Tesla Unveils Thruster-Equipped Roadster, Opens Preorders With 2028 Production Target

Chief executive Elon Musk had promoted the event on social media beforehand, saying he could not guarantee the launch would succeed but promising it would be spectacular, and calling the debut the most striking product show in the company's history. The event started at 7:55 p.m. Central time, a nod to 1955, the year the DeLorean travels back to in the film Back to the Future, and a line from the movie was hidden in the dark areas of the promotional poster.

During the demonstration, the car drove onto a large C-shaped ramp and stopped and restarted at will along the incline, including positions where the body was vertical or upside down, accompanied by an engine-like roar. It then accelerated over the top, rotated 180 degrees in the air and landed. In a second, longer jump, the Roadster cleared a row of Tesla vehicles that included the recently unveiled Robotaxi, spinning once in flight.

Tesla said the capability comes from a system developed jointly with SpaceX. The car carries two carbon fiber composite overwrapped pressure vessels with a combined volume of 600 liters, holding 250 kilograms of ultra-high-pressure air, while 10 high-pressure nozzles control the vehicle's attitude in what amounts to a rocket attitude control system. Four main thrusters at the rear produce more than 80 kilonewtons of thrust, and an onboard air compressor refills the tanks during ordinary driving. A ground-effect fan beneath the floor, Musk said, evacuates air under the car at low speed to generate up to 2 g of downforce.

Tesla quoted a 0-60 mph time of 0.81 seconds and said the design top speed exceeds 230 mph, or about 370 km/h, with Mach 0.5, roughly 612 km/h, as the next target. Musk said production tuning could be more aggressive still, leaving the driver's tolerance for g-forces as the practical limit, and described the car as the last Tesla that will need a human at the wheel.

The two-seat cabin uses carbon fiber bucket seats joined to the chassis. The steering column, brake booster and hydraulic lines have been removed, with steering, acceleration and braking handled by wire, and the car can shift between low-drag and high-downforce modes through the propulsion system and an adaptive rear wing.

Preorders opened worldwide after the event. Tesla's Chinese site lists a deposit of 332,000 yuan for the standard performance version, while the US deposit is 50,000 dollars, about 356,000 yuan, both refundable. The rocket version capable of flight is offered by invitation only. Musk said production is planned for 2028, about a decade after he gave a 2020 date for the second-generation Roadster, which has yet to enter production. In 2018, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launched Musk's original cherry-red Roadster into an orbit around the Sun, where it remains.