I feel like you could write a book on the saga of the second-generation Tesla Roadster. The car was all the rage when it debuted in 2017, with Tesla promising some (at the time) incredible specs, like a 1.9-second 0-60 mph time, a range of 620 miles, and a top speed of over 250 mph. A year later, CEO Elon Musk even promised the Roadster would have “~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly throughout the car.”
The second-gen Roadster was supposed to enter production in 2020. Obviously, that didn’t happen. In the eight years since the car’s unveiling, Musk has, year after year, promised the Roadster would eventually see the light of day. Last year, he updated the company’s claimed specs, saying it would now hit 60 mph in under one second, and earlier this year, he promised plans for the “most epic demo” by the end of 2025. Many believe this demo will involve the Roadster, though Musk himself hasn’t confirmed this.
Whether the car will actually appear in customers’ driveways by the end of the year is anyone’s guess. To reserve your spot for a Roadster 2.0, you have to give Tesla an immediate $5,000 deposit, and then wire the company another $45,000 within the next 10 days. Tesla’s website advertises the deposit as fully refundable. That’s also true of the reservation agreement form, which says the same thing but with more words:
Cancellation. Until you enter into the Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement, your Reservation may be cancelled at any time through your Tesla Account and for any reason, by either you or us, in which case you will receive a full refund of your Reservation Payment. The refund will be returned to the original for [sic] of payment. If the original account is no longer open or the funds are returned, Tesla will issue the refund via check in the name of the Reservation holder only.
But that’s apparently not what happened to Marques Brownlee. The YouTuber known best for his tech reviews took to his podcast to document the saga of canceling one of his Tesla Roadster orders. While most Tesla orders can be canceled via Tesla’s app, it seems it’s a bit more difficult for the two-seat coupe.
If you log into your account and you have a reservation, typically, if you don’t want to go through with it, there’s a cancel button. But with the Roadster… you go to manage your reservation, and there is no cancel button next to the Roadster. You have to go in and hit manage.
And when you hit manage, it goes, here’s a phone number, here’s an email address. And you call that phone number. I actually did this for a couple of days and just got voicemail, which was great. And I finally got through to someone, and it was somebody in vehicle sales. I asked them if they could cancel my Roadster reservation, and there was a really long pause, and they were like, “A Roadster?”
As Brownlee tells it, after being put on hold, being tossed between representatives, and having to call back again after two weeks, Tesla finally promised Brownlee his money back. Except he says he’s not getting all of it back. Brownlee specified he’ll be getting back the $45,000 wire, but not the original $5,000 reservation. What’s up with that?
[Update: Brownlee says he eventually got his $5,000 back, details below.]
Brownlee isn’t the only one. Mark McCann, another prominent YouTuber, published a video earlier this year documenting the saga of his £4,000 deposit that he hasn’t been able to get back, even after multiple attempts and even a visit to a Tesla service center. Despite asking for the money back, Tesla allegedly later asked him for an additional £185,000 to secure his spot for a Founder’s Edition Roadster.
I’d reach out to Tesla for an explanation, but Tesla dissolved its PR department back in 2020, and is famously impossible to reach out to regarding questions like this. After four years of operating like this, the company finally posted a job listing for “Vehicle Communications Manager” on LinkedIn last year, with a description of duties that seems to involve dealing with the press. But it’s unclear if anyone’s been hired for that job, and if they were, I still have no way of contacting them. If you’re the PR person for Tesla, hit me up!
As I mentioned before, Brownlee isn’t going to go Roadster-less when (if?) the car eventually comes out. He still has one car reserved, but he’s not paying anything for it. The car was awarded to him via Tesla’s now-dead referral program, which allowed buyers to input a referral code for people who recommended the car to them. Brownlee was able to garner enough referral bonuses to earn an entirely free Roadster, plus another 52 percent off a second Roadster. It was the second example, which he had to put a deposit down for, that he canceled.
If everything that they’re saying is still true, and I actually take Tesla’s word for it, I will still be getting, for free, one of the first thousand [Roadsters].
I just canceled the half-free one to get my 50 grand back, and I’ll just still get a free Roadster. Instead of paying half price for two Roadsters, I’ll pay zero dollars for one.
That’s exactly what I’d do if I were in Brownlee’s position. Personally, I wouldn’t want Tesla to have any of my money at this point, and five grand is a lot of money. He could involve a lawyer to get the remainder of the deposit back, but that might jeopardize his free car. That $5,000 is ultimately a small sacrifice (that is, if the car ever comes out).
[Update: After this article was published, I discovered Brownlee had issued an update about his refund to X, claiming to have received the additional $5,000 back from Tesla through a separate wire transfer after a week of waiting. I need to start remembering to check people’s social media more often. -BS]
Top graphic images: Tesla; WVFRM Podcast/YouTube
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Boy, I wish I was wealthy enough to consider 5 big ones a “small sacrifice”.
0-60 in one second, yeah, rocket thrusters, yeah, that’s the ticket. Coming soon, fully refundable deposit, yeah. It’ll be great, said my wife Morgan Fairchild.
Not just rocket thrusters. Approximately ten rocket thrusters.
I’m curious how you install approximately any number of rocket thrusters. You’d think it’d need to be precisely a certain number, but maybe they keep a few hidden just to keep you guessing.
Tesla is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
COTD
You know the next video will be him losing his referral credits used on this second car. No getting those back.
That’s an insane racket.. Free car through referral codes? Any way to get these youtubers to promote, oh IDK voting and democracy?
It’s only a free car if they actually create one, and at this point, I have serious doubts on that
I totally forgot about this until this article. It’s been years….damn, coming up hard on 10 years soon.
Didn’t some rubes put down a full $250k for the Founder’s edition or whatever? Imagine what you could do with a quarter million dollar interest free loan over 8 years that, apparently, you don’t even need to pay back fully.
Somewhat related…my wife and looked into having Tesla solar panels installed on our roof and we gave them a $250 deposit to start the process. We were told the deposit was refundable if for any reason we didn’t get them installed.
A rep from the company came out and said we needed to have our roof reinforced before they could proceed. I told them we couldn’t afford to work on the roof so they canceled the order.
They never gave us the $250 back and refused to respond to my repeated attempts at getting a refund. Small potatoes compared to a $5K deposit on vaporware, but still.
That’s the first and last time I’ll ever give Tesla any of my money.
I represented buyers who purchased a house w/ a Tesla roof recently.
The installers obliterated every single roof vent – so all exhaust fans and plumbing vents now terminate in the attic – causing smells and mold in the attic.
Then when the turnover occurred, all the settings for the roof and power walls which were made by the original owner to coordinate efficient power use and delivery with the local power company were wiped out – so new owners were hit with a massive electricity bill after their first month of ownership.
Tesla sucks.
You’d think Tesla would cut a break for someone with the platform Marques has but I guess they’re equally cold to all of their potential customers.
The fact that after EVERYTHING ELSE Tesla is still valued at what they are means there is literally no such thing as bad press for Tesla. If your CEO going full white-power conspiracy theorist doesn’t do it then literally nothing will.
I wouldn’t say it’s done nothing, I sold my shares after the “awkward wave” for what little that’s worth.
Marques Brownlee… ugh. Seems like a decent guy, but someone somewhere mentioned that he seems like the kind of dude who would always try to argue lessons with the teacher but still only gets like an 80% on each exam.
That kind of fits.
He’s got some good videos, and Fisker did deserve what happened with that video. But he just comes across as someone who thinks of himself a bit too highly i.e. the Panels crap he was trying (still is?) to sell, that’s really where he lost the plot with me.
He reminds me of a lot of tech bros, just kind of insufferable.
Yep and no deep car experience. Which seems fine for a YouTuber to convey the product from a layman / normal user standpoint but lacking some understanding of the car world
He’s an “influencer,” nothing more. I’m not sure he’s got a deep knowledge of anything…
Despite being a good looking render still even today, that body style is…. checks notes… most definitely not a roadster.
Miriam Webster says it is:
“Like the original Lotus-based Roaster, the new one will use a targa-top style roof – if it ever goes into production. Source: Tesla”
“roadster: noun. road·ster ˈrōd-stər
1a: an automobile with an open body that seats two and has a folding, retractable, or removable top and often a luggage compartment or rumble seat in the rear”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/roadster
Isn’t the “roadster” 2.0 going to be a 4-seater?
Roadsters can have back seats:
https://barrettjacksoncdn.azureedge.net/staging/Content/Pages/InventoryDetails/174763.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Roadster
My ego really wants me to say that Jeep and Morgan are just as wrong as Tesla about this. My id says I should at least acknowledge the validity of your point.
Ego wins today. I will now proceed to combine a strawman with dated, ineffective platitudes.
Morgan calls their 4-seater a Roadster!
If Morgan jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?
Jeep’s mom says they’re allowed to call the 4-seat Jeepster a roadster, too!
Well, I’m not Jeep’s mom, now am I?
Remind your ego that if anyone would know that constitutes a roadster it’d be Morgan. But if you need more, here’s more:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1957-austin-healey-100-6-bn4-4-seat-roadster-20/
Even pickup trucks have been roadsters:
https://www.goodingco.com/lot/1927-ford-model-t-roadster-pickup/
That’s honestly a lot more 4-seat roadsters than I thought was possible to come up with. Feels wrong, but with Morgan and Austin both there… Damn.
Mercedes-Benz sell a four door car they call a ‘coupe’.
Car companies can be wrong.
Maybe but I’ll bet their lawyers are better than yours.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!
0-60 in under a second should not be purchasable by anyone that does not achieve some sort of special licensure.
There’s no need for concern, because it’s completely made up, just like the rest of the specs.
Haha, yeah I know that the entire premise of this new roadster is yet another Tesla scam. But I was referring to just the general premise of that sort of acceleration being available to… well anyone on public roads.
And it not only will autopilot itself perfectly and safely with no interventions in hurricane rain and hail on city streets at 200 mph, the cockpit will stay dry while doing so even with the roof open, and range will only drop to 600 miles. It will also know where you want to go, without you having to tell it. And it includes a weenie roaster in the dashboard.
Strangely, though, the weenies will float above the buns.
Assuming that this car actually does release with the specs Tesla claims (press X to doubt), how long do you think it’ll take for someone to post a video of them testing that acceleration on public streets and getting into a crash?
Somewhere within 15 minutes to 3 hours of the first cars being delivered to owners.
If in the EU, default is set to Doubt. Press X for No Doubt.
At what acceleration does a regular Joe pass out?
Lawsuit time.
Serves them right for buying a nazi-mobile.
“Debuted in 2017,” is really gilding the lily here. Teased is more like it.
They had a running, driving prototype at the reveal event didn’t they??
If they did I wonder if it was the real deal? Or if it was a one-off Roadster body dropped onto a cut up Model 3, or something.
While it drove, they showed it off in 2018 and it had no interior. A lot of people speculated it was just a Model 3 with a new skin. Especially since all the specs were theoretical.
Not that I recall, but I could be wrong.
Minus the rocket thrusters, the claimed specs were achievable like 15 years ago, although the range perhaps not with that body shape(it would need to be narrower, lower, more streamlined, and with a CdA under 0.25 m^2 and a mass under 3,000 lbs, it might get 600+ miles highway range with an 80 kWh pack).
The focus on tech and gimmicks could doom this project. It would be so much easier to build without all the crap. Cheaper too. Just build a basic, simple, go-fast electric machine without all of these stupid bells and whistles. It’s not hard with the sorts of resources a major automaker has on hand. Might even be able to keep the cost below 6-figures, too.
Couldn’t they just rebody a Model 3? I don’t really get why this is so complicated.
Absolutely. And MG has done that with the Cyberster.
https://www.topgear.com/long-term-car-reviews/mg-motor-uk/cyberster/250kw-trophy-single-motor-77-kwh-2dr-auto/report-8
What will the world see first, the ver. 2.0 of the Tesla roadster or the SLATE?
Flying cars. And commercial fusion.
Mr. Fusion.
I could only hope!
And then Mr. Coffee. And Mr. Radar. Because I always have coffee when I watch the radar!
I believe pre-production Slates were shown to some press very recently.
I’m pretty confident in saying we’ll see the SLATE long before the Tesla Roadster 2.0, albeit not at the $20k price point that they initially promised.
I think we’ll definitely see the Slate, but it won’t be $20k like they say it will. They might be able to start it at $35k
We’ll see a $30-40k SLATE before the 2.0. Which isn’t saying much, because we’ll also see the Pope, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God perform the Macarena in an inflatable T-Rex suit at the Camp Nou before we see a Tesla 2.0 as advertised.
I also have a coupon for a free Tesla Roadster. It’s in Crayon on the back of an old receipt, but I’m fairly certain it’s worth just as much as the one this guy has.
How do you spell fraud? T-E-S-L-A.
Tesla scamming people? Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat
Elon Musk has said, “Solving full self-driving… is really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero”.
I forget whether he was promising FSD “next year” before or after the 2nd-gen roadster but… y’know…
Since Tesla still doesn’t know how to make a self driving car, and I don’t think they’ve really been working very hard on them for a while now, Elmo is now confident that ROBOTS will be the new game changing scam/opportunity/next-big-thing.
It’s funny to me that the richest man in the world spent half a billion dollars to help get T-Rump elected, only to lose his EV tax credit, making his EV’s more expensive, and he may soon lose his GHG credits, making them worthless and costing Tesla billions of dollars annually. Those two things will likely make Tesla unprofitable.
That is some comedy gold right there!!
Imagine doing all that and then being awarded the largest compensation package in history!
Even if the Roadster ever releases, I bet the odds of Marques getting it for free is about the same as the public forgetting about him doing 96 in a 35 mph active school zone.
I didn’t know this because I don’t know who this guy is, but yikes all the same.
I didn’t know about this either, and it changes my opinion of him and not for the better. Thanks.
Personally, I feel like that should be grounds for summary execution. But I am rather an Old Testament Atheist.
Note – for 96 in a school zone, not for fraud. Though if the fraud is big enough, well…
Me too, the older I get.
I’d say anyone who believes those specs and puts money down deserves to lose it, but I don’t actually believe that. It really is BS that Tesla is refusing to refund $5k. Those specs are ridiculous too. 0 to 60 in under 1 second? Assuming you can turn the wheels fast enough, what road legal tires have sufficient grip? Rocket thrusters? LOL
Its only going to have two wheels to maximize contact patch. Two Flintstone steamroller type wheels which extend across the width of the vehicle.
That might do it.
At this point, why not just do a deal with Jiangling to rebadge the Small Sports Car SC01? It retails for $32,000 under the JMEV brand, surely that gives plenty of room to mark it up into Tesla’s price range and still turn a profit, even with the tariffs. Nobody has to know
They could still mess it up. The original Roadster was based on a Lotus Elise, but they ended up with practically zero interchangeable parts.
That’s mostly because the Elise wasn’t an electric car
“The car was all the rage when it debuted in 2017….”
Um – there was never a debut.
It was previewed – the deposits rolled in – then it was promptly forgotten.
Because what better way is there to make money than promise your fanbase something – charge money for it – then never come through?
That’s the entire problem right there.
And it’s more properly referred to as “Wire Fraud”.
Free beer tomorrow!
Today we boast that it’s wireless.