Nope, that is not a typo. In a recent post on X (Twitter), Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, “The new Tesla Roadster can fly.” And he’s not talking about being launched into space, like the first-gen Roadster. This joint project between Tesla and SpaceX will probably sport rocket boosters. And it may even be able to hover for a few seconds. But it still doesn’t impress the record-setting founder of Rimac because of how heavy it will be.

Elon Musk first announced the roadster with a target 0-60 mph time of 1.9 seconds, along with a 620-mile range. Later, he announced he’d dropped the 0-60 target to under one second. That is insanely fast. The fastest accelerating vehicle in the world just broke the one second mark, but it is a tiny go-cart sized EV with a huge fan setup to pull it toward the ground and maintain traction. One second is impossible to hit with a regular vehicle. So it’s no surprise that after this announcement, Musk said the Roadster had become a Tesla/SpaceX joint project.

In a 2023 interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Elon Musk went into detail about the technology he hopes to use.

“You’d go pretty fast, but you are going to be time-limited. It’s going to use a super high-pressure air bottle. The standard version will have a back row with two small seats, like child seats in a Porsche or something, or if you get the SpaceX option package then in that place where those two seats is a high-pressure carbon overwrapped pressure vessel, something at around 10,000 psi, and a bunch of thrusters.”

Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience

So the current design of the Roadster will aim for an under one second 0-60 with the help of cold air thrusters. That means there won’t be any rocket fuel, just compressed air and nozzles. When asked about Tesla’s one second goal, the CEO of Bugatti-Rimac said, “It is possible with thrusters…We did the simulation.”

Rimac released the Nevera, an electric supercar with a drive unit at each wheel. The Nevera broke the production car 0-60 record, along with 23 other performance records, in a single day. The CEO went on to say, “Problem [with boosters] is you release the air in 2-3 seconds, and then you have a lot of dead weight that you are carrying around (tanks, compressor, valves, nozzles, etc.).” So even though the company considered the solution, they decided the 2-3 seconds of straight-line speed wasn’t worth losing performance while cornering and braking.

But Elon Musk is hoping to get more than straight-line speed from the Roadster’s boosters. By “flying” he means he hopes the car can hover for short stretches. In the above interview he explained his reasoning:

“We are going to throw some rocket technology in that car. I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people…I thought maybe we could make it hover but not too high. You make it hover like a meter above the ground or something like that. Something where if you plummet, you blow the suspension, but you are not going to die. Maybe 6 feet. You probably just put a height limit on it.”

Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience

So there you go. The new Tesla Roadster may have a SpaceX package. And there’s a chance this package will allow the car to hover, up to six feet off the ground, for a “time-limited” period. Will the feature make it into production? Will the car be allowed to hover on public roads? Will it be classified as an aircraft? We’ll just have to wait and see if Tesla pulls it off.

Next, read why the team that holds the 0-60 mph record is not who you’d expect, or see Elon Musk discuss the roadster with Joe Rogan in the video below: