YouTuber MKBHD cancels one of his Tesla Roadster reservations nearly 8 years after paying $50,000 deposit

• Marques Brownlee put down $50,000 to reserve a new Tesla Roadster in 2017. Almost eight years later, he canceled.
• On the “Waveform Podcast,” Brownlee said that Tesla had been “sitting with” his $50,000, and that it was difficult to get it back.
• Elon Musk unveiled the “fastest production car ever made” in 2017. The new Roadster has yet to begin production.

YouTuber Marques Brownlee — also known as MKBHD — reserved two Tesla Roadsters in 2017. They still haven’t entered production.

Tesla unveiled the new Roadster in 2017 to much fanfare. Elon Musk said that the reimagining of Tesla’s first-ever vehicle was “the fastest production car ever made.” It hasn’t been quick to hit the roads, though; almost eight years later, there’s no clear rollout date in sight.

On his “Waveform Podcast,” Brownlee said that he officially canceled one of the two Roadster reservations he made in 2017. Getting his money back was more challenging than expected.

“Tesla has been sitting with my 50 grand for eight years and hasn’t done anything with it, obviously,” Brownlee said.

Brownlee said that he had two Roadster reservations in his account: one that he paid $50,000 for, and another Founder Series model that he got for free as a “referral reward.”

For the first vehicle, Brownlee said that he made an immediate $5,000 payment and then paid an additional $45,000 within the next 10 days. The additional money to reach the car’s full price is paid after delivery, Brownlee said.

The $50,000 reservation payment structure is still available for new Roadster reservations, per Tesla’s site.

Brownlee said that he canceled the Roadster reservation he paid for while keeping the free one in his account. For the paid vehicle, Brownlee said he would receive the $45,000 payment back but would lose his $5,000 deposit.

“Tesla’s just had that money the whole time,” he said. “I could have done so much with that. I’ll do something else with it now.”

Using his additional points, Brownlee’s paid Roadster would have been “like 52% discounted” before he canceled. “It was like I had earned one and a half free Roadsters and I just canceled the half-free one,” he said.

Brownlee said that canceling his reservation was more difficult than expected. He had to call — unlike the order status page of many other Tesla models, he said, there was no cancellation button online — and he spent a few days getting voicemails.

When Brownlee did get through to a vehicle sales representative, he said they seemed confused: “There was a really long pause, and they were like, ‘A Roadster?’ Then they put me on hold, and they came back and they were trying to figure out who to direct the call to.”

Brownlee said that the representative he spoke to promised that he would receive his deposit back, but that he had to “wait a little while.” Brownlee said he called back after two weeks and talked to the same man, who, at that point, figured out how to have a check mailed within the month.

“[It’s] was going to say somewhere in between like canceling your Prime account and canceling your gym membership,” Brownlee said. “There are harder things to do, but this was pretty hilarious.”

Brownlee is still marked down for one Roadster — his free one, which should be one of 1,000 limited edition Founder Series vehicles. But Brownlee isn’t feeling confident; he noticed that the Roaster had been taken off the top of Tesla’s website.

Under the “Vehicles” tab on its site, Tesla lists the Model S, 3, Y, X, the Cybertruck, and inventory. A 2019 archive of the site also featured the Roadster in its top bar.

Brownlee said he’s also noticed a pattern: Every year or two, Musk or Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, appears on a fan podcast and is asked about the Roadster.

“Every single time this happens, Franz or Elon will very politely give no information, but they will tease that they have been continuing development on it and that it has gotten better since the original announcement,” he said.

In October 2024, Musk thanked the “long-suffering deposit holders,” saying that the Roadster hadn’t come out yet because “it’s the cherry on the icing on the cake” — and there are “other projects taking precedence before its launch.”

In Tesla’s most recent earnings release on July 23, the Roadster was listed as being in “design development.”

The Waveform podcast’s co-host, Andrew Manganelli, asked Brownlee to guess how much his $50,000 would be worth if he had invested it in Tesla stock, rather than reserving a Roadster.

Manganelli’s answer: $747,000.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post YouTuber MKBHD cancels one of his Tesla Roadster reservations nearly 8 years after paying $50,000 deposit appeared first on Business Insider.