Musk Unveils the Tesla Roadster by Launching It Off a Ramp, Flipping in Midair Before Landing Safely
Nine years later, the Roadster flies
Elon Musk has unveiled the Tesla Roadster by launching it off a ramp, where it flipped in midair before landing safely on the ground.
The reveal happened Thursday night at SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas, nearly nine years after the second generation Roadster was first shown. In the live demonstration, the unmanned car drove up an inverted ramp, spun around in midair using a mix of high-powered fans and thrusters, and eased itself down to the pavement, per TechCrunch.
In a separate stunt, the car lifted itself over a row of Tesla vehicles in motion: a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi, a Model Y and a Model 3. Musk called the car "the best of the last of the human-driven cars" and said: "This will be the actual car that's on the roads."
How it flies
The trick is SpaceX hardware. Engineering VP Lars Moravy said the Roadster uses 10 cold-gas thrusters connected to 600 liters of compressed air to lift and spin the car in midair, and the tank can be recharged. Tesla said every usable void in the car is packed with carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels to hold the gas, the same kind of vessels used on SpaceX rockets.
Tesla will offer three trims. Performance is the road-ready version with two seats, active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system. Thrust is the race-ready trim with rear-mounted thrusters and sub-one-second 0 to 60 times. Rocket is the air-ready trim, with one seat and all 10 thrusters around the car.
All three trims carry 300 miles of range and a top speed above 230 miles per hour, per Tesla. The company showed a 0 to 60 run in one second at the event, though the timing method was not made clear, and the car uses steer-by-wire with an automatically adjustable rear wing.
The longest wait in cars
The Roadster was first revealed in November 2017, at the same event as the Tesla Semi, with promises of a 1.9 second 0 to 60 time, a top speed above 250 miles per hour and 620 miles of range. Tesla took $50,000 deposits and targeted production in 2020.
That deadline passed, and so did every one after it. Tesla reopened reservations in the weeks before this event, and on Thursday Musk did not name a price. He said Tesla will finally build the car in 2028, which would put deliveries roughly a decade after the first deposits.
Whether the production car keeps the thrusters, the flip and the one-second launch is the open question. None of it has been independently verified, and the street-legal version has not been shown.
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Options market and stocks to watch
This is a TSLA headline, and Tesla headlines are an options event by default. The Roadster is a halo car: even in success it will be low volume and immaterial to near-term financials, so the trade is volatility and Musk premium, not a revised delivery model. Shares had weakened rather than rallied heading into the event, per coverage of the reveal, which tells you how the market currently files the Roadster story.
SPCX is the second name in the frame, because the Roadster's party trick is literally SpaceX technology, and the two stocks have been trading as a linked Musk complex. Watch TSLA call and put flow for spectacle-driven spikes that fade, and follow both names on the Unusual Whales news feed.
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