What happened in McGregor

The venue set the tone. Tesla held the reveal at SpaceX’s 4,000-acre rocket test and development center, attendees were handed earplugs at check-in, according to Engadget’s live blog, and the warm-up act was a Raptor rocket engine test firing. Subtle, it was not. Tesla’s design and engineering leads, Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy, opened the show before Musk walked out to promise “some crazy stuff tonight.”

Then the car went to work. First it drove up a towering curved ramp until it was upside down, held there by its suction fan, then let go and used its cold-gas thrusters to turn itself over and ease down onto its wheels. “Well, it worked,” Musk said. On a longer flight it lifted itself over a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi, a Model Y and a Model 3 while moving, TechCrunch reported, and flipped on the way over: someone on stage called it the kickflip. A Starman dummy rode along on one run, and Tesla was quick to add that it was “not a real human.”

Nobody was driving the stunts, either. One of the presenters said the demonstration car was “technically autonomous for this demo to make sure we don’t kill anyone,” and Musk added that, in the long run, the Roadster will be the only car Tesla makes that people drive themselves. He also said, plainly, that this is “not necessarily a safety optimized car.” Points for candor.

The car under the fireworks

Strip away the smoke and you’re left with a low, two-seat wedge in Tesla’s faceted Cybertruck-era style, with a thin light bar across the nose and doors that lift upward. Tesla says it looked to the SR-71 spy plane and the F-35 fighter for inspiration. It’s a long way from the smooth red concept of 2017, and it will divide opinion the way the Cybertruck did.

Inside, Tesla shows a yoke designed for steer-by-wire, a center touchscreen and two small displays ahead of the driver. On stage, the brakes and throttle were described as by-wire too. To save weight the seats are molded into the chassis, so the seat position is fixed, and Tesla lists magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber in the build.

The interesting end is the back. The thrusters and fans sit in the rear diffuser, and the car changes shape as it goes: Tesla demonstrated a high-downforce mode and a low-drag mode, with a rear wing whose pitch adjusts automatically on a track. Tesla says the wing is moved by actuators from its Optimus robot program, and it calls the package the best passive downforce of any road car, “approaching F1 levels.” That’s Tesla marking its own homework, and we’ll come back to that.

The numbers, and who measured them

The headline figure is 0.81 seconds from 0 to 60 mph, run live and read off Tesla’s own timer after an awkward wait. The team said there wasn’t much room on the pad and the run had to be cut short. It’s an astonishing number, and it is Tesla timing Tesla. Musk said the production car should beat it, and joked that the real limit is not detaching the driver’s retinas.

After the show Tesla posted figures for each version: under 1.6 seconds to 60 mph for Performance, under 0.9 for Thrust and under 0.59 for Rocket. Range is “>300 miles,” with no test method given, and top speed is “up to >230mph” for Rocket. Musk said he would like to reach half the speed of sound. That’s an ambition, not a specification.

Two systems do the work. A fan sucks the car onto the road. Tesla’s team said it can pull with up to 2 g, enough to hold the car upside down and to corner harder than tires alone allow. The thrusters run on compressed air, not fuel. For the demonstration car, Tesla said 10 nozzles draw on 600 liters, about 250 kilograms, of air, and the car tops its tanks up by itself; Tesla also says every usable void in the car is packed with pressure vessels. It hasn’t given separate figures for the versions you can reserve. Tesla says the thrusters make 4 to 5 times the force the tires can.

Price and reservations

Tesla did not announce a price for any version. Reservations had already reopened in September at $50,000, and on the night Tesla split them three ways. Reserving a Performance takes $5,000 on the day, which Tesla calls fully refundable, plus $45,000 within 10 days (by wire transfer, the Austin American-Statesman reported), or the reservation is canceled. Thrust takes $5,000 plus $245,000, limited to one per customer. Rocket is invite only.

Read the small print before you pay. Tesla’s reservation agreement calls the purchase price an estimate and says Tesla can’t guarantee when, or whether, the car will be delivered. It also says you can cancel and get your reservation payment back until you configure the car. For context, in 2017 Tesla quoted $200,000 for the base car and $250,000 for the Founders Series. It hasn’t said whether either number still stands.

Production and deliveries

Musk said Tesla will enter production in 2028, “actually, for real.” There’s no delivery date and no volume, and nothing was said on stage about where it will be built, though Tesla’s design and engineering leads said in May that it would be Texas, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The first promise, made in November 2017, was production in 2020, and Electrek counts at least six slips since. Treat 2028 as a target, the same way Tesla’s own reservation agreement does.

Road legality is the other open question. Tesla’s Roadster page says the Rocket version is “not approved for public road use,” and its reservation page says Thrust’s availability depends on each region’s laws. Musk said there will be such a car that someone can own, while admitting he isn’t sure it will be legal everywhere. Reuters reported that it wasn’t immediately clear how the thruster features could be used, or allowed, on public roads.

What Tesla promised in 2017

The second-generation Roadster first rolled out of the back of a Tesla Semi trailer at the truck’s reveal in November 2017. The promises were enormous: four seats, 620 miles of range, 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, more than 250 mph and a $200,000 price, with deliveries in 2020. People paid $50,000 to reserve one, or $250,000 for a Founders Series car.

Set that against this week. Seats are down to two at most, claimed range is more than 300 miles rather than 620, and the claimed top speed of more than 230 mph belongs to the one-seat Rocket. Acceleration went the other way: from 1.9 seconds to claims of under 1.6 for the base car and under 1 with thrusters. It’s a different car with a different brief, less grand tourer and more science fair with a rocket pack.

What Tesla still hasn’t said

Plenty. The price of any version. The weight. The battery size and charging speed. How the range was measured. How many thruster bursts a full tank gives, and how long it takes to refill. Which states and countries will let a Thrust car on the road, and what insurers will make of compressed-air tanks and cold-gas thrusters. And, of course, when the first customer gets a car.

The Performance version, the one most people can reserve, has the active aerodynamics and the suction fan but no thrusters, according to Tesla’s own descriptions. If the thrusters are what sold you, that’s Thrust, with its $250,000 reservation, and the legal questions come with it.

The DrivrShield view

It was a magnificent piece of theater, and theater is the right word. Every stunt the crowd saw was performed by a demonstration car running itself, and timed by its maker. None of the numbers has been checked by anyone else, and the figure a buyer needs most, the price, was never mentioned.

If you’re tempted to reserve, treat it like any large deposit on a car that doesn’t exist yet. Read the reservation agreement in full, note the 10-day deadline on the second payment, keep a record of every payment and message, and decide now what you’ll do if 2028 slips. Money sitting in a reservation earns nothing for you while you wait.

And if it’s the idea of a fast, special car that excites you rather than this one in particular, use the wait to learn how the money side works. The flying is Tesla’s problem. The paperwork is yours.