Tesla unveiled a redesigned Roadster equipped with thrusters developed in collaboration with Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, showing the vehicle driving upside down on a ramp using a suction system, turning in the air and landing on built-in thrusters, according to ABC News. The demonstration was streamed Thursday from SpaceX's Texas facility, where Musk called the vehicle a "flying" car and said, "Flying cars are real."
CBS News reported that Musk unveiled what he described as a "flying" car during a livestreamed event at his rocket company's grounds, and that the vehicle launched from a ramp that curled over so the car was upside down, appearing to cling to the surface before flying off the end, then rolled over one hundred eighty degrees midair to land on its wheels. Musk said the vehicle's "success is not guaranteed" but "it will probably work," describing the development as "what happens when you have a collaboration with the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company." He said the Roadster would go into production in 2028, with no prices announced.
The claim arrived inside a broader political week for Musk. According to NBC News, wealthy donors have been pouring money into the final stretch of the midterm elections, with the billionaire out in front after donating another two hundred fifty million dollars to Republican groups recently, funding party efforts to retain its congressional majorities during a difficult cycle. CNN reported that new filings with the Federal Election Commission are shedding light on Musk's heavy influence on the 2026 midterms, especially the blockbuster Senate race in Texas.
On the same day, Newsmax reported that the European Union is seeking to fast-track antitrust approval of a joint venture aimed at reducing Europe's reliance on American satellite providers, including Musk's SpaceX — a regulatory move that would touch the same company whose propulsion hardware sat on the Roadster stage.
The flying car claim traveled through coverage that treated the demonstration as an engineering spectacle. CBS News reported that during the demo, which was livestreamed on Tesla's X account, the car appeared to defy gravity before rolling over in midair. Other coverage of the same subject described the Roadster prototype hitting sixty miles per hour in under one second, and reported that the car used thrusters to leap over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y and Model 3 at the Texas demo. That coverage also noted the Roadster refresh was first shown as a concept in 2017 and that Tesla has since missed every targeted delivery date.
The reaction to the demonstration was not uniformly celebratory. Wall Street analyst Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives said in a research note that "the Roadster will not move the volume or revenue needle, with production likely limited, and investors should not model it as a growth driver." Ives added that "what it does is restore the brand halo at the top of the market and put a spotlight on the engineering stack a week before the FY3Q26 print on October 21st." He also said the Roadster "puts the Tesla and SpaceX relationship on the table in a tangible way, with propulsion, pressure-vessel, and control hardware developed at the rocket company sitting on a Tesla product."
Tesla's website, according to CBS News, allows would-be buyers to place a reservation with a five-thousand-dollar deposit for what is billed as the Performance model. A limited-edition Thrust model is promised online but cannot be reserved, and the site says a flying Rocket model with a "full flight system" will be offered by invitation only.
The idea of a flying car is not new. CBS News noted that the concept has been around almost as long as motor vehicles themselves, with American aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss debuting the first flying car prototype in 1917, and that successful designs have been pursued more seriously only in recent years as electric motors and high-performance batteries have advanced.
Next News Network could not independently verify the claims made about the vehicle's flight capabilities or the details of the demonstration.
The political and regulatory threads around Musk's companies continued to develop alongside the product claim. The Newsmax report said the European Union is reportedly seeking to fast-track antitrust approval of a joint venture aimed at reducing Europe's reliance on American satellite providers, including SpaceX. The NBC News report said Musk's two hundred fifty million dollars in recent donations went to Republican groups working to retain congressional majorities amid a difficult midterm landscape. The CNN report said the new Federal Election Commission filings are shedding light on his influence in the 2026 midterms, especially the Senate race in Texas.
None of those reports asserted that the Roadster demonstration caused the political or regulatory developments, and none described the flying car claim as independently confirmed.
Our Take
The press can't decide whether Musk is a car salesman, a political kingmaker or a satellite monopolist, so it covered all three in a single news cycle and let the reader sort it out. What the coverage does show is that the same man is now simultaneously pitching a flying Roadster, bankrolling Republican midterm efforts and sitting at the center of a European regulatory fight over satellite providers — and that the establishment press treats each of those as a separate story rather than a single concentration of power. The Roadster may or may not fly in 2028, but the deeper story is that Washington and Brussels are both negotiating with the same billionaire, and the coverage of a stunt car shouldn't obscure that.
