Tesla finally brought its long-delayed next-generation Roadster in front of an audience, and the car did things no production vehicle is supposed to do.
A supercar that drives on the ceiling
The unveiling took place outdoors at SpaceX’s test site in McGregor, Texas. In the live demo, the Roadster ran along a near-vertical curved track, broke free of gravity, climbed head-up toward the night sky, then flipped in mid-air and landed cleanly. It also drove inverted, held to a ceiling by suction, and cleared a row of parked Teslas, including a Semi, a Cybertruck, a Cybercab, a Model 3 and a Model Y, in a single leap. Musk said the car targets a 0 to 60 mph time below one second, with a measured floor of 0.81 seconds, and that the production version will do better.
The theatrics come from SpaceX hardware. The car carries two carbon-fibre-wrapped pressure vessels holding 600 litres and about 250 kg of compressed air, and it self-inflates without special propellant. A rear main thruster and attitude thrusters let it fly like a rocket, while an underbody fan system generates up to 2G of downforce so the car can stick to a ceiling. It has a high-downforce mode and a low-drag mode, with a two-stage fan that adds grip at low speed and airflow at high speed.
Built, Musk says, for the human driver
Musk framed the Roadster as the last and best of the cars still built for people to drive themselves, a conscious counterpoint to Tesla’s full tilt toward autonomy. He has teased flight since 2024, told Joe Rogan in October 2025 that the car carried crazy technology that can actually leave the ground, and told the April 2026 earnings call that the only car a human will still drive is the new Roadster. He even said, with characteristic bluntness, that if safety is your top priority, do not buy it, while adding that Tesla will try hard to keep anyone from dying in one.
The design language is a clean, angular two-seater with a full-width light bar, a sizeable rear diffuser and an adaptive rear wing. The interior is stripped for weight, with seats moulded into the chassis and steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire and throttle-by-wire controls. Tesla says the shape draws on the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-35 Lightning II.
Nine years of delay
The Roadster first appeared as a concept in November 2017 alongside the Semi, with deliveries then promised for 2020. It has since slipped at least six times, and production is now dated to 2028, leaving some reservation holders waiting nine years. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman posted that he put down a 50,000 dollar deposit in 2018 and, when he tried to cancel and seek a refund in 2025, found his original email address dead. Musk replied that the refund landed within 24 hours. Tesla reopened order books in late September with a 50,000 dollar deposit still required before the production version is shown.
Pricing still traces back to the 2017 figures: a base version at 200,000 dollars, about 1.34 million yuan, and a founder series at 250,000 dollars, about 1.67 million yuan. The company has confirmed none of the flying range, flight altitude, road legality or delivery timing, and the demo is not proof that a road-legal flying car exists yet.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Chedongxi report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://chedongxi.com/p/378119.html.