Tesla's Rocket Roadster
The redesigned Roadster prototype. Photo via MotorTrend’s October 2026 first-look gallery. Source
Nearly a decade after the second-generation Tesla Roadster was announced, we finally got a look at a new Roadster prototype vehicle.
It bears little to no resemblance to the original Roadster or the previewed 2017 Roadster prototype.
However, it did something that was hard to dismiss as a render, a tweet, or Elon having an especially ketamine-filled afternoon.
Tesla moved the outdoor launch event from October 1 due to weather, which was confusing at the time but makes more sense now. At SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site on October 15, a white aerospace-inspired prototype climbed a curved ramp, held upside down, left the surface, rotated in the air, and landed.
The official launch video has the ramp sequence, acceleration demonstrations and plenty of deliberate theatrics.
Car and Driver reports that the ramp car and the car driven on stage were different prototypes.
That is a small detail with a large effect on how much confidence we should attach to these Roadster show-pony antics.
Three Roadster Trims
Most of the loudest headlines have already mashed several vehicles into one imaginary supercar.
Tesla’s own configuration announcement makes the split pretty clear.
Performance is Tesla’s road-ready, two-seat configuration. Tesla assigns it active aerodynamics, a multi-mode suction system and a claimed 0-60 mph time under 1.6 seconds in the configuration announcement.
Thrust is a limited-release two-seater with rear cold-gas acceleration thrusters. Tesla’s claim is under 0.9 seconds to 60 mph.
Rocket is the bonkers one-seat, invite-only version with perimeter cold-gas thrusters. Tesla claims under 0.59 seconds to 60 mph, over 230 mph, and over 300 miles of range. Its own Roadster page states that Rocket is not approved for public road use and is unavailable in some regions.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already stated that he’ll ensure Tesla’s new jumping and flying Roadster is street-legal in his state.
How Does It Work?
Fans located in the rear diffuser and underbody pull air out from beneath the car. This creates a low-pressure vacuum zone underneath while normal atmospheric pressure pushes down from above.
The car features 10 cold-gas thrusters powered by 600 litres of compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks. These thrusters provide vectoring control to lift, stabilize, or flip the car when it detaches from an upside-down position.
That raises ordinary ownership questions.
How fast can you refill those tanks?
How many full-power runs do you get on a full tank?
How is this machine controlled in flight?
A controlled prototype demonstration at Tesla’s October 15 event. Image: Tesla, via TechCrunch. Source
Tesla has not published Roadster-specific data on pressure, usable gas, refill, durability, safety, or anything that would allow future customers to answer these questions.
The 2028 Asterisk
Elon’s latest public statement is that production will start in 2028.
The vehicle remains under development.
Options, hardware, and price are still subject to change.
A reservation is not a purchase, and Tesla does not guarantee delivery or timing.
That is sober language for an understandably speculative purchase.
Anyone writing that the Roadster will be “available in 2028” has turned a production-start ambition into a customer promise Tesla has not made.
The original 2020 Roadster goal slipped.
In October 2025, he hoped to demonstrate the car before the year ended.
The demonstration vehicle arrived in October 2026.
How likely is it that production vehicles will start shipping in 2028?
IMHO
The Roadster demonstration was impressive.
Will the prototype resemble the final vehicle? Time will tell.
Tesla built enough working hardware to make the Roadster feel real again, and it presented us with a clean demarcation line between a plausible two-seat performance car and the far wilder Thrust and Rocket concepts.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Roadster is how it demonstrates what a combined SpaceX-Tesla merger might produce: vehicles we’ve not even remotely imagined.
In a world where car buyers are primarily concerned with affordability, the Roadster emerges as another example of a billionaire’s tone-deaf pipe dream.
And at the end of the day, the Rocket Roadster is a textbook example of things we probably don't need cars to do.
Yeah, the backflip got my attention.
Building the car on time will earn my applause.
Building the mythical Model 2 that people can afford will earn my praise.