{"id":883,"date":"2026-10-16T02:09:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=883"},"modified":"2026-10-16T02:09:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:09:58","slug":"tesla-finally-revealed-the-roadster-it-flies-it-has-one-seat-and-it-cannot-carry-a-tent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=883","title":{"rendered":"Tesla Finally Revealed the Roadster &#8211; It Flies, It Has One Seat, and It Cannot Carry a Tent"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/tesla-roadster-revealed-camping-2026.avif\" alt=\"White Tesla Model Y with a rooftop tent on a high open moorland viewpoint at dusk in autumn\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>After roughly nine years of delays, Tesla finally showed the second-generation Roadster overnight. The event was held outside Waco, Texas, next to a SpaceX rocket test facility, and it was not a normal car launch.<\/p>\n<p>The car drove up an <strong>inverted ramp<\/strong>, hung upside down for a few seconds, spun around, and then lowered itself back onto the pavement using bursts of cold gas &#8211; like a rocket settling back onto a pad. It has a suction system that holds it onto the ramp when it is the wrong way up. Earlier in the night it used its thrusters to lift itself clean over a line-up containing a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi, a Model Y and a Model 3.<\/p>\n<p>It is the wildest thing Tesla has ever built. It is also, and this is the part that matters to anyone reading a camping blog, completely useless for camping.<\/p>\n<h2>What was actually announced<\/h2>\n<p>Three versions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Performance<\/strong> &#8211; &#8220;road ready&#8221;, two seats, active aerodynamics and what Tesla calls a multi-mode suction system for grip on and off the track<\/li>\n<li><strong>Thrust<\/strong> &#8211; &#8220;race ready&#8221;, two seats, plus rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters that give a sub-one-second 0-60 mph time<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rocket<\/strong> &#8211; &#8220;air ready&#8221;, <strong>one seat<\/strong>, around ten cold-gas thrusters positioned around the bodywork, and invite-only<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On acceleration: Tesla showed the car hitting 60 mph from a standstill in about one second. One livestream timed it at 0.81 seconds. Engineering VP Lars Moravy explained that the system is ten thrusters running off <strong>600 litres of compressed air<\/strong>, stored in carbon-fibre overwrapped pressure vessels &#8211; the same kind of tanks used in rockets &#8211; and Tesla says <strong>every usable void in the car is packed with them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Reservations opened immediately: <strong>USD 50,000<\/strong> to reserve the Performance trim and <strong>USD 250,000<\/strong> for Thrust. Musk confirmed <strong>2028<\/strong> for production at Giga Texas and, notably, <strong>did not announce a price<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>Three things worth being sceptical about<\/h2>\n<p><strong>The range figure does not add up yet.<\/strong> Back in 2017 Tesla promised about 620 miles, roughly 1,000 km. Reporting on the night consistently quoted a much lower figure &#8211; around <strong>300 miles, about 480 km<\/strong> &#8211; for all three trims. Those two numbers cannot both be right, and until Tesla publishes a spec sheet, treat the range as unconfirmed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2028 is a long way off, and this company has form.<\/strong> This car was first shown in November 2017 and has slipped at least eight times. Somebody who put down a deposit in 2017 has been waiting most of a decade. Musk has also said he may try to jump the Snake River Canyon with one, which tells you where the priorities are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Europe is not part of this conversation yet.<\/strong> No European price, no homologation, no delivery date. Musk even said outright that safety is not the main goal of the car &#8211; his own words were that if safety is your number one priority, do not buy the Roadster.<\/p>\n<h2>Why we are still writing about it on a camping blog<\/h2>\n<p>Because the headline spec is the wrong thing to look at, and the interesting bits are underneath.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There is no boot. Literally.<\/strong> The Rocket trim seats one person, and every empty space in the car is filled with compressed-air tanks. There is no version of this where you pack a tent, a stove and a cool box. The most extreme Tesla in history has less luggage space than a city runabout.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That is the point of a halo car.<\/strong> Nobody buys one. It exists to make the technology normal, and then cheap, and then standard on the car you actually own. Active aerodynamics, steer-by-wire, high-voltage architecture and big battery packs all start at the top of the range and finish in a Model Y three or four years later.<\/p>\n<p><strong>And it is a good reminder of what to buy for.<\/strong> When you are choosing a camping car, the number that matters is not how fast it reaches 60. It is how far it goes between chargers, how flat the floor is when the seats fold, and whether you can stay warm all night without burning anything inside the cabin.<\/p>\n<h2>The car you can actually sleep in<\/h2>\n<p>You already know which one that is. A Model Y with the seats down gives you more than 2,000 litres of flat floor, Camp Mode keeps the cabin at temperature with no exhaust and no gas, and the boot swallows a genuinely stupid amount of kit. From there:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=637\">Tesla Roof Top Tent<\/a> &#8211; a proper bed up off the wet ground, and it folds away in minutes<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=638\">Tesla Inflatable Air Mattress<\/a> &#8211; sleep inside the car instead and keep the boot for everything else<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=612\">2048Wh LiFePO4 Portable Power Station<\/a> &#8211; 2048Wh of battery for lights, pumps and phones, so the car battery is untouched in the morning<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=613\">35L Dual-Zone Compressor Fridge<\/a> &#8211; dual zone, so one side is a fridge and the other is a freezer<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=610\">Tesla Trunk Organiser Box<\/a> &#8211; because a 2,000-litre boot turns into chaos by the second morning<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/?p=640\">Tablet Mount Holder<\/a> &#8211; for navigation, weather warnings and the pitch you booked an hour ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Enjoy the video. Then go and use the Tesla you can actually sleep in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After roughly nine years of delays, Tesla finally showed the second-generation Roadster overnight. The event was held outside Waco, Texas, next to a SpaceX rocket test facility, and it was not a normal car launch. The car drove up an inverted ramp, hung upside down for a few seconds, spun around, and then lowered itself [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.auto-tsl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}