Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting was absolutely full of news. More than 75 percent of the company’s shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk’s one-trillion-dollar compensation plan, split into 12 tranches of shares that unlock only if Tesla meets a series of milestones over the next decade. Musk also confirmed that series production of the long-awaited CyberCab will begin in April next year.

Also: Elon Musk’s Trillion Dollar Pay Hinges On A Bet That Could Break Tesla

The Roadster 2 demo is now slated for the same month, and in classic Musk style, the timing isn’t without a joke. He says it’s happening on April Fools’ Day, partly because it “affords some deniability.” If the demo slips, he quipped, “I could say I was just kidding.”

What’s New With the Semi?

And then there’s the Semi, which is heading for a redesign and full-scale production next year, following its unveiling all the way back in 2017 The redesigned Class 8 hauler gets meaningful efficiency gains, higher payload capacity, and a package clearly engineered around Tesla’s autonomy ambitions.

While the original Semi entered limited production back in 2022, this is a full-scale update with big aspirations and changes.

Efficiency is the biggest news. Tesla claims energy consumption drops to 1.7 kWh per mile, a 15 percent improvement over the current Semi. Paired with a 500-mile range rating, the update positions the new truck more competitively against rivals from Daimler and Volvo.

Drive power holds at 800 kW, but Tesla says that internal improvements under the skin, such as cooling, software, and thermal routing, provide more consistent performance under load.

Fast Charge Future

Another major upgrade is charging. The new Semi supports a peak rate of 1.2 MW (1,200 kW). That eclipses the current Megacharger output and allows for significantly shorter high-volume charging stops when paired with compatible infrastructure. Payload capacity also increases, though Tesla didn’t reveal by how much.

Visually, the Tesla truck looks a lot more like the rest of the family now. It gets a new Model Y-style front light bar, cleaner body surfacing, and a reshaped roof to improve aerodynamic flow. The black glass side panel is narrower, the bumper is reworked, and that continues to the wheel openings.

Read: Tesla’s Cybercab Might Become The Affordable Model 2 After All

Tesla frames all of this as groundwork for a future autonomous freight platform. Amazingly, the brand and its CEO avoided reaffirming any specific Level 5 self-driving timelines.

How Fast Can It Build the Cybercab?

Elon Musk didn’t stop at teasing the Cybercab itself; he also boasted about how it would be built. According to him, the dedicated production line will operate on an astonishing sub-10-second cycle time, compared with the roughly one-minute rhythm it currently takes to assemble a Model Y.

If that target holds, Musk suggested, it could translate to an annual output up to five million Cybercabs, a figure that would eclipse the production pace of nearly any vehicle on the road today. Still, as with most of Musk’s projections, take everything said with a grain of salt.

Either way, it’s going to be a wild year for Tesla. From Semi production ramp-up to the launch of the Cybercab and the potential demo of the Roadster, there’s a lot to live up to and lots that could go wrong.

Time flies. Believe it or not, it’s been eight whole years since Tesla first unveiled the second-generation Roadster. Back then, the all-electric sports car was pitched as a new benchmark for EV performance, a car that would silence skeptics and rewrite the rulebook.

Since then, though, plenty of other brands have done the rewriting themselves.

Over the years, the brand has launched the Cybertruck, refreshed the Model 3 and Model Y, and promised real Full Self-Driving several times, while the Roadster feels like its been surpassed at best, vaporware wortse.

According to Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, however, it’s not dead, it’s simply fashionably late.

More: 8 Years Later, Tesla’s Still Taking $50K Roadster Reservations Musk Promised For 2020

Speaking on the Ride the Lightning podcast, von Holzhausen was asked if the long-promised “most epic demo ever” that Elon Musk teased earlier this year is still happening in 2025, he said “We are planning on this year,” suggesting Tesla still aims to showcase the car before the year’s end.

However, with roughly 10 weeks left until New Year’s Day, time is running out. 

Pressed further about when customers might actually take delivery, von Holzhausen replied: “Definitely within two years.” That would put first deliveries somewhere around the end of 2027, assuming nothing slips, which, given Tesla’s track record with timelines, is far from guaranteed. 

When it arrives, Tesla claims the Roadster will be capable of hitting 60 mph in under two seconds, reaching a top speed north of 250 mph, and have up to 620 miles of range, with talk of rocket-style thrusters for good measure.

Those are very lofty numbers, but until someone sees one outside of a studio light, they are just that: numbers.

Read: Ex-Tesla Alums Debut New Electric Roadster Named To Taunt Elon Musk

It’s worth remembering (as if anyone forgot) that Tesla might be as well known for over-promising and under-delivering as it is for actual automotive innovation. The Cybertruck famously showed up late with less range and a higher price than initially promised – and that’s but one example among many.

Right now, von Holzhausen insists the final product will be worth the wait. But as the years go by, the Roadster’s story feels less like a promising sequel and more like a project Tesla simply can’t afford to get wrong. 

It’s been eight long years since Tesla promised the second-generation Roadster, and yet the car still doesn’t exist outside of renders, prototypes, and Elon’s Twitter, err, sorry, X feed. Back in 2017, Tesla managed to talk plenty of people into dropping $5,000 for a reservation, followed by another $45,000 as a deposit, all with the confident assurance that production would begin in 2020.

The Refund Maze

For years, people have quietly wondered how you cancel a Roadster reservation, assuming anyone at Tesla would, you know, actually pick up the phone. Thanks to YouTuber Marquess Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, we finally know what the process looks like. Predictably, it’s a bit of a mess. Still, reservation holders can get their money back, even if it takes some persistence.

Read: 8 Years Later, Tesla’s Still Taking $50K Roadster Reservations Musk Promised For 2020

While speaking on a recent podcast, Brownlee said that he paid the $50,000 deposit for a next-gen Roadster when it was first announced in late 2017. When he later decided to cancel, he followed the required steps on the Tesla app and was given a phone number, but when he reached out, his call went straight to voicemail. When he did finally speak with someone, they said they didn’t know how to cancel the order, but assured him that they’d work out how to do it.

Money In, Money Out

Eventually, Tesla was able to confirm to Brownlee that he would receive the refund, but only for the $45,000 deposit, and not the initial $5,000 reservation fee that he had paid. Roughly a week after first sharing the story, the YouTuber took to X to reveal that Tesla had, in fact, also refunded him the $5,000, perhaps after realizing that its own website confirms this $5,000 is “fully refundable.”

The money paid to Tesla by Brownlee, as well as others who have placed deposits on the Roadster, may have been used by the electric automaker to help fund the development costs of the car, as well as other models. Either that, or it has been sitting in an account somewhere collecting interest over the past eight years.

Fun fact, had Brownlee put that $50,000 into Tesla stock back in 2017, when shares were around $22 a piece, instead of reserving a piece of vaporware, he’d be looking at more than $1 million today with the price sitting at $454 on October 1!