Tesla shows a Roadster it calls a flying car, but experts say it only hops

Tesla has unveiled a new version of its long-delayed Roadster sports car that Elon Musk describes as able to fly. At an event at a SpaceX test site in Texas on 15 October, the two-seat car used jets of compressed air to climb a ramp, hang upside down, flip in mid-air and land on its wheels.

What Tesla actually demonstrated was a short, staged leap, not sustained flight. That gap between the claim and the evidence is the story.

What happened on stage

The demonstration, streamed on Tesla's account on X, had no one inside the car. Musk told the crowd this was to avoid killing anyone, and warned that success was not guaranteed, though he expected it to work.

The car stuck to a curved ramp that turned it upside down, which Musk said was done with suction underneath the body, then launched off the end and rolled over to land. Later it used the same jets to jump over a row of parked Tesla models, and fired thrusters at the rear to accelerate.

Musk said the Roadster carries 10 nozzles fed by tanks of very high-pressure air, used both to leave the ground and to accelerate on the road. He said it can reach 60mph in under a second, and presented it as the product of Tesla working with SpaceX. "Flying cars are real," he told the audience.

The claim versus the evidence

Nothing shown on the night amounted to flight in the usual sense. There was no long-range or sustained flying, and no one has independently tested the car.

Specialists were cautious. Roger Connor, curator for vertical flight at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, told CNN before the event that a road car and an aircraft pull in opposite directions: aircraft need to be light, while cars need bumpers and crumple zones. A hybrid, he said, tends to be poor at both and expensive. Of the Roadster, he said, "We are literally talking about hopping."

US regulators have not given it a clear category either. The Federal Aviation Administration told CBS News that the vehicle does not meet its definition of an aircraft, and a senior US Transportation Department official expressed doubt that it would really take off. It is not yet clear which agency would oversee it.

Tesla's own website says the flying version is not approved for use on public roads.

Dates, prices and versions

Musk said the Roadster will go into production in 2028. Tesla has a long record of missing his deadlines, and this car was first promised almost a decade ago. No prices were given.

Buyers can reserve a non-flying Roadster online with a $5,000 deposit. A limited Thrust edition is listed but cannot yet be reserved, and a Rocket model with what Tesla calls a full flight system will be sold by invitation only.

Dan Ives, an analyst at Yorkville Ives, wrote that the car will not move Tesla's volumes or revenue and should not be treated as a growth driver. Its value, in his view, is to polish the brand and show how closely Tesla and SpaceX now share hardware.

Where Europe's flying-vehicle makers stand

Europe has spent years and a great deal of venture money on electric vertical take-off aircraft, and the sector has had a hard time. Several well-funded European eVTOL companies have struggled to finance the long, costly path to certification, which is the real barrier between a demonstration and a product.

Tesla's Roadster avoids that question for now by not being an aircraft at all, at least in the eyes of the US aviation regulator. Whether the 2028 car can do more than hop, and who will be allowed to drive it where, are the questions Tesla has yet to answer.