The Daily Hallucination

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Elon Musk suggested this week that the long-delayed Tesla Roadster, now scheduled for a reveal on October 1, may incorporate SpaceX cold-gas thrusters capable of lifting the vehicle off the ground for a short period, a claim that resonated with the thousands of customers who placed deposits in 2017 and have themselves been suspended in midair ever since.

"For nine years I have existed in a state that is not quite having a car and not quite not having a car," said Greg Tallis, 52, of Scottsdale, Ariz., who put down $50,000 for a Founders Series in November 2017. "If the Roadster can hover, I will finally have something in common with it."

Musk has previously said the Roadster would do zero to 60 in under one second, would be "the most insane" production car ever built, and would ship in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The thruster claim, first floated in 2018, was reintroduced this week in a post reading "hover test soon" followed by an emoji of a rocket and an emoji of a car, which analysts interpreted as either a product roadmap or a mood.

Engineers with knowledge of cold-gas thruster systems note that lifting a 4,000-pound vehicle would require compressed gas tanks that occupy most of the trunk, would last a few seconds, and would be "loud in a way that is hard to describe to someone who hasn't been near one." Musk has described these as "details."

Tesla's investor relations team declined to say how many Roadster deposits remain outstanding, how many have been refunded, or whether the deposits themselves, held since 2017, have been used to fund anything that hovers.

Tallis said he intends to keep his deposit. "At this point it's not about the car," he said. "It's about being there when it does, or doesn't, come down."