McGREGOR, Texas — Tesla finally pulled the sheet off its long-awaited second-generation Roadster on Wednesday night, and the car did something no production vehicle has ever done at its own debut: it rose off the stage, pivoted in mid-air, and briefly flew.
Thousands of reservation holders and fans gathered at a Tesla venue near SpaceX's engine-test grounds watched the matte-black prototype lift a few feet off the floor on jets of cold gas, rotate, and settle back onto its wheels. Moments earlier it had run a demonstration lap and, in the night's signature stunt, driven a short stretch inverted through a banked loop. The anticipation had been building for weeks and had already lifted Tesla's shares into the reveal.
A Reveal Nine Years in the Making
Elon Musk first showed a Roadster prototype in 2017 and spent the years since promising it would be unlike anything else on the road. On Wednesday he argued the wait was worth it. "This is the first car that transcends being a car," Musk told the crowd. "It can drive, and when you want it to, it can fly. Nothing about it is normal, and that's the point."
The Roadster's defining feature is the so-called SpaceX package, a set of small rocket thrusters derived from SpaceX hardware that Musk said give the car bursts of thrust for acceleration, braking, cornering and — as the demo proved — short, controlled flight. Full specifications went live on Tesla's Roadster page during the event.
