09/19/2026
What will likely be the most mind boggling car unveiling of all time will happen on October 15th at 8:30 pm EST. (The date was changed to Oct 15 due to poor weather.) The event will be live streamed on X.com, Tesla.com, and Facebook.com. How mind boggling? It is rumored that this new Tesla Roadster may be able to levitate, though not with any humans on board. It is also rumored to be capable of doing zero-to-sixty mph in about 1-second. The quickest street-legal cars can do this in just under 2-seconds.
A prototype of the Roadster was unveiled in 2017, but Tesla has been quiet about it since then. They may have been watching the high-performance car world, waiting for the right moment to capture the world's imagination. Five years ago, the Roadster engineering crew teamed up with some SpaceX engineers to see whether SpaceX's cold gas thruster technology might help the Roadster reach galactic performance levels and possibly allow it to fly. Seriously.
Cold gas thrusters are used on SpaceX's rockets to steer them as they reenter the Earth's atmosphere. The rockets carry vessels of compressed nitrogen for this purpose. The Roadster will use ordinary compressed air instead, stored in two carbon-wrapped vessels behind the front seats. An onboard electric compressor will keep the bottles filled to 10,000psi, hence the need for the carbon wrapping.
Acceleration, braking, and cornering ability could all benefit from cold gas thrusters, but they would likely be limited to use on race tracks, and even there, the noise could make them prohibitive. If you're into performance cars and racing, this will be a live cast not to miss.