Tesla Roadster 2026: Release Date Still Unknown After Jay Leno’s Garage Interview

© A. Krivonosov

Two months — and almost the exact same line. In June, Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen said the new Roadster would arrive “very soon,” possibly within weeks. Now, on Jay Leno’s Garage, he repeated the promise but still gave no specific date. That matters more than the phrase itself: August has arrived, and the promised demonstration still hasn’t happened.

The exchange was brief. Jay Leno said he was “eagerly anticipating the arrival of the new Roadster.” Von Holzhausen replied, “Yes, very soon.” When Leno pressed, “Very soon?” the designer repeated, “Very soon.” Leno’s deadpan response followed: “10 years… just shy of 10 years.” The second-generation concept was unveiled by Tesla in November 2017, with production originally promised to start in 2020.

The previous chapter of this story was also tied to August: the Roadster demo featuring the SpaceX thruster system was pushed to late summer or later. Electrek links the delay to continued work on the A71 cold gas thruster package, though Tesla hasn’t published a new official timeline. In May, engineering VP Lars Moravy also indicated that the company’s high-performance team was focused specifically on the Roadster.

Meanwhile, the official Roadster page still shows the same old benchmarks: 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in roughly 2.1 seconds, a top speed above 400 km/h (250 mph), and about 1,000 km (620 miles) of range. There’s no production start date, and no current price is listed — visitors are simply invited to reserve one or sign up for updates. So these figures are best treated as the project’s stated targets rather than a final production-car spec.

At launch, Tesla quoted a base price of $200,000, with the Founders Series at $250,000. Tesla’s current site no longer confirms those figures. Some early customers paid the full Founders Series amount years ago and are still waiting.

For now, the Roadster has only picked up one more verbal marker: “very soon.” The next real shift won’t be another timeline guess — it will be a public showing of the updated car with confirmed specs and a production calendar.