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After nearly a nine-year wait, Elon Musk has stunned the world again. On Thursday night, October 15 (9 PM local time), Tesla publicly unveiled its long-awaited second-generation Tesla Roadster — and in that very demo, the car actually left the ground and flew. Riding compressed-air thrusters, the car hovered for a few seconds, rolled into a barrel roll and even drove upside down — a spectacle that car history has rarely, if ever, seen shown in public before.
That is not all. In the demo the car went from 0 to 60 mph in just 0.81 seconds — under a single second! After the demo, Musk said only, "Well, it worked." But behind that plain sentence lie nearly a decade of research at Tesla and SpaceX, countless delays, deposits of up to $250,000 from thousands of buyers, and a long history of promises. In this report: the full story — how the technology works, what it costs, when it will reach buyers, and why the critics remain unconvinced.
A Car That Flew — What the Night Demo Showed
Millions of viewers worldwide watched the demo live on Tesla's own stream. Right at the start, the car rose off the ground and hovered for a few moments — enough for most journalists in the crowd to wonder whether it was a camera trick or some hidden rig. But repeated footage from multiple angles and the live presentation dispelled that doubt: it was the car's own thrusters doing the 'flying'.
Then came one wilder test after another. According to US auto-media reports, the car lifted off while running along the ground, then went into a barrel roll, popped a 'kick flip', and at one point drove completely upside down on the road. And the most talked-about moment of all — the car 'sucked' itself onto a vertical surface and held there, as if glued by a magnet! Road & Track called these the "3 wildest stunts" of the night.
The speed numbers are even more striking. Per the test reports of Autoweek and Edmunds, the car hit 0–60 mph in just 0.81 seconds. For perspective — the fastest production sports cars on Earth take at least double that time. Even Formula One cars, Tesla's tech team claims, would fall behind this performance.
Then Musk returned to the stage. "Well, it worked," he told reporters. Worth noting: even before the event he had teased on social media that this could be the "greatest product demo of all time". Judging by the media storm that followed, that claim looks quite plausible — the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and their peers all ran the 'flying Tesla'.
But it is also true that nobody stays stunned forever — many are asking the question bluntly: are these stunts really 'flying', or just a promotional feat? More on that controversy below.
Watch the astonishing moments from Tesla's official broadcast in the video below:
How Does This Car Fly? Inside the Technology
The headline technology of the new Roadster is the compressed-air thruster. The tech has existed in spaceflight for a long time — known as a 'cold gas thruster', this system generates mechanical force (thrust) by releasing high-pressure stored gas for brief moments. With SpaceX's help, that space technology has now been miniaturised and fitted around the car.
In numbers: tech outlet Tech-Insider reports the car carries about 250 kg of compressed air, stored at 440 bar of pressure. A household gas cylinder typically runs at 150–200 bar — 440 bar is an extraordinary figure. Released in controlled bursts, this air makes the car momentarily weightless: it leaps, spins, or presses itself against a surface and clings.
The limitation, though, is obvious. This 'flight' is not sustained — the tank empties within minutes, so it is not aircraft-like continuous flight but a series of short burst-style feats. Reuters plainly wrote "limited flight" — that is this car's real capability.
Another element powers the most talked-about 'wall-suck' stunt — a powerful fan system. A fan under the car pulls air downward, effectively 'gluing' the car onto the surface. Engadget and Racer magazine remind us — the idea is not new; it is nearly half a century old (more on that later).
Per Tesla Oracle, the new Roadster arrives in three variants — Performance, Thrust and Rocket. The most expensive 'Rocket' variant carries the full SpaceX-package thruster set. Teslarati reports owners will get a special 'Flying Stunt Mode' — permission to exercise the car's stunt capability on a designated enclosed track. In other words, no leaping and spinning anywhere on public roads; the feature has been deliberately restricted with safety controls in mind.
The Story of a Nine-Year Wait
In Tesla's history, Roadster is among the most sacred names. In 2008, the first-generation Roadster — an electric sports car built on a Lotus Elise chassis — essentially pulled the near-bankrupt Tesla back from the brink; it was the company's first production car.
In November 2017, Musk announced a second-generation Roadster — a car that would do 0–60 in 1.9 seconds, run 620 miles on a single charge, and top out above 250 mph. Delivery was promised for 2020. Then came the familiar story: it didn't arrive. 2020 passed, 2021 passed, 2022 passed — Musk kept saying the Cybertruck and the Generation-3 cars had to be finished first.
In between came another bombshell. At the November 2019 Cybertruck unveiling, Musk revealed the Roadster would get a special 'SpaceX package' — ten small thrusters around the car that would bring 0–60 down to about a second, and even let the car hover, if only for a moment! Many then assumed it was just Musk's playful teasing; seven years later, that 'tease' arrived in the flesh.
Since 2017, buyers have been paying reservation money — $200,000 for the base model, $250,000 for the limited 'Founders Series'. Which means those who paid in 2017 have now waited nearly nine years — and their wait is still uncertain, because as you will see below, Tesla is not even guaranteeing delivery!
Finally, in this October of 2026 came the first public demo — nearly nine years from the story's beginning to its end.
The 'First' Roadster Is Still Orbiting in Space
The Roadster's bond with space is, of course, nothing new. On 6 February 2018, SpaceX's giant Falcon Heavy rocket carried a very special payload on its maiden test flight: Musk's own cherry-red 2008 Roadster! At the wheel sat 'Starman', a mannequin in a SpaceX spacesuit, David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' played on the stereo, and the dashboard read "Don't Panic".
That car is still circling in an elliptical heliocentric orbit between Earth and Mars. A fun footnote: in January 2025, astronomers mistakenly identified that very car as a newly discovered asteroid (briefly designated 2018 CN41); the error was later caught and the record retracted. Even astronomy's most trained eyes sometimes mistake the Roadster for a celestial body!
So there is nothing surprising about SpaceX technology inside the new Roadster — Musk's companies have been borrowing each other's technology and culture for years. But this time the technology bridge has grown so tight that Wall Street has spun a fresh rumour: could Tesla and SpaceX ever actually merge? (More in the market section below.)
Price, Delivery and a Legal Puzzle
Now to the most practical questions — what does it cost, and when do you get one? The answer is as eye-catching as it is disappointing. Per Autonocion, reservations require deposits of up to $250,000. And here come the fine-print terms: The Drive and InsideEVs report that Tesla 'cannot guarantee' that reservation holders will ever receive a car!
On timing, Reuters reports the car will not reach buyers before 2028. From the 2017 announcement to delivery — over a decade. That is precisely why faith in Musk companies' timelines keeps eroding: the Cybertruck, the next-gen sedans and many other promises missed their dates.
The legal side is messier still. Per Politico, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has declared — this is not an 'aircraft' and not its responsibility. Then who regulates it? Asked by CBS, the Transportation Department (DOT) could not give a clear answer either. In other words, no regulatory framework yet exists for a car that can fly — and lawyers' concerns over road safety, airspace, insurance and accident liability are growing by the day (Gadget Review flagged the 'unresolved regulatory questions').
Praise Versus Scepticism — Reactions in Two Keys
The media split into two camps almost immediately after the demo. One camp is euphoric — MotorTrend ran a technical explainer titled 'how the rocket-powered car works', and Car and Driver says this Roadster "feels like the real deal". Their argument: the 0.81-second acceleration and the upside-down driving are no CGI — the engineering feat cannot be denied.
The other camp is deeply sceptical. The Verge wrote that "the incredible flying Tesla is just for show", Explorersweb says "don't buy the hype", and The Atlantic went straight for the headline — "The Flying Car Must Never Be Built". New Atlas's question still hangs in the air: "Do these stunts really count as flying?"
The sharpest sceptical argument came from history. Tech-Insider reminds us — holding a car against a surface with fans is a 56-year-old trick! In 1970 Can-Am racing, the Chaparral 2J used exactly this technology — so devastatingly fast that rivals protested and the technology was banned! In other words, the Roadster's 'magic' owes less to the space age and more to a modern revival of half-century-old motorsport engineering.
A playful reaction also came from the flying-car industry itself. Alef, a US startup working on genuinely flying cars since 2015, cheekily released a video 'welcoming Tesla to the flying-car race' — while adding the sting: are Tesla's stunts really flying at all? Al Jazeera and other international outlets picked up the exchange.
Stock-Market Reaction, Merger Chatter and the Auto Industry's New Race
In investors' eyes, the demo clearly landed well. Tesla shares moved higher after the event, per Yahoo Finance and other outlets. The bigger story began with CNBC's report — with SpaceX technology woven so deeply into the new Roadster, speculation about a Tesla–SpaceX merger has taken off. Whether such a merger is realistically possible, given the two companies' corporate structures, ownership and regulatory complexity, remains pure conjecture.
The New York Times sees the industry shifting on two fronts at once — Tesla now leads the rush to sell electric cars priced above $100,000. Axios's analysis is blunter still: "with the flying Roadster, Tesla waves goodbye to the car business" — that is, Tesla is drifting away from the mass market toward a spectacular, ultra-premium niche. And the Wall Street Journal reminds us there will be global consequences — what Chinese and European rivals do next is the thing to watch.
Final Word: Technology Revolution or Just a Show?
Whatever anyone says, Elon Musk has proved once again — nobody commands the world's attention quite like him. A single car demo has kept headlines running for a week, the stock market is abuzz, merger chatter is flying, and debate has even begun on how flying cars should be regulated. This masterclass in the attention economy never stops being astonishing.
But the real verdict will come at delivery time. If the Roadster truly reaches buyers in 2028, Musk will have made history again; if it does not — what will Tesla say to the thousands of depositors of $250,000? "Cannot guarantee" — those two words may well be the real packaging of today's dazzling demo.
For readers in Bangladesh: a personal car taking flight is still a distant dream, but this expansion of technology's frontier tells us that the future we dismissed as science fiction is arriving at full gallop. And that 2018 red Roadster drifting midway between the planets keeps hinting, with every lap of the sun, that human dreams are never lost in the void.
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