Tesla revealed its long-delayed second-generation Roadster on Thursday night, October 15, nearly nine years after first showing it off, and promised production in 2028.
And yes, it has thrusters. Cold-gas ones, but still.
At an event outside Waco, Texas, the car used a mix of high-powered fans and thrusters to drive up an inverted ramp, spin around and settle onto the pavement, according to TechCrunch. It also hopped over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y and Model 3 while in motion. Elon Musk called it “the best of the last of the human-driven cars.”
The stock market watched the same show and shrugged. More on that below.
The specs, such as they are
Tesla showed the car accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in one second. There will be three trims:
- Performance (“road ready”): two seats, active aerodynamics and a “multi-mode suction system.”
- Thrust (“race ready”): two seats and rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters for sub-one-second 0-60.
- Rocket (“air ready”): one seat, 10 cold-gas thrusters around the car, and an “invite only” sign on the door.
All three are promised 300 miles of range and top speeds above 230 mph. Reservations reopened with a $50,000 deposit for the Performance and $250,000 for Thrust. No price was announced for any version.
Note what’s missing: battery capacity, curb weight beyond Marques Brownlee’s “4000+ pound” description, charging speed, and any homologation detail. Those are the numbers that tell you whether a car is ready for a factory, and Tesla didn’t share them.
How the thrusters work
Engineering VP Lars Moravy said the thrusters are fed by 600 liters of compressed air, which can be recharged. “Cold gas” means the thrusters simply vent pressurized gas, with no combustion, the same basic principle spacecraft use for small attitude adjustments. Tesla said on X that “every usable void in the car is packed with Carbon Fiber Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPVs).”
As TechCrunch dryly noted, that’s the same type of pressure vessel that has been at the root of multiple SpaceX rocket explosions. Comforting.
There’s also a physics question nobody on stage answered: how many seconds of thrust do 600 liters of compressed air buy, and how often can a driver use them before refilling? A trick that works once per tank is a party piece, not a performance feature.
About that timeline
Musk says production will finally start in 2028. Some context: the second-gen Roadster was unveiled in November 2017 as a surprise at the Tesla Semi event, with deliveries promised within a few years. It was then delayed in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. Musk later floated an end-of-2025 reveal, then April 1, 2026 (chosen, he said, for “some deniability”), then October 1, which weather scuttled.
Customers who put down $50,000, or $250,000 for one of 1,000 Founders Series cars, back in 2017 have been waiting a long time. That’s nearly a decade of interest-free loans to Tesla, and the car still isn’t on a production line.
Marques Brownlee summed up the mood: “They really just got on stage and said this newly designed 4000+ pound car can do flips and go half the speed of sound (380+mph) and will ship in 2028. This is a prank, right?”
Wall Street’s verdict: nice flip, now show us earnings
Tesla shares jumped before the market opened on Friday, October 16, then gave it all back. The stock hit $371.13 premarket, up 2.4%, and was trading at $351.62, down 2.99%, by early afternoon, Investing.com reported. The Wall Street Journal’s markets desk put it simply: investors were unmoved.
JPMorgan kept its Neutral rating and $415 price target, per Investing.com. The stock was down about 23% for the year at that point, and the site noted Tesla’s auto sales have fallen for two years. Investors were more focused on the company’s third-quarter earnings, due October 21, and on speculation that Tesla and SpaceX could announce a merger, which Barclays has argued could come before Tesla’s shareholder meeting.
That reaction makes sense. A low-volume halo car that ships in 2028 doesn’t move revenue in 2026.
Safety is “not the main goal”
Musk has been unusually candid about what this car is for. He has said it may not “move the needle massively from a revenue standpoint,” and on a podcast earlier this year he said, “if safety is your number one goal, do not buy the Roadster,” adding that Tesla would “aspire not to kill anyone in this car.”
He also suggested Tesla might try to jump Snake River Canyon, the site of Evel Knievel’s famous rocket-powered attempt. That’s not a sentence you usually hear at a car launch.
The regulatory question nobody answered
A road car with thrusters raises questions Tesla didn’t address on stage. Will the Thrust trim’s thrusters be usable on public roads? Does a car that briefly leaves the ground fall under anyone’s aviation rules? How do crash standards apply to a cabin surrounded by high-pressure tanks? We don’t know, and Tesla didn’t say. The “invite only” Rocket trim, with 10 thrusters and one seat, sounds less like a road car and more like a track toy.
Why it matters
The Roadster is a brand play. Musk’s Tesla is increasingly pitching itself on robots, robotaxis and AI, and a flying sports car keeps the company in the “future arrives here first” business. It also neatly showcases SpaceX hardware at a moment when the two companies’ futures are being openly discussed together.
For deposit holders, it matters more concretely. The 2017 Founders Series buyers paid $250,000 for a car that was supposed to arrive around 2020. They now have a new design, a new date, and still no price.
The takeaway
Our read: as spectacle, this delivered. As a product, it’s a set of promises with a 2028 date attached, from a company with a long record of missing Roadster dates. The deposits, at least, are very real. If you’re tempted, treat the $250,000 as a donation to the Musk Cinematic Universe and anything that shows up in your driveway as a bonus.
What to watch: a price, a regulatory answer on those thrusters, a full spec sheet, and any sign of an actual production line.
Image: Smnt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
