The Tesla Roadster reveal happened on Thursday night, October 15. Tesla streamed the event live on X and YouTube starting at 5:55pm PT (00:55 UTC Friday), and the new Roadster arrived with a thruster system developed in collaboration with SpaceX.
Tesla calls the new car “the best of the last human-driven cars.” Elon Musk had set expectations high that morning, posting that the new Roadster is “beyond movies, beyond imagination, beyond human, yet still made by humans on Earth.”
Franz von Holzhausen noted on stage that it has been 20 years since the original Roadster, and Lars Moravy said the Roadster is the reason he joined Tesla.
If you missed it live, the full replay is above. Tesla announced the stream on X two days before the event, after moving it from October 1 so it could be held outdoors, and it had opened the run-up on September 12 with a teaser image captioned “Go for launch.”
Tesla x SpaceX: the thruster system
The headline of the night is a collaboration between two of Musk’s companies. Just before the stream began, Musk summed it up in three words on X: “Tesla x SpaceX.” During the event, Tesla explained what that means for the car.
Flying cars are real.
Elon Musk, at the Roadster reveal
SpaceX has used thrusters to position spacecraft for decades. Tesla says making them work in a road vehicle instead of the vacuum of space took all-new hardware and controls. The result is a Roadster with a thruster system that, according to Tesla, generates four to five times the force its tires can.
That matters because, as Tesla points out, every car on the road today is limited by one thing: tire grip. A conventional car can only accelerate, brake and corner as hard as its tires can hold the road. By adding force that does not depend on grip, the Roadster can push the same mass much harder. In Tesla’s words, more force on the same mass means significantly better acceleration, and “physics does the rest.”
To feed those thrusters, Tesla says every usable void in the car is packed with Carbon Fiber Overwrapped Pressure Vessels, or COPVs, the same kind of high-pressure tanks used in spaceflight. The more compressed gas the car carries, the more the thruster system has to work with. For the engineering behind it, read our explainer on how the Roadster’s thrusters and suction fans work.
The live demo
Tesla built the evening around showing the Roadster in action rather than just talking about it. Minutes before the stream, when a fan wrote that people would need to see the demo live or they would think it wasn’t real, Musk replied simply: “Yup.” He also kept the mood playful and honest right before the stream: “Success is not certain, but excitement is.”
Tesla held the reveal at SpaceX’s 4,000-acre rocket test and development center in McGregor, Texas, opening with a Raptor engine static fire as a pre-show. Musk said Tesla wanted a live audience “to prove that it’s not AI or CGI,” calling the Roadster a collaboration between “the world’s best car company and the world’s best rocket company.”
Franz von Holzhausen introduced Andy Bautista and Lamar Hermanns, the two Tesla engineers who drove the Roadster onto the stage.
The car ran autonomously during the demo as a precaution. After the first flight, Musk declared, “Flying cars are real.” The team named the second stunt the kickflip, joking that Tony Hawk would be proud, and Musk teased more demos to come, including a nod to Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump.
Acceleration was the headline moment. After a demo video showed the Roadster hitting 60 mph in 1 second, Tesla ran it live in front of the crowd and beat that, with Lars Moravy announcing a 0 to 60 mph time of just 0.81 seconds. That run came on a shortened run-up, because the team said there wasn’t much room on the pad. Tesla has not said which trim set that run, and Musk said the production car will do better.
The replay above is the best way to see the Roadster in motion for yourself.
Design inspired by the SR-71 and F-35
Since we knew Roadster was going to fly, we looked for some inspiration about flying, and we thought we would lean into the most badass stuff out there: the SR-71, cars that transform.
Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, on stage at the reveal
The new Roadster looks nothing like the 2017 prototype. Tesla says its design language has evolved since the last Roadster reveal, moving from the S3XY lineup through Cybertruck, Cybercab and Optimus. For the Roadster, the inspiration came from two legendary aircraft: the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-35.
The F-35 link got a nod from the jet’s maker too. When Tesla posted that the Roadster is inspired by the SR-71 and F-35, Lockheed Martin, which built the SR-71 and leads the F-35 program with partner Northrop Grumman, quoted it with a short reply: “SR-71. F-35. Roadster. All three fly.. 😎”
You can see it in the official images. The car is low, wide and sharply faceted, with crisp angular surfaces, a pointed nose and dihedral doors that swing up and forward. At the back, a full width light bar sits above a row of thruster nozzles, and the plate in Tesla’s photos reads “RDSTR.” It is a bold, jet age shape that fits a car with rocket technology inside.
Design details
After the show, Tesla shared a design thread on X calling the Roadster “a true pilot’s car,” built around active aerodynamics, a multi-mode suction system and cold-gas thrusters.
Exterior. Concealed headlights, a full-length taillight and flush-mounted surfaces give the car what Tesla calls “a minimalist, highly technical form.” The super light wheels use thin spokes that reinforce structural strength. Tesla says the cars in its official images are Thrust or Rocket builds, so two of the finishes you see are extras. The paint is Ano White, an aerospace-derived finish with UV and cryogenic protection, electrostatic dissipation and corrosion resistance, which Tesla lists for Rocket. The glass is Gold Glazed, tinted to mimic the copper coating of spacesuit visors, with subtle titanium accents, and it comes on Thrust and Rocket. Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, showed MotorTrend a few details the stage show skipped. The windshield wiper is removable: a small panel at the base of the windshield pops out, and a quick-release wiper plugs in when you need it. “We wanted to make it quickly so you could take it off if you don’t need it,” Franz told MotorTrend. There is no frunk, because the nose opens up to work as one big wing, and the charge port hides behind the rear wing on the driver’s side, so the car has one less cut line. Side cameras replace mirrors in markets that allow it, and US cars get conventional mirrors.
Interior. The cabin in Tesla’s images is what it calls the Supersonic interior, offered on Thrust and Rocket: Ultrawhite with gray microsuede detailing and seat bolsters for added grip. Manual controls and a fixed seat position cut overall mass, and lightweight, high-strength materials including magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber reduce it further. Tesla says the result lets the Roadster respond to driver inputs almost instantly. On the car shown, a two-seater, the seats are molded into the chassis to save weight, and the car is fully by-wire, with a steer-by-wire yoke, by-wire brakes and by-wire throttle. Franz told MotorTrend the team even took the motors out of the seats. The seatback tilts on a strut, the pedals slide on a manual lever and the steering wheel adjusts through the scroll wheels. The yoke carries a DRS button and an eBoost button for a short push-to-pass burst, while a “Superman mode” runs the aero automatically. The roof panels lift out and stow in the back on cars without the thruster tank, the windows drop all the way down, and the cup holders sit behind a rear panel (MotorTrend, 27:40).
Suction fan and active aero. Tesla describes a multi-mode fan and ground sealing system that pulls air from beneath the car, generating enough suction to hold it upside down while stationary. Powered fans and active wings maximize traction and cornering speeds in all conditions, achieving what Tesla calls “massive downforce at zero speed.” In Track Mode, Tesla says the aero delivers “the best passive downforce package of any road car (approaching F1 levels!),” with the wing moved by the Tesla Optimus actuator system. The thrusters and fans sit in the diffuser, which Franz called “the business end” of the car. Franz said the car transforms because “we wanted to make a pretty car, but also a car that could deliver amazing downforce,” and the team switched the fans on live on stage, loud enough that the presenter apologized for the noise. The car switches between a high-downforce mode and a low-drag mode, and the fan system pulls the car down for traction at low speed, then opens the front and rear of the suction system at high speed to push more air underneath. Musk said the rear wing has variable pitch and adjusts downforce automatically. On the grip, he added: “It looks like you’re breaking physics, because the car sticks to the ground so hard.”
Cold-gas thrusters. Finally, advanced cold-gas thrusters with all-electric actuators make micro adjustments within a fraction of a second to stabilize the vehicle in flight. Optimus actuators show up in the thrust system too: one opens the valve at the end of the high-pressure tank through a rocker, Lars Moravy told Hagerty and MotorTrend. In Tesla’s configurations post, Thrust pairs the suction system with rear-mounted thrusters, while Rocket adds perimeter-mounted thrusters for forward and upward acceleration plus lateral rotational movement. For the flight systems, the team said it “borrowed some technology from SpaceX,” and Musk said the car “could do rolls. It could do crazy gymnastics. Whatever you want, really.” As Tesla puts it: “So…yes, it can fly.”
Lars Moravy said on stage that two carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels, 600 liters in total, hold about 250 kilograms of gas feeding 10 nozzles. Musk said the car recharges its own high-pressure air tank, so no special propellant is needed. Moravy later told Top Gear it is nitrogen filled from a station, so the gas may end up being either. Exhaust from the four rear thrusters leaves faster than the speed of sound, producing visible Mach diamonds and over 80 kilonewtons of thrust. As Musk put it: “There are cars, and then there’s one car that has Mach diamonds.”
Real life, baby
Tesla has also posted the ramp run on YouTube.
Tesla followed it with The Kickflip, another stunt from the reveal.
Tesla also shared a behind-the-scenes development video from the event with Sawyer Merritt, and it shows how much work went into the show. Engineers lower a large pressure tank into the Roadster’s bare chassis, before any body panels go on. Slow-motion footage captures the cold-gas thrusters firing on a test stand, and a skeletal metal test rig hovers inside a tall tarp-covered tower, the tent-wrapped structure on SpaceX’s McGregor site that onlookers had long suspected was Roadster testing. The same rig fires itself high into the air on outdoor jump tests, and a quick test-stand blowup shows the team pushing hardware to its limits along the way. The video ends with the C-shaped ramp, its scaffolding draped in black covers, where a white Roadster is tested at night hanging upside down at the top, well before the public saw it.
Tesla also posted real footage of the system at work. At night, the Roadster drives up a fully vertical ramp that curves into an inverted overhang, drops off the top, fires four blue cold-gas thrusters from its underside to stay level as it falls, lands flat in a cloud of smoke and drives away. Tesla shows it from rear, side, overhead and wide aerial angles.
On November 3, Tesla posted onboard-camera footage from inside the Roadster during a flight, captioned “POV you’re a flying car.”
What Top Gear, Hagerty and MotorTrend learned
Before the reveal, Tesla walked Top Gear, Hagerty and MotorTrend around the car, and Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, filled in much of what the stage show left out.
The biggest surprise is the drivetrain. The Roadster is rear-wheel drive only, with two motors on the rear axle that Moravy says make more power and torque than all three motors in a Model S Plaid. There is no differential. Each rear wheel gets its own motor, its own inverter and its own reduction gear, so torque vectoring happens wheel by wheel. “There’s something like emotional about having all that torque behind you,” Moravy told Hagerty.
The battery uses a 4680 cell built just for the Roadster, with a high-power chemistry, aluminum cans instead of steel and cooling on both sides of every cell. The pack runs at 800 volts like Cybertruck and Semi, and Tesla is aiming for very fast charging on its Gen 4 Superchargers. On track, the goal is 25 to 30 minutes of unlimited performance before a quick recharge.
The aero goes deeper than the stage show revealed. Four rear fans built from the heat pump’s compressor motor work with drop-down skirts to hold the car down even at a standstill, front wings hidden behind the chin spoiler swing up, and the front fenders pop out as barge boards. Hagerty reports that Track Mode drops the car 40 mm and makes it three times stiffer.
The Thrust version carries a single tank in the trunk feeding four rear nozzles, and Moravy said one fill lasts about five seconds. The Rocket swaps the passenger seat for a second, larger tank and adds six more thrusters. Musk said at the reveal that the car can recharge its air tank on its own (livestream, 16:58), while Moravy told Top Gear the tank is filled from an outside high-pressure nitrogen system. The two descriptions differ, and Tesla hasn’t explained yet how they fit together.
Inside, the pedal box moves instead of the seat, and the yoke needs so little travel that you never go hand over hand. Moravy said Tesla has four or five prototypes now, with a bigger build early next year. Franz von Holzhausen told MotorTrend the Roadster will run a limited version of FSD, and Moravy said the car will be built in its own building at Giga Texas, Roadster Factory Texas (MotorTrend, 08:12).
What each outlet thought of the car after its walkaround is collected in our Tesla Roadster reviews roundup.
Where the numbers stand
The reveal itself gave one hard number: the 0.81 second run to 60 mph in front of the crowd. Since then, Tesla’s media materials, shared with reporters on October 14 and published on X this week by Ryan Zohoury and Sawyer Merritt, have put targets on each version:
- Performance: under 1.6 seconds to 60 mph and over 210 mph, with two seats and no thrusters.
- Thrust: under 0.9 seconds and over 230 mph, with two seats and four rear thrusters.
- Rocket: under 0.59 seconds, with one seat and ten thrusters.
Every version targets over 300 miles of range, and Musk said production starts in 2028. These are Tesla’s targets for a car that is still a prototype, so they can change before it reaches buyers. The executives’ interviews also gave higher top speed goals, including 330 mph for the versions with a pressure tank.
We keep the current figures, the feature list for each version and the deposits in one place, our trim-by-trim Roadster specs, and update them as Tesla changes them. To see how far the car has moved from the 1.9 second, 620 mile promise Tesla made in 2017, read our 2017 vs 2026 Roadster comparison.
From 2008 to Thursday night
Tesla framed the evening as a full circle moment. “In 2008, Roadster had one job: prove that an electric car could be fast, sexy and worth wanting,” the company posted during the stream. That first Roadster launched Tesla and helped start the global shift to electric cars.
The Roadster also has a famous connection to SpaceX. In 2018, Musk’s own red Roadster, with Starman at the wheel, rode a Falcon Heavy into space. As Tesla put it Thursday night, “Roadster and a rocket have shared a ride before.” Now the rocket technology rides inside the car.
For the complete story of how we got here, read our Tesla Roadster history, from the original 2008 car to Thursday night’s reveal.
Tesla Roadster Images Gallery
Roadster trims, deposits and timing
Reservations are open on Tesla’s Roadster page for three versions: Performance, the two-seat road car, with a $50,000 deposit; Thrust, the two-seat track car with thrusters, with a $250,000 deposit; and Rocket, a one-seat flight version that is invite only. Final prices haven’t been announced, and production is set to start in 2028. Our full trim and deposit breakdown covers what each one includes.
Electron Motion has also written an open letter to Tesla: Dear Tesla, please build a driver’s car the rest of us can afford.
What’s next
The Tesla Roadster reveal answered the biggest question fans had, which is what would make this car special, and the answer is thrusters developed in collaboration with SpaceX. Final prices, delivery timing and the markets that get the car first are the next pieces to watch for. Until then, the replay above is well worth a watch, wherever in the world you are.
After the reveal, Musk added two more promises on X. Owners will be able to ask the Roadster to perform any of the tricks from the reveal on its own, which he said will be possible because the car “will be sentient.” Tesla also plans a looping test track at its Texas headquarters, one Musk called “crazier even than Hot Wheels,” where owners can try out their cars.
For every first drive and walkaround in one place, see our roundup of Tesla Roadster reviews.