The demo, step by step
On 15 October 2026, Tesla drove its new Roadster up a curved ramp until it was hanging upside down, launched it off the end, flipped it the right way up in mid-air and landed it on its wheels.
If you watched it and thought "how is that even allowed by physics?", you're in the right place. Nothing here breaks the rules. It's a clever stack of ideas engineers have used for decades, put together in one car. The event took place at SpaceX's test site in McGregor, near Waco, Texas. Here is the main stunt, in order:
- Up the ramp. The car drove up a ramp that curved over until the car was upside down.
- Off the end. It left the ramp while still upside down.
- Turn over. Air jets rolled it the right way up while it was in the air.
- Land. It hovered for a moment and touched down on its wheels, with a puff of tyre smoke.
Tesla also showed the car hopping over a row of its other vehicles, and going from 0 to 60 mph in 0.81 seconds.
What Tesla told us
| Air jets | 10 thrusters on the top version of the car |
| What they use | Compressed air: 600 litres stored in strong carbon-fibre tanks, which the car can refill itself |
| Suction fans | Press the car down with a force up to twice its own weight |
| Power | About 1,340 horsepower, roughly six family cars combined |
| On sale | Planned for 2028. Not approved for public roads yet |
Tesla didn't publish the car's weight, the size of the ramp or how strong the thrusters are. Where this page needs those numbers it uses careful estimates, marked Estimate. They assume a 1,500 kg car and a ramp with a 5 m radius.
See the forces, one step at a time
Press Play to watch a step. The animation stops at the end of each one so you can read what's happening. Drag the picture to look around.
Why it doesn't fall off
The fans make the air push the car onto the ramp twice as hard as gravity pulls it away.
This part is pure aerodynamics. It's all about air pressure and how air behaves around the car.
This is the bit everyone asks about first, so let's start here. A normal car can't stay on an upside-down road. Gravity pulls it off, and tyres only grip when something presses them against the surface.
The Roadster has fans under its floor, with flexible flaps around the edges that almost touch the ground and seal the space underneath. The fans pump air out of the space underneath, so the air pressure there drops. The air above and around the car is still at normal pressure, so it pushes the car towards the low-pressure side, onto the ramp.
The air around us presses on everything much harder than we notice: about 10 tonnes on every square metre. The car only needs to take away a tiny slice of that under its floor to be pushed down with twice its own weight.
Upside down, gravity pulls the car away from the ramp with a force equal to its own weight. The fans push it onto the ramp with twice its weight. Twice minus once still leaves a whole car's weight pressing the tyres onto the ramp, so they keep their grip. Going round the curve adds even more push, the same way you get pressed into your seat on a looping rollercoaster.
Fans have one big advantage over wings: they work even when the car is standing still. That is why the car can drive slowly and calmly upside down. A Formula 1 car would need to go very fast to do the same.
This idea isn't new. Racing cars used fans in the 1970s until they were banned for being too good. In 2025 a small electric car called the McMurtry Spéirling drove upside down from a standstill using the same trick.
Show the maths
The suction force is the pressure difference times the floor area:
How hard the ramp pushes back (N) depends on speed v, ramp radius R, suction S (in g) and where on the loop the car is (angle φ, from 0° at the bottom to 180° upside down):
Grip check: on the vertical wall, the tyres must carry the car's whole weight up the ramp. At 11 m/s with 2 g of suction, the ramp pushes with about 4.5 times the car's weight, so the tyres use only about 17% of their grip.
Fan power: air leaks in around the skirts. With a 5 mm gap all round, the fans need roughly 40 kW Estimate, a small part of the car's 1 MW.
Try it: will it stay on?
Move the sliders. If "Stays on upside down?" turns red, the car would fall.
The moment it starts to fall
Once the car leaves the ramp, the fans stop helping and the car falls like a thrown ball.
This part is flight mechanics. It's about how things move once nothing is holding them up.
Suction only works when there is a surface to stick to. As soon as the car leaves the ramp, air rushes back underneath and the push disappears. Now only gravity and the air jets act on the car.
From the top of a 10 m ramp, a car with no help would hit the ground in about 1.4 seconds. Everything that follows has to happen fast.
There's a catch. The thrusters that hold the car up blow out of its floor. Upside down, the floor faces the sky, so those thrusters would push the car down. The car has to turn over first, and it is falling while it does.
Show the maths
A useful rule: the car's balance point (its centre of mass) follows the same smooth curve whether the car is spinning or not, as long as the thrusters fire in balanced pairs. Spinning and moving through the air are separate.
Tiny rockets that run on air
Each thruster is a valve on a tank of squeezed air. Air rushes out one way and pushes the car the other way.
This part is propulsion. It's the same idea that drives jet engines and rockets: throw something backwards, and you go forwards.
Blow up a balloon and let it go: the air rushes out one way and the balloon shoots the other way. A thruster is the same idea, made strong and precise. Nothing burns. Air squeezed into a tank at very high pressure shoots out of a small opening, and the car is pushed the opposite way.
Spacecraft use the same kind of thruster to turn themselves in space, because they are simple, reliable and safe to use near people.
How long can it fly?
Not long. Air is a weak fuel compared with what real rockets burn. To hold up a car weighing about 1,500 kg, the jets would use around 27 kg of air every second. With roughly 250 kg on board, that gives at most about 9 seconds of hovering in total Estimate.
So the Roadster doesn't fly like a plane or a drone. It makes short, controlled hops, which is what the demo showed. Between stunts, a pump in the car refills the tanks using battery power.
Is it safe?
Squeezed air stores a lot of energy. The air in these tanks is squeezed to about 400 times normal pressure, so a full set holds roughly as much energy as 12 kg of explosive if it ever burst all at once Estimate. That is why these tanks are wrapped in carbon fibre and built with large safety margins. How Tesla tests them for crashes is one of the open questions.
Show the maths
Refilling: squeezing 250 kg of air to 400 bar takes at least about 35 kWh of energy, a big slice of an electric car's battery.
Try it: how much flying is in the tank?
Why the roll looks so calm
Pairs of jets twist the car without pushing it, a computer plans a gentle turn, and it corrects the car hundreds of times a second.
This part is flight control. Keeping a moving vehicle pointed the right way is the same problem spacecraft and fighter jets solve every second.
1. Twist without push
Honestly, this is the part that impressed me most. To roll the car, one jet pushes up on the left side while another pushes down on the right. The two pushes cancel, so the car doesn't get shoved sideways, but together they twist it, like turning a steering wheel with both hands.
2. A planned, gentle turn
The computer doesn't flip the car as fast as it can. It speeds the turn up gently, then slows it down gently, so it settles exactly the right way up with no jolt. Lifts and good camera cranes move the same way.
3. Constant small corrections
Motion sensors, like the ones that let your phone know which way up it is, measure the car's angle and spin hundreds of times a second. If the car is a little ahead or behind the plan, the computer fires a jet for a split second to fix it. The corrections are too small and fast to see, so the motion looks smooth.
Landing
Once the floor faces down again, the floor jets slow the fall. The car touches down gently, about the same as dropping it from 11 cm, which its springs handle easily. It is still rolling forward when it lands, and the tyres scrub against the ground as they spin back up: that's the smoke.
Show the maths
Spinning wheels act like gyroscopes. Turning the car while they spin creates a small sideways twist (about 470 N·m) that the computer must cancel. Speeding up or braking the wheels in the air can also tilt the body, a trick motocross riders use. Tesla hasn't said whether the Roadster uses it.
Try it: the roll
Why tyres alone can't do it
The same fans that hold the car on upside down also press the tyres into the road, so they can grip much harder.
This part mixes aerodynamics with Newton's laws. Grip, push and acceleration, the basics of how anything speeds up.
Going from 0 to 60 mph in under a second pushes the driver back into the seat with more than three times their own weight. A normal car can only speed up as hard as its tyres can grip the road, and even the stickiest tyres can't grip hard enough for this.
The fans change that. Pressing the car down with twice its weight makes the tyres grip about three times harder, without making the car any heavier to move. That gives enough grip for the launch. Near 60 mph the electric motors run short of power, and the air jets at the back give the final push.
Show the maths
The open questions
- No independent tests yet. All the figures come from Tesla's own event.
- The exact numbers. Car weight, ramp size and thruster strength weren't published. The 250 kg of air comes from one report.
- The rules. The car isn't approved for public roads yet, and anything that flies, even briefly, may face aviation rules.
- High-pressure tanks in a crash. How Tesla makes them safe hasn't been shared.
- Timing. The Roadster was first promised for 2020. Production is now planned for 2028.
Frequently asked.
How did the Tesla Roadster stay on the upside-down ramp?
Fans pull the air out from under the car. The air around it then presses the car onto the ramp with up to twice its own weight. Upside down, gravity only pulls it away with its own weight, so there is still plenty of push holding it on. Tesla said the air jets helped too.
How does the Tesla Roadster fly?
Ten small air jets blow out squeezed air from tanks in the car. Pointed down, they can hold the car up for a few seconds. Fired in pairs, they turn it over. The air runs out in seconds, so the car can hop, not fly like a plane.
How did it roll over so smoothly in the air?
Pairs of jets twist the car without pushing it off course. A computer plans a turn that starts gently and finishes gently, and makes tiny corrections hundreds of times a second, too small and fast to see.
What are cold-gas thrusters?
The simplest kind of rocket: a tank of squeezed gas, a valve and an opening. Nothing burns. They are reliable and safe near people, but weak for their size. Spacecraft use them to turn themselves in space.
Can a normal car drive upside down at high speed?
A racing car's wings press it down harder the faster it goes, so in theory it could drive upside down, but only at well over 100 mph. Fans work at any speed, even standing still, which is why the Roadster uses them.
Is the Tesla Roadster a flying car?
Not in the aviation sense. It can hop, flip and land under control, but it cannot cruise. Stored air limits it to seconds of thrust between refills.
- TechCrunch, 15 Oct 2026: Tesla reveals SpaceX-powered Roadster (10 thrusters, 600 L compressed air, COPVs, trims)
- Not a Tesla App: event recap (inverted half-loop, thruster roll, 2 g suction, 1 MW, 250 kg air, 0.81 s)
- Hardware Busters: cold-gas thrusters at the reveal (road-legal footnote, timestamps)
- Drive: 2028 Tesla Roadster revealed
- The Next Web: how the McMurtry Spéirling drove upside down (fan car precedent)
- Sutton & Biblarz, Rocket Propulsion Elements (cold-gas thrusters, nozzle flow); Wertz & Larson, Space Mission Analysis and Design (reaction control); Katz, Race Car Aerodynamics (fan cars and ground effect).
Interested in learning more about vehicles that fly?
If this got you curious, start with the beginner's guide on AerospaceKit. It explains what aerospace engineers actually do, from aircraft to rockets, and you don't need any background to follow it.
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