Tesla has promised a sequel to its original Roadster for nearly a decade. We’ve seen a few different versions over the years, and like much of what CEO Elon Musk promises in his big, flashy presentations, it never really materialized. On Thursday night, the brand debuted a vehicle that it claims will enter production in 2028 with rocket thrusters and a sub-1-second 0-60 time.
I hate to be the one to pee in your Wheaties (figuratively speaking), but if you believe that this car will ever see the road in this form, you’ll believe anything. However, I do have some very valuable NFTs to sell you!
In Short: The Thursday announcement of the second-generation Tesla Roadster showed a lot of unbelievable stuff like a flying rocket car and a car that can hang upside down. You shouldn’t believe any of it.
Roadster? We Barely Know ‘Er
For a quick history lesson on the Tesla Roadster, it debuted in 2008 and was made through 2012. It was based on a modified Lotus Elise chassis, hit 60 mph in as little as 3.7 seconds, and travels 244 miles on a charge (according to the EPA). It was the first production electric vehicle to exceed 200 miles of range.
Then, in 2017, Tesla announced its second-generation Roadster alongside a raft of wild claims, including a sub-2-second 0-60 time and a “SpaceX option package” that would add cold-gas thrusters to improve performance. The company offered potential buyers the chance to put down a $50,000 deposit to be among the first to receive their vehicle when it entered production in 2020.
In July 2020, Musk claimed the vehicle would be built in California and that production would start in 2021. Of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic knocked everyone for a loop, so the delay seemed reasonable. Then that 2021 date turned into 2023, which turned into 2024… then 2025, and then the company promised a production version would debut in April 2026.
It’s now mid-October, and the production date is 2028, supposedly. See where I’m going with this?
Delays By Design
The Roadster isn’t the only Tesla vehicle to get these kinds of big promises and keep getting delayed. It happened with the Model 3 and Y, the Cybertruck, and it happened big time with the Semi. For all of these models, Tesla collected paid reservations by the boatload, effectively getting an interest-free loan to keep going while it figured things out. The delays aren’t a fluke; it’s just how Tesla does business.
Through that lens, Tesla’s continued request for a $50,000 deposit on standard Roadsters and $250,000 for “Thrust” models doesn’t look great. The stock market seems to share our skepticism, too: Tesla’s stock price took a nosedive after the dog-and-pony show, dropping about $20 per share.
Fans and Rockets, Oh My
Of course, the 2028 production date isn’t even remotely the wildest claim Musk and his cronies made about this new Roadster. That honor goes to the ground-effect fans and cold-gas thrusters that let the demo vehicle hang upside down and bunny-hop over a row of other Tesla vehicles.
The first problem is that these kinds of thrusters are unlikely to be legal for road use anywhere on Earth with actual laws. Tesla has previously claimed that the thrusters would use compressed air at a working pressure of 10,000 psi. A tank at that pressure would create an almost mind-bogglingly dangerous crash-safety risk, and the risk to other vehicles and pedestrians from 10,000 psi of air exiting the thruster nozzles is also very real. A rapid pressure increase of just 14.5 psi can, for example, rupture a human eardrum.
Using fans to suck a car down to the road isn’t new. The idea dates back to the 1960s and the Chaparral 2J CanAm race car; Brabham tried it in Formula 1 in 1978 with its BT46, and the Gordon Murray Automotive T50 hypercar currently uses a similar system to boost performance. It’s proven tech. Of course, creating the kind of downforce Tesla is talking about, where a car can hang upside down, is a different story. That much downforce would overload any normal road-going suspension, bottoming it out and making it useless, and if the car had a suspension that could handle those loads, it’d be so stiff that, again, it’d be useless.
But Did They Even Show a Real Car?
Next, this new Roadster looks a lot like a half-assed, reskinned Lamborghini with McLaren-style door hinges. In typical Tesla “bread and circuses” marketing, nobody got a look at any of the technical components, and neither Musk nor Franz von Holzhausen nor Lars Moravy gave any details as to specs or technical aspects. Musk just rambled about sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch and his friend (and arguably one of the worst people in the world), Peter Thiel.
Having a car-shaped object that does specific things very well to be visually appealing or shocking isn’t new. The movie industry has been doing it for decades, and this demonstration, where nobody was allowed to get near the vehicles, definitely has a whiff of Hollywood stunt car about it – especially if you pause when the underside of the vehicle is shown and it appears to be a hollow shell fixed to a ladder frame.
What I’m saying is that it’s fine to think a flying, kick-flipping rocket car is a fun visual, but take it with a big fat grain of salt. Remember that this is all coming from a man who brought us all the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its massive data insecurities, heartless job and program cuts that saved taxpayers very little money, and let us not forget “Big Balls.”
On this Tesla announcement, we urge you to follow the sage advice of Chuck D, Flava Flav, and Terminator X: “Don’t Believe the Hype.”
