An EV you can buy that can drive upside down.
The Spéirling has also set a faster lap time around the Top Gear test track than an F1 car, blitzed the Goodwood Hill Climb record, and I’m pretty sure would demolish Volkswagen’s untouchable Pikes Peak time if it gave it a shot. McMurtry has sold at least 24 of the planned 100-car production run.
In 2022 McMurtry went faster up the Goodwood hill than anyone else, including an F1 car.
McMurtry
McMurtry
Crazy looks are rewriting performance.
McMurtry
In 2022 McMurtry went faster up the Goodwood hill than anyone else, including an F1 car.
McMurtry
Crazy looks are rewriting performance.
McMurtry
Will any of this happen?
Musk claims that the Roadster will go into production by 2028. But the CEO has a long and glorious history of overpromising and underdelivering; in 2017 he told attendees at the previous launch that “We are making it now.” Using the company’s referral program, some people were in line to receive two free cars. But those free cars never showed up, and neither did the ones that people put down $50,000 deposits for; last year Sam Altman discovered how hard it can be to get that money back.
And it’s not like there’s actually much of a market for very expensive, very fast EVs: hypercar buyers want noise and an emotional connection, and they don’t get that from an EV.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s core business remains in trouble. Even in quarters with decent sales, its profits are vanishing as costs rise and selling prices drop. And most recently, sales have not been decent.
Its stratospheric valuation was predicated in large part upon promises of constant growth, something that perhaps seemed possible when its market share was near total and there was little competition for EVs. But now Europe and China have hundreds of models to choose from—only two of which are offered by Tesla. The Models 3 and Y are both increasingly aged, and Tesla has shown little ability to innovate rapidly like the Chinese brands that have taken so much of its sales away there. In fact, it might even leave the Chinese market.
But as Musk has told us time and again, Tesla is no longer a car company. Currently, he seems more interested in merging Tesla with SpaceX, claiming synergies having to do with AI despite most of his AI-derived revenues coming from renting GPU time to others. But a merger would give SpaceX a backdoor into the S&P 500 index, which rejected the rocket company in June, as it requires several consecutive profitable quarters for inclusion. Should Musk succeed, he will have access to billions of dollars from passive investment funds that invest retirement accounts in the S&P 500. Apparently, that could happen before the end of the year.
