Tesla Roadster: A €50,000 Deposit, but for What?
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No price, no delivery date, but €50,000 on the table: Since the unveiling of the new Tesla Roadster, customers in Austria and Germany can also reserve the electric sports car. It does not come cheap. On Tesla’s reservation page, €5,000 is due immediately, and another €45,000 must be wired within 10 days. If the second payment does not arrive on time, Tesla can cancel the reservation.
What You Get for the Money
Essentially, you are buying a place in line. In Europe, buyers can reserve the road-legal base version, Performance, with two seats, suction fans and active aerodynamics, which Tesla says reaches 60 mph (96 km/h) in under 1.6 seconds. The Thrust version, with cold-gas thrusters at the rear, is limited, and Tesla is asking for a $250,000 (about €223,000) deposit for it in the United States. The flying Rocket version is available by invitation only.
What you do not get is a purchase price. Tesla has not named one for any version. In its reservation terms, Tesla explicitly calls the estimated price “merely an estimate,” according to the site Not a Tesla App, with options and equipment still being finalized. The final price is to be set only once the configurator goes live. In 2017, the base price was $200,000 (about €178,000), and observers now expect significantly more.
There is no firm delivery date either. Elon Musk has announced that production will start in 2028, nothing more. That means the €50,000 is likely to sit with Tesla for at least two years before a purchase agreement is even signed.
Europeans Pay More
The difference from the United States is striking. There, a reservation costs $50,000, or about €44,600. Customers in Europe are paying about €5,400 more for the same place in line.
Can You Get Your Money Back?
On its German page, Tesla lists only the first installment of €5,000 as fully refundable. The page does not make clear what happens to the remaining €45,000 if a customer changes their mind. Tesla’s U.S. reservation terms have so far stated that a reservation can be cancelled at any time until the purchase agreement is signed, with the payment refunded in full.
The case of the YouTuber Marques Brownlee shows that this can be a hassle in practice. On an earlier Roadster reservation, he initially got back only the $45,000 and had to wait weeks for the remaining $5,000, The Autopian reported. There was no cancel button for the Roadster in the app, so customers had to call.
Lessons From 2017
There are good reasons to hesitate. Back in 2017, Tesla collected $50,000 deposits for the Roadster and, for the limited Founders Series, even the full price of $250,000 (about €223,000) up front. Delivery was promised for 2020. The date has been pushed back again and again since then, and the car now set to arrive differs significantly from the original promise: two seats instead of four and a range of about 300 miles (480 kilometers) instead of about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).
For Tesla, the deposits mean money in the bank years before delivery. Financially, the Roadster plays a minor role anyway, with Morningstar expecting about 2,000 sales a year. Mr. Musk himself said he was “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint.” It matters more as a showcase for the collaboration with SpaceX, which has recently fueled rumors of a merger.
The Alternatives
Anyone who wants an electric supercar today does not have to wait until 2028. The Porsche Taycan Turbo GT costs about €240,000, the Rimac Nevera about €2.1 million, and Ferrari offers its first all-electric car, the Luce, starting at €550,000. Unlike the Roadster, these models come with a fixed price.
