Tesla Roadster prototype makes rare outing ahead of Model Y event

Tesla’s next-generation Roadster prototype is making a rare outing in public and it coincides with the Model Y launch event.

The automaker has a few next-gen Roadster design shells, but we have so far only seen a single working Roadster prototypes and it has made only a rare few outings.

We haven’t seen that prototype in a while.

In September, the Roadster made its car show debut at the Grand Basel car show, but they were only displaying a design shell.

The last time we saw the working Roadster prototype was when Tesla brought it to the Art Center College of Design to inspire young car designers a few months ago.

But it has now been spotted this afternoon outside the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne, where Tesla is going to unveil the Model Y in a few hours.

SilverXnor on Instagram spotted the vehicle next to the Supercharger station at the Design studio and he shared the images with Electrek:

We can’t see anything different on the prototype since the last sighting and it’s unclear if it’s going part of today’s event.

When first unveiling the vehicle, Musk claimed a list of insanely impressive specs for the new Roadster, including 0-60 mph in 1.9 sec, 620-mile of range, and more.

Musk has been teasing those specs as the “base specs” and other versions could be even crazier.

Later,  he even said that Tesla will offer a ‘SpaceX package’ that will include cold air thrusters.

At first, the CEO said that these thrusters, which basically amount to small rocket engines, will “dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering”, but he also said that it would “maybe even allow a Tesla to fly.”

Tesla has yet to demonstrate the feature and we speculated during our Model Y launch pre-show that it could potentially be part of the event.

The automaker is trying to bring the vehicle to market by 2020 and make it the quickest and fastest production car on the market – and it just happens to be all-electric.

Tesla is currently taking reservations for the $200,000 base version with an expensive $50,000 deposit and for the $250,000 Founders Series for an even more insane $250,000 deposit.