Want to physically drive a Tesla in the future? Get ready to pay up.
On Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the new Roadster with a gravity-defying demo. The car suctioned to the side of a vertical ramp, drove upside down, briefly flew, stuck the landing, and later bunny-hopped and twirled over a standing lineup of other Tesla vehicles.
The stunts were choreographed with autonomy, Musk said — but Roadster owners will eventually be able to manually take the wheel. That will make it unique in Tesla’s lineup.
“This will actually be, long-term, the only manually driven car that Tesla makes,” Musk said on stage, before Tesla’s lead engineer, Lars Moravy, added, “You gotta have some fun sometimes.”
Tesla hasn’t revealed the car’s final price, but we know it’ll firmly be in the luxury supercar tier. The company’s reservation queue asks customers who want the base Performance trim to fork over a $50,000, due within 10 days. That reservation, alone, is nearly the price of an average car in America, and it doesn’t capture the car’s final price. Our best pricing ballpark dates back to 2017, when Tesla first said it was bringing back the Roadster. At the time, the automaker collected $250,000 payments from people who wanted a Founder Series model.
Meanwhile, Tesla has been ramping up its autonomy push for its more price-conscious vehicles.
In September, it started rolling out the Cybercab — a vehicle that leans so heavily into self-driving that it has no steering wheel, brake pedals, or side mirrors. Tesla says it wants to eventually sell those cars to consumers at less than $30,000 apiece.
On recent earnings calls, Musk has also praised the recurring revenue from subscriptions of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) from Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model 3 owners.
Musk has talked a lot about a world where driving becomes obsolete. He has compared driving a car to operating an elevator, a profession that was largely phased out in the mid-20th century as elevators became automated.
“Now, you just get in, press a button and a modern elevator, if inspected regularly, is extremely safe,” he wrote on X in March.
Treating driving like elevator operation requires a pretty big leap. Driving is still a hobby, a sport, and — for many people — a point of pride. By Moravy’s own admission, driving is fun.
There’s still a chance in Musk’s vision of his carmaker’s future that drivers can control their own Tesla and lean into that fun. They’ll just need to open their checkbooks.
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