Sam Altman tried to cancel his Tesla Roadster, but he was ghosted

Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO and Elon Musk’s rival in AI, has tried to cancel his Tesla Roadster reservation and get his $50,000 deposit refunded.

But it’s not as easy as it looks.

Tesla unveiled the next-generation Roadster in 2017. At the time, it took reservations with $50,000 and $250,000 deposits, depending on whether people wanted the Founders Series.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the new Roadster would enter production in 2020.

It didn’t.

Every single year since, the CEO claimed that the vehicle would enter production the following year, but it never did. It has become a sort of running joke.

The fact that Tesla couldn’t bring the vehicle to production has led many reservation holders to cancel their reservations, a process that has reportedly been difficult.

Many reservation holders reached out to Electrek over the years to describe how difficult it was to get their money back. Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee recently shared his experience with the process.

Now Sam Altman is having a similar problem. He took to X to share that he wanted to cancel his Roadster reservation, but the reservation email was shut down:

The OpenAI CEO is a supercar enthusiast and revealed that he reserved the Roadster in 2018.

He said:

“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait.”

His post went viral with over 5 million views.

The timing is interesting, as we just reported that Tesla looks to be finally taking steps to bring the Roadster to production.

Musk, who notoriously despises Altman, has been claiming that Tesla will hold a demonstration of an updated Roadster before the end of the year.

However, he said that before, and it didn’t happen.

Electrek’s Take

The new Roadster is entirely in its “I’ll believe it when I see it” phase for me, regardless of job listings for Roadster battery manufacturing.