Tesla presents its $200,000 car on Thursday, after a long delay.

Tesla presents its $200,000 car on Thursday, after a long delay Tesla is set to present the redesigned Roadster model, almost nine years after it first presented a nine-generation version of its sports electric car, Reuters reports. Tesla unveiled a prototype of the $200,000 car in 2017 and announced that deliveries would begin in 2020. The price was not updated, but the deposit for reservations remains $50,000 each. CEO Elon Musk minimized the car's importance for Tesla's finances, describing it in 2023 as a "matter of little importance" that would not have "significant financial impact". However, the car still has symbolic importance. "It will be the new reference model of Tesla" "Tesla currently does not have a reference model, meaning a high-performance luxury vehicle designed to showcase the best engineering and technological achievements of an automotive manufacturer. The Roadster will be Tesla's new reference model," stated analyst Morningstar, Seth Goldstein, in a note published last month. Musk created high expectations in 2017, claiming that a four-seater Roadster would travel 620 miles (1,000 km) on a single charge. In 2024, he posted on X that the model had been redesigned. The new Roadster will accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (100 km per hour) in less than a second. "And that is the least interesting part," he wrote, adding that it is a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX, the rocket company also led by Musk. The original Roadster was launched in 2008 Goldstein expects Tesla to sell approximately 2,000 Roadsters per year—a fraction of the 1.6 million vehicles sold by Tesla last year. The original Roadster, launched in 2008 and marketed until 2012, was Tesla's first electric vehicle and used a Lotus Elise chassis. This contributed to changing the world's perception of what an electric vehicle could be. Since then, the company has become known for the Model Y and Model X SUVs, as well as the Model S and Model 3 sedans. The presentation of the second-generation Roadster also takes place amid a radical shift in Tesla's company direction towards autonomous driving technology based on artificial intelligence and robotics, away from the production of cars for human drivers. This year, Tesla has stopped selling the Model S and X vehicles to make way for the production of humanoid robots Optimus. It has also launched the Cybercab – a two-seater robotaxi that does not have manual controls such as the steering wheel, pedals, and mirrors. The event dedicated to the Roadster model will begin on Thursday at 8:55 PM EDT (3:55 AM in Romania) at a SpaceX test range in McGregor, Texas.