The car features an underbody suction fan and compressed-air, cold-gas thrusters that make it capable of remarkable feats like a below-1-second, 0 - 60 mph acceleration and aerial acrobatics. However, while Musk has said the flying Roadster will be “a car that someone can own,” and “it’s going to be pretty pretty wild that you can have a rocket car,” he also made it clear that he is not sure it is legal in all jurisdictions.
Why Tesla’s Roadster 2 lands in a legal gray area
The Roadster has three variants –– Performance, Thrust and Rocket. The Rocket version was demonstrated on Thursday, and its design and functionality place it in a legal gray area, between two vastly different regulatory structures.
For a car to be deemed “street-legal” in the United States, it must comply with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and the Roadster’s thrusters might make this hard.
Standard cars require a crumple zone — parts designed to deform, bend and collapse in a controlled way during a collision, like front bumpers –– for passenger and pedestrian safety. The Roadster 2, however, features high-pressure gas tanks, aerospace-grade valves and protruding air nozzles along the perimeter that may violate these conventional road-safety blueprints.
Tesla’s official Roadster product page includes a disclaimer stating the vehicle is “not approved for public road use.” And Musk described it as “not necessarily a safety-optimized car.”
A NHTSA spokesperson told Business Insider that “while the vehicle may appear to defy the laws of physics, the manufacturer must ensure that it does not defy applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and drivers must obey all local traffic laws.”
In aviation, a vehicle truly capable of leaving the ground falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). However, the FAA has indicated that the thruster-equipped Roadster does not fit its standard definition of an aircraft. “The Tesla vehicle does not meet the FAA’s definition of an aircraft,” an FAA spokesperson said to Business Insider.
While the FAA is actively building frameworks for the rising eVTOL [electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing] sector — such as flying air taxis and advanced cargo drones — the Roadster’s rocket-like “hopping” mechanism does not fit into these sustained-flight categories.
