By ChaiScoop News Hub. Updated October 15, 2026.
The reason Tesla’s new Roadster can drive up a ramp and keep going upside down is a fan system that sucks the car into the surface. On Thursday night, at an event outside Waco, Texas, Tesla showed a car that does things no road car has done in public, and the crowd got to see it live.
What the Roadster did on stage
- Drove up a ramp and kept going upside down. The car climbed until it was inverted and stayed that way for several seconds. Elon Musk said the active-aero fans pull the car into the surface, which is what makes the climb and the inversion possible.
- Flipped and landed on its wheels. Attitude-control thrusters in the rear diffuser turned the car back over and slowed its descent. Engadget’s writers also saw a mid-air twist before a smooth landing.
- Cleared a row of Teslas. Using thrusters, the car lifted over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Semi, Model Y and Model 3, according to TechCrunch.
- 0 to 60 mph in 0.81 seconds. That is the time Tesla claimed for a live run. One outlet reported the figure as “one second”, so treat 0.81 as Tesla’s claim and not an independent timing.
- Top speed. A presenter reportedly said at least 235 mph, and Musk said it can go much faster. No official number was given.
- No fuel needed. The thrusters run on compressed air that the car can refill on the go. Tesla also showed an adjustable rear wing and a two-seat cabin with scissor doors and steer-by-wire.
So how many g’s?
We can do some arithmetic with the numbers that were stated. Going from 0 to 60 mph in 0.81 seconds is an average forward acceleration of about 3.4 g, more than three times what you feel in a typical sports car launch. That is our own calculation from Tesla’s claim, not an official figure. And to stay pressed to a ramp upside down, the fans have to pull the car toward the surface with a force at least equal to its own weight, which is at least 1 g of suction. Official figures for cornering, braking and thrust would be welcome when Tesla releases full specs.
What we still do not know
Tesla gave no 2026 price, range or battery size at the event. It said production would begin in 2028. The first Roadster prototype was shown in November 2017 with production promised for 2020, so the wait has been long, and Musk said himself that the car is not built with safety as its main goal. It is a halo car and a manually driven one, and he suggested it may be the only manually driven Tesla in the future. The demo car itself was reportedly a prototype that is not street-legal.
Why you should never bet against Elon
Every decade seems to have one person who keeps turning “impossible” into a schedule item, and for the last ten years that person has been Elon Musk. SpaceX started landing orbital rocket boosters on drone ships in 2016 and was reflying them by 2017. The Falcon Heavy flew in 2018 and landed two of its boosters side by side. In 2020 Crew Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts to the space station, and Starlink has since connected millions of people to broadband from orbit. On the ground, Tesla fought through the Model 3 production ramp in 2017 and 2018 and went on to reach a $1 trillion market value in 2021. In 2024 Neuralink implanted its first human patient, and Starship’s giant Super Heavy booster was caught out of the air by the launch tower’s arms. Not every promise has arrived on time, and the Roadster is the proof. But the pattern is hard to ignore: the things he says cannot be done keep getting done, just later than he says.
