स्तम्भ Stambh · Arthanīti

Tesla Built a Flying Car Before It Built the Roadster

On 15 October a Tesla Roadster drove up a ramp, hung upside down, flew and landed on its wheels. The car was promised for 2020. It is now promised for 2028. What a demonstration buys and what only delivery can.

Nikhil Sharma · अर्थनीति Arthanīti · 17 October 2026 · 4 min read

Fabulous.Media sells attention for a living. This column is about what attention can buy and what it cannot.

The car flew. That part was real. Everything after it is a promise.

On Thursday 15 October Tesla showed its new Roadster at a SpaceX test site near Waco in Texas. The car drove up a curved ramp, held on upside down with fans that suck it to the surface, fired compressed-air thrusters, rolled in the air and landed on its wheels. In a second run it jumped a row of cars and a semi-truck. Nobody was inside. Musk said that was to make sure nobody got killed.

Tesla claims 0 to 60 miles an hour in 0.81 seconds, a top speed above 230 and a range of more than 300 miles. There will be three versions. The one with what Tesla calls a full flight system is by invitation only. There is no price. Production, Tesla says, starts in 2028.

The car that was promised

This Roadster was first shown on 16 November 2017. Deliveries were promised for 2020 at a base price of $200,000. Buyers paid a $50,000 deposit to reserve one. The first thousand, the Founder’s Series, paid $250,000 up front.

Then the date moved. In 2021 it became 2023. In November 2025 Musk said 2027 or 2028. On Thursday it became 2028. Nine years after the first promise the car exists as a demonstration and as a reservation page.

A demonstration buys attention. Only delivery buys trust.

Who the show was for

Not for car buyers. Dan Ives, among the most bullish analysts on the stock, told CBS that the Roadster will not move volume or revenue in any meaningful way and that investors should not model it as a growth driver. He called it a statement of prestige six days before Tesla’s quarterly results.

The numbers explain why a statement was needed. Tesla delivered 1.64 million cars in 2025, 8.6 per cent fewer than in 2024 and the second annual fall in a row. BYD sold 2.26 million and passed it as the world’s largest maker of electric cars. In the third quarter of this year Tesla delivered 486,532 cars, about 2 per cent fewer than a year earlier.

And there is the other company on stage. The car was built with SpaceX engineers, at a SpaceX site, with rocket hardware on a car. SpaceX went public in June at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. Bloomberg read the event as the latest hint that Musk wants the two closer still. A flying car is a good advertisement for that idea. It is a poor advertisement for buying a Model Y.

Nobody knows who regulates it

The FAA told CBS the car does not meet its definition of an aircraft. The road regulator lets carmakers certify their own safety and did not comment. A senior official at the US transport department doubted it would take off at all and admitted nobody could say who would oversee it. Tesla’s own website says the flying model is not approved for public roads. Musk himself called it “not necessarily a safety optimized car”.

That is not a detail. A product that no authority has agreed to look at is a product nobody can promise a date for. Not even its maker.

What an Indian business should take from it

Tesla opened in India in 2025. By 2 October it had sold 1,017 cars here in thirteen months, at ₹50.89 lakh to ₹61.99 lakh each. The Indian buyer was not sold by a flying car. He was sold by a showroom, a test drive and a delivery date that held.

That is the lesson for anyone who sells here. A demonstration is a loan against your reputation. It is repaid in deliveries. Musk can carry a nine-year loan because the market lends to him at a rate nobody else gets. An Indian founder who misses a date by a quarter has not had a delay. In the customer’s mind he has had a default.

So do the boring thing first. Ship the car. Then fly it.

The engineering on Thursday was real and some of it will matter: the suction fans that pin a car to the road, the steer-by-wire, thrusters that Musk says will help it brake and corner. I hope the Roadster arrives. I have put a date on whether the flying one does, in the essay that sits beside this column, [Elon Musk Sells the Future in Instalments](/soch/vimarsh/elon-musk-sells-the-future-in-instalments).

Gurugram, 17 October 2026.

Sources, checked 17 October 2026. The demonstration, the venue, the variants and the 2028 date: CBS News, Fox Business, Euronews and Dezeen, 15 and 16 October 2026. The 0.81-second claim is Tesla’s and has not been independently tested. The FAA, the transport department and Dan Ives: CBS News. Musk on safety: Axios, 16 October 2026. The 2017 promise, deposits and delays: Wikipedia, Tesla Roadster (second generation)). Annual deliveries and BYD: CBT News, 5 January 2026. Third-quarter deliveries: Electrek, 2 October 2026. The SpaceX listing: Wikipedia, Initial public offering of SpaceX. The merger reading: Bloomberg, 15 October 2026. Tesla in India: Autocar Professional, 3 October 2026, from Vahan data.