The sports car drove upside down and jumped over other cars using thrusters built with SpaceX. Tesla says it goes from 0 to 60 mph in 0.81 seconds.
Tesla showed off its long-delayed new Roadster sports car on Thursday, October 15. In the show, the car drove upside down, jumped over other vehicles and turned in the air before landing.
The event took place at SpaceX’s rocket test site in McGregor, Texas, near the city of Waco. SpaceX is the rocket company also run by Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk.
The show was dramatic, but customers will not get the car soon. Tesla says production will start in 2028. That is eight years after Musk first promised deliveries.
How the car moves in the air
The Roadster has 10 small thrusters, said Lars Moravy, Tesla’s head of vehicle engineering. They are fed by a 600-litre tank of compressed air that refills while the car drives, TechCrunch reported.
The thrusters push air out in short, strong bursts. That lets the car lift, spin and steady itself in the air. No fuel is burned.
The car also has a fan system that sucks it down onto the road. In the show, this held the car to a curved ramp so it could drive upside down. The thrusters then flipped it back onto the ground.
Using its thrusters, the car jumped over a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi truck and other Tesla models.
What Tesla says the car can do
Tesla says the Roadster can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour (about 97 km/h) in 0.81 seconds. That time uses the rear thrusters to push the car forward, not just its wheels. It has not been checked by anyone outside Tesla.
Tesla also says the car can reach more than 230 mph (about 370 km/h) and travel more than 300 miles (about 480 km) on one charge, Reuters reported.
That range is less than half of what Musk promised in 2017, when he said the car could go 620 miles.
Three versions
Tesla is offering three versions on its Roadster page:
- Performance: two seats, built for normal roads. Reservation: $50,000.
- Thrust: two seats, with rear thrusters for extra speed. Reservation: $250,000.
- Rocket: one seat, with the full set of thrusters. Invite only.
Tesla did not give a final price for any version. In 2017, it said the car would start at about $200,000.
Eight years of delays
Tesla first showed this second Roadster in 2017. Musk said then that it would reach buyers in 2020.
That date slipped again and again, in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. Even this week’s show came late. A reveal planned for October 1 was pushed back because of bad weather.
Some early buyers paid deposits of up to $250,000 in 2017 and are still waiting.
Can it do this on real roads?
Musk said the Roadster “will be the actual car that’s on the roads.” He said owners could do these moves “whenever you’d like.”
Tesla has not said whether road safety regulators will allow a car with thrusters that can lift it off the ground. Thursday’s show took place on a closed test site, not a public road.
A show car more than a money maker
Musk has said the Roadster will not make much difference to Tesla’s earnings. He called it “the best of the last of the human-driven cars.” It will be the only new Tesla designed for a person to drive rather than to drive itself.
Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called the car an “engineering flex with no commercial value.” Seth Goldstein of Morningstar said it would become Tesla’s new “halo car,” a model built to attract attention to the whole brand.
The show comes at a hard time for Tesla. Its car sales have fallen over the past two years. This year, it stopped making its Model S and Model X to free up space to build its Optimus humanoid robot.
Tesla shares rose about 5% before the market opened on Friday, Reuters reported.
Tesla will report its July to September results on October 21.
By The Lion Capital Editorial Team | October 2026