The Men Spending $50,000 Just to Reserve a Tesla Roadster

In mid-October, CEO Elon Musk sort of made good on a long-standing promise: Tesla’s new second-gen Roadster flew through the air. Technically, the vehicle used compressed air to “thrust” itself—the “flying” lasted mere seconds, and the system takes six to seven hours to refill.Never mind, though—some buyers were eager to unsheath their credit cards to reserve one of the cars. “I was freaking out,” says Alex Lawrence, the owner of used-electric-vehicle dealership EVAuto, who already had one reservation for a second-gen Roadster and watched the demonstration live online. “I placed another one.”It’s not a decision most would make lightly. Tesla took years to get the sports car even close to production. The automaker first introduced the vehicle, a successor to its first car ever, as a surprise at a 2017 event, and immediately began taking $50,000 reservations. At the time, the plan was to deliver the cars in 2020; Musk and company now say the vehicle will enter production in 2028, with delivery dates unclear. (If reservation holders had put that money into Tesla stock, they would be up nearly $1 million today.)The Roadster is also expensive to reserve—and will likely get pricier to buy. The vehicle’s base model, which doesn’t include acceleration thrusters or the flight system, still costs $50,000 to reserve. The second-tier Thrust variant, which comes with the thrusters, requires a $250,000 deposit. The actual flying car, called Rocket, is listed as “invite-only,” and even Musk has acknowledged the vehicle won’t be street legal. Meanwhile, the automaker’s reservation terms note that purchase prices are “only an estimate”—and those estimates don’t even exist yet.Whatever! “I’m going to do everything in my power to get the flying one,” Lawrence says. When he sees the Roadster, after all, he sees money signs. His EV dealership has a large and growing social media following, and the business, not the man, technically put down the money for the Roadster reservations. “We’re going to put it on the track and use it for marketing content,” he says.Utah-based tech founder Travis Cook upped his nearly 10-year-old reservation for the base Roadster variant to the Thrust because he actually wants to live with the thing. He calls himself a “car aficionado” and has a dealer’s license so he can buy and sell fun cars. He loves little more than driving an unusual vehicle, he told WIRED from behind the wheel of a Cybertruck as he used the company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature.“When I roll up somewhere, all the other car aficionados come out, and they're so excited,” he says. “I just get a buzz from that.”Cook says he has no regrets about his years-old reservation, though he may get frustrated if the price shoots up closer to half a million. “I’m not sure I’m willing to drop too much money on the car—but I probably would,” he says. Close family tolerates his obsession, though his wife doesn’t enjoy going 0 to 60 in his other cars and probably won’t in the Roadster, either. “She’s not going to want to go in it,” he says.The tech founder has faith in Musk and Tesla. The October demonstration was even crazier than he had expected. “When it launched off the top of the ramp and went and landed, my jaw was on the floor,” Cook says.Despite the Roadster’s memeable debut, the vehicle doesn’t seem to be a top priority for Tesla. Musk has said for years now that the automaker isn’t really in the business of making cars anymore and instead is focused on robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomy. He has touted the new Roadster as the company’s last human-driven car ever. The supercar garnered just two mentions in Tesla’s hourlong earnings call with investors this month, with Musk calling it “arguably the coolest demo of any product ever.” Musk, meanwhile, has other preoccupations—he has donated at least $445 million to Republican candidates ahead of the US midterms.But Lawrence believes Musk will pull off what he says he will and that his own business’s investment in the Roadster will be worth it in the end. The looping, wedge-shaped car demo left him a little nostalgic, a little existential.“We don’t do crazy stuff like this anymore, like going to the moon. There’s not a lot today that will stop you in your tracks,” he says. “I felt like I was 15, watching that.”