Tesla’s New Roadster Can Somehow Do Corkscrews in the Air (Without Exploding—Yet)

The new Tesla Roadster can’t quite fly, but it can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in under a second using boosters, drive upside down, and propel itself through corkscrews in the air—at least under the conditions of the prototype’s unveiling at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, on Thursday night.

“We need an audience to prove it’s not AI or SI,” Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told the audience (referring to the White House’s preferred language, “Super Intelligence”).

Tesla started taking deposits for the Roadster nearly a decade ago , and it launched a cherry-red first-generation Roadster with a mannequin named Starman into space on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in a 2018 publicity stunt . A 2019 demo for the Cybertruck resulted in Tesla’s design chief shattering two of its supposedly unbreakable “Armor Glass” windows, and Cybertrucks have subsequently become something of a signifier for jerkwads , selling more poorly than the infamous Ford Edsel . So it’s safe to say that this reveal was make-or-break.

This prototype is a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX and uses what Musk described as an “advanced ultra-high pressure air tank” to power SpaceX cold-gas thrusters. The demo took place well away from the actual stage for safety reasons. Musk told attendees, “Success is not guaranteed… But if it doesn’t work, we’re at a safe distance.”

Unbelievably enough, it did work. Tesla showed the prototype Roadster launching upside down off the top of a half-circle ramp before guiding itself through a corkscrew maneuver. Later in the demo video, Musk had the Roadster jump over the entire Tesla vehicle fleet monster-truck-style, again with a corkscrew.

“The car has, obviously, attitude control thrusters and main thrusters in the rear, so it can basically fly like a rocket, and it could do rolls,” Musk told the audience.

“This will actually be, long-term, the only manually driven car that Tesla makes,” he said at another point.

The Roadster pulls off its upside-down driving with suction fans that Musk said generate more than 2 Gs of cornering grip. Musk admitted that there aren’t many people who want to drive upside down, but claimed the “downforce of the car means you can corner incredibly well.” Combined with its acceleration, he promised it would “crush every track record that has ever existed.”

The SpaceX cold-gas thrusters are deafeningly loud, judging from the livestream, where Musk activated them close to the audience for only a few seconds.

Tesla also played a clip of the Roadster accelerating to 60 miles per hour in one second, then a live test where it achieved the same acceleration in 0.81 seconds.