The car carries a price tag of $250,000 (Tesla) Tesla says the Roadster will accelerate to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds and to 100 mph in 4.2 seconds. It also says the triple-motor, all-wheel-drive car will complete a quarter-mile sprint in 8.8 seconds and have a top speed of over 250 mph. Tesla claims the range will be 620 miles – far greater than even the longest-range EVs on sale today – and describes the Roadster as a 2+2, meaning it has a pair of small seats in the rear, as well as two standard seats up front. If the range claim wasn’t outlandish enough, Musk tweeted in June 2018 how the Roadster will be offered with a “SpaceX package” which taps into technology used by the space rocket company he also runs. This would give the Roadster “10 small rocket cold air thrusters arranged seamlessly around the car,” he said. The Tesla boss has even suggested the car might fly. Musk said in the same 2018 tweet: “These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly….” Musk has spoken about the Tesla x SpaceX tech tie-in for some time now, but is yet to show any evidence of the Roadster using any form of thruster to boost performance. He has previously said how the car could use rocket technology to reduce its 0-60 mph time to under one second, and that one thruster would deploy from behind the rear licence plate. All of this should be taken with a pinch of salt. Mate Rimac, the Croatian boss of both Bugatti and electric hypercar company Rimac, has since poured cold water on Musk’s one second acceleration claim. Rimac said on Facebook in 2024: “It is possible with thrusters. We did the simulation. Problem is, you release the air in two to three seconds and then you have a lot of dead weight that you are carrying around (tanks, compressor, valve, nozzles etc). Same with fans – they just give you more grip, but you need something like 30,000 Nm [of torque] on the wheels to accelerate below 1 sec 0-100 km/h, which means you need massive motors, inverters, gearboxes, driveshafts, etc.” Tesla currently states the Roadster produces 10,000 Nm of wheel torque, and makes no mention of the SpaceX tech on the specification or pre-order pages of its website. Recommended Xpeng G6: Release date, price and all you need to know about the Tesla Model Y rival