With flying Roadster, Tesla waves goodbye to the car business
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Elon Musk's spectacular unveiling of a flying, rocket-powered Tesla Roadster Thursday night could be seen as a boisterous farewell to Tesla, the car company.
Why it matters: The Roadster is a dazzling celebration of automotive engineering, but Musk increasingly envisions a future in which humans don't drive at all — and Tesla is more an AI and robotics company than an automaker.
The big picture: With speculation mounting about a possible Tesla-SpaceX merger, the Roadster offers a tantalizing glimpse of how the two companies' technologies might intersect.
- Tesla's first Roadster, introduced nearly 20 years ago, helped launch the electric vehicle revolution by proving that EVs could be fast, sexy and fun.
- The new Roadster takes that idea to an almost absurd extreme, using SpaceX rocket technology and powerful suction fans to perform gravity-defying stunts.
- And while Tesla can still push the boundaries of automotive engineering, its mainstream vehicle lineup is aging, sales have struggled and Musk is increasingly focused on robotaxis, Optimus robots and artificial intelligence.
Between the lines: The Roadster is an extravagant tribute to the very thing Tesla is moving beyond: the thrill of driving.
- Musk told Thursday's audience the two-seater would be "the only manually driven car that Tesla makes" in the long term.
- And if you're only going to have one, he said, "let's take it to the limits, and way past the limits."
The intrigue: Thursday's demo arguably had little to do with selling cars.
- Not every version of the Roadster will be street legal. When someone shouted that question from the crowd, Musk replied with a playful joke.
- And he even had some fun while acknowledging the risks of driving a rocket-powered car.
"This is not necessarily a safety optimized car," Musk said Thursday. "But ... it takes the fun meter to 11 out of 10."
- "We'll just ride the limit of 'don't detach the retina of the human in the car,'" he added.
Reality check: For all its technological wizardry — a suction fan system and compressed-air thrusters — the Roadster isn't likely to generate much revenue for Tesla. Musk has said as much.
- Production isn't expected until 2028, and Tesla hasn't announced a final price.
- Meanwhile, Tesla faces more immediate challenges: defending its automotive market share and proving that its enormous bets on autonomy and robotics can pay off.
The bottom line: The original Roadster announced Tesla's arrival as a car company. The new one might be its most extravagant exit.
