Tesla unveils the new Roadster

Updated Oct 16, 2026. Three trims, SpaceX cold-gas thrusters, a fan that sucks the car to the road, and production planned for 2028. Tesla gave out the first numbers on X and its website. Top Gear, MotorTrend and Hagerty then spent the next morning filling in the rest.

Tesla showed the second-generation Roadster on October 15, 2026, in a livestream from a SpaceX site near Waco, Texas. The stream started at 5:55 p.m. Pacific. Elon Musk joined design chief Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy, vice president of engineering, on stage. The car drove up a ramp that curled into an upside-down wall, then another Roadster flew off a ledge, flipped and landed on its wheels. Tesla also said the car ran 0 to 60 mph in about a second on stage. Later that night Tesla's own account posted a faster run, covered below.

What Tesla actually showed

Tesla's Roadster page lists three versions. Performance is the by-reservation trim, with two seats and a road-ready setup. Thrust is the limited-release trim, also with two seats, and cold-gas thrusters at the rear. Rocket is invite only, with a single seat, thrusters around the body, and Tesla's line that it can fly. The page describes those thrusters and flight as Rocket features. Tesla's reserve page calls Thrust an "augment," and the Roadster page says its feature list reflects "our Thrust augment only," sold as an optional upgrade.

The three trims side by side

Sources for the table: cells marked tesla.com or Tesla's spec post come from tesla.com/roadster, tesla.com/en_US/roadster/reserve and Tesla's spec post on X (Oct 15). Cells marked reported, and the prices, come from the outlets named in them. All performance numbers are Tesla's claims about a prototype. None has been measured by an outside party.

A reported fourth trim. Top Gear and MotorTrend both describe a fourth, base Roadster that would sit below the Performance. InsideEVs repeats the four-version count from the Top Gear video. Tesla's pages list three trims, and the specs for a base car are unknown. MotorTrend says it has not been confirmed as a production model.

Tesla's spec post gives the acceleration figures. Performance is under 1.6 seconds to 60 mph. Thrust is under 0.9 seconds in that post. Tesla's Roadster page states the Thrust time as under 1 second. Rocket is under 0.59 seconds. Range is over 300 miles. Top speed is up to more than 230 mph, and the same post labels that speed for the Rocket trim only.

A run Tesla posted: 0.81 seconds

Separately from the trim specs, Tesla's own X account posted a short video at 10:19 p.m. Pacific on October 15, 2026, captioned "0-60 mph in 0.81 seconds." A reply about a minute later gave 0.67 seconds "w/ rollout subtracted," which means the first foot of movement is not counted. The posts do not say where the run took place. Outlets tie the 0.81 figure to the prototype's runs at the reveal (Car and Driver, Autocar Professional, MotorTrend). Both numbers are Tesla's claims for a prototype run. They are not the published spec for any trim, and no one outside Tesla timed them. The official per-trim figures above (under 1.6, under 0.9 and under 0.59 seconds) are unchanged.

Sources: Tesla on X, 0.81 s post (Oct 15, 10:19 p.m. PT) and rollout-subtracted reply (Oct 15, about 10:20 p.m. PT).

More exact numbers from the hands-on walkarounds

The morning after the event, Top Gear, MotorTrend and Hagerty each published a long walkaround recorded before the reveal with Tesla's designer or engineering chief. These figures are what Tesla's executives told the outlets. They are not on Tesla's website, and some of them differ between outlets.

• Acceleration. Top Gear and Hagerty both put the Thrust at about 0.85 seconds to 60 mph. Hagerty gives the Rocket as 0.55 seconds and says that is a "rollout" figure, which means the first foot of movement is excluded. Tesla's own number for the Rocket is under 0.59 seconds. Car and Driver reports that the second run at the reveal was a claimed 0.8 seconds and that Musk said Tesla expects to do better.
• Power and drivetrain. Rear-wheel drive only, with two motors on the rear axle. For the Performance and the versions above it, Top Gear reports a megawatt (about 1,350 hp) and 1,033 lb-ft, Hagerty says over a megawatt (1,341 hp) and 1,033 lb-ft, and InsideEVs gives over 1,341 hp and over 1,032 lb-ft. MotorTrend says Tesla claims 1 megawatt, or "roughly 1,500 horsepower," and about 1,000 lb-ft, so treat the horsepower as approximate.
• Weight. MotorTrend reports that von Holzhausen gave a target weight of 1,700 kg (about 3,750 lb). Top Gear and InsideEVs say the lightest version should come in at about or under that.
• Range and charging. Top Gear and InsideEVs report 310 to 320 miles of range and a peak of 500 kW charging (InsideEVs: from a V4 Supercharger). The reported charge time is not consistent: Top Gear says under 15 minutes from 15 to 80 percent, InsideEVs says Moravy gave 10 minutes from 15 to 85 percent, and MotorTrend says Moravy said 10 to 12 minutes from 10 to 80 percent.
• Battery. Tesla has not published the capacity. MotorTrend says it is "substantially more than 100 kWh" and that Tesla asked it not to give the exact number. MotorTrend reports 4680 cells with a titanium cover.
• Top speed. The spec post's "more than 230 mph" is the only top-speed claim on a Tesla channel. Top Gear says the megawatt cars manage about 230 mph and that Tesla is engineering for about 300. InsideEVs reports that the car is currently limited to about 214 mph and that the target is 330 mph. Car and Driver reports that Musk talked about half the speed of sound, about 383 mph. Treat 330 and 383 mph as goals.
• The thrusters. MotorTrend reports that the Thrust has a 200-liter carbon-wrapped tank in the old luggage space, holding gas at up to 10,000 psi, feeding four rear nozzles. InsideEVs says Moravy described about five seconds of boost per tank, and Top Gear says the tank empties in six. For the Rocket, Autocar Professional reports that Moravy said two pressure vessels hold 600 liters (about 250 kg) and feed ten nozzles. Top Gear and MotorTrend describe the second tank as 400 liters, in place of the passenger seat. Of the ten nozzles, four are at the rear, four point down at the corners and two sit at the nose pointing sideways for yaw (MotorTrend, Top Gear). Car and Driver and Autocar Professional report that the four rear thrusters make more than 80 kilonewtons.
• What the gas is. Tesla's X post says "compressed gas," and its pages say "cold-gas thrusters." Top Gear, Car and Driver, TechCrunch and Autocar Professional say air. MotorTrend and Hagerty say nitrogen. Autocar Professional and TechCrunch report that Moravy said the tank can be recharged by the car, and InsideEVs relays Musk's claim that the tanks refill themselves. InsideEVs also reports that, in the Top Gear video, Moravy describes filling from an external nitrogen supply, which takes two to six hours today, with a goal of under 30 minutes.

Design and interior

The company also described the shape. Tesla pointed to the SR-71 and the F-35, and the Roadster page lists a yoke with electronic steering. Posts from Tesla name Ano White paint, Gold Glazed glass, and an Ultrawhite interior, plus a fixed seat and a structure using magnesium, titanium, and carbon fiber.

Top Gear says the new car has nothing to do with earlier Roadsters, and MotorTrend reports that, per Tesla, it is a ground-up redesign of the 2017 concept. MotorTrend says von Holzhausen also drew on the white Lotus Esprit from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. The doors are butterfly doors, and the glass roof panels come off for a T-top, so Top Gear and MotorTrend both ask whether it is really a roadster. MotorTrend and Hagerty describe pop-down headlights behind small panels that drop away. A rear wing hides in the tail and works as a wing and an air brake. The charge port sits behind that wing (MotorTrend, InsideEVs). Motor1 reports Tesla says the fan system can give the car as much as 2 g of cornering force. MotorTrend reports that US cars will have side mirrors, as the law requires, and that the car gets a limited version of Full Self-Driving.

Inside, Tesla lists a yoke for steer-by-wire, a center touchscreen with two smaller forward displays, an Ultrawhite interior with gray microsuede, a fixed seat position, and manual controls to save weight. MotorTrend adds that the pedals slide to fit the driver, the seat back reclines with a piston, and a red information strip runs along the bottom of the windshield. On the Thrust, the tank takes the luggage space. On the Rocket, a second tank replaces the passenger seat.

Price, reservation, and timing

Tesla has not announced a purchase price. TechCrunch, Reuters and CNBC all reported that the event did not include one. What the reserve page does publish is a deposit: a $5,000 fully refundable reservation due today, plus $45,000 due within 10 days. That is the reservation, not a price for the car. The page also says reservations are not final until payment is received, and that refunds for modifications will not be issued.

Reuters reports that Tesla's reservation page after the event showed a Performance version requiring a $50,000 deposit and a Thrust version requiring a $250,000 deposit. TechCrunch and MotorTrend give the same two figures. MotorTrend, Engadget and Notebookcheck split the Thrust amount into $5,000 now and $245,000 within 10 days. The $250,000 is reported by outlets and is not yet on tesla.com: the text of Tesla's reserve page that we could read shows only the $5,000 and $45,000 lines. InsideEVs describes a $50,000 deposit for all three trims, so the outlets do not fully agree. Rocket is invite only, and Tesla's page lists no price for it.

A production year is not on Tesla's site either. Musk said on stage that production is planned for 2028. TechCrunch, CNBC, Reuters, and Engadget reported the remark. No Tesla page states the date, so the year stays attributed to that stage comment. Top Gear's event report repeats 2028 for deliveries, and InsideEVs reports that, in the Top Gear video, Moravy and von Holzhausen said the car will go into production in Texas in 2028. Tesla has not published a delivery start date or a volume.

What is still unproven

• Nobody outside Tesla has measured any of it. Every acceleration, speed, range and charging figure above is a Tesla claim about a prototype. MotorTrend wrote on its Roadster page that the claims are extraordinary and need "an instrumented test of a production car." MotorTrend also said Tesla calls this "a prototype with production intent," and that it is not yet confirmed that a base model will be built.
• Four trims or three? Top Gear and MotorTrend describe a fourth, base Roadster under the Performance, and InsideEVs repeats it from the Top Gear video. Tesla's pages list only three, and the specs of a base car are unknown.
• The stunts were not a customer car. Top Gear reports the stunt car was unmanned. Car and Driver reports the stunt car was a different prototype from the one on stage. Car and Driver quotes Musk: "I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, but there will be such a car that someone can own."
• Road use. Tesla's page says "Not approved for public road use," and places the note under the Rocket description. Tesla says the flight system is available with the Rocket only, "which is not available in all regions."
• The skeptics. Marques Brownlee posted on X, "This is a prank, right?" and then called the event "a successful engineering exercise and marketing stunt" in his video. In that video he also says his reservation agreement states that Tesla cannot guarantee when, or if, the car will be delivered. We have not seen the agreement. Ars Technica called the claims "vaporware" and noted that the McMurtry Spéirling, an electric fan car already on sale, claims higher cornering force than the Roadster's 2 g. Electrek expects Tesla to sell only a handful of the thruster trims.

How we got here

The first Roadster, built from 2008 to 2012 on a Lotus Elise chassis, was Tesla's first-ever electric vehicle, according to Reuters. Tesla unveiled a second-generation prototype in November 2017, at the end of the Semi event, with claimed figures of 1.9 seconds to 60 mph (with optional SpaceX thrusters), 620 miles of range and a 200 kWh battery, according to InsideEVs. TechCrunch reports that Tesla took $50,000 deposits. TechCrunch also reports that some customers paid $250,000 to reserve one of 1,000 "Founders Series" cars. Musk first talked about SpaceX thrusters on the car in 2018. Musk pushed the timeline back in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024, and the reveal itself slipped from the end of 2025 to April 1, 2026, then to October 1, when bad weather delayed it again.

What it means if you are buying an EV

For someone choosing an EV now, the reveal does not change the cars already on sale. The new Roadster is three claims: a two-seat Performance car, a Thrust car whose 0-60 time is under 1 second on Tesla's site, and a one-seat Rocket that Tesla says can fly, with the top-speed line kept on the Rocket trim. The step Tesla has posted is the reservation above. Until a price and a production date are on Tesla's own pages, those blanks matter more than the acceleration figures.

Watch

Tesla's own short of the ramp demo is first. The player loads from YouTube after you start it.

The longest and most detailed walkarounds are from the two outlets above. MotorTrend's is with Tesla's chief designer. Top Gear's is with the designer and the engineering chief.

Sources

• Tesla - Roadster
• Tesla - reserve
• Tesla - spec post on X
• Tesla - post on X with the 0.81 s run, Oct 15, 10:19 PM PT
• Tesla - rollout-subtracted reply on X (0.67 s), Oct 15
• Tesla - "The Ramp" short (YouTube)
• Tesla - COPV post on X ("compressed gas")
• Tesla - YouTube livestream replay
• Top Gear - walkaround article
• Top Gear - event report
• Top Gear - video
• MotorTrend - first look
• MotorTrend - Roadster model page
• MotorTrend - video
• Hagerty - Lars Moravy explainer
• InsideEVs - full specs
• InsideEVs - thruster refill
• Car and Driver - reveal report
• Electrek
• Ars Technica
• TechCrunch
• CNBC
• Reuters (syndicated on Investing.com)
• Engadget
• InsideEVs - reservation and trims
• InsideEVs - 2017 claims
• Notebookcheck
• Autocar Professional
• Motor1
• Marques Brownlee on X (via Dexerto)
• Marques Brownlee / Auto Focus video