Vocal Anti-Tesla Billionaire Spends $600k on Abandoned Roadsters in China

Remember that "barn find" with three virtually brand new, barely touched Tesla Roadster examples languishing in shipping containers stuck in China? Well, after 12 years of limbo it would seem that the trio of Roadsters may have finally found a buyer. Though, the person footing the bill is someone that many of us would least suspect.

YouTube channel "What's Inside? Family" (via CarScoops) recently paid a visit to Medlock and Sons, an independent Tesla Service Center in Washington state. The shop is owned and run by Carl Medlock who was on the original team that produced the Roadster. O'Dowd sent his new acquisitions to Medlock's shop to presumably get them freshened up after years in a shipping container caused some moderate damage.

If you consider yourself a fan of Tesla in any capacity, then you're probably familiar with the name Dan O'Dowd. If not, then here's a quick primer. Dan O'Dowd is a billionaire entrepreneur who made his fortune in software development and is most well-known for secure operating systems for aerospace. The Boeing 787 and Lockheed Martin F-35 Fighter Jet both run on his operating systems, which he boldly claims "can't be hacked."

O'Dowd has been on a very public campaign against Tesla's so-called Full Self Driving (FSD) software. O'Dowd is not a fan of AI-driven software that seemingly makes critical decisions with human safety at the center and, in his eyes, Tesla's FSD software is a specifically egregious example. Through his organization called "The Dawn Project," O'Dowd has funded political campaigns to try and get Tesla's FSD banned and even used his own money to buy Super Bowl Ad time to show his test videos of FSD-equipped Teslas mowing down child-sized mannequins.

We wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that O'Dowd is the last person on Earth who would ever spend any amount of money on a Tesla. However, it turns out that would be wrong. Apparently, O'Dowd is a fan of the first Tesla Roadster and has collected several of them. The most recent cars to join his private collection are the very same Roadsters that have been stuck in China for over a decade.

Most notably, the factory clear vinyl wrappings have cracked and deteriorated along with the clear coat on some of the carbon fiber pieces on the hood and front lip. In one instance, one of the original tires on a Roadster deteriorated to the point that it can't hold air anymore. Though the biggest issue is that after sitting so long the Roadster's batteries are virtually bricked. According to the host of the video replacing the battery pack would cost approximately $35,000 for each car. Despite that, all three vehicles are in remarkable shape relatively speaking. If you can't watch the video right now, we have screenshots of the cars in the attached image gallery.

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Original Tesla Roadsters are quite rare these days and the particular trio of Roadster's bought by O'Dowd are likely the rarest. As the story goes, the vehicles were originally purchased by a Chinese firm fresh off the assembly line. Legend says the firm wanted to reverse engineer the vehicles but the Chinese government held the Roadsters at a shipping port and there they sat for 12 years. The cars were so fresh that each of them only has 104 miles on the clock from the intial testing that each Roadster would go through after leaving the assembly line. Because they were never sent to a dealer,  they could very well be the only three Tesla Roadsters in the world that have never been titled or registered according to Medlock.

Medlock didn't reveal exactly what O'Dowd paid for the Roadsters, though he did explain some of the math involved. "The cars were $125,000 new [in 2010]," said Medlock. " Some of these cars optioned the way they are, $160,000. If you add the inflation over the years, he [O'Dowd] basically paid retail for the new cars of what they would be today."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $125,000 in 2010 equates to $177,916 in 2024 and $160,000 in 2010 is equal to $227,732 now. So, that means O'Dowd paid roughly $533,750 for all three cars on the low end and as much as $683,200 on the high end. That's not counting the $105,000 it would cost to replace the batteries in each Roadster on top of miscellaneous fees and taxes. That amount of money becomes more shocking when it's revealed that O'Dowdisn't even planning to drive them.

Medlock says that rather than get the Tesla's road-worthy, O'Dowd is looking to display them in a museum due to their rarity. That certainly doesn't sound like something a Tesla hater would do. Perhaps O'Dowd's beef with Tesla really is just limited to the FSD software.