I’ve been to thousands of car launches over the years, including the infamous reveal of the Tesla Cybertruck in California back in 2019. Remember when Elon Musk took a sledgehammer to the unbreakable glass and it, er, broke? Yes, I was there.
I couldn’t make it to Texas last night – I’m in California driving a ‘normal’ car with BMW – so was glued to my laptop screen when Musk announced the flying Tesla Roadster.
Firstly, a little insight into how Tesla operates… It’s not like any other car company in how it works; from the cars themselves to the way it communicates. Tesla makes computers and builds cars around them, while every traditional car company makes cars and squeezes a computer system into them – two very different things and it shows when you use them.
As for the well thought-through strategy behind how the company puts its information out there, let’s just say Tesla seems to be a bit ‘seat of the pants’. And having known people who’ve worked with Musk over the years, he sometimes shoots from the hip, leaving his comms team to work things out afterwards.
I’ve met and chatted with Musk a few times and, unsurprisingly, he’s always good for a story. He told me the name of the Tesla Model 3 before he’d told anyone else – and that remains the single biggest story I’ve ever had published. He told me that Brexit made it too difficult to build a car factory in the UK – number two on my biggest story list. And he also told me that he was thinking of setting up a UK research and development base – something that had his team scrabbling around a bit!
Then there’s the events that are a bit like Apple showcases: there’s little advanced warning; there’s sometimes a dress code (Cyberpunk for the Cybertruck launch) and what appears to be little preparation. Although, in last night’s case, thankfully nothing went wrong.
And yes, I was expecting whooping and hollering – it’s America after all – but I wasn’t expecting respectable-looking adults to shout, “I love you Elon”. Yup, it happens.
Anyway, last night. Firstly, when it comes to Tesla (and X and probably SpaceX, too) there’s one guy who talks: Elon. Only the first on stage were Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice-president of vehicle engineering, and the company’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen. They were the warm-up act and they got a fair bit of whooping and hollering, too.
But the main act is always Musk and out he strode, looking as awkward as ever and in an ill-fitting T-shirt, and off he went in what looked like a more stage-managed affair than usual. And with flying, rocket-propelled cars, I guess it had to be.
There was a disclaimer: “By the way, success is not guaranteed,” said Musk, “So, I mean that it'll probably work, but if it doesn't work, we're at a safe distance.”
Gulp.
On screen was a car. And knowing that Musk shares my obsession with the Lotus Esprit – the car that turned into a submarine in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me – it wasn’t surprising to see that the roadster wasn’t in fact an open-top model as roadsters traditionally are, but a low, sleek, white, wedge-shaped two-seater sports car. Tesla? Convention? Nah!
So far, so good. But the car was sat at the end of what looked like half of a hot wheels ramp that shot up into the sky. And yes, the car was driven up – slowly – until it was hanging upside down.
Now, that’s not entirely beyond my GCSE understanding of physics – although Musk later reeled off some fancy formula that, I guess, means something to cleverer people than me. A car hanging upside down, being sucked onto upside down Tarmac – that’s doable, isn’t it?
What happened next genuinely made my mouth open wide with no noise coming out – a rare thing for me.
The car climbed the ramp again and just kept going, upside down, off the end of the ramp and out into the dark, Texan air. It dropped quickly before jets of air sprang from the side to flip it back upright, and underneath to bring it back down to earth in an incredibly controlled somersault. It landed without a splash – the perfect dive. If this was Strictly, it would be a ten from me.
Of course, the crowd went wild. But I swear it was a more muted whoosh of noise – probably at least half of those there didn’t believe what they saw either.
But that wasn’t all. The Roadster had another party trick up its sleeve and one that I’m desperate to perform in traffic on the M25.
With Tesla’s entire car line-up in front of it, from Cybercab to Semi truck, the Roadster drove forward, shot up into the air, rolled over and landed on the other side. Think Evel Knievel or Eddie Kidd, a motorbike and a row of London Buses – but with an added bit of theatre thrown in. Oh, and in a car.
Musk muttered something about the car jumping over Snake River Canyon – another Evel Knievel reference. And on this showing, I’d believe it.
In true Tesla style, other than a demo that proved the car could get from 0-60mph in under a second, the promise that a top speed could be half of the speed of sound, that the car would beat any known track record and that it would be on sale in 2028, there was little more detail. You know, the boring stuff like price and how far the car could go on a full charge of its unknown battery.
You just have to press the ‘reserve now’ button on the Tesla website after all that, don’t you? I did that after the Cybertruck launch and still have a deposit on the non-existent UK version – I must get around to cancelling that.
This time your $5,000 deposit (refundable) must be another $45,000 within ten days. Tesla’s good at that – a nice bit of cash before anyone knows how much the car is going to cost. And we have no idea.
What we do know is there will be three versions: a car, a rocket-powered car, and a flying car. Tesla calls them Performance (road ready with seating for two and including active aero and a multi-mode suction system), Thrust (everything from Performance plus acceleration thrusters), and Rocket (tantalisingly claiming that it’s ‘air ready’ with seating for one, including Performance and Thrust, plus a full flight system).
Quite what legislators will make of Rocket and what sort of licence I’ll need to drive one – and I sure as hell would given half a chance – I have no idea. But let’s just dream for now.
Elon Musk is, without doubt, the brightest guy I’ve ever met. You can see him analysing every question you ask as his head tilts backwards, his eyes roll towards the heavens and he gives an instant but carefully thought-through answer.
However, his recent dalliances into politics have caused problems for his businesses – including Tesla. Put simply, people haven’t bought Teslas because of Musk.
The Tesla Roadster has put Tesla back on the map as a car company – and that’s a carefully measured strategy that will position the company well for what is still its autonomous driving future. Tesla is back in the positive again.
But before I wrap up, two things:
You gotta feel for Porsche who, last night, also revealed a new car – and an important one. The Porsche Mission S previews a new range of Porsche models and hints at the design of future models. A very traditional automotive message that has been blown into the weeds by Tesla.
And, some years ago when I spoke with Musk in Europe, we chatted about performance and how fast cars could go. I joked that Teslas might end up arriving before they’ve left at some stage and naively said that making cars go fast in a straight line wasn’t exactly rocket science. Forgetting that Musk was also the boss of SpaceX, he told me: “Yeah, we do that, too.”
Last night his two worlds converged – and Tesla won the internet.
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