.8% lower.
Shares of SpaceX fell 4.1% to $145.88 at the same time.
‘Greatest Product Demo of All Time’
Musk escalated his language over the past three days.
Late on Tuesday, he quoted Tesla’s post announcing the livestream with the words “Timing is everything.”
On Wednesday evening, he wrote that “the new Tesla Roadster is a candidate for greatest product demo of all time.”
About 90 minutes later, he added, “Let’s just say that this demo will be a BANGER, probably metaphorically, though some chance literally.”
The 7:55 p.m. start has drawn comparisons with Back to the Future, whose time-travel plot centers on 1955, because Tesla hid the film’s line “Where we’re going” in its first teaser in September.
A Year of Moving Dates
Musk set the first 2026 target at Tesla’s shareholder meeting in November 2025, saying the company was “actually tentatively aiming for April 1, for what I think will be the most exciting, whether it works or not, demo ever of any product,” and putting production 12 to 18 months later.
“I have some deniability because, like, I could say I was just kidding,” he joked of the April Fools’ Day date.
On the January 28 earnings call, he said Tesla was “hoping to debut” the next-generation Roadster in April, adding, “It’s gonna be something out of this world.”
The next day, he replied on X that the car “will be incredible” after tech reviewer Marques Brownlee wrote “Oh Roadster is so cooked,” following Tesla’s decision to end Model S and Model X production.
On March 17, the anniversary of the original Roadster’s start of production in 2008, Musk wrote “True. New Roadster unveil probably in late April.”
Hours later, he wrote “New Roadster unveil hopefully next month. It will be a banger next-level.”
On the April 22 earnings call, he pushed the date again, saying “we may be able to debut that in a month or so.”
“It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo,” Musk said on the call.
He also said “long-term the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” that “it might be one of the most spectacular demos ever” and that he was “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint.”
Silence, Then a Countdown
Musk did not mention the Roadster on the July 22 earnings call, according to two published transcripts.
The Information reported in June that the demonstration had slipped to August or later while SpaceX finished a cold gas thruster system, and in August that the car would be operated remotely with no one inside at SpaceX’s test site in McGregor, Texas.
Musk did not confirm those reports, but on August 12 he replied “You will get flying cars” to a post contrasting the flying cars once promised with artificial intelligence.
Tesla broke the silence on September 12 with a teaser captioned “Go for launch,” showing four plumes rising from the rear of a car, and Musk replied “New Tesla Roadster Unveil 10.01.”
He repeated “10.01” on September 24 when Tesla posted a second teaser showing a full-width front light bar.
Tesla then postponed the event to October 15 on September 28, citing severe weather forecast for an event that “can only be held outdoors.”
“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk wrote the following evening.
Undisclosed Details
None of the posts and earnings-call remarks cited here gives a price, range or production date for the car Tesla will show.
The targets Tesla announced in 2017 were 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph and 620 miles of range, with $50,000 reservations for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series.
Tesla said in May that the model was in testing and would be built in Texas, and it reopened Roadster reservations in September.
Production remains guided for 2027 or 2028, the window Musk set in November 2025.
Musk has also not said whether the car shown on Thursday will carry SpaceX hardware, although he has described a “SpaceX option package” with cold gas thrusters since 2018.
Tesla was granted a patent in September for a ducted fan system that increases downforce, although it has not linked the patent to the Roadster.
