The flying Tesla Roadster is an overbaked idea from my least favorite person

There’s a phrase I often used to use when referring to Elon Musk: Don’t bet against Elon.

This stemmed from long before he became a supervillain, and was instead no more than an oddball tech-sector genius primed to become a real-life Tony Stark.

It was at the tail-end of this honeymoon, in 2017, that Musk unveiled the Tesla Roadster 2020, a luxury model EV that promised insane specs and performance (0-to-60mp in 1.9 seconds) and maybe even something we’d only dreamed of: rockets that might let it fly.

Now, for chronology sticklers, Musk did not promise rockets during Tesla's November 2017 event; it was was primarily devoted to the Tesla Semi.

That tease came months later on his favorite platform, Twitter, where Musk wrote: “SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car.

These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering.

Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly …” I posted my skepticism with a Tom Hanks GIF of him saying “Really?” @LanceUlanoff @elonmusk Yes, really. https://t.co/SMt0yydSA6 October 16, 2026 This morning, my X feed has been filled with people replying to that old post with “Yes, really” and wild videos of the fully redesigned Tesla Roadster flying with the aid of what appears to be 10 thrusters (SpaceX rocket engines).

In the videos shared from Musk’s launch event, the Roadster inexplicably rides up a vertical incline and then flies off it, flips over, and lands on its wheels.

Yes, a car can fly.

We may not have affordable healthcare or housing, world peace, safe social media, or know if AI will save us or kill us, but we have a car that can fly.

Do a kickflip! https://t.co/DJ1Bq1yu8m October 16, 2026 I’m not discounting the impressive engineering or sheer audacity of the flying Tesla Roadster, but it’s been a long time since Musk crashed his own launch event with a “one-more-thing” Roadster update, and I feel different about, well, just about everything.

Back then, it had been five years since I had interviewed Musk and gotten him to playfully whistle Fly Me to the Moon .

The busy entrepreneur’s personality had been shifting slowly to a more petulant and unpredictable place.

I’d recently sat through a Tesla Model 3 launch where he abruptly ended a press conference without taking any real questions from journalists, and at the Semi event, he showed up incredibly late, though he did deliver the goods in the end.