The flying Tesla Roadster is an overbaked idea from my least favorite person

There’s a phrase I often used to use when referring to Elon Musk: Don’t bet against Elon.

This stemmed from long before he became a supervillain, and was instead no more than an oddball tech-sector genius primed to become a real-life Tony Stark. It was at the tail-end of this honeymoon, in 2017, that Musk unveiled the Tesla Roadster 2020, a luxury model EV that promised insane specs and performance (0-to-60mp in 1.9 seconds) and maybe even something we’d only dreamed of: rockets that might let it fly.

Now, for chronology sticklers, Musk did not promise rockets during Tesla's November 2017 event; it was was primarily devoted to the Tesla Semi. That tease came months later on his favorite platform, Twitter, where Musk wrote:

“SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly …”

I posted my skepticism with a Tom Hanks GIF of him saying “Really?”

This morning, my X feed has been filled with people replying to that old post with “Yes, really” and wild videos of the fully redesigned Tesla Roadster flying with the aid of what appears to be 10 thrusters (SpaceX rocket engines).

In the videos shared from Musk’s launch event, the Roadster inexplicably rides up a vertical incline and then flies off it, flips over, and lands on its wheels.

Yes, a car can fly. We may not have affordable healthcare or housing, world peace, safe social media, or know if AI will save us or kill us, but we have a car that can fly.

I’m not discounting the impressive engineering or sheer audacity of the flying Tesla Roadster, but it’s been a long time since Musk crashed his own launch event with a “one-more-thing” Roadster update, and I feel different about, well, just about everything.

Back then, it had been five years since I had interviewed Musk and gotten him to playfully whistle Fly Me to the Moon. The busy entrepreneur’s personality had been shifting slowly to a more petulant and unpredictable place. I’d recently sat through a Tesla Model 3 launch where he abruptly ended a press conference without taking any real questions from journalists, and at the Semi event, he showed up incredibly late, though he did deliver the goods in the end.

I see things differently now

Now, when I look at this more geometric and rocket-filled Tesla Roadster (it looks nothing like the one I saw in 2017), it’s through the prism of everything else Musk has done in the last five or so years.

He purchased Twitter, smothered the brand, and rebooted it as the darker and often angrier X. To be fair, some now report that X has started to rekindle some of its older, kinder, and more inclusive community (I’ve experienced a bit of this myself), but it’s still a far cry from the place Musk so enjoyed when he touted all his latest Tesla and SpaceX advancements back in 2017.

Musk became not just the face of government cost-cutting; he became President Donald Trump’s weapon of choice, with the Musk-led Doge taking an axe to life-saving programs around the world.

It’s hard to reconcile the excitement of a flying car with the man who now guides it.

Or is it?

The fact is that no one needs this car, and anyone who understands even the tiniest bit of physics (and rocket technology) knows that the power and effort to lift and fly a one-ton car is extraordinary.

Its thrusters have nothing to do with the EV motors or batteries — they’re cold-gas thrusters, which use massively compressed gas stored in a 200-liter tank and a 400-liter tank. Musk was clear that this car is not expected to be road legal, which is good, because I’m frankly terrified of the idea of something crashing into it and rupturing those tanks.

But even if he delivers multiple of these cars for the invite-only crowd it’s aimed at, and it doesn’t turn out to be a one-off (which, let’s face it, is likely), why bother? If it’s so impractical that it can never make it to American roads, or any others, what was the point outside of a fun few seconds to watch?

Musk has his devotees, and I can see them tripping over themselves to applaud the unveiling (finally, after almost a decade) of this promised Tesla Roadster update, but for many others Musk is just another inscrutable tech bro who does what he does for his own reasons with very little, if any, of them having to do with the betterment of humankind.

So, thanks for the tech showcase, Elon. You have anything for what’s really ailing the world?