Exactly how Tesla "flew" its new 230 mph car

The Roadster 2 seems to both suck and punch.

Last night, in a remarkable display, Tesla CEO Elon Musk proudly unveiled the Roadster 2 just nine years after it was first introduced and took it into flight. While undeniably impressive, you could describe the spectacle as Tesla taking its long-delayed luxury car "big leap" and then, as Buzz Lightyear put it, "falling with grace."

During the unveiling in McGregor, Texas, at SpaceX's Rocket Development and Test Center, the two-seater Roadster 2 launched its way across the entire production line, shooting from 0 to 60 mph in less than a second before driving in reverse down a long ramp to mid-air and back using the ground. Thrusters

All of this was pure gold for social clips (although at the time of publication, Tesla's stock price was down after the event), but how did Tesla pull off its new EV prototype? Ahead of yesterday's event, Tesla's head of automotive engineering, Lars Moravi, went into detail with Hagerty's lifestyle car and insurance brand, explaining how the Roadster 2 will perform.

The Roadster 2 gravity demonstration in Texas used a combination of suction and rocket thrust.

Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's chief designer since 2008, designed the angular exterior. He also directed the aesthetics of the Cybertruck, the S, X, 3 and Y models, as well as the Semi. Blacked-out windows obscured the view inside the electric car, which carried no human driver anyway because, as Musk said, Tesla wanted "to make sure we didn't kill anyone" during the anti-gravity demonstration.

The Roadster 2 will be rear-wheel drive only, falling short of Tesla's all-wheel drive electric vehicle record. The two engines deliver more than one megawatt of power (1,341 hp) and more than 1,400 newton meters (Nm) of torque, meaning the car has more torque and power than a three-engine Plaid. But all this power only passes through the rear wheels.

According to Morawi, the car will be light, weighing just under 1,700 kg (less than 2 tons) and, despite its larger size, won't be significantly heavier than the original Roadster at 1,300 kg (1.4 tons).

Tesla claims a range of more than 300 miles for the Roadster, and hopes to reduce that average range to the EV by offering the fastest-charging battery the automaker has ever produced, which is said to be able to charge from 15 to 80 percent in 10 minutes.

At an auction in 2013, Elon Musk bought the iconic "Wet Nellie" Lotus Spirit S1 submarine from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me for just $1 million. Musk is so enamored with his gang memorabilia that it apparently inspired one of Roadster 2's main abilities.

The Bond submarine has four propellers on its back, so Tesla decided to use it with four 20kW fans on the Roadster 2. These fans defy the laws of tire physics, Morawi says, and by becoming what Tesla calls the car's "suction system," they dramatically increase the electric vehicle's traction. Four independent replaceable side skirts allow the Roadster 2 to stick (or suck) to the road at lower speeds, where its aerodynamic wings still don't contribute to downforce. Morawi claims the system can generate more than two Gs in a corner when accelerating, even below 50 mph.

This type of aerodynamic manipulation is also seen in the McMurtry Spéirling Pure, which uses two high-speed electric fans that spin at a maximum speed of 23,000 rpm to actively suck air from under the chassis and generate up to 2,000 kg (about 4,400 pounds) of air.

This strong suction allows the Roadster 2 to climb the vertical ramp at the Texas rally and even stay on the surface upside down.

So how does the Roadster 2 float, right itself and mitigate its fall? That's thanks to what Tesla calls the "SpaceX System," referring to Musk's aerospace company, which helped with that part of the car's development.

Initially, the roadster was supposed to have a 2+2 cabin. It's now a two-seater, as behind the seats is a 200-liter carbon-coated pressure vessel (COPV) that holds up to 10,000 PSI to power the car's cold-gas thrusters, which use the expansion of pressurized nitrogen gas to generate thrust, a technology primarily used to stabilize spacecraft. Cold gas thrusters are the simplest form of a rocket engine.

This combination of intake and thrusters helps the car to accelerate from zero to 60 mph in less than one second. In this launch mode, Morawi says the thrusters produce more than 80 kilonewtons of thrust, which surprisingly matches the Dassault Falcon 10X jet. Tesla apparently failed in the second sub-race, with the aforementioned McMurtry Spéirling Pure managing the feat in just 1.3 seconds. During this stunning acceleration, the driver endures up to 5 Gs.

The Performance Roadster 2 will be aspirated and powerless, so 0-60 takes a touch longer in 1.6 seconds and a top speed of 210 mph. The Thrust model gets the full package and a top speed of 230 mph.

Morawi says the "flight system," as he calls it in the Haggerty manual, requires another 400-liter cold-gas COPV, which takes up the passenger seat space, single-seats the vehicle and brings total thrust fuel to 600 liters. This "flight system" also requires six additional thrusters: one in each corner, plus two in the front for yaw.

Unlike space, where cold gas thrusters provide constant levels of thrust until the last drop of fuel is used, on Earth the "flight system" loses thrust as compressed gas depletes. Morawi likens it to blowing up a balloon and then letting the air out: "When I open the end of a balloon, all the gas comes out and at a certain point, it starts to deflate. The same thing will happen here."

The Roadster 2 requires 6 additional thrusters around the vehicle to operate the "flight system".

It reportedly takes the Tesla Six up to seven hours to fill its 600-liter nitrogen tanks, but the company is reportedly working on a system that will dramatically reduce that time to 30 minutes.

Prototypes of the Roadster 2 will be used for further development, and production won't begin until 2028 — but remember that Musk has previously said that Roadster deliveries will begin in 2020, so take this with a grain of salt. That's without talking about how the FAA will react to this "flying" car.

However, for Tesla loyalists, a reservation page is currently live where a reservation fee of $5,000 is guaranteed for the Performance Edition, with an additional $45,000 available within 10 days. Thrust is available for an initial cost of $5,000, with a whopping $245,000 available within 10 days.