Tesla is planning to unveil the second-generation Roadster later this month, with an elaborate demonstration of the cold-gas thrusters that have held the programme up for years — performed by a vehicle expected to be under remote control for safety, according to a report published Friday by The Information.
The demonstration would show the hover capability Elon Musk has teased since 2018, and is planned for Texas, with some accounts pointing to the McGregor test site associated with SpaceX.
The Thruster Car Is Not for the Road
The most consequential detail in the report is what the thruster version will not be.
The limited-edition SpaceX package model — roughly ten cold-gas thrusters and a high-pressure air tank occupying the rear seating area — is not expected to be street-legal.
A more conventional scaled-down version without the full thruster system is planned alongside it.
The system is known inside Tesla as A71.
Engineering teams demonstrated an early version to Musk in late April, and it was not ready for public display, which is why the reveal moved from spring to August.
The Information has reported that thrusters could take the car to 60 mph in under 1.1 seconds.
Tesla shares were trading about 1.3% higher in Friday pre-market, just short of $340.
The Design Has Changed Substantially
The report also details how far the production car has moved from the 2017 prototype.
It shifts to a carbon-fibre tub, adopts a two-seat layout in place of the original 2+2 arrangement, and gains butterfly doors.
The two-seat change is not styling. If the air tank occupies the space where the rear seats sat, the packaging decision and the thruster system are the same decision.
Musk has said the production design would be “very different” from what was shown in 2017, and trademark filings are reported to show a sleeker shape with a squarer roofline.
Nine Years, Eight Delays
Tesla unveiled the Roadster as a surprise at its Hawthorne design studio during the Semi launch on November 16, 2017, promising production in 2020.
That slipped to 2022, then 2023, then 2024. In February 2024 Musk said the company had “radically increased the design goals” and promised a production unveil by year-end with deliveries in early 2025. Neither happened.
At the November 2025 shareholder meeting he set a demo for April 1, 2026, joking that the April Fools’ date gave him “deniability.”
April passed, the target moved to late April, then on the April 22 earnings call to “a month or so.”
Tesla described the project on that call as being in design development, with Musk saying it needed extensive testing and validation before a demo could run without something going wrong.
The Information reported in June, citing four people with knowledge of the programme, that the event had moved to August or later.
“Very Soon,” Twice
Chief designer Franz von Holzhausen told Tesla Takeover Europe in Austria in June that the unveiling was coming “in a few weeks.”
He said it again on Jay Leno’s Garage on August 10, telling Leno “very soon” and repeating it when pressed.
He and vice president of vehicle engineering Lars Moravy have confirmed the car is in testing and will be built at Gigafactory Texas, which Moravy stated on the Ride The Lightning podcast on May 24.
Moravy said at the X Takeover in July 2025 that the team had spent years rethinking the vehicle to make it “the last best driver’s car” before autonomous driving becomes the norm.
Musk’s Two Posts
Musk returned to the subject twice on August 12.
He reaffirmed his promise that the demonstration would be “unforgettable,” a claim he first made on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he also said it had “a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever” while refusing to elaborate: “I can’t do the unveil before the unveil.”
Hours earlier he had replied “You will get flying cars” to a post by Vercel chief executive Guillermo Rauch reading “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone” — a riff on Peter Thiel’s complaint that Musk has invoked before when discussing the Roadster.
He has called the technology “crazy, crazy,” said it would be crazier than combining every fictional James Bond car, and asked “Is it even a car? I’m not sure,” before adding: “We need to make sure that it works.”
What Buyers Were Promised
Tesla‘s 2017 claims: 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, 0-100 in 4.2, a quarter mile in 8.8, a top speed above 250 mph, 10,000 Nm of wheel torque, tri-motor all-wheel drive and 2+2 seating under a removable glass roof.
Pricing was $200,000, with the first 1,000 Founders Series cars at $250,000 payable in full. Base reservations required a $50,000 deposit, money some customers have had with the company since 2017.
Musk has said the sub-one-second 0-60 figure, which depends on the thrusters, would be the “least interesting part.”
Production remains targeted for 2027 at the earliest, on a timeline Musk has variously described as 12 to 18 months after the demo, the second half of 2027, and around mid-2027.
It would be Tesla‘s first vehicle debut since the Cybercab in October 2024.
