Tesla Roadster

Am I the only one who's worried that Tesla is really starting to bite off more than they can chew? Right now their finances are a mess, they are publicly struggling to produce their most important car ever, their CEO is spending time figuring out how to dig holes underneath LA...and now they're announcing a semi truck and a roaster in the same day? Don't get me wrong, Teslas are incredible cars. But this seems like an overreach considering they are struggling to figure out how to meet demand on the Model 3. It's also insane to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI! These are some very bold announcements and there isn't much explanation for how these goals will be met. I hope this all turns out as advertised, but I'm very skeptical.

Has the 8 second quarter mile been confirmed to be done in stock trim (i.e., no special tires or other modifications)?<p>The reason I ask is because that is EXTREMELY impressive. I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.<p>Even all wheel drive cars (GTRs, DSMs, EVOs, etc.) usually run 4 slicks once they get to that speed.<p>It seems very hard to make a pass like that on regular street tires, even with AWD.<p>EDIT: To add, I&#x27;m not knocking Tesla here, as there are very few cars that can actually run an 8 second pass off the showroom floor without any modifications at all. Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.

The Tesla roadster specs are insane! No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).<p>Plus 620 miles of range, and it is a 4 seater. Expensive as hell, but this is exotic car territory.<p>Base Specs<p>Acceleration 0-60 mph1.9 sec<p>Acceleration 0-100 mph4.2 sec<p>Acceleration 1&#x2F;4 mile8.8 sec<p>Top SpeedOver 250 mph<p>Wheel Torque 10,000 Nm<p>Mile Range 620 miles<p>Seating 4<p>Drive All-Wheel Drive<p>Base Price $200,000<p>Base Reservation $50,000<p>Founders Series Price $250,000<p>Founders Series Reservation<p>(1,000 reservations available)$250,000

Close up video of Tesla Roadster launching from zero:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;DavidHodge&#x2F;status&#x2F;931391188065705984" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;DavidHodge&#x2F;status&#x2F;931391188065705984</a>

200K is actually good value, seeing as gas supercars that are near it in terms of performance (except slower) often cost over $1M.<p>EDIT: Tesla probably should fix their homepage going to a what appears to be the live stream page. I&#x27;d have to imagine they are losing valuable pageviews and sales. Tesla.com should be redirecting to either the Semi or Roadster landing pages.<p>Screenshot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;L9oN5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;L9oN5</a>

Does this mean that Tesla is pivoting from their attempt to produce a medium-priced car in quantity and going back to hand-building high-end cars?<p>Tesla is good at high-end, low volume products. But the Model 3 production fiasco shows they don&#x27;t know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota City do. This is in a way a step backwards. Tesla is going back to targeting the 1%.<p>There are lots of little supercar companies. It&#x27;s not that hard to build an electric supercar in tiny volume. I know some people who&#x27;ve done it. It&#x27;s fun, and there are idiots with too much money who&#x27;ll buy the thing. But it&#x27;s a waste of engineering talent which should be getting the volume product out the door.

I would really love to know how they are getting such a large battery capacity in a vehicle of this size.<p>Is this a generational leap in energy density? What kind of materials are being used here?

I&#x27;m thinking what this means to gas car makers.<p>Wave 1: &quot;It&#x27;s all about legacy and prestige, not speed&#x2F;acceleration&quot;.<p>Wave 2: &quot;The track handling isn&#x27;t all that good, how can drivers take that corner at full power without losing traction&quot;.<p>Wave 3: &quot;Alright, we will go electric too&quot;.

They clearly learned the power of the preorder with the Model 3! This is a great way to raise funding without going back to the equity markets.<p>Say they can fill up all the founder series slots along with 5,000 regular slots, that’s $500,000,000. Smart :)

Stumble on this video from last night where a few lucky invitees could feel the experience of riding in the new Roadster. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;C6nN-GlghAc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;C6nN-GlghAc</a>

Love it. Perfect showmanship to hype up the truck then announce this.<p>Hope they stay solvent long enough to ship it.

Taking reservations for 1000 founder series cars at $250k each up front means they&#x27;re pre-selling $250,000,000 worth of product at least 2 years out. Kind of smart.

I wonder what the handling will be like. Teslas on the track have had over heating issues, and cornering performance has been just average at best.<p>Not every exotic car owner (Ferrari, Lambo, Mclaren) brings their car to the track, but I feel like a good % do. When you own a 200k car, you don&#x27;t drive it to the grocery store because it attracts too much attention, and you worry something bad will happen to it.<p>Edit: For more clarification on the grocery getter comment: As an owner of an older exotic car, I&#x27;ve seen that most do not drive their exotics that much. 1-5k miles max&#x2F;year. The cheapest insurance policies won&#x27;t let you drive it to any public parking lots. And policies from the normal companies will cost $3-8k in large metropolitan areas for 40-50 year olds. So where do you go? You make excuses to drive it. Cruise to a friends house, drive in the mountains, or to the track if you have time. Daily errands are for your other car. Why risk it. Elon&#x27;s a pretty good showman, and he makes me feel like I could do anything with this car! But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @ 130-150k.

Bold prediction: if they manage to produce a battery capable of 620 mile range promised, it will essentially be game over for ICE cars. My bet is that next generation of Model S and X will easily be in the 400-500 mile rsnge.

0-60 mph in 1.9 sec<p>This might sound really stupid. But isn&#x27;t performing such acceleration on a daily basis close to the limit of harming one&#x27;s health? I mean micro concussions for example.<p>Really curious because that acceleration is amazing!

<p><pre><code> 1.9 seconds </code></pre> That&#x27;s what caught my attention the most. This is unheard of in a production car. I&#x27;m also generally very excited that Lamborghini is also experimenting with electric power.<p>We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5 second range....that is insane acceleration.

There has <i>got</i> to be an astroturfing campaign going on here, or the HN crowd is a lot more naive than I thought. Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but <i>two</i> new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)? What matters more than anything to Tesla is production at scale, but they are busy promising ever more fantastic new products that will distract even more from hitting core goals. Every announcement from Tesla seems more like flimflam at this point, hardly better than an ICO (with preordering and everything).<p>That&#x27;s not even getting into Elon Musk&#x27;s ever expanding personal commitments with Tesla, SpaceX, Boring company, Solar City and what have you, <i>each</i> making bold new announcements every other week, like saving Puerto Rico (and Australia too, while we&#x27;re at it).

Those acceleration figures are meaningless. The Chiron isn&#x27;t the best car on a circuit for example. I would be interested to see this car compete against say a gt3 on a track like Nürburgring :)

The specs are astonishing, and I believe they can deliver. The original Roadster is the iconic car that made electric vehicles cool.<p>Would be nice if they could get production of the Model 3 properly ramped up so us peasants who&#x27;ve been drooling over performance electric cars since before we had our driver&#x27;s licenses can actually get our hands on them...

0-60 in 1.9 seconds is ABSURD

It&#x27;ll be interesting to see if they can keep the battery power output up for a sustained length of time. Acceleration numbers are all well and good, but racetrack performance is about sustained high-load operation, and Tesla has had some trouble there:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedrive.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;5207&#x2F;this-video-reminds-us-that-the-tesla-model-s-is-an-awful-track-car" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedrive.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;5207&#x2F;this-video-reminds-us-that...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insideevs.com&#x2F;expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurburgring-full-power-video&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insideevs.com&#x2F;expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurbu...</a><p>Then again, how many people actually care? I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;ll have trouble finding buyers.

So basically Musk unveils future products of lesser demand but probably higher profit so he can raise Tesla stock value a bit and also grab some preorder cash flow and help Model 3 while it&#x27;s stuttering ?

<i>&gt; 0-60 MPH in 1.9 seconds</i><p>For comparison, a top fuel dragster does 0-60 in 0.5 seconds.

While the specs of this car are no doubt impressive i wouldnt say no one can compete with them. Porsche is&#x2F;has been working on a high end electric car for quite a bit and they have specifically said they would challenge Tesla with it. Porsche also is someone who knows how to build high end cars and with their racing heritage i wouldnt be suprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of Teslas sail

Anybody know why Tesla didn&#x27;t solve model 3 production scaling issues by subcontracting to someone who could do a &quot;running start&quot;? I would imagine a large portion of the car is relatively standard, being made of steel, mass produced components etc.

I&#x27;d really like to see a clearer shot of the steering wheel (steering device?) I&#x27;m curious why they decided to go with something that looks more like a plane&#x27;s yoke than a normal wheel. Is this something that&#x27;s common with supercars?

It would seem over 200 mph isn&#x27;t useful, except the Boring company could change that. A private tunnel could enable such leisurely travel for only cars that had level 3+ autonomy safety features.

A lot of people seem to have an electric car fetish that is blinding them to the amount of work that went into the chassis and suspension design which is the real achievement here.<p>If you have 1000hp available at any speed not going at least reasonably fast would be an achievement.<p>Putting 1000hp to the ground at really low wheel speeds in a semi-production ready (let&#x27;s not kid ourselves, nobody is going to be sending a $200k+ car off the line in high volumes) chassis is the interesting thing here.

Electric motors are absolutely better compared to combastion engines. But Guys, please don&#x27;t compare apple to oranges. Tesla is no match to Ferrari nor McLaren. Ferrari&#x27;s main intention is to build a car that has a good cornering on track. 0-60 is for muscle cars which you can compare to SRT Demon. All these Bugattis, Koenigseggs are a bunch of unsteerable rockets on tracks. Last but not least you know how Koenigsegg ended up in Nordschleife.

While this cars specs are no doubt impressive I wouldnt say no one will be able to challenge them. Porsche has been working on a high end electric car for a while and they specifically said they would challenge Tesla. Porsche can build some nice high end cars, and with their racing&#x2F;electric technology i wouldnt be surprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of teslas sail

I&#x27;d like to see this kind of battery tech on a lowest-end, lowest-cost mass production car with a 2-3k mile range on a single overnight charge. For my usage in the city, this would mean I&#x27;d charge every other week.<p>How far are we from such a feat I wonder, and, can&#x27;t help but speculate as to why we&#x27;re not.

It&#x27;s a bit unbelievable they were able to double the range of the already highly efficient model S...<p>Maybe a significant reduction of weight + increase in battery? Whatever it is, it&#x27;s amazing that they were able to pull it off.

All nice and good. We see the EV revolution in front of our eyes.<p>But nobody speaks about the EV infrastructure.

I&#x27;m curious about the claim that it fits 4. Because my friend has a late 90&#x27;s firebird that while having 4 seats, it&#x27;s clearly made for children &#x2F; teens. So any information if the backseats in this model is made for adults?

Oh no, they&#x27;re doing what all the other carmakers do and reuse the same name for completely different cars whose only thing in common is to target the same market segment. We&#x27;ll have to call this the 2020 Roadster.

I&#x27;m hoping they actually tested that 250mph+...I&#x27;m no expert but that car looks bit too light and short to do that speed...can&#x27;t see how it will stick to the road...unlessssss...they want it to fly away :)

Great another car for the super wealthy. I thought Tesla&#x27;s mission was to take on the GM&#x27;s and Toyota&#x27;s of the world. I&#x27;d personally be more excited if they announced an affordable Tesla SUV.

This doesn&#x27;t really makes sense as a sports car if you want to do anything but go straight. If they had wanted good handling they should have gone for half the range and saved the weight.

3 motors.<p>Some kind of torque vectoring deal in the rear wheels? Like the Electric AMG SLS.

0-60 in 1.9s for $200k that is affordable by a good range of people. I can see disasters happening with this car as young dudes lose control when they accelerate.<p>There has to be some serious A.I to prevent this.

It&#x27;s interesting that people are so quick to dismiss this as merely a rendering, with the videos being CGI. Is that because the videos are &#x27;too good&#x27; perhaps, or it just looks too much like a racing game car on the X-box? You&#x27;d have to deliberately ignore the fact that there were real cars presented at the announcement, for instance. Also interesting is that because the acceleration is so fast, there were accusations of the video being sped up at that point - people couldn&#x27;t believe it was real. Are HN readers getting more skeptical of TSLA because of its recent financial and production issues, and this is showing in the cynical comments here?

In my humble opinion, the 1st roadster was much, much better looking.

I&#x27;m a Tesla skeptic for model 3 success, but this is badass.<p>If I was in the market for a car that I couldn&#x27;t take advantage of driving legally, and had 200k laying around, would definitely buy lol

Why is it that concept car designers insist on <i>not</i> adding wing mirrors or else tiny little stalks that are significantly smaller than production wing mirrors? Every damn time...

Multiple Porsche owner here. The acceleration on the Roadster is great obviously, however the sound of a car (or in this case lack of it) is definitely a factor in the experience.

I was wondering recently what happened to all the first generation roadsters? I used to see them frequently enough but they&#x27;ve been hiding from the road a long time it feels.

&quot;quickest car in the world&quot; is an interesting choice of word.<p>Is that to stand out from the slogan tropes like &quot;fastest car in the world&quot; &#x2F; &quot;fastest in its class&quot;?

At what speed&#x2F;acceleration can you put wings on the thing and be able to fly? I wouldn&#x27;t put it past Elon for his master plan to include flying cars.

I don&#x27;t see autopilot or any sort of autonomy mentioned for the new Roadster. That sort of makes sense, but I&#x27;m also a bit disappointed about it.

No side view mirrors! That helps tremendously with aerodynamics. I wonder if they used cameras and displays. Even the new Ford GT has mirrors.

Would ludicrous mode for the roadster go 0-60 in 1 second?<p>the 620 mile range is super impressive. How??? Or is it just that the roadster is super light?

Are people just not testing their websites on non Apple devices or why are there 2 vertical scrollbars next to each other?

Hey, how do you call a guy who takes people money for future orders without delivering on the ones already taken?

Tesla can barely ship the Model 3, and now they&#x27;re adding yet another consumer vehicle to the lineup?<p>Tesla&#x27;s vision is completely scattered. I have little faith in them at this time since they can&#x27;t deliver the &quot;economy&quot; Model 3, but now suddenly have the bandwidth to develop, engineer, ship, and maintain yet another car?<p>Tesla, ship the Model 3 at scale and then we&#x27;ll talk.

Well here&#x27;s my &quot;exit event&quot; car, should such a thing ever happen. :)

4 seats, but somehow I doubt it has more legspace than the average budget airliner.

Putting a license plate on that would be like putting braces on the mona lisa.

I wonder how long the trick of masking problems with announcements will work.

Sorry, 10,000 nm of torque? This can&#x27;t be real. edit: misunderstood

An 8.8 second 1&#x2F;4 mile is crazy for any car, let alone a stock one.

Tesla should make a Formula E car. Clearly they have the tech.

No rear view mirrors ?

I thought this was hacker news. Not gearhead news. (:

This is half the top speed of a plane. Insane.

0-60 in less than 2 seconds. that’s insane.

0-60 1.9 Why is this still a thing?

This feels like slide ware to me, and I know Tesla has achieved its goals in the past, but color me at least a little skeptical.

Still to see if it can do it over and over again like the sports cars it&#x27;s billed to compete against.

Want! Man. This is so cool!

Why are they introducing a new car? Have they solved the model 3 deployment problems already?

That front-end tho

Wow, 200k for a car is pretty expensive.

What would be even cooler is if they could build the cars they’ve already taken money for, and service the ones they have already sold.

How are they going to keep up with production on Roadster when Model 3 production itself is slow and low ?

I don&#x27;t need to live in a house when I have a car like this do I? Think the wife will buy that argument for selling the house and buying this car?

<i>&gt; 250mph</i><p>Metric system, where are you?-)

Are they selling the reservations now? Is this about getting more cash to keep funding their operations?

Off topic, but really nice website.

The specs are insane but it would be better if Tesla focuses on getting its mass market car out in the market, in the hands of consumers.

Is today 1. April?

Apple needs to buy Tesla and run it better than Elon Musk can right now. He&#x27;s overloaded himself with responsibilities.<p>Apple could do a lot of good by applying their skills to such an important problem. And Tesla&#x27;s have been called &quot;laptops on wheels&quot; which has some truth it. They have the money, people, and management skill to do it well. Tesla has the industry lead that Apple needs to get in the race.<p>First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I&#x27;d guess. But maybe not.

solving the world&#x27;s important problems.

$250k and it looks like a Nissan Z. Honestly, the old model roadster looked much more distinctive.

Tesla is true leader in car.I just love it.

Hmmmmm. Tesla seems on the edge of imploding, financially.<p>Then they announce this. (With reservations starting at $200k.)<p>I wouldn&#x27;t put retirement money on that one.

But you have to get out of the car and remove the roof to use it as a convertible. Then I think I&#x27;d stick with a BMW 438i convertible which takes the entire roof down at the push of a button in about 20 seconds. Driving isn&#x27;t all about acceleration.