Tesla’s new Roadster turns in air with SpaceX thrusters, won’t land until 2028

• Tesla unveiled a redesigned Roadster with SpaceX thrusters and said production would start in 2028, after years of missed deadlines.
• The car showed dramatic stunts at a Texas SpaceX site, including upside-down driving, mid-air turns, and jumping over vehicles, thrilling fans.
• The launch boosts Tesla’s image, but investors still care more about third-quarter results, sales, and the company’s shift to self-driving tech and robots.

SAN FRANCISCO – Tesla unveiled a redesigned Roadster powered by rocket-style thrusters on Oct 15 and said it would start production in 2028, more than a decade after it first showed a next-generation version of its electric sports car.

The white two-seater vehicle, developed in collaboration with chief executive Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, drove upside down on a ramp using a suction system, turned in the air and landed using built-in thrusters.

Later in the event, it used the thrusters to jump over a truck and other vehicles, twisting in the air during the manoeuvre.

Some observers saw the collaboration as Musk drumming up interest in a merger of the two tech giants he controls, an idea he has explored by discussing their overlap.

The reveal gives Tesla a showpiece car after years of missed Roadster deadlines, but it comes as the company shifts its focus to self-driving technology and robotics and days before third-quarter results that analysts say matter more to investors.

“It was an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional carmakers,” Gene Munster, managing partner at Tesla investor Deepwater Asset Management, said on social media platform X.

“The Roadster event is the latest example of why Elon can’t wait to bring (Tesla) and (SpaceX) together,” Munster said.

Musk has played down the car’s importance to Tesla’s finances, describing it in 2023 as a “small potato situation” that would not “move the needle in a major way financially”.

But the car still carries symbolic weight.

“Tesla does not currently have a halo car, or high-performance luxury vehicle designed to showcase an automaker’s best engineering and technology. The Roadster will be Tesla’s new halo car,” Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein said in a note in September.

Viewers gushed over the spectacle of the launch.

“That was the most insane product demo I’ve ever seen,” Tesla fan and investor Sawyer Merritt posted on X. “I just saw this in person, and I’m still asking how this wasn’t AI.”

Musk and other executives did not specify any target prices at the Oct 15 event, although Tesla quoted a base price of US$200,000 (S$256,000) for the vehicle nearly a decade ago.

Tesla’s reservation page for the Roadster after the event showed a Performance version requiring a US$50,000 deposit and a Thrust variant with “acceleration thrusters” requiring a US$250,000 deposit.

A Rocket variant, which Tesla says is “invite-only”, is a single-seat model with a “full flight system”.

‘Halfway to the speed of sound’

The event at a SpaceX ​test site in McGregor, Texas, had all the elements of a classic Musk product reveal: dramatic music, smoke, mechanical hissing sounds and a launch countdown.

“This is the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and SpaceX engineers working closely together to make something that you haven’t seen in any movie,” Musk, wearing a silver Western-style belt buckle emblazoned with the Tesla logo, told a cheering crowd of enthusiasts and investors.

The Roadster can accelerate from zero to 97kmh in less than one second and can hit a top speed of more than 370kmh, said Tesla vehicle engineering chief Lars Moravy.

“Definitely much faster than that,” an excited Musk said. “I think you’ve got to crack halfway to the speed of sound.”

The Roadster can travel more than 480km on a single charge, which is less than half the distance Musk promised in 2017, when Tesla first revealed a prototype of the second-generation Roadster and said deliveries would begin in 2020.

The original Roadster, released in 2008 and sold until 2012, was Tesla’s first electric vehicle and used a Lotus Elise chassis. It helped change the world’s view of what an EV could be. The company has since been known for its Model Y and Model X SUVs and Model S and Model 3 sedans.

The reveal of the second-generation Roadster comes amid a sharp shift in Tesla’s focus to artificial intelligence-led self-driving tech and robotics, away from manufacturing cars for human drivers.

In 2026, Tesla stopped selling Model S and X vehicles to make space for production of its Optimus humanoid robots. It also launched Cybercab – a two-seater robotaxi that comes without manual controls such as a steering wheel, pedals and mirrors.

Tesla is set to report third-quarter results on Oct 21.

Sales of Tesla’s ageing line-up of EVs have declined over the past two years, although high petrol prices helped boost deliveries in the third quarter.

“The margin and cash flow numbers will carry far more weight with investors than anything they saw at the reveal,” said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst for Asia-Pacific at trading platform eToro. REUTERS