Tesla finally showed the new Roadster, and it spent most of the event airborne. The car ran a vertical climb, a mid-air roll and a jump over a line of parked Teslas including the Semi, Cybertruck, Cybercab, Model 3 and Model Y, all staged at SpaceX’s McGregor test site in Texas.
What the hardware actually does
Musk claimed a 0 to 60 mph target below one second, with a best measured run of 0.81 seconds. The car uses two carbon-fibre wound pressure vessels with 600 litres of volume holding 250 kilograms of air, plus a high-pressure tank that self-inflates without special propellant.
Rear-mounted main and attitude-control thrusters let the car fly in the manner of a rocket, while an underbody fan system produces up to 2G of downforce, enough to hold the car against a ceiling. There are high-downforce and low-drag modes, with a two-speed fan that clamps the car at low speed and opens front and rear airflow at high speed.
Tesla said the production design is a clean two-seat coupe with a creased surface treatment, a full-width light bar, a large rear diffuser and a variable-pitch wing. Inside, the seats are moulded into the chassis and steering, brakes and throttle are all by wire. Tesla confirmed the design references the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-35.
The claim, the caveat and the nine years
Musk has been promising flight for years. In 2024 he wrote on X that the new Roadster can fly. In October 2025 he told Joe Rogan the car carries technology that can genuinely leave the ground. On the April 2026 earnings call he framed it as the last car Tesla will build for human driving, adding that anyone who puts safety first should not buy one.
The record is less dramatic. The Roadster debuted in November 2017 alongside the Semi, with deposits taken that day and deliveries promised for 2020. It has been delayed at least six times. Reservations reopened in late September with a USD 50,000 deposit, before the final production design is fixed.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman paid USD 50,000 in 2018 and found the reservation email dead when he tried to cancel in 2025. Musk replied that the refund had been processed within 24 hours.
Why a nine-year delay is a strategy document
Nothing about the Roadster is constrained by engineering capacity at Tesla. The company is simultaneously funding a robotaxi network, a humanoid robot line and its own semiconductor fab. In that queue, a low-volume halo coupe waits, and the 2028 date is an honest admission of where it sits.
The demonstration also carries a marketing function that has nothing to do with the car. A stunt that invites viewers to distrust video evidence is aimed at an audience already sceptical of autonomous driving claims, and it buys attention that Tesla no longer has to spend on advertising.
Range under thrust, altitude, road legality and delivery timing remain undisclosed. The 2028 car will be judged on those numbers, not on a backflip.
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.