Tesla Says Its New Roadster Can Fly, but Experts Aren’t So Sure

One of the engineers behind it compares it to a Transformer, with four vehicles packed into one body. Here’s what the car can actually do, and why some experts remain skeptical.

Elon Musk has been working on a car that can fly, and on October 15, the Tesla CEO showed off his company’s long-awaited Roadster, which Musk promises can actually fly.

The two-seat sports car’s capabilities were demonstrated at a SpaceX facility in Waco, Texas, where it climbed a steep ramp, hung upside down, then spun off, flipping through the air and using air jets to land.

The car also jumped over a row of parked Teslas and went from 0 to 60 mph in under a second. Musk assured the crowd watching that there was no one driving the car, “to make sure we don’t kill anyone.”

How the Roadster Works

A version of the Roadster was revealed in 2017 but never actually made it to production. In an article he wrote for The Times with Katie Prescott, James Crook, an engineer who led the car’s aerodynamic development before leaving Tesla, gave insight into the making of the car.

Crook described the ambitious project, dubbed Project Mede, short for “Most Epic Demo Ever," as “like creating a Transformer,” involving “four vehicles in one body.”

According to the engineer, the car has two tanks filled with highly pressurized air. When that air is released through 10 small openings around the car, it creates a powerful push, something like a rocket, which helps the Roadster go from 0 to 60 mph in just 0.81 seconds. Crook says this makes it the fastest-accelerating car ever built.

The car also has a fan underneath that sucks air out from below. This pulls the car so tightly to the road that it can stay on even when it’s upside down.

As the head of both Tesla and SpaceX, Musk described the technology as the result of “a collaboration with the world’s best car company and the world’s best rocket company.”

Crook also explained the safety risks of the car, which is why it was driven remotely during the demonstration. The tanks that carry extremely high pressure are still in their experimental stage, so they could be dangerous if something goes wrong.

Flying, or Hopping?

While the Roadster showed it could get airborne, it’s unclear if it can truly fly, as the event didn’t show if it was capable of long-range travel.

“We’re not talking about sustained flight,” Roger Connor, curator for vertical flight at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, told CNN before the event. “We are literally talking about hopping.”

Connor also noted that cars and aircraft have very different needs. “Inevitably, something that is a hybrid between the two is going to be a poor performing aircraft and a poor performing vehicle, and also quite expensive,” he said.

Jim Dukhovny, CEO of flying car start-up Alef, acknowledged that getting a car off the ground is “100% feasible,” but he said the hardest part is switching from rising straight up to moving forward without losing lift.

When Can You Buy One?

According to Musk, production of the Roadster will begin in 2028, though Musk has a history of missing his own timelines. He is aware that people have doubts, so he asked the people at the demonstration to tell others that they’d seen what the Roadster could do. He also said, “We need an audience to prove that it’s not AI.”