Here’s how the chips hold back Tesla as well
Elon Musk postpones the launch of the Roadster, Tesla's electric supercar, to 2023. The company, however, has other priorities. All the details
The shortage of microchips is also a problem for Tesla, the well-known Californian company that produces electric vehicles. In fact, CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, where he is very active, that the market launch of the Roadster – a fully electric supercar – will postpone to 2023, "assuming that 2022 will not prove to be a mega-tragedy".
2021 has been the year of super crazy supply chain shortages, so it wouldn't matter if we had 17 new products, as none would ship.
Assuming 2022 is not mega drama, new Roadster should ship in 2023.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2021
2021, THE NEUTRAL YEAR
The Roadster was initially scheduled to launch last year. In January, however, Musk said that production would begin in 2022 and that a model ready for driving would be released by the summer. Instead, the release was postponed again because "2021 was the year of the super insane shortages of supply chains", wrote Musk referring to the hitches in the supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which complicated the manufacturing and transport of the whole a range of materials and components, such as microchips (or semiconductors) for the automotive industry.
Not only Tesla, but many other car manufacturers such as Stellantis , Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors are having problems accessing the chips and are forced to reduce or suspend production. The shortage of semiconductors is especially serious for those companies – such as Tesla – that make electric vehicles, because these cars, compared to cars with internal combustion engines, need more microchips to work.
WHAT IS THE TESLA ROADSTER
The Roadster is an electric supercar, announced to the public in 2017 and described on the Tesla website as "the fastest car in the world, capable of guaranteeing record performance, range and acceleration": it reaches 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in 2 , 1 second, reaches a top speed of over 400 kilometers per hour and has a driving range of 1000 kilometers.
The price for the pre-order of the basic model is 43 thousand euros. The reservation of the advanced model, called Founders Series, instead costs 215 thousand euros.
NOT A PRIORITY, FOR MUSK
The Roadster, however, is not Tesla's most important model. A year ago Elon Musk, in a podcast with American comedian Joe Rogan, compared it to the "dessert" that comes at the end of a meal: first comes "meat and potatoes and vegetables and all the rest".
The Roadster, in short, is not meant to be the main dish, the main offer, of Tesla's menu. The company's priorities are other: first of all the Model Y, an electric SUV of medium size.
DELAYS ALSO FOR CYBERTRUCK
The shortage of microchips and the problems of supply chains have not only upset the timing of the Roadster. Tesla also had to postpone the production of the Cybertruck, the electric pick-up with a stainless steel frame and a very particular design, to 2022.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/tesla-roadster-posticipo-carenza-microchip/ on Thu, 02 Sep 2021 12:43:08 +0000.