Tesla Roadster should come in 2023, Elon Musk says

Tesla's upcoming sports car, the second-gen Tesla Roadster, should finally become available in 2023.

This is according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who tweeted that the Roadster "should ship in 2023," but that comes with a caveat. "2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn’t matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship," Musk explained. The Roadster will ship in 2023, but that's "assuming 2022 is not mega drama," he wrote.

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Forgive us for being slightly pessimistic, but the last two years have absolutely been "mega drama," so we wouldn't exactly count on next year being drama free — especially given the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. — but hey, a person can hope.

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Originally announced in 2017 and slated for a 2021 launch, the Roadster was later delayed into 2022. And even though it will be the most expensive Tesla by far, with a starting price tag of $200,000, it should be worth the wait. According to Tesla, the Roadster should go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, have a top speed of 250 mph, and have 620 miles of range.

Musk also said there could be a special SpaceX edition of the car with cold gas thrusters and an absolutely crazy 0-to-60 time of 1.1 seconds.

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When the Roadster was originally announced, its specs sounded near impossible. But in the meantime, a new electric supercar arrived, and it already has that kind of performance: Rimac Automobili's Nevera goes from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds. The car has been tested in real-life conditions, setting the world's fastest quarter-mile time of 8.52 seconds. With a $2.44 million price tag, the Nevera is quite a bit pricier, so it remains to be seen whether the Roadster can achieve similar performance for a fraction of that price.