AUSTIN, Texas — Tesla is preparing to finally show the world its next-generation Roadster as soon as this month, and the debut is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious product demonstrations the company has ever staged. A report from The Information, corroborated by Electrek and Teslarati, says the supercar will lift off the ground using SpaceX-developed cold-gas thrusters at SpaceX's rocket testing facility in McGregor, Texas.
A decade of anticipation nears its payoff
Tesla first revealed the second-generation Roadster back in 2017, and CEO Elon Musk has spent years promising it would be unlike anything else on the road. The plan taking shape now would deliver on exactly that promise. Three people familiar with the program told The Information that the demonstration vehicle will be operated remotely, with spectators kept several hundred yards back because the thrusters are powerful enough to be felt from a distance.
The cold-gas thruster package, internally code-named A71, is a direct spillover from SpaceX engineering — a rare example of two Musk companies sharing hardware to push an automobile into territory normally reserved for aerospace. It is the clearest sign yet that the production Roadster will live up to Musk's long-standing pledge that it would blur the line between car and rocket.
From carbon-fiber tub to hypercar
The car Tesla is about to reveal reflects years of uncompromising engineering. Rather than stretch an existing Model S platform, Musk directed the team to build the Roadster around an ultralight carbon-fiber tub, the same approach used by the world's top performance and racing cars. Tesla recruited engineers with hypercar pedigrees, including talent out of Italy, to make it happen. Design chief Franz von Holzhausen drew inspiration from the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which is where the A-71 code name originates.
