‘7.5 years has felt like a long time’: Sam Altman booked a Tesla with $50,000 deposit but never got one

“Hi, I’d like to cancel my reservation. Could you please refund me the $50k?” Altman wrote in an email that bounced back undelivered. “I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait,” he added.

The OpenAI chief isn’t the only one giving up on Tesla’s long-promised supercar. In September, YouTuber Marques Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, said he too had cancelled one of his two Roadster reservations after eight years of waiting.

“Tesla has been sitting with my 50 grand for eight years and hasn’t done anything with it,” Brownlee said on his Waveform podcast, adding that the company only refunded $45,000 of his $50,000 payment after a lengthy process involving multiple voicemails.

Tesla’s dream car

The Tesla Roadster, first unveiled by Elon Musk in 2017, was billed as the world’s fastest electric car—with a claimed 0–96 kmph acceleration time of 1.9 seconds, a top speed of over 400 kmph, and an estimated 997 km range per charge.

Despite the hype, the car never entered production. Musk has repeatedly pushed back the launch, calling it “the cherry on the icing on the cake” and saying other projects took priority. Tesla’s most recent earnings report in July 2025 still listed the Roadster as being in “design development.”