The internet’s first response to Tesla’s thruster-equipped Roadster was a joke about the guy next to you on the highway doing a kickflip. Niko Draca, a software engineer in Montreal, took the joke literally. His free browser game, Roadflip, lets you launch a virtual Roadster off a giant ramp and spin it for points, Tony Hawk style.
UNILAD Tech reported on the game on October 30 and quoted Draca on where the idea came from: “I saw the demo and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy’. And then I started seeing all the jokes online of imagining the guy on the highway next to you doing a kickflip. I was like, ‘Can we actually imagine if you could do that right now?'” We dug into the game, then checked the real car against the physics, the timeline and the rulebook. Some of the details in the viral version of this story need fixing.
The short version
- Roadflip is a free, unofficial browser game: hold Enter to launch, arrow keys to flip and roll, Space to fire thrusters, then land on your wheels.
- The real Roadster demo took place on October 15, 2026, at SpaceX’s test site in McGregor, Texas. The car had nobody inside and jumped, flipped and landed. It did not hover in any meaningful sense.
- The demo car’s air tanks hold about 600 liters. Tesla’s own engineers say one fill of the smaller 200 liter tank in the Thrust version lasts about 5 to 6 seconds and takes 2 to 6 hours to refill.
- The FAA says the car is not an aircraft. NHTSA says it still has to meet federal car safety standards. Tesla says the top Rocket version is not approved for public roads.
- Production is now set for 2028, eight years after the original 2020 target.
How Roadflip plays
Roadflip loads straight into a night scene with a curved launch ramp and a short tutorial. You hold Enter to pull the car back like a slingshot, and the longer you hold, the faster it goes. Once you are airborne, the arrow keys pitch and roll the car, and pressing the opposite direction counter steers. Space fires the thrusters, which, in the game’s words, “stop your spin and push out of the car’s floor.” On-screen buttons make it work on phones.
We read through the game’s code to see how scoring works, and it is a neat little design. Every full vertical flip is worth 1,000 points and every horizontal roll 750. You also earn 500 points per second of air time, 40 per meter of distance, and your launch speed in km/h. Land more than about 40 degrees off level and the car wrecks.
The smartest touch is the thruster tank. The virtual car carries only 1.5 seconds of thrust, and whatever air you do not use is worth up to 5,000 bonus points. In other words, the game rewards you for saving your air, which is exactly the problem the real car has. Draca told UNILAD the game came together in a few days. It is the same builder behind Hinge Wrapped, the fan-made yearly recap of dating app data, and, per UNILAD, a map of every place Drake has mentioned in his songs.
What the real Roadster actually did
Here is where the source story gets a little loose. UNILAD says the car lifted off, flipped and “briefly hover[ed]” before landing. The event did happen at a SpaceX site in Texas, specifically the rocket test facility in McGregor, near Waco, on Thursday, October 15. Weather had pushed it back from October 1.
The routine had three parts. Underbody suction fans held the car onto a curved ramp so it could drive upside down. Compressed air thrusters then flipped it off the end, and the finale was a jump over a row of parked Teslas with a roll in the middle. A mannequin in a SpaceX suit sat in the driver’s seat. Before the run, Musk said the car was driving itself “to make sure we don’t kill anyone,” and added, to laughter, “This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car,” according to the Associated Press.
A true hover was in the plan at one point. In August, Electrek, citing The Information, reported that Tesla had wanted the car to race up a roller coaster style ramp, drive upside down, right itself and hover, then scaled the routine back. One insider put it bluntly: “We started off thinking we were almost making an aircraft and ended up with something closer to hovering.” What made it to the stage was a jump, a flip and a controlled landing. We covered the full reveal in our report on the Roadster jumping five Teslas.
UNILAD also says production “could begin early 2028.” Musk said 2028. The AP and other outlets did not report the word “early,” and given this car’s history, we would not add it.
Nine years of “next year”
The Roadster was first shown in November 2017, when it rolled out of a Tesla Semi trailer with a promised 2020 start, a $200,000 base price and a $50,000 deposit. The first 1,000 Founders Series cars cost $250,000, paid in full up front. Then the date started to move.
That is eight missed production targets in nine years, with a ninth now on the board. The people who paid $250,000 in 2017 are now looking at a car with roughly half the range they were promised. The AP also noticed that the new reservation fine print says there is no guarantee when the car will be delivered, or whether it will be delivered at all.
Three Roadsters, three very different spec sheets
The car Tesla showed in October is not the car it showed in 2017. It is a two seater on a new aluminum and carbon fiber chassis, split into Performance, Thrust and Rocket versions. Tesla engineers Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen filled in the numbers in a video with Top Gear, as summarized by InsideEVs.
| Spec | 2008 Roadster (sold) | 2017 promise | 2026 reveal claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 60 mph | 3.9 s (3.7 s Sport) | 1.9 s | Under 1.6 s Performance, under 0.9 s Thrust, under 0.59 s Rocket; 0.81 s claimed for the demo car |
| Top speed | 125 mph | 250+ mph | 214 mph now, 330 mph target |
| Range | 244 miles (EPA) | 620 miles | About 310 to 320 miles |
| Power and weight | 2,877 lb | Not stated | 1,073+ hp base, 1,341+ hp top; about 3,700 lb |
| Thrusters | None | “SpaceX option package” teased in June 2018, about 10 thrusters | Thrust: 4 rear, 200 L tank. Rocket: 10 around the body |
| Price | $98,950 at launch | $200,000 base, $250,000 Founders Series | No price. Deposits $50,000 (Performance), $250,000 (Thrust); Rocket invite only |
| Production | 2008 to 2012, about 2,450 sold | Promised for 2020 | Planned for 2028 in Texas |
Every 2026 figure is a company claim. Nobody outside Tesla has timed one of these cars yet.
What cold gas thrusters can really do
The thrusters are not rockets in the fire-and-smoke sense. They dump very high pressure air through nozzles, like a balloon you let go of. SpaceX uses the same idea, with nitrogen, to steer Falcon 9 boosters. Musk first pitched the “SpaceX option package” for the Roadster in June 2018, with carbon-wrapped pressure tanks of the kind SpaceX flies replacing the rear seats.
The production version follows that sketch. Tesla says the demo car’s two carbon tanks hold 600 liters of air feeding ten nozzles, with more than 80 kilonewtons of thrust, MercoPress reported, while the suction fans add up to 4,700 kg of downforce. Here is a rough sanity check of what that air can buy:
Weight to lift: about 1,950 kg x 9.81 = 19 kN
Claimed thrust: 80+ kN, about 4 times the car’s weight
Best-case exhaust speed for cold air: about 700 m/s
Total push in the tanks: 250 kg x 700 m/s = about 175 kN-s
At full 80 kN: 175 / 80 = about 2 seconds
Pure hover at 19 kN: 175 / 19 = under 10 seconds, in theory
0 to 60 mph in 0.81 s = average 3.4 g
Force needed: 1,950 kg x 33 m/s² = about 65 kN
GeekBlog estimate. Real numbers are lower: thrust drops as tank pressure falls.
The math lines up with what Tesla’s own engineers say. InsideEVs reports one fill of the Thrust version’s 200 liter tank lasts about five to six seconds, and refilling it with a high pressure nitrogen system takes two to six hours. Tesla is working on cutting that to under 30 minutes. So the thrusters are real, and they can genuinely launch a two ton car or push it to 60 mph faster than tires alone could. What they cannot do is keep it in the air. Each fill buys a few seconds of drama.
Is a thruster car legal on US roads?
Nobody has a clean answer, and the agencies are not rushing to claim it. Federal rules define an aircraft as “a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air,” under 14 CFR 1.1. Even so, the FAA told CBS News: “The Tesla vehicle does not meet the FAA definition of an aircraft.” That means no airworthiness certificate and no pilot’s license, at least for now.
That leaves NHTSA, which does not pre-approve cars. Automakers certify their own compliance with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The agency’s statement to CBS News was pointed: “While the vehicle may appear to defy the laws of physics, the manufacturer must ensure that it does not defy applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and drivers must obey all local traffic laws.” NHTSA can still open investigations and force recalls, as it did when it opened a file on the Cybercab the day it launched.
Then come the states. “I’m not sure every state is going to allow a driver in the middle of traffic to suddenly elevate himself and fly,” Georgetown Law professor David Vladeck told the AP. Noise is another problem: Electrek reported spectators would be kept several hundred yards back because the thrusters can damage eardrums. Tesla seems to know where this ends up. It calls the Thrust version track-ready, and it says the Rocket version is not approved for public road use. “This was a demonstration of a one-off car using a technology around for many years and will not be coming to public roads in 2028,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: Free game lets you try Tesla’s gravity defying Roadster for yourself
- Roadflip: Practice Tesla Roadster tricks
- Associated Press (via Spectrum News): Tesla’s new Roadster car can thrust itself in the air, but don’t expect to drive it anytime soon
- CBS News: We asked the DOT who would oversee a flying car like Tesla’s Roadster. The answer isn’t readily clear.
- InsideEVs: The Tesla Roadster Has 1,341 HP And Half The Range Elon Musk Once Promised. Here Are The Full Specs
- MercoPress: Tesla’s new Roadster uses compressed air and fans to jump and drive upside down
- Electrek: Tesla ‘flying’ Roadster demo could come this month, with no one inside
- Fortune (2018): Elon Musk Says Tesla’s Next Roadster Will Feature Actual SpaceX Rocket Thrusters
- Wikipedia: Tesla Roadster (second generation)
- Wikipedia: Tesla Roadster (first generation)
- eCFR: 14 CFR 1.1, General definitions
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