Less than a week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that his carmaker is in for a "few rough quarters," the company's executives are spinning up the rumor mill in an apparent effort to distract from its disastrous earnings results.
As Teslarati reports, Tesla senior vice president of powertrain, Lars Moravy, revealed that the carmaker is "gearing up for a super cool demo" of the company's long-awaited next-generation Roadster.
The news comes two weeks after Musk teased a "most epic demo ever by end of year."
"Ever," he added for emphasis at the time.
Tesla's next-gen Roadster has been in the works for at least eight years now. In 2018, Musk revealed a striking design of the company's fastest production car at its electric semi announcement, a sleek and extremely aerodynamic sports car that he said would have a 500-mile range and could go from 0 to 60 mph in a breakneck 1.9 seconds.
But many years of production hell and various spells of Musk sleeping at the firm's factory later, the Roadster has yet to show any real signs of life. Tesla has been quiet about the project, leaving diehard enthusiasts — who shelled out up to a $50,000 deposit — waiting.
The first-generation Roadster, a sports car based on the Lotus Elite chassis, entered production a whopping 17 years ago, so it's basically an antique at this point.
At this point, we can only speculate as to what Musk's "most epic demo" will turn out to be. Moravy remained vague, promising during a recent X livestream that "It’s going to be mind-blowing," as quoted by Teslarati. "We showed Elon some cool demos last week of the tech we’ve been working on, and he got a little excited."
Moravy also promised that the Roadster will be the "last best driver's car" before self-driving tech takes over for good.
One possibility is that we could finally see a glimpse of the Roadster's alleged hovering capabilities.
In true Musk fashion, the mercurial CEO didn't hold back when gloating about the largely vaporware vehicle, promising since 2018 that a special "SpaceX package" made up of a cold gas thrusters that would replace the rear two seats could give the vehicle "three Gs of thrust" and allow it to accelerate in virtually "any direction."
In 2021, Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan that he wants the Roadster to "hover" but was still "trying to figure out how to make this thing hover without, you know, killing people."
"Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground, or something like that," he added at the time. "If you plummet, it’ll blow out the suspension, but you’re not gonna die."
Another possibility being floated by users on social media is that the Roadster could have a simulated manually controlled gearbox in an effort to appeal to sports car enthusiasts.
In recent years, Tesla's design innovation has failed to dazzle. Instead, it released the Cybertruck, a stainless steel monstrosity that has been riddled with technical problems from the get-go, with sales now circling the drain.
Given the company's track record, it would take a miracle to pull off a SpaceX-inspired thruster system, let alone secure the required regulation to make it all street — or airspace — legal.
Fans aren't exactly optimistic, either.
"At what point does old design work become useless because it’s taken so long to release that the tech and aesthetics no longer are cutting edge?" one user wrote on the TeslaMotors subreddit.
"Are they pretending to make it again?" another user lamented.
"Delivery date of never," one user added.
What's far more plausible is that Tesla executives are desperately looking for a carrot on a stick to dangle in front of frustrated investors and disillusioned buyers. The company's sales have fallen off a cliff worldwide, the result of Musk's infamous descent into far-right extremism, considerable competition, and an aging lineup.
Tesla is in a financially precarious position as Musk abandons the company's core business in favor of robotaxis and humanoid robots.
In short, the company is likely looking to light up the afterburners to inject some much-needed life into the brand.
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