Nine years after Tesla first showed a new Roadster, Elon Musk finally put one on a ramp in Texas, stepped back, and let it fly. On Thursday night at SpaceX’s test site in McGregor, the car drove upside down on a curved track, fired compressed air thrusters, flipped, and then cleared a row of five parked Teslas in what Musk called a “kickflip.” Nobody was in the driver’s seat.
That last detail is what made the clip go viral. Before the stunt, Musk told the crowd the car was running autonomously “to make sure we don’t kill anyone,” and then added the line everyone is now quoting: “Success is not guaranteed.” It worked. “Flying cars are real,” he said afterward. Whether this is really a flying car, and whether you will ever be able to buy the version that does it, is a different story.
The short version
- Tesla revealed the new Roadster on October 15, 2026, at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, site after a two-week delay for high winds.
- The driverless demo car used underbody suction fans to drive upside down and 10 compressed air thruster nozzles to flip and jump over five parked cars.
- Tesla says the demo car hit 60 mph in 0.81 seconds. The top “Rocket” version claims under 0.59 seconds and more than 230 mph.
- There is no price yet. Reservations reportedly start at $50,000, or $250,000 for the thruster version, and production is set for 2028.
- Tesla’s own page says the Rocket version is not approved for public road use.
What actually happened on stage
The event was supposed to happen on October 1. Musk pushed it back on X with a short note: “Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks.” For a car whose party trick depends on air jets, that delay was not a joke.
When the livestream started on October 15, the routine had three parts. First, fans under the car sucked it onto a curved, partly inverted ramp, so it could drive along the ceiling section like a toy car on a loop track. Second, the thrusters kicked in and launched it into a flip with a controlled landing. Third came the headline move: a jump over five parked Teslas, a truck included, with a barrel roll in the middle.
What the car did not do was hover in any meaningful way. Several viral posts describe it “hovering,” but reports from the event describe a jump, a flip and a short lift. Electrek had reported back in August, citing The Information, that a planned hover segment was cut from the routine. Critics were quick to point out that this makes it more of a “hopping car” than a flying one.
How the “SpaceX package” works
The idea is not new. In June 2018, Musk tweeted about a “SpaceX option package” for the Roadster with around 10 small cold gas thrusters fed by composite overwrapped pressure vessels, the same kind of tanks SpaceX uses on its rockets. Back then he said the tanks would replace the small rear seats and an electric pump would refill them.
The production plan looks close to that sketch. According to TechCrunch, Tesla vehicle engineering chief Lars Moravy described 10 nozzles fed by roughly 600 liters of compressed air, about 250 kg of it, stored in two carbon overwrapped tanks. That is not rocket fuel. It is high pressure air, released very fast, which pushes the car the same way a deflating balloon shoots across a room. It gives a huge burst of thrust, but only for a few seconds before the tanks run dry.
That is the key limitation behind the viral clips. A tank of air can give you a jump or a launch. It cannot keep a two ton sports car in the sky.
Three Roadsters, three very different cars
Tesla split the Roadster into three versions. Only one is described as road ready.
| Version | Key hardware | Claimed 0 to 60 mph | Reported deposit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance | Two seats, no thrusters, “road ready” | Under 1.6 seconds | $50,000 |
| Thrust | Rear cold gas thrusters | Under 0.9 seconds | $250,000 |
| Rocket | One seat, thrusters around the body, “Invite Only” | Under 0.59 seconds, 230+ mph top speed | Not public |
Tesla says range is over 300 miles. That is a big drop from the 620 miles promised in 2017, when the original car was pitched with a 200 kWh battery. Tesla did not share horsepower or battery capacity on Thursday, according to The Drive, and it did not say which factory will build the car.
The deposits are where the money question gets real. Reuters reported the reservation page asks for $50,000 for the Performance car and $250,000 for the Thrust model, yet there is still no final price for either. When asked whether the car is street legal, Musk said: “Yeah, depends on your street, but it’ll be a viable car.”
Is 0.59 seconds even possible?
Electric hypercars have been fighting over tenths of a second for years. Tires are the hard limit: there is only so much grip between rubber and asphalt before the wheels spin. Thrusters cheat that limit by pushing the car directly, the way fan cars and drag rockets do. That is why the numbers below jump so sharply once air jets are involved.
Two caveats. The 0.81 second demo time came from Tesla, and the timing is not visible in the livestream. And even the non-thruster Performance car, at under 1.6 seconds, would beat the Rimac Nevera, the benchmark electric hypercar. That claim deserves the most scrutiny, because it is the version Tesla says people will actually drive on roads.
Nine years of “next year”
Part of why the internet reacted so loudly is that many people had stopped believing this car existed. The Roadster was unveiled in November 2017 as a surprise at the end of the Tesla Semi event, with production promised for 2020. Buyers put down $50,000 deposits, and Founders Series buyers paid $250,000 up front. Then the date kept moving. Electrek counts roughly eight slips over about nine years.
The Roadster’s moving finish line
Nov 2017
Unveiled with 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, 250+ mph, 620 miles of range and a $200,000 base price. Production promised for 2020.
Jun 2018
Musk tweets about the “SpaceX option package” with cold gas thrusters.
Jul 2020
Production is “12 to 18 months” away.
Jan 2021 and Sep 2021
Production moves to 2022, then to 2023.
May 2023
“Hopefully” 2024, but “not a commitment.”
Feb 2024 and Oct 2024
A demo by the end of 2024, then production in 2025 or 2026.
Nov 2025 to Aug 2026
Demo set for April 1, 2026, then late April, May or June, then August.
Oct 15, 2026
Revealed after a wind delay. Production now set for 2028, which Musk says is “actually, for real.”
So the people who paid in 2017 have been waiting for nearly a decade, and they are still more than a year away from delivery under the best case Tesla has given.
Is it really a flying car?
Not in the way the term is normally used. A flying car usually means a vehicle that can drive and then travel through the air under its own lift for a meaningful distance. The Roadster’s thrusters give it a few seconds of brute force. It is closer to a stunt car with a rocket kit than to an aircraft.
The companies trying to build actual flying cars are on a different and much slower path, mainly because they have to deal with aviation regulators.
| Vehicle | What it is | Price | Status, October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla Roadster | Sports car with air thrusters for short jumps | Not announced ($50k or $250k deposits) | Production planned for 2028 |
| Alef Model A | Drivable electric aircraft with vertical takeoff | $299,999 | FAA special airworthiness certificate only; first deliveries targeted, not confirmed |
| Xpeng Aridge Land Aircraft Carrier | Six wheel truck that carries a detachable two seat aircraft | Under 2 million yuan (about $280,000) | 7,000+ preorders; deliveries targeted in China |
| Joby S4 | Electric air taxi, not a car and not for sale | n/a | Still working through FAA type certification |
Xpeng, by the way, is the same company that recently got its humanoid robot working on a real assembly line before Tesla’s Optimus did. It has been competing with Tesla on spectacle for a while.
The regulation question nobody answered
The fine print does a lot of work here. Tesla’s Roadster page says the Rocket version is “Not approved for public road use” and will not be offered in every region. No statement from NHTSA or the FAA has surfaced about the thrusters. That is not unusual by itself: in the US, NHTSA does not pre-approve new car technology, and carmakers certify their own compliance with safety standards. But a car that throws jets of high pressure air around in traffic, or leaves the ground, will raise questions that the current rules were not written for.
Analysts were split. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called it an “engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional car makers.” Axios called the flying Tesla “gloriously absurd,” and CFRA’s Garrett Nelson said the reveal could break Tesla’s run of underwhelming product events. CNBC noted that investors will care more about margins in Tesla’s third quarter results, due October 21, than about a low volume halo car.
Musk also said a live crowd was needed so people would believe the demo was real and not generated by AI. Given how many people replied “I thought this was AI” under the clip, he had a point. It is a theme that keeps coming up around his companies, from rockets to the Starlink outage that hit Ukraine this week: the demo is the easy part, and the hard questions come after.
What to watch next
- A real price. Deposits without a sticker price are a promise, not a product.
- Independent testing. Until a magazine straps timing gear to a Performance car, the sub 1.6 second claim stays a claim.
- Regulators. Any response from NHTSA, the FAA or European authorities will decide how much of the “flying” survives in production cars.
- The 2028 date. Given the history, this is the number most likely to change.
For now, the Roadster is the most entertaining car reveal in years, and also the latest example of Tesla’s oldest habit: show the future first, figure out the details later.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: Elon Musk makes concerning safety admission moments before launching Tesla’s “flying car”
- TechCrunch: Tesla reveals SpaceX powered Roadster
- Electrek: Tesla unveils new Roadster with a kickflip
- Electrek: Nine years of Roadster delays
- CNBC: What to know about the delayed Tesla Roadster
- CNN: Tesla unveils what it says is a flying car
- The Drive: Tesla Roadster reveal updates
- Axios: Elon Musk’s flying Tesla is gloriously absurd
- Electrek (2018): Musk details the Roadster “SpaceX package”
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