Cartoon parody frame: a cartoon log character in sunglasses holds a big red button while a white cartoon sports car bursts into a cartoon explosion. On-screen text reads: Cartoon gag. Nobody was hurt, and the real car landed fine.
AI-generated cartoon parody image. Not real footage.

The night a sports car went vertical

On Thursday night, Oct. 15, Tesla held a demonstration at SpaceX's rocket development and testing facility in McGregor, Texas, per Reuters and WIRED. Reuters said the show had "all the elements of a classic Musk product reveal: dramatic music, smoke, mechanical hissing sounds and a launch countdown." Musk spoke to what Reuters described as "a cheering crowd of enthusiasts and investors."

The routine went like this. The white two-seater drove up a curved ramp and parked at the top upside down, held there by a suction system. Then it reversed, zoomed back up, and launched into the air. Four thrusters fired, and it was "propelling it softly back to the safety of a test track," as The Washington Post put it. Later it used the thrusters to jump over a truck and a row of other Teslas, "twisting in the air during the maneuver" (Reuters). Live Science describes the flip as a 180-degree barrel roll.

One important detail: nobody was riding in it. Musk said the car was controlled remotely "to make sure we don't kill anyone," according to The Guardian.

Tesla investor and longtime fan Sawyer Merritt was there in person, and he summed up the vibe on X: "That was the most insane product demo I've ever seen… I'm still asking how this wasn't AI" (Reuters). (It wasn't. Our version, on the other hand, absolutely is. More on that below.)

What Musk and Tesla said

Musk called the car "the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and SpaceX engineers working closely together to make something that you haven't seen in any movie" (Reuters).

He did not undersell it. "Flying cars are real," he said onstage. "It's got altitude controls, thrusters and main thrusters in the rear. So it can basically fly like a rocket, it can do rolls, crazy gymnastics" (The Guardian). He also offered two refreshingly candid disclaimers: "I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions," and the car is "not necessarily a safety optimised car but it takes the fun meter to 11" (same source).

Afterward he posted the clip on X with a caption that got about 78 million views: "Turns out the future does have flying cars."

The spec sheet (all Tesla claims for now)

According to Tesla vehicle engineering chief Lars Moravy, the Roadster can go 0–60 mph in less than one second and reach a top speed of over 230 mph (Reuters). WIRED notes that Moravy said the production version would "hopefully" reach that speed. Musk went further: "Definitely much faster than that… I think you've got to crack halfway to the speed of sound." Halfway to the speed of sound is roughly 385 mph, WIRED notes, for a car whose claimed range is over 300 miles per charge.

Tesla says the thrusters run on onboard compressed gas (WIRED). Live Science describes them as SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters that release bursts of high-pressure gas. Nothing burns, so there are no flames.

There will be three versions, per Tesla's reservation page as reported by Reuters and WIRED:

  • Performance: a road-ready two-seater with no thrusters. $50,000 deposit.
  • Thrust: adds "acceleration thrusters" and is "limited." $250,000 deposit.
  • Rocket: single seat, "full flight system," and invite only.

Tesla's site says the Rocket is "Not approved for public road use" (Washington Post). Production is slated for 2028. Tesla didn't announce prices at the event. Nearly a decade ago it quoted a $200,000 base price (Reuters).

The five-second catch

Not everyone was swooning. On Oct. 17, AI researcher Yann LeCun, an NYU professor, replied to Musk on X with some back-of-the-envelope physics. Compressed air, he wrote, has "crappy specific impulse (less than 50 seconds)." He continued: "Even assuming that 50% of the mass of the car is the compressed air, that gives you less than 10s of useful thrust (with thrust-to-weight ratio larger than 1.0). Probably more like 5 seconds, actually." His verdict, quoted by Live Science: "Cute demo, but totally impractical." He also called it a "marketing stunt."

Musk's rebuttal, on Oct. 18, was pure Monty Python: "I fart in your general direction 💨". LeCun later added that he owns two Teslas and isn't "anti-achievement."

To be fair to everyone: Tesla hasn't said how long or how far the car can stay airborne (Live Science). So LeCun's figure is an estimate, not a measurement.

Investors had their own take. "It was an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional car makers," Deepwater Asset Management's Gene Munster said on X (Reuters). Tesla shares were still up 5% in premarket trading the next day.

Meanwhile, flying-car startup Alef Aeronautics trolled affectionately. It released footage of its own vehicle flying over an earlier Roadster, and CEO Jim Dukhovny said: "Welcome Tesla to the flying car race, we've been here alone for eleven years" (Live Science).

A very long road (and a 2018 tweet that called it)

The Roadster 2 was first unveiled in 2017. At the time, Tesla said it would be the fastest production car in the world and that deliveries would begin in 2020 (WIRED, Reuters). Early fans put down $50,000 deposits on what was billed as a $200,000 car (WIRED). Musk later called the Roadster a "small potato situation" financially, in 2023 (Reuters).

The thrusters themselves aren't a surprise. On June 9, 2018, Musk tweeted that a "SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car… Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly…" (Electrek, Fortune). In a follow-up he described them as "ultra high pressure air in a SpaceX rocket COPV bottle" (Fortune). Eight years later, the "maybe" got a demo.

Will it ship on time? Live Science notes that Tesla "doesn't have the best track record of meeting its deadlines." That's a fair reminder that 2028 is a target, not a guarantee.

Our cartoon version (definitely not a documentary)

For our companion video, we leaned into the movie magic Musk mentioned. It's an AI-made, 1980s-family-film-style spoof. A wide-eyed kid watches a sports car leap into the sky and gasps, "Is that a superhero?" A voice answers: "No, it's Elon." In our cartoon version, the landing goes considerably less smoothly than the real one, and ends in a classic cartoon kaboom.

That part is pure fiction. In the real demo, the car landed and drove on. We found no reports of any crash or damage.

The bottom line

Tesla really did make a sports car drive upside down and hop over its own lineup, which is wonderfully ridiculous. Whether that makes it a "flying car" depends on how you define flying. For now it's a remote-controlled stunt car with a 2028 date, a $250,000 deposit for the version with thrusters, and a top-tier Monty Python comeback.

Sources