Tesla's Roadster 2 Is Late to a Very Different EV World

Nine years after it was unveiled, the long-delayed Roadster goes on sale Thursday in an EV market that has grown skeptical of electric hypercars.

Nine years after its unveiling, the laid-back roadster is set to debut Thursday in an EV market that has been skeptical of electric hypercars.

Almost nine years ago, a tanned and relatively quiet CEO named Elon Musk announced that his electric car company would build a new sports car called the Tesla Roadster 2. The lights flashed and the red prototype did a few quick laps behind him.

Time has changed. Musk is a major contributor to a political party that last year eliminated incentives to buy electric cars and last month adjusted fuel economy standards to make it easier for automakers to abandon electric vehicles. Musk has said he's not even in the business of making cars anymore and has instructed investors to think of Tesla as a robotics and autonomous company. On Thursday night, Tesla is hosting what it has billed as its latest unveiling event for a human-centric vehicle. Six years after it was supposed to hit the streets, the Roadster 2 is finally here. Tesla is scheduled to begin deliveries next year.

"Electric vehicles today exist in a very different environment than when the roadster was introduced," said Ed Kim, president of AutoPacific, an automotive research firm. When Tesla introduced the car in 2017, electric vehicles were "toys for early adopters," he says. By 2020, other automakers saw Tesla's sky-high valuations and lawmakers' plans to convert cars to batteries, making big electric promises and investing heavily in the shift. China began to dominate the production of electric vehicles. Now, after the Trump administration reversed course in the U.S. on propulsion, electric car sales are declining, not growing.

However, more options are now available. In 2017, research firm Cox Automotive says, American consumers had 15 electric vehicles to choose from. Today, that number has grown to nearly 90. Potential EV buyers are likely to be normal, and therefore their needs are more practical. "People are looking for range, performance, chargeability, resale value," says Stephanie Valdez Street, Director of Industry Insights at Cox.

So success for the roadster seems a bit complicated. It's a hypercar aimed squarely at geeks – people who like to show off and go really, really fast. Some of them want that power and roar of a petrol engine. That's why some luxury automakers have gone to great lengths to reproduce the sound of a V-8 without the presence of a luxury car. And that's why others - Porsche and Ferrari among them - have said they will continue to develop gas engines. Lamborghini announced earlier this year that it would ditch electrics entirely. Even the CEO of Bugatti, who founded his own electric hypercar company, said he expects ICE cars to become loud status symbols among the wealthiest car buyers.

Electric cars in this space really need to surprise buyers with a lot more, says Kim: practical things. Great range, really quiet, charging at home - none of that matters. In 2017, Tesla said the car would start at $200,000. Reservation holders deposit $50,000.

In 2017, Musk promised a sub-2 second zero-to-60 acceleration, which broke the record at the time. Now that a handful of other production cars have broken the barrier, Tesla should be on top. One option: Musk has suggested several times over the years that the new Roadster will fly, and reports suggest the automaker will get help from Musk's rocket company SpaceX. (In 2018, SpaceX used its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the first Roadster into space.)

"It's not easy to go fast," says Shay Burns, an auto and industrial partner at AlixPartners. "The laws of physics meet them outside the rocket fragment." This would be an interesting way for an EV manufacturer to get out of human driving.