Tesla's Design Chief Says the Roadster Is Coming 'Very Soon'

Tesla's chief designer says the next Roadster is coming "very soon." Franz von Holzhausen said it on the latest episode of Jay Leno's Garage, and when Leno pressed him, he said it again. Leno's reply — "10 years… just shy of 10 years" — is the honest summary of where this car sits.

What was actually said

Von Holzhausen made no commitment beyond the phrase. No date, no specification, no pricing, no market. That matters, because the same two words have been attached to this vehicle repeatedly since it was revealed.

Separately, The Information has reported that Tesla intends to unveil the second-generation Roadster this month, citing four people with knowledge of the programme. Tesla has not confirmed an event, and nothing on the record fixes a date.

The record so far

Tesla showed the Roadster as a running prototype in November 2017 and promised production for 2020. It has moved since:

The current explanation for the delay is the SpaceX package Elon Musk has teased for years — a set of cold-gas thrusters, referred to internally as A71, intended to improve acceleration and cornering. Integrating rocket hardware into a road car is a genuine engineering problem, and it is also an open-ended one.

What "coming" would mean

This is the part worth being precise about, because it is where expectations usually go wrong. Reporting on the expected event describes a demonstration, not the start of production. If it happens, it would be the second public demo in roughly a decade. Volume production would sit closer to 2027 or 2028 on the same reporting, and Tesla has not published a production timeline at all.

None of this is confirmed by Tesla. Treat the unveil date, the thruster package and the production window as unconfirmed reporting rather than a plan you can buy against.

For European buyers

A European Roadster is further away still, and for reasons that have nothing to do with thrusters. A low-volume performance car needs EU type approval on its own merits, and features designed around American road rules do not automatically transfer — Tesla's experience getting driver-assistance functions cleared in Europe is a standing demonstration of that gap. Right-hand-drive markets add another step.

The practical position for anyone in Europe holding a Roadster reservation, some of which date to 2017 and carry substantial deposits, is unchanged by this interview. A designer saying "very soon" on a chat show is not a delivery estimate, and there is still no European launch commitment, no homologation status, and no price.

Tesla has plenty of hardware genuinely arriving — the Cybercab is being shown with real Starlink hardware, and the Semi is pushing into France. The Roadster is not yet in that category. The next credible signal is an actual event with an actual car, and until that happens the sensible read on "very soon" is the one Leno gave on air.