Tesla's, or should we say Elon Musk's, "flying car" hopped over five Teslas and landed. The FAA says it isn't an aircraft, and the 2017 deposits still haven't turned into a car

Back to the Future Part II promised us flying cars by October 21, 2015. On October 15, 2026, almost exactly eleven years late and after nine years of “next year”, Tesla finally showed the new Roadster. At a SpaceX test site in Texas, in front of a live audience and a livestream, Elon Musk claimed that “flying cars are real”. Then a white wedge drove up a ramp that curls over the top, hung upside down for a second, shot off the end, flipped and landed on its wheels. On a separate run, it jumped over five parked Teslas and set itself down in a cloud of condensation

“Well, it worked!” Musk said afterwards. He sounded surprised

To be fair, for exactly one paragraph: it’s a fun stunt. A car that sticks to a ceiling with very loud fans and hops on compressed air, and nothing exploded on a livestream. That’s more than most launch events manage 🫪

It’s a jump. With extra steps

Here’s what makes it “fly”, according to Tesla’s own people. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, said a “fan suction system” under the car can “pull up to 2 Gs”, which is what keeps it stuck to the upside-down part of the ramp. For the airborne bit, he said 10 thrusters fed from 600 liters of compressed air lift and spin it. Doc Brown needed 1.21 gigawatts. Tesla needs the same stuff that’s in your bike pump, just angrier

Tesla says one run cleared 27 feet, or about 8 meters in normal measurement units. It didn’t fly anywhere. It went up, it came down, and in between it did a barrel roll. Marty McFly did more than that on a hoverboard in 1989, and nobody asked him for a deposit

The people whose job is deciding what counts as flying agree. The FAA told CBS News the Roadster doesn’t meet its definition of an aircraft, and a senior US Transportation Department official was skeptical it can take off at all. A flying car that the aviation regulator says isn’t an aircraft. Bold branding 🫥

And the version that does the stunts, the invite-only “Rocket”, isn’t approved for public roads, by Tesla’s own website. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” said Doc Brown. Tesla took the half about not using roads and skipped the half about flying. What you’ve got is a very fast lawn ornament with a refill valve

Fan cars are older than Elon Musk

Musk also joked that “this car really sucks”. He’s right, just not the way he meant it. The Chaparral 2J  had fan suction back in 1970, a year before Musk was born, and that kind of sucking is a compliment: it glued the car to the track so well it got banned. The new Roadster sucks the other way. A doorstop of a design, with fans loud enough to drown out the livestream. Same trick, opposite review. The Brabham BT46B  pulled the same trick, won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix and was withdrawn straight after. And a small British company, McMurtry, already drove its fan-powered Spéirling upside down on a rotating rig. McMurtry didn’t call it a flying car. Small company, smaller claims, same trick

“Not necessarily a safety-optimized car”

Musk’s words, not ours. He also said Tesla would “aspire not to kill anyone in this car”. Aspire. That’s a word for a sustainability report, not for a car with a seat in it 🙄

Then look at what’s in it. Tesla says “every usable void” in the car is filled with carbon-fiber-overwrapped pressure vessels, the type of tank that has been linked to multiple SpaceX rocket explosions. That’s what sits around the driver, full of high-pressure gas. Musk also floated jumping the Snake River Canyon, the one Evel Knievel tried to jump in 1974 and didn’t. Nothing says “we’ve thought about safety” like picking a stunt with a famous failure attached

Nine years of deposits

This is the bit that doesn’t just bother us, it frustrates us. The Roadster was first shown in November 2017, as a surprise at the end of the Tesla Semi event. The promise: 1.9 seconds to 60 mph, over 250 mph, 620 miles of range, four seats, production in 2020. Tesla took $50,000 deposits, and $250,000 up front for one of 1,000 “Founders Series” cars

Then it slipped in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. In late 2025 Musk said the reveal would happen by year-end, then moved it to April 1, 2026 (yes, April Fools’ Day), then to October 1, and then the weather got it. Not a single one has been delivered, and the first deposit holders are still waiting. A baby born the week of that 2017 reveal is in third grade now. Doc Brown had a time machine and still turned up when he said he would

What was shown this week: over 300 miles of range, which is less than half, a top speed of “over 230 mph” on the Rocket, and two seats at most. The 0 to 60 did get quicker. That’s the one number that went the right way

And the deposit? Still $50,000. Reservations reopened in September with $5,000 on a card now, which Tesla calls fully refundable, and a $45,000 wire within 10 days, or the reservation is cancelled. The Thrust version asks $250,000. There’s no price for any version, and the production date is, in Musk’s words, “2028, actually”. Going by the last nine years, see you in 2037. The specs went down, the date went back, the deposit stayed exactly where it was. Funny how that works 🤑

Getting money back hasn’t always gone smoothly either. In 2025 Tesla initially kept the $5,000 deposit of a 2017 reservation holder who cancelled, and Sam Altman said he was ghosted when he tried to cancel his. Marques Brownlee, about the delays, asked “This is a prank, right?” Nine years in, it’s a fair question

Even the money people don’t think the car is about money. Musk said he’s “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint”, and analyst Dan Ives told CBS “the Roadster will not move the volume or revenue needle”. So it’s about the show. And the show was nerdy. It just isn’t a car you can buy, fly, or legally drive on the road with the fun parts switched on

Paying for a promise

We make a password manager, so we’re not in the flying business and have no opinions on thrusters. But we do ask people to trust us with something, and the rule we hold ourselves to is boring on purpose: you get the thing first. Vauz  has a free plan that costs nothing, with no reservation and no wire transfer, and what you download today is what you get today. No “2028, actually” 🤷‍♂️

Where we’re going, we don’t need delivery dates

Will the Rocket ever get approved for a road anywhere, or get a price? Will 2028 survive contact with 2027? Will the people who paid in 2017 get a car before the people who paid this September? And will anyone at the FAA have to rewrite a definition? Until then, a “flying car” is a car that’s briefly not touching the ground, and so is every car that ever took a speed bump too fast 🛬