{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-10-16T12:39:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-15-tesla-roadster-unveil-thrusters-kickflip/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-15-tesla-roadster-unveil-thrusters-kickflip/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2026-10-15-tesla-roadster-unveil-thrusters-kickflip","date":"2026-10-15","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Tesla unveils the next-gen Roadster with SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters","deck":"Driverless stunt cars leave an over-vertical ramp and 'kickflip' over parked Teslas","takeaway":"The car has a fan \"suction\" system and, on its top trims, SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters.","category":"product","category_label":"Products","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Tesla: Roadster | The Last Best Driver's Car (YouTube, spec description)","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKIR-c1SsU","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"youtube.com"},{"n":2,"title":"Tesla Roadster page","url":"https://www.tesla.com/roadster","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"tesla.com"},{"n":3,"title":"Tesla on X: 'Do a kickflip!'","url":"https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110926164306931860","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"x.com"},{"n":4,"title":"Reuters (via Spokesman-Review): Tesla unveils next generation Roadster sports EV with SpaceX thrusters","url":"https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/oct/15/tesla-unveils-next-generation-roadster-sports-ev-w/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"spokesman.com"},{"n":5,"title":"TechCrunch: Tesla reveals SpaceX-powered Roadster that flies and falls with style","url":"https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/tesla-reveals-spacex-powered-roadster-that-flies-and-falls-with-style/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"techcrunch.com"},{"n":6,"title":"Electrek: Tesla unveils Cyberfied new Roadster that can kickflip","url":"https://electrek.co/2026/10/15/tesla-unveils-cyberfied-new-roadster-kickflip/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"electrek.co"},{"n":7,"title":"Electrek: Are Tesla's claims for its new 'flying' Roadster real, or is it just full of cold gas?","url":"https://electrek.co/2026/10/15/an-updated-technical-look-at-teslas-kick-flipping-0-60-in-1s-next-gen-roadster/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"electrek.co"},{"n":8,"title":"New Atlas: Do the Tesla Roadster's aerial stunts count as flying?","url":"https://newatlas.com/automotive/tesla-roadster-flying-ev-speed-thrusters-spacex/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"newatlas.com"},{"n":9,"title":"CNBC: Tesla reveals next-generation Roadster after almost a decade of delays","url":"https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/15/tesla-roadster-reveal-what-to-know-about-the-delayed-ev.html","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"cnbc.com"},{"n":10,"title":"Tarmac Life: I watched the Tesla Roadster demo so you don't have to","url":"https://www.tarmaclife.co.nz/news/i-watched-the-tesla-roadster-demo-so-you-dont-have-to/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"tarmaclife.co.nz"},{"n":11,"title":"AutoNotion: The Tesla Roadster reveal wasn't a live demo (opinion)","url":"https://www.autonocion.com/us/tesla-roadster-live-demo-recap/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"autonocion.com"},{"n":12,"title":"Electrek (Aug 14): Tesla 'flying' Roadster demo could come this month, with no one inside (citing The Information)","url":"https://electrek.co/2026/08/14/tesla-flying-roadster-demo-this-month-no-driver/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"electrek.co"},{"n":13,"title":"Electrek (Oct 13): Tesla sets Roadster event for Thursday after nearly 9 years of delays","url":"https://electrek.co/2026/10/13/tesla-roadster-event-thursday-nine-years-delays/","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"electrek.co"},{"n":14,"title":"Tesla: Roadster Event (livestream replay, YouTube)","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt5p-_tE8d0","type":"video","group":"reactions","domain":"youtube.com"},{"n":15,"title":"Tesla: The Kickflip | Roadster (YouTube)","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5vsHHPVhJg","type":"video","group":"reactions","domain":"youtube.com"},{"n":16,"title":"Collin Rugg on X: clip of the ramp stunt (7.1M views)","url":"https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2110901393238474863","type":"discussion","group":"reactions","domain":"x.com"},{"n":17,"title":"unusual_whales on X: 7-second kickflip clip","url":"https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/2110910422358561071","type":"discussion","group":"reactions","domain":"x.com"}],"official":3,"filed":"2026-10-16","updated":"2026-10-16","orgs":["Tesla","SpaceX"],"title":"Tesla unveils the next-gen Roadster with SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters; driverless stunt cars leave an over-vertical ramp and 'kickflip' over parked Teslas","summary":"On the evening of Oct 15, 2026 (US Central time; Oct 16 UTC) Tesla livestreamed the unveiling of its long-delayed second-generation Roadster from an event outside Waco, Texas (Reuters: Musk spoke at SpaceX's McGregor test site). The car has a fan \"suction\" system and, on its top trims, SpaceX-derived cold-gas thrusters. In two stunts with nobody in the car, one car drove up a ramp that curves past vertical, left it upside down, righted itself on gas jets and landed in a cloud of gas; another lifted off flat ground on thrusters and did a full roll (\"kickflip\") over a parked Semi, Cybertruck, Cybercab, Model Y and Model 3. Tesla gave three trims (Performance, Thrust, Rocket), 0–60 mph claims under 1.6 / 0.9 / 0.59 s, 300+ miles of range, production in 2028, and no prices. Clips of the stunts got millions of views. Whether the flights had help that can't be seen (cables, a lighter stunt body) has not been established; press reports call them real, staged stunts.","key_facts":["Livestream on Oct 15, 2026, scheduled for 7:55 pm Central (00:55 UTC Oct 16) after an Oct 1 date was cancelled for weather; replay 'Roadster Event' on Tesla's YouTube channel (23:21, 1.7M views in ~6 h) (Electrek, Tesla)","Venue: an event outside Waco, Texas (TechCrunch); Reuters says Musk spoke at SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas","Trims (Tesla's X thread, via Electrek): Performance (2 seats, active aero, 'multi-mode suction system', 0–60 under 1.6 s), Thrust (2 seats, rear cold-gas thrusters, 'race ready', under 0.9 s, limited release), Rocket (1 seat, perimeter thrusters for vertical and rotational movement, 'air ready', under 0.59 s, over 230 mph, invite only)","Tesla's Roadster page says the Rocket is not approved for public road use (Electrek, New Atlas)","Range over 300 miles; 2017 promise was 620 miles, 1.9 s 0–60, 250+ mph and a 2+2 layout (Electrek)","Lars Moravy: 10 thrusters fed by 600 litres of rechargeable compressed air; every usable void filled with carbon-fibre-overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) (TechCrunch)","Tesla claims the thrusters give four to five times the force the tyres can transmit; rear thrusters over 80 kN; fan system holds the car upside down even when stationary; 2 g cornering (Electrek, New Atlas)","Tesla's YouTube description: 'cold-gas thrusters w/ all-electric actuators make micro adjustments within a fraction of a second to stabilize the vehicle in flight'","Live 0–60 run: 0.81 s after timer problems; recorded run 1.0 s (Electrek)","Reservations: $5,000 refundable deposit plus $45,000 within 10 days for Performance ($50k total); Thrust $250k deposit; Rocket invite only; no prices announced (Electrek, Reuters, New Atlas)","Production: 2028 (Musk: '2028, actually'); first shown Nov 2017 with 2020 deliveries promised (Reuters, Electrek)","Stunt 1 (ramp demo, stream 6:03–10:55): car climbs an over-vertical curved ramp, leaves it inverted, rights itself on gas jets and lands in a gas cloud; Tesla's on-screen HUD read ~66.7 ft at the top","Stunt 2 (kickflip, stream 10:56–12:43): Tesla calls it 'the 2nd live demo during the Roadster event'; its 44-s edit 'The Kickflip' / 'Do a kickflip!' got 5.0M views on X in about a day","Nobody was in the stunt cars (Electrek); pre-event, The Information reported the demo car would be 'operated remotely with nobody in it'; Tarmac Life reports Tesla said it ran the car autonomously 'to make sure we don't kill anyone' and that a Starman dummy sat in the seat","Musk on stream: 'a friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said that the future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters. Well, not anymore.'","Collin Rugg's clip of the stream: 7.17M views; Tesla's kickflip post: 5.01M; unusual_whales' 7-s clip: 1.06M (fxtwitter, Oct 16)"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["tesla","roadster","spacex","cold-gas-thrusters","fan-car","stunt","viral-video","elon-musk","livestream"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nTesla first showed a second-generation Roadster prototype in November 2017 and promised deliveries in 2020. After at least six production\nslips and seven unveil dates (Electrek's count), and an Oct 1 event in Texas cancelled for weather, Tesla livestreamed the reveal on the\nevening of Oct 15, 2026 (scheduled 7:55 pm Central). Musk had promised the \"most exciting, whether it works or not, demo ever of any\nproduct\" (TechCrunch). Electrek and Reuters tie the presentation to SpaceX: the thrusters, pressure vessels and fans are presented as SpaceX\ntechnology.\n\n**The car.** Tesla's design language \"from S3XY to Cybertruck, Cybercab & Optimus\", inspired by the SR-71 and F-35: hidden headlights,\na full-length taillight, \"Ano White\" paint with rocket-coating properties, gold-tinted glass like a spacesuit visor, a steer-by-wire yoke,\na fixed seat and manual controls to save weight, and magnesium, titanium and carbon fibre (Tesla, Electrek). A \"multi-mode suction\nsystem\" of fans pulls air from under the car hard enough to hold it upside down; in Track Mode active wings, driven by actuators from the\nOptimus programme, add downforce (Electrek). Three trims: **Performance** (\"road ready\"), **Thrust** (rear cold-gas thrusters, \"race\nready\") and **Rocket** (single seat, 10 cold-gas thrusters for vertical and rotational movement, \"air ready\", invite only, not approved\nfor public roads). Musk said production starts in 2028 and called the car, in TechCrunch's paraphrase, \"the best of the last of the\nhuman-driven cars\". Musk said he might try to jump the Snake River Canyon (TechCrunch).\n\n**The stunts.**\n1. *Ramp demo* (replay 6:03–10:55). The car drives up a curved ramp that bends past vertical, sits upside down at the top on its suction\n   system, leaves the ramp inverted, rights itself as gas jets fire, and lands in a large cloud of gas before driving away. Tesla's\n   on-screen HUD showed G-force and altitude (about 66–67 ft at the top). After the landing Musk says \"Well, it worked,\" and later the\n   Peter Thiel line about flying cars and \"140 characters\" (\"Well, not anymore\").\n2. *Kickflip* (replay 10:56–12:43). On flat ground beside a parked line-up (Semi, Cybertruck, Cybercab, Model Y, Model 3), a car lifts\n   off on downward jets, makes a full roll over the Semi and lands in gas. Tesla's YouTube description calls it \"the 2nd live demo during\n   the Roadster event\"; Tesla's 44-second edit was posted on X as \"Do a kickflip!\".\n\nElectrek reports that nobody was in the stunt cars, that different cars were used for the demos, and that spectators were kept far away.\nIn August, The Information (via Electrek) reported that the demo car would be \"operated remotely with nobody in it\" and that an earlier,\nmore ambitious plan (magnetized roller-coaster ramp, upside-down driving, hover) had been scaled back: \"We started off thinking we were\nalmost making an aircraft and ended up with something closer to hovering.\" After the event, Tarmac Life reported that Tesla said the car\nwas run autonomously \"to make sure we don't kill anyone\" and that a Starman dummy sat in the seat. Whether the cars were remotely piloted,\nran pre-programmed/automated control, or both is not clear from the sources. Tesla says the thrusters' all-electric actuators make\n\"micro adjustments within a fraction of a second to stabilize the vehicle in flight\"; no source we found says AI models (Grok or others)\ncontrolled the flight.\n\n**Was it real?** No outlet we read reports evidence of cables, cranes or CGI, and none has independently verified that the flights were\nunassisted. Reuters and TechCrunch describe the stunts as shown, without questioning them. Electrek (Jameson Dow) says it treats the demo\n\"as if it was real, not faked\", calls fan cars and thruster stunts plausible, doubts the 4,700 kg downforce figure shown on Tesla's\ndisplay (\"some liberties were taken\"), and speculates that the demo car may not have had a normal battery pack. New Atlas says the\n\"flying\" means \"big jumps, barrel rolls, and quick moments of hovering\", not sustained flight, and that it \"can't be sure if there was a\nhuman driver\". AutoNotion (opinion) argues the stunts were shown as video segments and were \"clearly scripted\", not real-time; Tesla's own\ndescription calls the kickflip a live demo, and an attendee's YouTube video is titled \"I Went To The Tesla Roadster Unveil! Insane Stunts…\" (Out of Spec Reviews,\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFL2ObpM08; not reviewed in detail).\nMarques Brownlee asked \"This is a prank, right?\" (quoted by TechCrunch). AutoNotion also reports Musk saying \"We need an audience to prove\nit's not AI\"; we have not found that line in another source.\n\nTwo AI video models and Claude also examined the clips (see the video files): they found that the car stays in the air longer than free\nfall would allow, consistent with the claimed thrust, but footage at night cannot rule out hidden support. These are model observations,\nnot facts.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nTesla is increasingly valued as an AI and robotics company (Reuters notes it stopped selling Model S and X this year to free production\nfor Optimus robots and launched the Cybercab), and Musk presented the Roadster as a last human-driven car. The reveal is here mainly\nbecause its stunt clips spread far beyond car media, look unreal, and are the kind of footage that later models will be asked about:\nthe car is a real announced product, the stunts were staged with driverless cars, and the flying Rocket trim is invite-only and not\nroad-legal.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-03-11-macrohard-digital-optimus-tesla-xai","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-03-11-macrohard-digital-optimus-tesla-xai/","date":"2026-03-11","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Musk unveils 'Macrohard' / Digital Optimus, a joint Tesla–xAI computer-use agent with Grok as planner and a real-time Tesla model acting on screen video","deck":null,"takeaway":"It is Musk's answer to the computer-use agents of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, built on a different design: a small real-time vision model on cheap in-car hardware with a large model as planner.","category":"agents","category_label":"Agents","importance":3,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":5,"official":2,"filed":"2026-10-12","updated":"2026-10-12","orgs":["Tesla","xAI","SpaceXAI"]}],"people":[{"id":"elon-musk","name":"Elon Musk","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/elon-musk/"},{"id":"peter-thiel","name":"Peter Thiel","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/peter-thiel/"}],"posts":[{"id":"2026-10-16-collinrugg-tesla-roadster-ramp-flip","title":"Collin Rugg: clip of Tesla's live Roadster ramp stunt with Musk's Peter Thiel 'flying cars' line","url":"https://postcutoff.com/p/2026-10-16-collinrugg-tesla-roadster-ramp-flip/"},{"id":"2026-10-16-tesla-do-a-kickflip","title":"Tesla: 'Do a kickflip!' — edited video of the Roadster's thruster roll over parked Teslas","url":"https://postcutoff.com/p/2026-10-16-tesla-do-a-kickflip/"},{"id":"2026-10-16-unusual-whales-tesla-roadster-flew-over","title":"unusual_whales: 'The new Tesla Roadster flew over other Tesla vehicles' (7-second clip)","url":"https://postcutoff.com/p/2026-10-16-unusual-whales-tesla-roadster-flew-over/"}],"videos":[{"id":"tesla-roadster-event-livestream-2026-10-15","title":"Roadster Event","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/tesla-roadster-event-livestream-2026-10-15/"},{"id":"tesla-roadster-the-kickflip","title":"The Kickflip | Roadster","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/tesla-roadster-the-kickflip/"},{"id":"tesla-roadster-last-best-drivers-car","title":"Roadster | The Last Best Driver's Car","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/tesla-roadster-last-best-drivers-car/"},{"id":"cnet-tesla-flying-roadster-revealed-10-minutes","title":"Tesla's Flying Roadster Revealed: Everything That Happened in 10 Minutes","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/cnet-tesla-flying-roadster-revealed-10-minutes/"},{"id":"videofromspace-tesla-flying-roadster-spacex-thrusters","title":"Tesla Unveils 'Flying' Roadster with SpaceX Thrusters","url":"https://postcutoff.com/v/videofromspace-tesla-flying-roadster-spacex-thrusters/"}],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-10-16","type":"filed","text":"Created (owner request; video analysis by Gemini 3.8 Flash, Gemini 4 Argon and Claude frame check)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-10-16","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-10-16","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-16"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":168,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":107,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"gemini-4-argon","name":"Gemini 4 Argon","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":198,"in_training_data":false},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":137,"in_training_data":false}],"short_url":null}