Tesla Roadster reveal set for October 1 – ‘go for launch’ teaser hints at SpaceX thruster demo, 9 years on

Nine years after it was first shown, the second-generation Tesla Roadster finally has a reveal date. Tesla has posted a teaser on X showing a red Roadster bathed in vertical launch pad-style lighting, captioned “go for launch” and stamped 10.01 – and a countdown clock on its Roadster webpage confirms the date, October 1. That’s 8.30pm Eastern time, or 8.30am on October 2 for us in Malaysia.

According to invitations sent to reservation holders, the event will be held in Waco, Texas, around 90 minutes north of Tesla’s Austin headquarters, with RSVPs required by September 16 and entry limited to guests aged 21 and above.

The “go for launch” phrasing points at the long-teased SpaceX package – cold gas thrusters that Musk has claimed would allow the car to hit 96 km/h (60 mph) in under a second, or even lift off the ground briefly. Reports in the US suggest the October 1 demonstration will indeed involve the car leaving the ground – operated remotely with nobody inside, with spectators kept hundreds of metres away because the thrusters are loud enough to damage hearing.

The teaser image gives a few things away as well. The four plumes venting upwards match the four-fan arrangement in a Tesla patent granted in August 2025 – US 12,377,920, titled Adaptive Vehicle Aerodynamics for Downforce – which describes fans mounted in the vehicle’s airflow pathways working with deployable skirts to seal the underbody, sucking the car onto the road for maximum downforce at low speeds, fan-car style. There’s also faint hidden text above the car reading “where we’re going…” – a nod to Back to the Future’s “where we’re going, we don’t need roads” line.

It has been a very long road to this point. The Roadster was unveiled as a prototype in November 2017 with staggering claims – 0-97 km/h in 1.9 seconds, a 402 km/h top speed and 998 km of range from a 200 kWh battery – and production promised for 2020, at US$200,000 for the base car and US$250,000 for the Founders Series, with deposits of US$50,000 and the full US$250,000 respectively.

Tesla has since moved the goalposts at least eight times, from 2020 to 2022 to 2023 and beyond. Along the way, Musk promised the SpaceX thruster option in 2018 – “10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around [the] car” to “improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering” – and over 1,000 km of range in 2019.

In February 2024, Musk said the car’s design goals had been “radically increased”, alluding to a sub-one-second 0-96 km/h time and calling it “the least interesting part” – the production design was supposed to be shown by end-2024, with a demo he described as the most epic ever. That reveal slipped too, and as of last November, Musk was guiding for production only in 2027 or 2028.

Don’t hold out for a showroom model, though – US reports indicate the car being demonstrated will not be street-legal, and that Tesla is considering offering it through a Ferrari-style track programme for select customers rather than as a regular production model. Patience among early depositors has visibly worn thin – high-profile reservation holders including YouTuber Marques Brownlee and OpenAI chief Sam Altman have cancelled and taken their money back.

Still, after nearly a decade of vapourware jokes, there is now a date, a venue and a countdown clock. In under three weeks we will know if the Roadster is finally real – or if the goalposts are about to move for a ninth time.

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