On Thursday night, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk unveiled what’s been billed as the company’s last human-driven car. Maybe human-piloted is a more accurate way to say it.
At a demonstration event McGregor, Texas—at SpaceX’s rocket development and testing facility—the new car did what Musk has long promised. With a herky-jerky burst of steam, it flew into the air. At one point, the car appeared to flip over the automaker’s entire line-up, floating several feet over its electric semi-truck. Tesla executives said the vehicle could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1 second.
“This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car,” Musk said.
Tesla says it will begin production on the Roadster 2 in 2028. Fans have waited a long time for the vehicle. The Roadster 2—the successor to Tesla’s first vehicle, the Roadster—was first announced in 2017, and at the time Tesla said the new sports car would be the fastest production vehicle in the world.
The “flying” technology is enabled by four thrusters, Tesla vehicle engineering head Lars Moravy said. He said the production version would “hopefully” travel up to 230 miles per hour, though Musk said he hoped to “crack halfway to the speed of sound”—around 385 mph. Modern Formula 1 vehicles usually top out around 220 mph.
