Two Roadsters

The rocket part

How a car hops

Every hop is Newton's third law. The car carries a tank of compressed air: about 600 litres, Tesla engineering VP Lars Moravy told TechCrunch at the reveal (a figure not on Tesla's page). Open a valve and the air rushes out through a nozzle; pushing the gas one way pushes the car the other. Nothing burns, so this is called a cold-gas thruster.

Cold gas is the gentlest kind of thruster. With no combustion to heat it, the gas leaves the nozzle at a few hundred metres per second, far slower than a rocket engine's exhaust, so the supply is good for short bursts rather than sustained flight. That suits hops and flips, and the air can be pumped back in afterwards.

Holding air at high pressure takes strong, light tanks. Tesla's page says the car carries SpaceX components, and at the reveal Tesla said it packs the car's spare spaces with carbon-fibre-overwrapped pressure vessels, or COPVs: a thin liner wrapped in carbon fibre. They are the tank type SpaceX flies on its rockets.

Two more systems keep it steady. Fans and a ground seal pull air out from under the car, so the higher air pressure around it presses it against the surface. Tesla says that is enough to hold the car upside down, even when it is standing still, and powered fans and active wings give it downforce at zero speed. At the reveal it clung to an upside-down ramp, let go, rolled over in mid-air and landed on its wheels. On the thrusters, all-electric actuators make tiny corrections within a fraction of a second to keep it steady in the air.

Same idea, on Falcon 9

Falcon 9 uses cold-gas thrusters too, with nitrogen. Small nitrogen thrusters turn and steady both stages: the first stage uses them, with its grid fins, to flip around and line up for landing, and the second stage uses them to point itself while it coasts. Not every SpaceX thruster is cold gas, though. Dragon's Draco thrusters burn two propellants that ignite on contact.

Suction, downforce and actuators from Tesla's Roadster page, checked October 16, 2026; air supply and COPVs as reported from the reveal on October 15, 2026. Sources: Tesla, Roadster page, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, Wikipedia on Falcon 9.

McGregor, Texas

Where engines get tested

McGregor, near Waco, is where SpaceX proves its engines. It has used the site since 2003, and Merlin and Raptor engines are fired on its test stands there before they fly.

That made it a fitting stage. Tesla's page says the Roadster carries SpaceX components, its thrusters work on the same principle as a rocket's, and Elon Musk called the demo a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers. A test site also has what a hopping car needs: open ground and room to keep people at a safe distance.

Site history as of October 2026. Sources: Wikipedia on the McGregor site, Tesla, Roadster page, Teslarati.

2017 to 2028

The long road

It is a thrill to see a car leave the ground on air alone. It is fair to say it took a while: the Roadster was promised for 2020, and the target moved almost every year after that. Production is now aimed at 2028, as reported from the reveal.

Sources: Tech Insider, Drive Tesla Canada, TechCrunch.