The new Tesla Roadster can’t quite fly, but it can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in less than a second using boosters, drive upside down and propel itself through corkscrews in the air – at least under the conditions of the prototype’s unveiling at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, on Thursday evening.
“We need an audience to prove that this is not AI or IS,” said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, (referring to the White House’s preferred parlance, “Super Intelligence”).
Tesla began taking deposits for the Roadster nearly a decade ago and launched a first-generation cherry red Roadster with a mannequin named Starman into space on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in a publicity stunt in 2018. A demo of the Cybertruck in 2019 caused Tesla’s design chief to shatter two of its supposedly shatterproof “Armor Glass” windows, and Cybertrucks subsequently became something of a symbol for jerkwads, outselling the infamous Ford Edsel. It is therefore safe to say that this revelation was decisive.
This prototype is a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX and uses what Musk described as an “advanced ultra-high pressure air tank” to power SpaceX’s cold gas thrusters. The demo took place away from the real stage for safety reasons. Musk told attendees: “Success is not guaranteed… But if it doesn’t work, we’re at a safe distance.” »
Incredibly, it worked. Tesla showed the Roadster prototype launching upside down from the top of a semi-circle ramp before guiding itself into a corkscrew maneuver. Later in the demo video, Musk made the Roadster jump over the entire fleet of Tesla vehicles in monster truck style, again with a corkscrew.
“The car obviously has attitude control thrusters and main thrusters in the back, so it can fly like a rocket and do rolls,” Musk told the audience.
“It will actually, in the long run, be the only manually driven car that Tesla makes,” he said at another point.
The Roadster achieves its upside-down driving with vacuum fans that Musk says generate more than 2 Gs of grip when cornering. Musk admitted that few people want to drive upside down, but claimed that “the downforce of the car means you can corner incredibly well.” Combined with its acceleration, he promised it would “crush every record that has ever existed.”
SpaceX’s cold gas thrusters are deafeningly loud, judging by the livestream, where Musk activated them in close proximity to the audience for just a few seconds.
Tesla also released a clip of the Roadster accelerating to 60 miles per hour in one second, and then a live test where it achieved the same acceleration in 0.81 seconds. Musk said SpaceX thrusters deliver 80 kilonewtons of thrust (an unusual measurement for cars, of course) and use compressed air, so they don’t need separate fuel.
This is arguably a more practical feature, although the thundering boosters and compressed air feedback are probably unpleasant to any human being.
Musk joked during the demo that the upper limit of acceleration is probably somewhere around the time when G forces cause the retina to detach, so let’s hope it’s a little lower than that.
As a final trick, Tesla showed the Roadster prototype launching straight into the air to fire a corkscrew from the ground.
None of these tricks, much to the palpable relief of Musk and others on stage, resulted in a SpaceX-style explosion. The Roadster will be available in three configurations (Performance, Thrust and Rocket), only the last of which has thrusters allowing movement on a vertical axis.
It’s unclear exactly what the car’s ability to corkscrew is for – its use probably isn’t legal in the first place, and it’s hard to imagine a real-world driving scenario in which this maneuver wouldn’t likely end with the Roadster’s cabin full of vomit, blood, or worse.
According to MotorTrend, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a rule that classifies any vehicle that rises “any inch off the ground” as an airplane, and imposed airspace restrictions around the McGregor test center ahead of the event’s original October 1 date. This suggests that the Roadster would fall under FAA rules that limit the use of these features to pre-approved areas away from traffic; Tesla has a long history of conflicts with its main safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The new Roadster will enter production in 2028, according to Musk and his team. They made a point of assuring the audience that this was an actual timeline, not an estimate, but that it was about the only other concrete information provided alongside the show.
Tesla did not offer additional data, such as a technical sheet or price. Its initial promised specifications for this new generation of Roadster, from 2017, included 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds or less, a top speed of 250 miles per hour and a range of 620 miles.
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