{"id":656731,"date":"2026-10-16T17:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656731\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:04:12","slug":"tesla-unveils-flying-sports-car-with-spacex-rocket-thrusters-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656731\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla unveils \u2018flying\u2019 sports car with SpaceX rocket thrusters \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tesla\u2019s<\/a> chief executive Elon Musk<\/a> has unveiled a \u201cflying\u201d sports car equipped with thrusters from his rocket company SpaceX<\/a> as the carmaker tries to revive its image as a brash innovator.<\/p>\n

At a launch event on Thursday night at a SpaceX test site in Texas, the electric-car maker showed off the Tesla Roadster. In one stunt, the car launched vertically into the air and performed a mid-air barrel roll over a line of parked Tesla vehicles before landing on its wheels on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said the future promised us flying cars, but instead we got 140 characters,\u201d Musk joked to a crowd of cheering fans, referring to the character limit of social media posts on Twitter before he bought it in 2022. \u201cWell, not any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk said the Roadster was \u201cnot necessarily a safety-optimised car\u201d, but it would \u201cbe an actual car that\u2019s on the roads\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s necessarily legal in all jurisdictions,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there will be such a car that someone can own.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vehicle, which has been under development for a decade and will not enter production until 2028, will be Tesla\u2019s only manual car. With the help of its thrusters, it can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in less than a second and achieve a top speed of 230mph.<\/p>\n

\"\"Microsoft president Brad Smith: Ireland is \u201cwell-positioned for future of AI\u201d<\/p>\n

The company postponed the launch on at least five previous occasions, originally promising to start delivering the vehicle in 2020. As a publicity stunt, Musk launched a prototype into space in 2018.<\/p>\n

Customers \u2013 including OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman \u2013 paid $50,000 (\u20ac44,000) to remain on a waiting list for years. However, a year ago, during a vicious legal battle with Musk, Altman asked for his money back, saying \u201c7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait\u201d.<\/p>\n

Musk spent weeks hyping his new product on his social media platform X, calling it \u201ca candidate for greatest product demo of all time\u201d. As far back as 2018, the billionaire had been stoking speculation that the Roadster would be able to fly using cold-gas thrusters developed by SpaceX for its reusable rocket-landing systems.<\/p>\n

The Roadster has been a pet project for Musk. Tesla sold a predecessor model as a concept car between 2008 and 2012 to spread awareness of electric vehicles.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s wild ride shows how quickly markets can change their mindsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It will now compete with ultra-luxury electric supercars such as the \u20ac550,000 Ferrari Luce and other new offerings from Bentley, Jaguar and Porsche.<\/p>\n

However, Musk has played down the Roadster\u2019s significance to his $1.4tn carmaker, saying sales would probably be modest and not \u201cmove the needle in a big way financially\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tesla has been reducing its number of offered models as it refits its production lines in California and Texas to build robots and autonomous taxis.<\/p>\n

In January, Musk discontinued Tesla\u2019s premium S and X models as the group shifted to development of the Cybercab, a gold-coloured self-driving taxi, and a humanoid robot called Optimus.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of Tesla\u2019s sales come from its Model 3 and Y, while its Cybertruck has sold poorly since the enormous stainless-steel truck was released in 2023. The company started mass production of the Semi, its articulated lorry, in Nevada this year.<\/p>\n

Tesla deliveries fell 2 per cent in the third quarter, hit by a decline in US demand after President Donald Trump ended a $7,500 tax credit for EV purchases.<\/p>\n

Tim Levin, a senior editor at the InsideEVs website, said with the bestselling Model Y having first gone on sale in 2020, the Roadster could help revive Tesla\u2019s image as a brash innovator.<\/p>\n

But he cautioned that the EV industry had changed since Tesla first announced the Roadster as a concept.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe back then the world needed convincing that EVs could be these superfast accelerating vehicles,\u201d said Levin. \u201cBut maybe now it won\u2019t have the same impact as it would have had in 2020.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tesla\u2019s chief executive Elon Musk has unveiled a \u201cflying\u201d sports car equipped with thrusters from his rocket company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,605,61,60,77283,2306,1188],"class_list":["post-656731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-peter-thiel","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}