Tesla CEO and controlling shareholder Elon Musk has again signalled the unveiling of the new Tesla Roadster and the release of unsupervised full self driving FSD will be pushed back, at least by several months.
Product delays have become a regular feature of Tesla’s path to dominance in the EV market, and its pre-eminent position is now being challenged by the likes of BYD and the success of a host of other Chinese car makers who are releasing more and lower priced models.
Tesla has been stuck with just two major models, the still best-selling Model Y SUV and the Model 3 sedan, although it is rolling out new variants of the Model Y, including six-seater versions, and bigger and longer range variants.
Its Cybertruck electric ute has not been successful, the company is still to roll out the Tesla Semi electric truck at scale, and the long awaited wait for the new version of its very first EV, the Roadster, has been delayed again.
Electrek reported that it is the eighth time that Musk has delayed the official unveiling of the Roadster since the prototype was first revealed in late 2017.
“We may be able to debut that in a month or so,” Musk said on the earnings call with analysts and shareholders to make its first quarter earnings results. “It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
The Tesla results came in with mixed results. Its revenue of $US22.39 billion was below market expectations, but the increase in margins from its EV sales helped earnings per share come in at 41 cents, which was better than analyst expectations of 37 cents.
A major focus though was Tesla’s increased capital spending of $US25 billion in 2026 – three times the level of 2025 and $US5 billion more than previously advised – mostly targeted towards FSD and robotics as Musk charges on with his plans to change the company from its once singular EV focus to AI initiatives, robotics and data centres.
“You should expect to see significant, a very significant increase in capital expenditures, but I think well justified for a substantially increased future revenue stream,” Musk said in the call.
Of most interest to existing Tesla EV owners, particularly those who have older cars that do not have the hardware infrastructure to host the company’s FSD technology, despite paying up to $10,000 for the privilege, will be news that Tesla will update those vehicles.
That will be complicated though, given the complexity and the numbers, and will require numerous new hubs – or “micro-factories” as Musk described it – to be built to deal with the demand, and if Tesla owners don’t want to trade in their car for a newer vehicle.
Musk had promised that Tesla EVs with Hardware 3 would be able to support FSD. It turns out not to be the case.
“I wish it were otherwise but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD,” Musk said in the earnings call.
“We did think at one point it would have that, but relative to Hardware 4 it has only 1/8th of the memory bandwidth. And memory bandwidth is one of the key elements needed for unsupervised FSD. It’s generally a thing thats needed for AI, if you’re doing an auto-regressive transformer, memory bandwidth is the chokepoint.”
And Musk also confirmed that full unsupervised FSD was not yet ready. “I’m just guessing here, but probably in the fourth quarter,” he said when asked. Observers said this was the 10th year in a row that Musk had made a similar promise.
See The Driven’s detailed EV sales data here:Â Australian electric vehicle sales by month in 2026; by model and by brand.
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.