- Tesla’s Roadster will be the “last, best driver’s car” it makes.
- This comes as Tesla says its focus is geared towards autonomy rather.
- Effectively, Tesla’s VP of Engineering says that the Roadster is its “swan song.”
Tesla’s long-delayed (almost mythical) next-gen Roadster has picked up a new title, courtesy of the automaker’s VP of Engineering: the “last, best driver’s car.”
According to Lars Moravy, who was speaking to Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley at the X Takeover 2025 event, reaffirmed that the Roadster is still in development. This comes just after CEO Elon Musk promised the “most epic demo ever” later this year after visiting Moravy and his crew at the Tesla Design Studio.
Now, we know that Musk was referring to the Roadster as many suspected, and that the brand is putting some serious weight behind the product that is now five years late to the party.
“Roadster is definitely in development. We did talk about it last Sunday night,” said Moravy. “Super cool product. We are gearing up for a super cool demo. It’s going to be ‘mind-blowing,’ as Elon says. We spent a lot of time last few years rethinking what we did and why we did it, and what would make an awesome and exciting, last, best driver’s car.”
That’s quite a statement. Let’s unpack what it means.
It’s incredibly clear that Tesla sees driving as something on its way out for the mainstream public. This is evident in Tesla’s push for the Robotaxi to become rapidly adopted despite not having yet solved true self-driving. It’s also apparent whenever Tesla refers to the “cost per mile” of its autonomous cars, something that hints at vehicle ownership as a whole potentially being something Tesla sees as going out of style in the future.
In Musk and Moravy’s view of the future, anything with a steering wheel could be made obsolete. And the Roadster is Tesla’s last big hurrah before it commits completely to that cause.
He continued: “Given where Tesla is going with autonomy, we know that it’s a swan song. If we’re going to make this transition to autonomy, driving cars turns into like, a luxury. And the Roadster’s got to be the best, right?”
It’s very likely, given the pace of autonomous development—let alone acceptance of full autonomy by the public—that Moravy is counting his chickens a few years (or even decades) before they hatch. But this technology is catching on more and more in different ways.
A recent study by AutoPacific found that hands-free driving was the most desired feature by new car buyers. In fact, 43% of new car buyers were looking for something with that capability, which has roughly doubled since 2024. If automakers are delivering on the market’s wants, then it could lead to a world that Tesla is already steering toward.
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Tesla first debuted the next-generation Roadster as a concept in 2017. At the time, potential buyers could put $50,000 down (that’s worth about $66,500 in 2025 thanks to inflation) to reserve a car that promised a 620-miles of range and a sub-2-second zero-to-60 MPH sprint.
Pretty darn impressive—and plenty of people took the bait. Those who didn’t want to fork over money could even win one by referring enough folks to Tesla’s referral program to purchase a new car. And, yup, people earned that too.
However, it’s been nearly eight long years since Tesla first showed the Roadster off as a “one more thing” moment during the Tesla Semi unveiling. That makes the Roadster smell a lot more like vaporware than an actual product, especially when Musk had made some rather bold claims like the car being able to hover or reach 60 MPH in nearly a second flat with the alleged SpaceX rocket package.
That’s still coming, according to Moravy. “We showed we showed Elon some cool demos last week of the tech we’ve been working on and he got a little excited,” he said. “The SpaceX package is] definitely hard. I was meeting with the SpaceX team last Thursday just for a minute. It’s a challenge.”
He added: “When you have a car, it has to do all the car things. There’s a little bit more mass there and you get a separate propulsion system to do the car things. […] We found some really cool ways to get the mass where it needs to be, to get it to do what it needs to do.”
That’s a lot of promises to live up to, including anything that would make its projected $200,000 price tag justifiable. And if this thing can come to market with everything they say it can do—remember the Cybertruck’s range-extending battery, or the Cyberquad?—it must also overcome the fact that this desig has been in the works for nearly a decade.
The Roadster is a tall order to fill before anyone can declare it the “last, best driver’s car.” And, let’s be honest—human-operated cars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
