Tesla Roadster Finally Heads to Production at Giga Texas — but 2027 Is Still a Long Way Off
Tesla's long-delayed Roadster has a confirmed home: Giga Texas in Austin. Company VP Lars Moravy and Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen have both confirmed the Austin plant as the production site, with Tesla VP, Chief Designer confirm Giga Texas production citing first engineering plans already underway. Low-volume output is targeted for late 2027, scaling through 2028. For the roughly 10,000 reservation holders who put down $50,000 back in 2017, that's progress — just not the progress they were promised eight years ago.
Still on paper, mostly
A Tesla SEC filing from early 2026 classifies the Roadster as "Design development" — not production engineering, and not prototype testing. That's a meaningful distinction. Von Holzhausen's podcast comments pointed to active prototype work, but no independent test footage or performance data has been released publicly. Elon Musk has set and missed Roadster deadlines in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The current 2027 date carries real credibility risk.
Engineering teams previously based at Fremont — many of whom worked on the Model S and Model X — have been relocated to Austin. The logic is sound: consolidating resources at Giga Texas, Tesla's most advanced manufacturing facility, removes cross-state complexity and lets new production lines spin up faster.
The numbers, with caveats
The base Roadster targets 0–60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a 620-mile range, and a tri-motor all-wheel-drive setup producing 10,000 Nm of torque. That puts it in the same bracket as the Pininfarina Battista (1.8s) and the Rimac Nevera (1.97s), according to MOTORWATT 2026 hypercar rankings — competitive, but not fastest in class.
The headline-grabbing SpaceX package is a separate, optional add-on. It uses around 10 cold-gas thrusters derived from Falcon 9 rocket technology, pressurized at 10,000 PSI, and is designed to push the 0–60 time under 1.1 seconds. Whether that system can ever be legally driven on public roads — in the US or anywhere else — is an open question Tesla has not addressed.
Founders Series and price
The Founders Series is capped at 1,000 units, priced at $250,000 in the original 2017 reveal. A base model was announced at $200,000. Neither price has been officially reconfirmed, and component inflation since 2017 makes both figures uncertain. Founders deliveries are projected for mid-to-late 2027 if the timeline holds — a significant "if" given the track record.
