Elon Musk showed off a new Tesla Roadster that flies, flips and drives upside down during an event Thursday at a SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas. The EV performs its acrobatics using cold gas thruster technology from SpaceX.
Car and Driver reports that the 55-year-old SpaceX founder unveiled his flying roadster in front of a live audience, with Tesla livestreaming the demonstration. No human sat behind the wheel. Controlled remotely and built with a steer-by-wire system, the EV utilizes a system of four cold gas thruster (CGT) nozzles adapted from SpaceX to take to the air.
In one demonstration, the flying roadster accelerated towards a line of Tesla vehicles, only to take off vertically and fly over them:
Musk said the car “can basically fly like a rocket” and ran through a list of tricks it performed, including “rolls” and “crazy gymnastics.” At one point, it drove upside down along a curved ramp. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy explained how: “We have a fan suction system on the bottom of the car that can pull up to 2Gs (twice the force of gravity) in order to make the car upside down.” He credited SpaceX for part of the system. “Then we borrowed some technology from SpaceX to do the rest. This car really sucks. This car could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe,” Moravy said.
Also on hand was Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen. After the stunts wrapped without incident, Musk turned to Moravy and von Holzhausen and said simply, “Well it worked.”
Musk told the crowd he wanted witnesses in the flesh. “We need an audience to prove that it’s not AI or SI,” he said, adding, “So, you guys can tell people that you saw it with your eyes. Because what you see with your eyes, you will not believe.” He framed the car as a joint triumph of two companies: “You’re going to see what happens when you have a collaboration with the world’s best car company and the world’s best rocket company. This is the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and Space X engineers working closely together to make something that you haven’t seen in any movie.” He also recalled his own reaction when he first pitched the concept, calling it “crazy,” and said the car is “better than any James Bond car.”
Musk said skipping a human driver was a safety call. A mistake, he said, could “kill anyone.”
The Roadster will hit a top speed of up to 230 mph and offer at least 300 miles of range, though Musk suggested it could go faster still: “I think you got to crack halfway to the speed of sound, Mach 0.5.” It will be Tesla’s only manually driven model going forward. A “Performance” version which keeps all four wheels on the ground requires a $50,000 deposit, while a “Thrust” version equipped with the CGT technology requires a $250,000 deposit. Production is set to begin in 2028. Musk was candid about one unresolved question: “You know I’m not necessarily sure it’s legal in all jurisdictions.”
Watch the full presentation here:
Read more at Car and Driver here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.