Tesla reveals SpaceX-powered Roadster that flies and falls with style
The demo is pure theater, and I don't mean that as an insult. Watching a Roadster hop over a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Semi, a Model Y, and a Model 3 is a clever way to make a point about where Tesla sees this car in its own lineup. It literally clears everything else they sell.
But the engineering underneath the stunt is the part worth paying attention to. Cold-gas thrusters, the kind SpaceX uses for attitude control, work by venting high-pressure gas. On a car, that means bottles, valves, and a control system that has to fire precisely while the vehicle is in motion. Getting that to work reliably on a road car, with all the safety and certification baggage that comes with it, is a much harder problem than making it work once for a demo.
I'd want to know what happens next. Tesla has been promising this Roadster since 2017, and the specs keep shifting. The thrusters make for a great launch event, but the hard questions are about range, price, and whether the production version will actually carry the hardware. Until Tesla shows a car doing this outside a controlled demo, I'll treat the leap as an aspiration with a very cool video attached.