Tesla Roadsters found in shipping containers had wild fate

Remember those brand-new Tesla Roadsters discovered in shipping containers in China? The mystery about what they were doing there may well have been discovered.

A $2 million bid has been placed on the final three brand-new, first-gen 2010 Tesla Roadsters in their collection.

And it turns out they were destined to be reverse-engineered.

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After the cars were originally found back in early 2023, we’ve had several updates.

These include the plot twist of billionaire, Dan O’Dowd, who has been publicly critical of Tesla’s self-driving features purchasing three of them.

The pristine units – two orange and one red – were thought to have been sitting there for 13 years.

They’re the last brand-new, completely assembled first-gen Roadsters sold 13 years after they were built.

How did the Tesla Roadsters get there?

Gruber Motors, the shop brokering the deal, it recently received information on the original shipment that led them to where they were found.

The three Roadsters were all intended to be dismantled by an early Tesla competitor in the EV race of the 2010s.

They were en route to an R&D facility for an ’emerging’ Chinese automaker that went bankrupt before the cars even arrived.

“The original purchaser was an R&D center for a Chinese auto company, that subsequently went bankrupt, and the assumption is these were purchased for reverse engineering to be disassembled,” Gruber Motors said in their auction listing.

“In 2010, the Tesla Roadster was after all a state-of-the-art EV, before the Model S even came out, and would have been of enormous value to an emerging EV company.”

The mystery of the shipping containers deepens

Per the investigation by Gruber Motors, the original shipment was actually for four 2010 Tesla Roadsters with VINs 1107, 1120, 1146, and 1185.

While the first three were auctioned, the fourth car is missing in its entirety.

While the chassis was absent, a subsequent shipping container uncovered by Gruber Motors revealed parts that can be traced back to VIN 1185.

These include wheels and tires, a door assembly, headlight assemblies, body parts, trim parts, and other car parts.

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