Roadster (next generation)

On October 15, 2026, Tesla revealed the next-generation Roadster at SpaceX's rocket test site in McGregor, Texas, and the car flew. It drove up a giant curved ramp, held on with suction fans until it was fully upside down, then fired its thrusters to leave the ramp and flip in midair. Next it launched over a Tesla Semi and a row of Teslas, flipped high above them, and came down on its thrusters on the far side.

The Roadster is Tesla's electric hypercar, and Tesla and SpaceX engineers built it together: suction fans can hold it upside down, and cold-gas thrusters taken from spaceflight push it harder than its tires ever could. Tesla says its quickest version reaches 60 miles per hour (mph) in under 0.59 seconds. It comes in three versions, seats up to two, and goes into production in 2028. The night of the reveal, I put it this way:

What is the Next-Generation Roadster?

Tesla first showed a Roadster concept in 2017, and the car revealed in 2026 is an all-new design. Tesla says its design language grew through the Model S, 3, X, and Y, then the Cybertruck, the Cybercab robotaxi, and the Optimus humanoid robot, and that the Roadster takes its shape from the SR-71 spy plane and the F-35 fighter jet.

Tesla calls the Roadster "a true pilot's car." Concealed headlights, a taillight that runs the full width of the car, and flush-mounted surfaces give it what Tesla calls a "minimalist, highly technical form." Its super-light wheels use thin spokes that also add structural strength. The "Ano White" paint is an aerospace-derived finish that protects against ultraviolet (UV) light and extreme cold and resists static charge and corrosion, and the "Gold Glazed" tinted glass copies the copper coating on spacesuit visors, with subtle titanium accents.

Inside, the cabin is "Ultrawhite" with gray microsuede details and seat bolsters that hold the driver in place. The seat position is fixed, several controls are manual, and the structure uses magnesium, titanium, and carbon fiber, all to cut weight so the Roadster responds to the driver almost instantly. The driver steers with a yoke, a wheel cut flat at the top, linked to the front wheels by wire instead of a steering column, and reads two small displays plus a center touchscreen.

Why the Roadster Exists

The Roadster is a halo car, the flagship that sets the mood for a whole brand and shows what the technology can do before cheaper products get it. That plan goes back to Tesla's 2006 master plan: start at the premium end, prove the engineering, raise money, then work down toward regular buyers. The original 2008 Roadster ran that play once, and this one runs it again up at hypercar heights.

At the reveal Tesla called the Roadster "the best of the last human-driven cars," a car built for the joy of driving by hand while the rest of the lineup moves toward self-driving. I have owned Tesla stock for more than a decade, and a car that can drive upside down is one more sign of how early the company still is:

How it Works

Every car on the road is limited by how hard its tires can push against the pavement before they slip. Tesla says the Roadster's thrusters produce 4 to 5 times the force its tires can, and more force on the same weight means faster acceleration.

The thrusters are cold-gas jets: they fire compressed gas without burning anything, the way SpaceX has nudged spacecraft into position for decades. Tesla says making them work in air instead of a vacuum took all-new hardware and controls, and that every usable gap in the car is packed with carbon fiber overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), lightweight tanks that hold the gas at high pressure. More gas means more time in the air. All-electric actuators trim the thrusters within a fraction of a second to keep the car steady in flight. Jalopnik reported a 158-gallon tank behind the seats feeding 10 exhaust ports, with rear thrust above 80 kilonewtons, roughly 18,000 pounds of push.

A second system pulls the car down instead of pushing it forward. Tesla's multi-mode fan and ground sealing system sucks air out from beneath the car, hard enough to hold it upside down while it stands still, so the Roadster has massive downforce even at zero speed. Powered fans and active wings work together to maximize traction and cornering speed in all conditions.

In Track Mode the car lowers and raises an active wing driven by the same actuators, the motors that move each joint, that Tesla builds for Optimus. Tesla says that gives the Roadster the best passive downforce package of any road car, approaching Formula 1 levels.

Tesla sells it in three configurations. Performance is the road car: two seats, active aerodynamics, and the suction system, with 0 to 60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. Thrust adds rear thrusters for 0 to 60 in under 0.9 seconds in a limited run. Rocket seats one and adds thrusters around the whole car for forward and upward acceleration and for rotating it in the air, which led Tesla to write "So...yes, it can fly." It claims 0 to 60 in under 0.59 seconds and over 230 mph, and it is by invitation only, built for the track. Every version has more than 300 miles of range.

Thrusters on a Tesla trace back to June 2018, when Elon first described a SpaceX option package with about 10 small thrusters arranged around the car:

The Economics of the Roadster

Reservations are open for each version now, ahead of pricing. The Performance car takes a $50,000 reservation: $5,000 by card, which Tesla calls fully refundable, and $45,000 by wire within 10 days. The Thrust car takes $250,000, and the Rocket is by invitation only.

Reservations give Tesla early, interest-free funding, and the Roadster's bigger payoff is as a halo that draws attention to every other Tesla.

Current Status of Roadster

The evening before the reveal, Elon set the bar himself:

Tesla held the reveal on the evening of October 15, 2026, livestreamed from SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas. The stage held the 2008 Roadster, a Lotus Elise, a Tesla Semi, and the white Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, one of the cars Tesla named as inspiration.

The ramp run put both of the car's systems to work at once: the fans held it to the curved wall, and the thrusters carried it off the top. Tesla also showed a 0 to 60 run it put at 0.81 seconds.

Elon told the crowd the new Roadster "takes the fun meter to 11 out of 10," and afterward he posted:

Later that night Tesla posted one more stunt, a standing flip:

Watching a car flip off a ramp and land on its wheels, I keep coming back to how many people Elon has pushed to build things this bold:

Tesla released 10 new 4K photos of the car the same night, collected in a thread by Sawyer Merritt on X, and all of them are in the gallery below. The design matches what Elon promised in February 2024:

What Comes Next

Production starts in 2028. Elon said at the event that the top speed could "crack halfway to the speed of sound," about 380 mph, and Tesla says production cars could be even quicker than the demonstration cars. The Performance version is the one built for public roads, while Thrust and Rocket are aimed at the track.

I would not bet against this car reaching customers:

The Bottom Line

The next-generation Roadster is the most ambitious car Tesla and SpaceX have built together: a white, Space-age hypercar that drove upside down and flew over a Tesla Semi on rocket-style thrusters at its reveal. Reservations are open, and production starts in 2028. On the morning of the reveal, Elon put it this way: