Tesla released a second teaser for its next-generation Roadster, showing a full-width light bar across the front of the car days before the scheduled October 1 unveiling.
Tesla posted the video on its main X account under the caption “See you next week” as it closed its Semi production event in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday.
Elon Musk quoted the post with “10.01”, the date Tesla has set for the Roadster reveal.
The clip opens on industrial doors being pulled apart in darkness.
A thin horizontal strip of light then appears across the nose of a car held in shadow, broken up by glitch and pixel effects.
The sequence ends on a glowing Roadster wordmark. Tesla gave no new specifications, price or delivery date for the car.
A light bar would align the Roadster’s look with the Cybercab, Cybertruck and Semi.
The Semi truck went through the same change.
Tesla unveiled the truck in 2017 with separate headlights, then showed a redesigned version at its November 2025 shareholder meeting.
The refresh added a full-width light bar in place of the original headlights, along with a revised front bumper, aerodynamic channels and new camera pods behind the front wheels.
Tesla presented the update at the same meeting where Musk set the April 1 Roadster demo.
The redesigned Semi is the version now entering high-volume production in Nevada.
Tesla has not said what the mark in the Roadster teaser signifies.
Front Follows Rear
This week’s clip mirrors the first teaser, published on September 12.
That image showed the rear of a low, wide car in near-darkness, with a full-width red light bar, four bright vertical plumes above the deck and the date 10.01 across the bottom.
Set between the plumes and the light bar, the image carried the words “WHERE WE’RE GOING”, legible only when the shadows were lifted.
The line comes from Back to the Future and ends “we don’t need roads”.
Musk referenced the same film on January 9, 2019, replying to an animation of the hovering DeLorean posted by another user with the words “The new Roadster will actually do something like this”.
Asked by tech reviewer Marques Brownlee whether he was joking, he replied: “I’m not. Will use SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultra high pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats.”
Between them, the two teasers show both ends of the car but not its side profile.
The only side view in the public record remains the silhouette in a trademark application Tesla filed in February, which showed a sleeker profile and squarer roofline than the 2017 prototype.
A Partial Logo
Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla shareholder who posts frequently about the company, said on X that the clip appeared to show part of the SpaceX logo.
“Interesting, the new Tesla Roadster teaser shows part of the SpaceX logo 👀,” he wrote on X.
The Information reported in August, citing people with knowledge of the programme, that Tesla planned to demonstrate the car lifting off the ground at SpaceX’s rocket development site in McGregor, Texas.
Nobody would be inside and spectators would be held several hundred yards back, according to the same report.
Known inside Tesla as A71, the thruster system occupies the rear seating area with about 10 thrusters and a high-pressure air tank.
A version carrying it is not expected to be street-legal, and a conventional car without the full system is planned alongside it.
Night footage dated April 15 from McGregor, showing an object rising inside a shrouded structure, circulated on X after the first teaser.
The account that posted it said the motion was a gantry lift rather than flight, and nothing in the frames confirmed the object was the Roadster.
Invitations sent to reservation holders, copies of which were shared on X, name Waco at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, about 20 to 30 minutes from McGregor.
Tesla has not named a venue or confirmed McGregor.
Nine Years of Dates
Tesla unveiled the second-generation Roadster on November 16, 2017, alongside the Semi.
Tesla promised 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range and deliveries in 2020.
Musk said in July 2020 the car was 12 to 18 months away. Production then moved to 2022, 2023 and 2024 across successive statements. In February 2024 he said the design goals had been “radically increased” and raised the acceleration target to under one second.
At the shareholder meeting on November 6, 2025, Musk set a demo for April 1, 2026, and put production 12 to 18 months after that, in 2027 or 2028.
April passed, reports in June moved the reveal to August, and August passed without an event.
Tesla’s latest quarterly update, published in July, still placed the Roadster in “design development,” and next week’s event is billed as an unveiling.
Lars Moravy, Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, and Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen confirmed in May that the car will be built at Gigafactory Texas.
Tesla reopened reservations this month against a $50,000 deposit.
Tesla removed prices from its site in 2021, which listed $200,000 for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series.
