FAA Says Tesla's Flying Roadster Is Not an Aircraft
Tesla's rocket-assisted Roadster demo has drawn regulatory clarity: the FAA says it is not an aircraft, while NHTSA says road-safety rules still apply. The car can leave the ground for only seconds, and Tesla says the Rocket version is not approved for public roads.
The FAA's answer followed a question from CBS about which agency has jurisdiction over a vehicle that can flip in the air, Ifanr reported. Under U.S. federal rules, an aircraft must use aerodynamic or powered lift to maintain controlled cruise and navigation in airspace. The Roadster's propulsion system lasts only seconds, so it fails that test. NHTSA's position means that even if the car appears to defy physics, Tesla must ensure it meets motor-vehicle safety standards, and drivers must obey road rules.
Tesla's demonstration used two systems. Four electric ducted fans in the rear diffuser, each about 20 kW and derived from Tesla's heat-pump compressor architecture, evacuate air beneath the car to create negative pressure and keep it stuck to the track. Active seals along the chassis edge move with the road surface. Tesla vehicle engineering vice president Lars Moravy said the system can generate more than 2G of lateral grip from 0 to 50 mph.
The Rocket version that performed the jump replaced the passenger seat with a 600-liter carbon-fiber-wrapped tank storing about 250 kg of gas at 700 bar. The gas feeds 10 nozzles: four at the rear for longitudinal acceleration, one at each corner underneath for vertical thrust and valves on the sides for attitude adjustment. Moravy said the lines were made equal length so that timing differences of thousandths of a second would not destabilize the car in the air. In the demo, vertical nozzles fired to lift the vehicle, side nozzles then fired to brake its rotation after about 180 degrees, and the car landed.
That is still far from sustained flight. Hovering a roughly 1.8-ton Roadster would require about 18,000 newtons of continuous thrust, which would consume about 35 kg of gas per second, according to the report. The 250 kg supply would last less than six seconds at full thrust. MotorTrend reported that the demo car carried three times the gas of the regular Thrust version, whose 200-liter tank would last less than two seconds at full thrust and take six to seven hours to refill.
Tesla's own website says the Rocket version has not been approved for public roads and is being sold by invitation. Musk said safety was not the main goal. "If you buy a Ferrari, safety won't be the primary goal. If safety is your primary goal, I would say don't buy a Roadster," he said, according to Ifanr. Musk also said Tesla would build a circular track at its Texas headquarters for owners to experience the stunt in a closed environment.
The demo drew criticism from Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who estimated that useful thrust would last about five seconds and called the car a 700-bar, 600-liter "fart device" and a marketing stunt rather than a path to flying cars. Musk replied with a line from the Monty Python comedy, according to the report. He Xiaopeng, a Chinese automaker founder also exploring flying cars, said flight certification, safety and flight parameters remain unavoidable and require long-term work globally.
Editor's Summary
U.S. regulators have said Tesla's Roadster demonstration does not qualify as an aircraft and remains subject to motor-vehicle and road-safety rules. The vehicle's gas-powered jump lasts only seconds and Tesla says the Rocket version is not approved for public roads. The episode highlights how far demonstration hardware remains from certified low-altitude passenger transport.