Elon Musk spent years promising a Roadster that could fly. On Thursday night he showed one. At an event outside Waco, Texas, the car used fans and cold gas thrusters to climb a curved ramp until it was upside down, then launched off, flipped and landed on the pavement. “Flying cars are real,” Musk said.
The show went on for under half an hour and felt more like a stunt reel than a car launch. The Roadster also hovered over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Semi, Model Y and Model 3, and Tesla claimed a 0 to 60 mph time of about a second. Musk called the car the culmination of work by Tesla and SpaceX engineers.
Look closely, though, and the “flying car” label needs some padding. The flying sequences used a remote-controlled prototype with no one inside, on private SpaceX property, rather than a street-legal car cleared to fly over public roads. Tesla also left price, specifications and public-road use largely unanswered. Musk did say production should begin in 2028, almost nine years after the car was first promised.
Rivals noticed. Alef Aeronautics released a video of its own electric aircraft flying over the Roadster and declared Tesla the second flying-car maker in history, after itself.
So Tesla finally has footage to point to after a decade of waiting. Whether it has a product people can buy and legally fly is a different question, and Thursday’s show didn’t answer it.