Tesla's Roadster Event Was Packed With Stunts, but the Real Specs Came Out the Next Morning

Tesla's Roadster event combined a redesigned car with a series of demonstrations: a car driving up a wall, a car flipped upside down, a flying car, a car jumping and performing a kick flip, and a claimed 0.6-second 0-to-60 mph run. Marques Brownlee says many of these demonstrations distracted from the facts that were released the next morning on the Roadster materials.

The speaker frames his job over the past decade as separating real information from fluff at tech events. He says the redesigned car looks like a cyberized interpretation of a Lamborghini and that the sheer spectacle drew both excitement and skepticism, both of which he considers justified.

The event did not disclose that the Roadster comes in four versions: base, performance, thrust, and rocket. Brownlee says the base car is essentially a basic EV without the extra features, and that he heard this from Fron in the Motor Trend video, which said there is a base model that has none of the extra equipment. He also notes that the base version is not even listed on the website.

The performance trim adds a fan system for downforce, but no cold-gas thrusters. The thrust trim adds thrusters to that fan system. The rocket trim is the most extreme, with the highest specifications.

The fan system works by placing a skirt under the car to create a low-pressure zone and spinning a fan at the rear at high RPM, so that air above the car pushes it down. Brownlee says this system generates more downforce than the car's weight, which is why the Spearling has already been driven upside down.

Videos show the Spearling outperforming high-downforce track cars in low-speed corners, including keeping pace with a GT3 RS, and reaching 0-to-60 mph in 1.4 seconds while putting over 1,000 horsepower down immediately. The Roadster inherits this fan system and a 1.6-second 0-to-60 claim. The speaker says it is unclear whether such a car could be street legal, noting that road imperfections would make the system unsuitable on many roads.

In the Thrust trim, the rear of the Roadster has four fans at the bottom for the suction system and four larger exhaust pipes at the top for the thrust system. The pipes connect to a 200-liter carbon-overlaid pressure vessel.

When full, the vessel carries more than 100 kilograms of pressurized nitrogen at 10,000 PSI behind the driver's head. Brownlee says the demonstration showed large amounts of compressed nitrogen exiting the rear, the car pulling a few G's, and reaching 60 mph before the length of a driveway. He estimates the lateral load at about three Gs, above the roughly 1.2 to 1.3 G limit of typical tire grip, and notes the thrusters are very loud, which is why the demonstration was held hundreds of feet from spectators with hearing protection.

Brownlee says his main concern is crash safety, pointing to the cold-gas thrusters and massive carbon-overlaid compressed-air canisters. Rockets are not crash-tested like cars, so he notes this is largely untested territory.

The rocket trim adds six more thrusters facing different directions and a 400-liter compressed-air tank in the passenger seat area, making it a one-seater. He asks what happens in a safety incident with a 10,000 PSI tank next to the driver's head and says he does not know what the plan is.

Brownlee says there is discussion about whether the demonstration used a real full-weight car, and he says he does not know. He adds that if he were in charge, he would use a smaller battery to reduce the risk of things going wrong.

He argues that the extremity of the demonstration was both figurative and literal smoke and mirrors, covering the abandonment of the original Roadster, which had spent an unknown amount of time in development. The new car's promised timeline is 2028, but the event offered little more information after the demonstrations. The morning videos from Top Gear and Motor Trend revealed further details: all-carbon-fiber body panels, a claimed weight under 1,700 kg, rear-wheel drive, dual rear motors producing 1,300 horsepower and 1,400 newton-meters of torque, and a range promise of 300-plus miles, down from 600 miles.

Brownlee says Tesla claimed the car would travel at half the speed of sound, but he is fairly sure it will not. He notes that thrust mode lasts 3 to 5 seconds and then the tank is empty, making it effectively a single-use feature before a refill, which the Hagerty video said takes 6 to 7 hours.

He distinguishes between the demos: the kick flip and jumping are impressive engineering, but they have no clear real-world performance benefit. The fan system adds downforce and grip that improve cornering and lap times. The rear thrusters could be seen as a straight-line drag-race gimmick, and braking-safety thrusters on other parts of the car could be argued, but jumping and flips serve no practical purpose on public roads.

Brownlee argues that the 2020 Roadster spent nine years without launching because it makes no difference to Tesla's bottom line. Volume is simply too low. He notes Tesla recently discontinued the Model S and Model X for the same reason, and that the company's priorities are the Model 3, Model Y, and a planned humanoid robot.

He says the event was a successful engineering exercise and marketing stunt that will keep Tesla in conversation for years. A Roadster reservation agreement, he notes, states that the car is still under development and that Tesla cannot guarantee when or whether it will be delivered. He also cites Hagerty's Henry Catchpole's view that a very fast electric car no longer impresses buyers, and that Tesla already made the Plaid.