Tonight the people who put down $50,000 for a Tesla Roadster, announced in 2017, will learn what it is they’re buying and, maybe, how much they’re going to pay for it.
Tesla’s big differentiator right now is self-driving. But why is that valuable in a sports car?
Tesla’s latest creation will accelerate faster than a $50,000 used C8 Corvette? So what? A $50,000 C8 Corvette in Launch Control already accelerates at a terrifying rate, 0-60 in 2.9 seconds, for street use. (See Corvette driving school report (Ron Fellows near Las Vegas) for my report on what I did besides hang out with Hunter Biden in Pahrump.)
It will be great on a race track because each wheel can be individually controlled? If that’s a dramatic improvement then we’ll see Tesla Roadster-only racing?
The car was promised at $200,000 in pre-Biden dollars, right? If we assume that every Nvidia employee wants one, does that mean the market-clearing price for a Roadster will be closer to $500,000 post-Biden dollars? The people who paid $250,000 for a “Founders Series” car apparently weren’t guaranteed a car at that price. They can get a refund if they don’t like whatever Tesla now wants to charge them and Tesla has been holding the money all this time. (Gemini says that if they’d bought $250,000 of Nvidia in November 2017 it would be worth about $11 million today. A stupid investor (like me!) who instead bought the S&P 500 would have about $650,000 today, with dividends reinvested. So if Tesla delivers the car as promised and without charging any more money, it will cost the early adopters $650,000 in 2026 dollars.) I’m going to guess that the only Roadster that can be ordered for delivery within 18 months costs $375,000 (“Douche Edition”?) and that Tesla actually does honor the first 1,000 at $250k/$650k/$11 million depending on how one looks at the opportunity cost of the money. There will be talk about a $290,000 version, but it won’t materialize in our lifetimes.
What would it take for me to get excited about this offering? Seating for 7-plus-puppy and sliding doors!
You can see the 2017 prototype in Los Angeles at a minimum cost of $23 per adult:
Gemini says “EBT cardholders receive free general admission to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles through community promotional offers”, but Grok disagrees and says that those who wisely choose to refrain from work get only 10% off.
How does this compare to the latest gas-powered concept vehicles? Here’s one from Alfa-Romeo with a hood long enough to hold a V-12:
I’m not sure how different the 2017 Tesla looks from the Maserati MC20:
Here’s a Chevrolet C9 Corvette concept, which could almost surely never be sold due to the lack of practicality, e.g., no luggage space. GM won’t let a base Corvette be useless like the Maserati above (5 cu. ft. luggage). It has to have some functional transportation value, though I guess the ZR1 and ZR1X push the limits by eliminating the frunk and leaving owners with a small hot trunk (about 9 cu. ft. vs. 15 on the base C8).
