Finally! Hopefully? Very likely?
Tesla is set to re-unveil the second-generation Roadster on Thursday evening — and Elon Musk has been hyping it up. The event was originally scheduled for October 1, but the automaker postponed it due to inclement weather.
The Tesla CEO said the big reveal would be "a candidate for greatest product demo of all time" and "the whole world will watch this."
New Roadster is
beyond movies,
beyond imagination,
beyond human,
yet still made
by humans
on Earth
The event is scheduled for 7:55 p.m., Central Time, and is strictly limited to reservation holders who received direct tickets. Tesla says it will livestream the event.
Roadster event streaming live this Thursday at 7:55pm CST https://t.co/AbsmpVucui
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 14, 2026Thursday's event has been years in the making. Musk first revealed the rebooted halo vehicle nearly nine years ago, in November 2017, making this its second unveiling.
In September, Tesla shared a teaser of the high-powered EV, captioned "Go for launch," showing a Roadster in a shaft of light with "10.01" at the bottom. Musk added that the car is "out of this world."
It'll be a unique offering in Tesla's lineup — with an eye-watering price tag.
The automaker has promised a sleek convertible with a 0-to-60-mph time of 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, up to 620 miles of range, and a 200-kilowatt-hour battery pack — roughly the same size as the battery in GMC's gargantuan Hummer EV.
Those are all old-school, driver-oriented performance metrics from a company that is increasingly betting on an autonomous future. Musk has also teased a SpaceX collaboration that could give the Roadster cold-gas thrusters — "rocket-y stuff," as he put it — that could briefly lift the car in the air.
Online, there's a ton of speculation about what Tesla's teaser image actually shows. A popular theory: the image, when flipped upside down, could be showing the car floating in the air.
Any chance the image on the Tesla Roadster website is flipped and it should actually look like this? @tesla #roadster #teslaroadster https://t.co/J74laGnrIy
— Benjamin Scot (@benjaminscot) October 14, 2026In September, Tesla's post quickly got the meme treatment, with some joking about how long they've waited to see the high-priced car.
Tesla began taking reservations in 2017, asking for a $50,000 deposit for the base car and $250,000 upfront for a Founders Series. Musk has acknowledged the long wait in recent years, thanking the vehicle's "long-suffering" deposit holders on an October 2024 earnings call.
Some big-name early reservation holders have removed or altered their booking from the Roadster's queue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman openly canceled his reservation, while YouTuber Marques Brownlee, commonly known as MKBHD, canceled one of his two reservations.
"Well well well," Brownlee wrote in September after the Roadster teaser.
Read next
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Ben Shimkus is a reporter for the Business News desk. He writes about cars, transportation, retail, and jobs. Ben's reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Verge, Automotive News, USA Today, AutoBody News, LGBTQ Nation, TopSpeed, and Out Magazine. He's also held staff writing positions at The U.S. Sun and the Daily Mail. He graduated from NYU with a Master's in journalism in 2024. Email Ben at [email protected] or message him privately on Signal at bshimkus.41.

2 days ago
56