According to Tesla design boss Franz von Holzhausen, the long-awaited Tesla Roadster will be better in every measurable way than the car that was presented back in 2017. At the time, Tesla promised that the Roadster would be capable of running the quarter mile in just 8.8 seconds and would manage 620 miles of range on a single charge. Not long after, company CEO Elon Musk claimed the car would be able to fly, and by the end of 2019, von Holzhausen was saying that the new Roadster was "evolving" and would be "even better" than what was originally unveiled. Now the designer is making the same claims again, but are they any more believable this time around?

Speaking on the Ride the Lightning podcast, von Holzhausen said, "We're developing the car. I think you know we have priorities as a company, and the priorities are mass electrification. And Roadster is not a mass product. So, unfortunately, you know it takes its kind of position, but we are working on it in earnest. And I think the time that we've taken has enabled us to really improve on basically every metric that we set out to establish when we first debuted that [car]."

Essentially, the designer confirmed that the Roadster is not a priority for the company as it focuses on more important projects like semi-autonomous driving technologies and increasing its scale of production.

It's not a surprise that Tesla is not pouring resources into the Roadster when it has so much else to perfect, but if von Holzhausen's claims are to be validated, then Tesla will need to at least bring the Roadster to production. As it is, meeting the targets set for the Roadster in 2017 will be very challenging. Improving on a sub-two-second 0-60 time? Not impossible, but not easy. Claiming the Nurburgring lap record? Another claim that seems easier in theory than in practice. Besting a range of 620 miles? Time will tell.

Tesla is no stranger to making outlandish claims, but the longer it takes to bring the Roadster to market, the further it will have to set the goalposts. Rivals are catching up fast, and some are even on their way to overtaking the revolutionary EV manufacturer. Still, Tesla has proven its doubters wrong before, and we sincerely hope it can surprise us once again.