Tesla's new Roadster leaves the ground. Whether owners may fly it is unclear

The car went up a curved ramp, hung upside down at the top, and flipped into the air.

That was the start of Tesla's livestream on Thursday from SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas, where the company finally showed its second-generation Roadster, nine years after first announcing it. Elon Musk, who runs both Tesla and SpaceX, presented it with Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen and vehicle engineering vice-president Lars Moravy.

"Turns out the future does have flying cars," Musk wrote on X the next day. Footage of the demonstration on X drew 1.7 million views, according to the entertainment site Mandatory.

Before the show, Musk compared the car with the gadget-filled cars of James Bond films. He promised "some crazy stuff" and said excitement was "100 percent guaranteed".

What the car did

In the demonstration, the two-seat Roadster:

• drove up a half-pipe ramp, stayed upside down at the top, then launched off and landed a few seconds later;
• built up speed on flat ground and jumped over a row of parked Tesla vehicles;
• lifted off from a standing start.

Reports from InsideEVs and TechCrunch say the parked vehicles included the Tesla Semi truck, the Cybertruck, the Cybercab, the Model Y and the Model 3.

The car was not driven by a person. The stunts ran as a pre-programmed sequence with nobody at the wheel, Dezeen reported.

How it works

The lift comes from thrusters, not wings or rotors. Tesla describes them as cold-gas thrusters, a design taken from SpaceX rockets. They push out compressed air from tanks in the car, through nozzles in the bottom and the back. The tanks can be refilled with air, with no fuel burned, according to Tesla.

The same thrusters can fire backwards to add speed. Tesla says the car reaches 60 miles per hour in 0.81 seconds and calls it the quickest production car to that speed.

To hang upside down on the ramp, the car used a fan that sucks it onto the surface.

Inside, the seats are moulded into the frame. Steering is "by wire": the wheel sends electronic signals instead of turning the wheels through a mechanical link. Von Holzhausen said the design had an "aerospace aesthetic".

The one car you drive yourself

Tesla is also building driverless cars, such as its Cybercab robotaxi. Musk said the Roadster would be the "only manual" car in the line-up, meant for people who want to drive.

At Thursday's show, though, the stunts were run by a computer, not a driver.

Not every Roadster will lift off

Tesla's own Roadster page says the thruster features are an optional upgrade, available only on the top "Rocket" version, and not in all regions. InsideEVs reported that the Rocket version will be sold by invitation only. The standard car has no thrusters.

The questions it did not answer

Musk did not say whether the car will be allowed to leave the ground on public roads. Before the demonstration he said "success is not guaranteed".

In the United States, a vehicle that flies usually falls under the Federal Aviation Administration's rules for aircraft, not the rules for cars. Tesla has not said how it will handle that.

Tesla also gave no new price. When the Roadster was first shown in 2017, the base car was listed at $200,000 and a limited Founders Series at $250,000.

A long wait

Tesla says production will start in 2028. When it unveiled this Roadster in November 2017, it planned deliveries for 2020, and it has been taking reservations since then.

The demonstration showed that the car can leave the ground for a few seconds. It did not show how far it can fly, how often the tanks need refilling, or what owners will be allowed to do with it.