After a decade of hints, concept drawings, and the sort of calendar slippage that would embarrass most automakers, Tesla finally staged the production reveal of its new Roadster on Oct. 15. The venue was not an auto show floor but the 4,000-acre SpaceX testing facility in McGregor, Texas. The car drove upside down, barrel-rolled through the air, and Tesla claimed it hit 60 mph in less than a second. It did all of this without a human inside.
Franz von Holzhausen, Lars Moravy, and Elon Musk handled introductions before the coupe — white-painted and visibly reworked from the 2017 concept — rolled out and went straight into stunts. “By the way, success is not guarantee. It’ll probably work, but if it doesn’t work, we’re at a safe distance,” Musk quipped.
The car climbed a C-shaped section of track until it was inverted and gripping the road, accompanied by an audible suction noise, then took off, rolled upright midair, and settled back onto the stage. It also leaped and flipped over a lineup of Tesla’s other current vehicles, including the Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Semi.
Tesla attributes the levitation act to “a fan suction system on the bottom of the car that can pull up to two Gs,” plus borrowed SpaceX hardware: two carbon-overlay pressure vessels totaling 600 liters, roughly 250 kilos of air, and 10 nozzles. Four rear “thrusters” styled like exhaust tips provide a claimed 80 kilonewtons of thrust. Tesla said the timed zero-to-60 run, thrusters firing, clocked 0.81 seconds.
Tesla says the fan system also enables cornering at “greater than 2g,” with selectable high-downforce and low-drag modes and a variable-pitch rear wing. Other specs: a top speed over 230 mph, two occupants, steering by wire, and braking by wire. Musk said this will, long term, be “the only manually driven car that Tesla makes.”
Production doesn’t begin until 2028. Pricing wasn’t discussed, though previous reporting puts it north of $200,000. Musk conceded he’s “not sure it’s necessarily legal in all jurisdictions.” And what the car actually does when a human finally sits in one remains unknown. No automaker has ever staged a car reveal quite like this.
[Images: Tesla]
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