Overview
- Tesla demonstrated the flight-capable Roadster in a public show outside Waco on Thursday when the car drove up an inverted ramp, held itself, used onboard gas thrusters to fly briefly and then landed safely.
- Company engineers said the car uses ten SpaceX-derived cold‑gas thrusters fed from carbon‑fiber overwrapped pressure vessels roughly 600 liters in volume and charged to about 380 bar to produce lift and rotation.
- Tesla opened reservations and set a 2028 production target while outlining three variants — Performance (street-legal), Thrust (track-focused with rear thrusters) and Rocket (single-seat, invitation-only and not road-legal) — and requiring large deposits for early buyers.
- The added thruster systems substantially cut electric driving range from the earlier promise of about 1,000 km to roughly 480–515 km and forced layout changes such as fewer seats and heavy tanks that need lengthy recharging of the pressure system.
- The demonstration has prompted immediate scrutiny over bystander safety, regulator approval and the use of COPV pressure tanks given their history in rockets, and key things to watch are certification decisions, final pricing and whether features are limited to closed tracks or collector use.