For the first story on a website called Flying Cars Are Real, we could not have asked for a better quote. "Flying cars are real," Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, told the audience on Thursday night. Elon Musk went one further: "Turns out the future does have flying cars."
What Tesla actually showed at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, on October 15 was the redesigned, next-generation Roadster, the car first teased as a prototype in 2017. And yes, it left the ground. Twice. On a livestream.
What happened on the ramp
The first demonstration looked more like a stunt show than a car launch. The Roadster drove up a giant curved ramp and kept going until it was hanging fully upside down, held to the surface by a fan-driven suction system under the car. Moravy said the system can pull "up to 2 Gs."
At the top of the arch, the car fired thrusters, detached from the ramp, flipped in mid-air and landed back on its wheels. According to Tesla Oracle's breakdown of the demo, the drop was about 68 feet and the landing peaked at around 3.2 G.
The second stunt was a "kickflip." Driving along at normal speed, the Roadster fired its downward thrusters, rose into the air, used side thrusters to rotate a full 360 degrees over a row of Tesla vehicles (a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Semi, a Model Y and a Model 3) and then fired again to soften the landing. The whole manoeuvre took about three seconds.
How it works
Nothing about this car involves wings or rotors. The trick is compressed air.
- Suction: ducts and fans in the rear diffuser pull the car onto the road (or onto a ramp, or a ceiling).
- Thrusters: ten cold-gas nozzles at the bottom, sides and rear. Musk said the main thrusters sit at the back, with attitude-control thrusters on the sides.
- Tanks: SpaceX-derived carbon-fibre-overwrapped pressure vessels holding about 600 litres (250 kg) of pressurised air. Moravy said the air can be recharged.
Tesla says the thrusters produce four to five times the force the tyres can deliver, which is how it claims to get past the grip limit that caps every car's acceleration. The company showed a 0-60 mph run of around one second during the event, and says all versions offer roughly 300 miles of range and top speeds above 230 mph.
Three versions, three promises
- Performance, described as "road ready": two seats, active aerodynamics and the suction system.
- Thrust, "race ready": two seats, plus rear cold-gas thrusters for sub-one-second 0-60 mph.
- Rocket, "air ready": a single seat and the full set of ten thrusters. Invite only.
There is no price yet. Reservations cost $50,000 for the Performance and $250,000 for the Thrust. Production is scheduled to start in 2028.
So, is it a flying car?
This is the question this site exists to ask, so here is our honest answer: it jumped, it flipped, it hovered for a moment. It did not fly in any sense an aviation regulator would recognise.
What Tesla demonstrated are short, thruster-powered hops fed by a finite tank of compressed air. That is very different from the eVTOL air taxis that companies like Joby and Archer are taking through certification, which are aircraft first and vehicles second. Nothing in the coverage so far mentions the FAA or any aviation approval, and a car that can leap over a Semi will raise questions with road-safety regulators too.
Musk did not make that easier. He said "safety is not the main goal" and that Tesla would "aspire not to kill anyone" in the car. Before the event he said the demo would be exciting "whether it works or not". Afterwards he suggested Tesla might try to jump the Snake River Canyon.
"This is a prank, right?" — YouTuber Marques Brownlee, reacting to the reveal
Then there is the calendar. The 2017 prototype was supposed to reach customers in 2020, with a quoted base price of $200,000. The reveal itself was pushed back several times, most recently from October 1 because the outdoor demo could not survive a severe weather forecast. A 2028 start of production should be read with that history in mind.
Why it matters anyway
Even with every caveat, this was the most watched "flying car" demonstration in history, and it was not a render. A production car company drove a vehicle off the ground, upside down and over five other vehicles, live. Musk called it "the best of the last of the human-driven cars."
Whether the Roadster ever ships with thrusters in customers' hands is a story for 2028. Whether flying cars are real is a story we will be tracking every single day.