CHICAGO — Tesla has unveiled its new Roadster sports car, which can thrust itself up in the air. But drivers shouldn't expect to take it for a spin anytime soon.
Elon Musk's electric car company this week debuted the latest bells and whistles of its second-generation Roadster — chief among them, as shown off at a Thursday event, are a set of cold gas thrusters and a “multi-mode” suction system that can fling the car in the air for short spurts and spin the vehicle mid-flight.
"Turns out the future does have flying cars," Musk, Tesla's CEO, wrote on his social media platform X shortly after.
Thursday's event was hosted at the Texas rocket testing and development center for SpaceX — Musk's now publicly-traded rocket company — and Tesla's executives noted that they "borrowed" some SpaceX technology to get the new Roadster in the air. Beyond quick jumps and flips, Tesla also said the car can accelerate from zero to 60 miles (96.6 km) an hour in less than a second.
This week's launch arrived after years of delays and anticipation around the new Roadster — and Tesla shares climbed up slightly in morning trading on Friday after its unveiling.
Still, Musk said production for consumers won't begin until 2028. Tesla also didn't immediately set a price tag on its latest EV.
And of course, these kinds of cars aren't flinging themselves in the air over highways and streets just yet. There are ample regulatory hurdles for flying vehicles overall. The fine print of the Roadster's "rocket" feature on Tesla's website notes: "Not approved for public road use."
Musk has repeatedly said that the future of driving will be autonomous — and Austin-based Tesla has focused much of its business on building out self-driving features for its vehicles and, more recently, launching its own (still limited) robotaxi business.
But the company maintains that its new Roadster will be made for humans behind the wheel, calling the EV the “best of the last human-driven cars.”
Thursday's demo was technically autonomous “to make sure we don’t kill anyone,” Musk noted. But long-term, he said, the new Roadster will be “the only manually driven car that Tesla makes.”
“This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car,” Musk later added, met by laughter from the audience. But “it takes the fun meter to 11 out of 10.”
Tesla's first Roadster was launched to the public back in 2008. And in 2018, Musk went as far as placing that EV on a rocket (with a mannequin dubbed "Starman" in the driver's seat) and launching it into space.
Again, the second-generation Roadster isn't immediately hitting the market. And whether the ambitious new vehicle boosts the company's bottom line remains to be seen.
In second-quarter earnings reported over the summer, Tesla's profits fell as the company spent more on research and development for its robotaxi and robotics businesses — which cut into money made from an otherwise sharp increase in vehicle sales. Net income totaled $1.11 billion for the period, while revenue climbed to $28.24 billion.
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