We got flying cars before a lot of things, and Thursday night in Texas, Tesla made sure everybody saw it happen. At the long-awaited reveal of its redesigned Roadster — nearly nine years after the car was first teased — Tesla didn’t just roll the car onto a stage. It drove it up a giant ramp until the car was completely upside down, launched it into the air, and let SpaceX thrusters flip it back around for the landing.
The event went down at SpaceX’s Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas, and the stunts were the story. First, the Roadster climbed the towering curved ramp — held to the wall by a suction system — until it was hanging fully inverted, several stories up. Then it came off the ramp in the air, fired its cold-gas thrusters to right itself, and touched down on the pavement like it was nothing. Tesla engineering VP Lars Moravy says the system runs on 10 nozzles fed by 600 liters of compressed air, technology borrowed straight from SpaceX.
And then came the one the internet named on sight. The Roadster lifted off, floated clear over Tesla’s entire lineup — the Semi, the Cybercab, the Cybertruck, a Model Y and a Model 3 — and spun upside down in midair before landing. Chief designer Franz von Holzhausen joked it was a Tony Hawk-style move, and the name stuck instantly: the kickflip. Clips from the night raced across social media within the hour, pulling millions of views before the event even wrapped.
The numbers Tesla is claiming are just as wild as the stunts. The Roadster demonstrated a 0-to-60 mph run in 0.81 seconds, and Tesla says the top “Rocket” trim — a single-seater with all 10 thrusters — will do it in under 0.59 seconds, with a top speed over 230 mph and 300 miles of range across the lineup. Three trims are coming: Performance, Thrust, and the invite-only Rocket. Musk says production finally begins in 2028, with reservations open now at $50,000 for the Performance and $250,000 for the Thrust. Final pricing hasn’t been announced.
“Flying cars are real,” Musk told the crowd, teasing an even bigger stunt to come — an attempt at Evel Knievel’s famous Snake River Canyon jump. Tesla’s own summary of the night was just as bold, calling the Roadster “the best of the last human-driven cars.” After nine years of delays, skeptics had every right to doubt this car would ever do anything but sit in a rendering. On Thursday night, it flew.
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