The Tesla Roadster: Eight Years, Fifty Thousand Dollars, and Still No Car

If you were one of the wide-eyed hopefuls who clicked "Reserve Now" on Tesla’s website back in 2017, congratulations — you’ve been waiting for your dream car longer than most marriages last. And for the low, low price of $50,000 (roughly the annual income of an entire Estonian village), what have you received? Not a car. Not even a delivery date. Just… hope. And maybe a Tesla t-shirt, if you ask nicely.

The Roadster, Tesla’s shiny electric unicorn, was supposed to be the hypercar to end all hypercars. Unveiled with the kind of theatrical fanfare usually reserved for popes or alien landings, it promised 0–60 mph in one second, a top speed north of 250 mph, and — for extra sci-fi flair — a rocket-assisted “SpaceX package.” In short, a car so fast it could slap a Bugatti into the next dimension.

Yet here we are, on the doorstep of 2025, and not a single customer has touched a real Roadster, let alone driven one. Musk once described the car as "the cherry on the cherry on top of the cake" — which, given Tesla's current priorities, translates to "we'll get to it after we finish painting the base layer of frosting on the cupcakes."

Meanwhile, something bizarre is happening on the streets. Tesla owners, once evangelical in their devotion, are jumping ship — and not for financial reasons. No, it’s Elon. The erratic tweets, the political stunts, the baffling public rants… they’ve turned the world’s most beloved tech messiah into a PR liability. Owning a Tesla no longer makes you look futuristic — it makes you look like you retweet Elon at 2am.

Used Teslas now make up 1.4% of the U.S. second-hand car market — a record high, but for all the wrong reasons. Owners are reporting verbal abuse, vandalism, even arson. In some circles, driving a Tesla is no longer cool — it’s controversial. It's the vehicular equivalent of walking into a vegan café wearing a MAGA hat.

To make matters worse, Tesla's global sales are declining for the first time in a decade. Germany and China — markets once drunk on electric Kool-Aid — are sobering up fast. And yet, amid all this, Tesla still wants your $50,000 for a car that doesn’t exist, and might never exist. For that kind of money, you could reserve a Ferrari. You’d get an actual car. With leather, sound, and — crucially — a presence in this plane of reality.

So, if you're still clinging to your Roadster reservation after eight long years, hats off. You’re not buying a car. You’re funding a fairytale.