Tesla asked interested customers to plunk down a $50,000 deposit for the Tesla Roadster in 2017 but still hasn’t delivered the model nor some refunds.
The Tesla Roadster was announced back in 2017 with production originally expected for 2020. Based on the automaker’s promises of a 1.9-second 0-60 time, a top speed of over 250 miles per hour, and a range of over 600 miles, plenty of buyers were eager to put up a $50,000 reservation fee. To secure the privilege of buying a Tesla Roadster, customers had to put an immediate $5,000 payment on a credit or debit card and wire the remaining $45,000 within 10 days. The Roadster has since been delayed numerous times, and many of those customers are taking to forums and social media to complain how hard it was to get their supposedly refundable deposits back.
According to an October 2024 report from BBC’s Top Gear, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told investors on a conference call „The reason it has not come out yet is because the Roadster is not just the icing on the cake, it’s the cherry on the icing on the cake.“ That bit of marketing analogy doublespeak was little comfort to impatient buyers, especially coming eight months after Musk revealed major updates on the new Roadster and promised it would ship by 2025. But barely a dozen weeks remain in the year as of this writing, and Tesla is still taking reservations for a car that may never come.
