This car sucks. No, literally—the Tesla Roadster broke cover today by driving (and idling) virtually upside down, made possible by suction fans that vacuum the car onto the road. If Tesla’s on-screen graphics are to be believed, the car generated up to 4,700kg of downforce to pull this off.
The Roadster then accelerated full speed off the ramp, careening into the air upside-down...and then corrected its trajectory with jets of pressurized air, putting it right-side-up and stabilizing its landing. So yes, this car is also part spacecraft.
Watch: Tesla Roadster live reveal event
No wonder Tesla needed good weather for this reveal. How do you make your long-delayed performance EV stand out in a world where all-electric supercars have come into their own? Musk and company’s answer: tap SpaceX to give the Roadster toys that rival 007’s garage.
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The Tesla Roadster is tricked out with cold-gas thrusters and a multi-mode suction system to achieve all sorts of trickery. The suction system is the more straightforward piece of tech—it generates massive amounts of downforce (up to 2Gs of grip) to achieve “incredible cornering performance.”
The cold-gas thrusters, meanwhile, are an array of gas nozzles on the sides, rear, and underside of the Roadster. This system is fed from an ultra-high-pressure air tank that passively fills itself—no special propellant needed. The layout of nozzles allows the car to precisely orient itself mid-air to do barrel rolls and then steady itself for a soft landing.
Other stunts that the new Roadster performed at the reveal include jumping over Tesla’s full roster of EVs (including the Semi), and leaping several meters into the air from a standstill.
Even without being airborne, it can use the four rear thrust nozzles to assist with acceleration. On paper, Tesla claims that a thruster-assisted 0-100kph is doable in just one second. The live demo did it in 0.81 seconds. Musk claims the production car “will actually do better than that.”
Right, so this isn’t actually hitting the market as soon as we initially thought. Production starts—for real this time—in 2028.
Reservations are currently live on Tesla’s website, and it actually clarifies some key details. The Performance is the base trim that includes active aero and the downforce-generating suction system. A deposit for this variant is a chunky $50,000 or P3.15 million.
Next step up is the Thrust, which gives you the rear-mounted acceleration-boosting nozzles. Tesla states that it’s building a limited number of these models, with a cap of strictly one per customer. The deposit for this trim rockets over the base unit at $250,000 or P15.77 million.
The full suite of thrusters—what was shown off today—appears to be locked to the Rocket trim, which is available only by Tesla’s invitation. A reservation price was not made public. Given that just the rear boosters already quintupled the base car’s price, I’m morbidly curious to learn how much the model with the ‘full flight system’ stickers for.
Maybe it’s a good thing that the Rocket Roadster won’t be available to the general public. I don’t think anyone has the mental capacity to witness a car that looks ripped straight out of a PS2-era GTA game do gymnastics on the road. How do you even regulate that?
But 2028 is a long way out; customers getting behind the wheel of the Roadster potentially further out still. Can Tesla actually deliver this time? Watch this space.
