Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of cold gas thrusters. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show we're talking about the most recent Tesla Roadster reveal and why that car even exists in the first place. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 seconds on The Verge for Thursday, October 22nd, 2026.
President Trump loves renaming a body of water, and now he is apparently interested in rebranding, get this, the Atlantic Ocean. He said at a rally on Wednesday night that he reached out to Google CEO Sundar Pichai to feel him out about changing the name to either Trump or America Ocean. Seriously, that's a real thing that happened. Anyway, it appears Pichai said no, which means Google's moral compass points to somewhere between a great lake and an ocean. Actually, what Pichai said, according to Trump, was, "Please don't ask us to do that." Anyway, Trump is still pushing to change New Mexico to New America and says he wants a river and an ocean. So, I guess Pacific, watch your back.
Meanwhile, 1Password just announced a new feature that lets AI agents sign into your accounts without actually accessing your passwords directly. This is a big deal. Using an AI agent requires trusting that agent with an incredible amount of data and autonomy, and it's encouraging to see companies try to lessen that a little bit, whether it's payments or passwords or anything else. Attaching AI to systems you already trust is just better than constantly asking you to trust new systems. This should also make using agents quite a bit easier going forward, since you might not have to log in directly to everything all over again. 1Password's UI seems kind of complicated, but this is still a step in a good direction.
Finally, Oppo just launched the world's first 200-megapixel camera phone called the Find X10 Pro Max. The Verge's Dominic Preston has used the thing and seems impressed by it. Most of us will never actually be able to buy this device, but this is yet another sign that there are still huge smartphone camera improvements to be had on all of our devices. I hope eventually. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That is 90 seconds on The Verge for Thursday, October 22nd.
So last week Tesla held an event after delaying it a couple of times to show off the new Tesla Roadster, and it kind of did that. But mostly what it did was show a pretty remarkable demo of a car that could climb up a wall, go vertical upside down, and then fly down to the ground. They showed one that could flip and jump over a bunch of other cars. Does that car bear any resemblance to the actual new Tesla Roadster that may or frankly may not ship at some point? Who knows? We didn't actually get all that much new information at this event, but what we did see was a pretty cool demo. And frankly, I just want to talk about it.
But before we get into it, just a quick disclaimer that we should probably do before we talk about Elon Musk on this show, which is that I think there are a lot of problematic things about him as a person and a lot of problematic things about the things that he does. And yet, it is still true that his companies are massively influential and his products are often very successful, and sometimes we have to talk about them. So we're going to try to be as straightforward about the pros and cons of all of this and about the Elon of it all, but we do have to talk about it. So with that, Andy Hawkins is going to come on. Let's get into it.
Andy Hawkins, welcome back to the show.
Sometimes we get to talk about wild, weird things like bike buses, and then every once in a while we get to talk about really boring things like flying cars.
The bike bus won an Emmy.
That's true. Congratulations, Emmy-winning Andy Hawkins. I should start introducing you this way.
Yes. The Verge editor, Emmy winner, bike bus champion, Andy Hawkins.
So, we're here to talk about the Tesla Roadster, which I think is one of the strangest car stories in recent memory, culminating in this big event last week where the car did or did not flip, did or did not fly, was or was not a car. We'll talk about all those things, but first I want to just speed through the history of the Roadster, because the Roadster is actually a really interesting car in the whole history of Tesla. So give me a sense, just sort of very briefly, of what the Roadster has meant to Tesla over the course of its history. There's now a real generation and a fake generation. Run me through the Roadster so far.
Absolutely. So the Roadster was noteworthy because it was Tesla's first car. It was sort of this proof of concept that an electric-powered sports car could find an audience. And so when Tesla first got started, the Roadster was that first product. It was sort of their halo vehicle. That then led into the flagship vehicle, which was the Model S. And then in 2017, while the company was introducing the semi-truck for the first time...
Oh yeah. Forgot about the semi.
Yeah. We'll get back to that. Elon came on stage and did his "one more thing" thing that Steve Jobs obviously made famous, and brought out what they were calling at the time the second-generation Roadster. Design-wise, it looked a little sleeker, but I think what was really impressive to a lot of people at that 2017 event was that this was going to be the end-all, be-all of electric supercars. There wasn't much of an electric supercar market at the time in 2017, and so Tesla was going to come in and build this electric second-generation Roadster and really kind of just make a statement about electric supercars.
And this was going to have, you know, a 0-to-60 time in perhaps less than one second and a 600-mile battery range, and just all these things that on the surface seemed outlandish. But I think at the time, a lot of people believed Tesla was sort of viewed as being somewhat able to make it happen, right? They were in the midst of the Model 3 rollout, which, despite the production snags, was looking like it was going to be a real hit for the company. So I think the company had a lot of goodwill at the time, and so people were willing to believe that this next-generation Roadster would indeed roll out in 2020, which was the initial promise.
Right. Spoiler alert: it didn't happen.
It did not happen. That date got pushed many, many times. And now we're, you know, nine years later after that initial announcement of the second-generation Roadster, and we got a demo of an entirely different car with an entirely different set of capabilities, and now a theoretical 2028 production time. So I think it's, you know, sort of... and obviously Tesla as a company, Elon Musk as the CEO, much different place than he was in 2017. I think that the goodwill is gone, but still people are very excited, and then we got this demo that we saw last week.
So obviously Tesla is famous for dates that do not come true. Do you chalk the Roadster up to normal Tesla delays? I feel like nothing from Tesla has ever shipped on time. Or is there something different about this Roadster that it took nine years? Like, looking at the car we've seen now, is there a reason that's obvious that it took nine more years than we thought it might?
I think it's probably a combination of the insane level of expectations that Elon Musk apparently was delivering to his engineering team. Like, he just kept upping the ante as these deadlines would slip past, right? Like, "Oh, it's late again. I'm so sorry, but now it's going to be even faster. Oh, it's late yet again, but now it's going to fly." And so I think...
Those are two things that literally happened, by the way. Those are not hypothetical examples.
Well, we'll get to that too. But I do think that with the deadlines passing and Tesla just missing all of its promises to these reservation holders — people who were putting down $50,000, upwards of $250,000 to reserve one of the founder editions of the Roadster. These are essentially interest-free loans to the company that they were able to do whatever they wanted with. They had to keep sort of upping the ante and making the car seem even more ludicrous than it was. So I do think that it was a combination of this engineering challenge that Elon was creating for his team, but also I think the car just became less interesting, right? They were in the midst of Model 3 and Model Y production.
Then the Cybertruck came along, and then the Cybercab, and then AI and the Optimus robot, and all these other things cropped up in the interim that shifted into the center of the focus, whereas the Roadster just got pushed further and further back — it was almost out of range for a lot of people. And also in the interim, we now have an electric supercar market. There's the Rimac, and there's Bugattis that can go insanely fast, and there are these hypercars and these low-volume cars and all these other crazy engineering feats that all these other companies have come along to supplant and replace the Roadster in a lot of people's imaginations. So I do think it was a combination of the engineering challenge being insane, and then also the Roadster just kind of got less relevant as the years slipped past.
I think you just made the launch event make sense to me, right? Because I think if you're at a point where you're like, "Okay, this car is super late, and the stakes for it have gone up over time, but also we are launching this into a market that is going to be much less impressed by the car we showed them nine years ago. We have to blow everybody's minds if we want to live up to expectations." This is how you get the launch event.
So, last Thursday, this all builds to this big reveal that I think was supposed to happen a month ago. Even the launch events for the delayed cars get delayed. Tell me about this launch event.
Yeah. So, you know, it was undeniably pretty rad. I've witnessed many, many Tesla events over the years.
Tesla events are famously pretty awkward. It's like they always are really late. It's Elon being kind of weird. He's many things, but he's not a particularly charismatic speaker. We got the famous incident of the Cybertruck with the broken window. Well, that one was great. That one is like an all-time live demo moment. But this one...
Yeah, but I think that speaks to the awkwardness that you're referring to.
Yes. Very much so. Yeah. And so I think my expectations for what these things are going to be in terms of razzle-dazzle are very low, and this one feels like it was just all razzle-dazzle.
Yeah, absolutely. It was a party trick, and it was a really impressive party trick at that. But I do think that aside from the fact that it was just a demo, once the next day sort of dawned, people were like, "Wait a second." And a lot of things started — people started realizing a lot of things about that demo.
Oh yeah. So what we saw was a pretty absurd specs list: 0-to-60 under a second, cold gas SpaceX thrusters allegedly enabling sort of this flight that we saw, which I think is more of a graceful landing than a flight.
Falling with style. I don't know how nobody — maybe I'm the only one watching Toy Story right now — but I watch that thing and I'm like, this is Buzz Lightyear flying through the living room, falling with style. Like, this is what this is.
That's the best. That's not flying. Falling with style. That is the best analogy. All the parents out there will immediately get what you're talking about.
Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, so it can hop, right? So one of the demos was the Roadster sort of drove up to a line of Tesla's other models, right? The Model 3, the Model Y, the Cybercab, the Cybertruck, and the Semi, and it hopped up over and then did a kickflip over the cars and then landed on the other side. Arguably very cool, very cool thing.
Apparently, all the people that were there — The Verge was not there, unfortunately. We don't get invited to these events by Tesla anymore because we're, I guess, too critical of the company. But everyone that was there seemed like they were very impressed by it. I guess everyone had to wear ear protection because these cold gas thrusters are extremely loud. And I should also note that the car did drive up a vertical ramp and then also upside down, where it stayed for a second before flipping off the edge of the ramp and then landing again.
So there was, I think, a couple things that we need to note. There's obviously the SpaceX thrusters and the ultra-high-pressure air compression tanks that they have in the vehicle. But then there's also a separate technology, which is this fan technology that they're using, which I think is actually really interesting. You know, they're using the fans to create a lot of downforce that sort of basically glues the car to the road. That's how they were able to achieve the vertical party trick and then also driving upside down.
This is a technology that exists, right? We've seen some other proof of concepts, some other science experiments around fan cars as a way to improve acceleration time, improve handling and grip in cornering, and performance in race situations. So I think that what they are seizing on here is something that has been proven before, and I think that they're sort of taking it to that next level in the way that Tesla does, which is very interesting.
So, okay, at the risk of asking a really stupid question: that car you just described, what actual resemblance does that bear to the actual Tesla Roadster that might actually exist someday in the future? Like, the debate on the internet has gone all the way from "this is the Tesla Roadster people will be able to buy, oh my god, it flies" — that's clearly not correct. They said this car is not road legal. People were screenshotting videos of the bottom where there's just nothing in the car. Like, this is not the Roadster people will buy on the road. It's also not just a completely separate science experiment, as far as I can tell. So what is it? What car did we see doing all of these tricks?
There's not a ton of information about the actual car that was used in the demo. Although we did catch a glimpse of that bottom that you spoke of, where it did seem that the car was basically missing its entire battery. And if that's the case, the car would obviously not be weighed down. EV batteries are incredibly heavy, the heaviest part of the car for the most part. And I think if they were removing that, it raises some serious questions about the thrust and the flying and the SpaceX thrusters, because I think what they're showing is a car that's not the car that they purported to actually sell to people.
And the intimation was that this is the Roadster, right? They were not like, "Look at this cool thing we did." They were like, "Here's the Tesla Roadster."
Correct. Yeah. It wasn't until after the event that the website updated and that we got some details about the different trim levels. They didn't really give any of that information out at the event itself. But there was actually — so what we got, and there was also a couple of videos. Hagerty put out a video interviewing Tesla's engineering executives as well as a couple of other outlets, and they went into a little bit more detail about the technology behind this. So you can tell that we're not entirely dealing with smoke and mirrors here. There is some real tech that's backing some of this up.
But what I do think is important to note is that that rocket trim, the one that they showed off doing the party tricks, flipping off of the ramp, jumping up over the rest of Tesla's lineup — that's the supposed rocket trim that will be available invite-only. They say also, fine print, not legal for public use. So, I mean, it's just sort of like it's kind of all right there, right? You won't be able to just buy one. Even if you are like the wealthiest person in the world, you won't be able to just buy one. You need to have some sort of connection to Tesla to get one of these invites, and who knows how many of those are going to go out. And then when you do have it, you can't drive it anywhere, or you at least can't use this party trick with the thrusters.
So, you know, sorry to everyone who posted an AI-generated video of themselves in a Tesla Roadster leaping over traffic and gridlock. It's a nice idea, but it will never exist in real life. You'll never see any of these out on the road doing this stuff. I think of them a little bit like Formula 1 cars in the sense that, like, is it in some ways a real vehicle? Sure. Are you ever going to see one on a road near you? No. Right? Like, they exist for a purpose. They are sort of the shape of a car, but they do not exist to do car things, and that's fine. The only part that I find frustrating is the intimation that, yes, this is the Tesla Roadster you've been waiting for for nine years. That's where you lose me.
Right, yeah, the messaging was very muddled. And I mean, that's classic Tesla, right? Where they sell a product called Full Self-Driving that is not actual full self-driving, that ten years ago they told us would drive coast to coast without even needing to charge.
Exactly. The real ones remember.
But I think, like, to me, the thing that really just was the icing on the cake of this whole thing was if you look at the terms and conditions of the new Roadster, which also updated the website and that was posted as well. Right there, I think it was number four out of all the terms — it was only a two-page document. Number four basically said Tesla does not guarantee that it will deliver the version of the car you ordered, or that it will deliver any version of the car that you ordered.
They are already absolving themselves of missing deadlines, missing production timelines. I just don't understand how anyone could have any sort of trust in this company that this car will eventually come out, when they've already missed nine years of deadlines, and now they are sort of just openly admitting in their own terms and conditions, their own legalese, that this car may never see the light of day. So it's just — I don't know. I've lost the ability to be shocked by Tesla, but I am still somewhat shocked by this.
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Did we learn anything about the actual Roadster? The car that they claim is going to start shipping to people who bought it nine years ago in 2028. Did we get any new information about the actual street car?
That car is dead. I mean, that version of the car that we saw in 2017 — there were some prototypes made. The one that people were initially putting down deposits for, that's gone. That is not going to be in production anymore.
