DOMINANT ANGLE
Pretoria weighs the Roadster against the backdrop of Wall Street: a technical showcase with no immediate commercial value, in the service of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
The Roadster, unveiled Thursday near Waco (Texas), jumped over a truck thanks to cold gas thrusters developed with SpaceX.
- 02
Production is announced for 2028, and the car is expected to go from 0 to 100 km/h in under one second and reach a top speed of 370 km/h according to Musk (The Citizen).
- 03
Gene Munster (Deepwater) calls it a demonstration with no commercial value; Seth Goldstein (Morningstar) sees it as Tesla's future "halo car".
ANALYSIS
Pretoria, 16 October 2026. The South African press, which largely reproduces international dispatches, treats the Roadster as a stock market event as much as a mechanical one. Moneyweb opens with this formula: Tesla hopes that a demonstration in flight "can give its ground-bound auto business a lift", or give a boost to an automotive business stuck on the ground.
On Thursday, at a SpaceX test site near Waco, Texas, and live on the Internet, the two-seater white car drove upside down on a ramp thanks to a suction system, pivoted in the air, then jumped over a truck and other vehicles thanks to cold gas thrusters. According to The Citizen, Elon Musk launched that "flying cars are real", specified that success "is not guaranteed" but that it "will probably work", and that the vehicle had no driver "to be sure not to kill anyone". He described ten thrusters and high-pressure air tanks, a 0 to 100 km/h in less than one second and a top speed of 370 km/h.
The calendar remains the sensitive point: production is not expected before 2028, more than a decade after the first presentation of a new generation version. TimesLIVE and Business Day, which publish the same text, insist on the financial context: Tesla is turning to autonomous driving and robotics, and its third-quarter results are due in a few days, which matters more to investors according to analysts.
The quoted voices are those of analysts. Gene Munster, of Deepwater Asset Management, judges on X that it was "an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional carmakers" and sees it as another reason why Musk wants to bring Tesla and SpaceX closer together. Seth Goldstein, of Morningstar, recalls that Tesla has no "halo car" and that the Roadster must play this role. Musk himself had qualified the car in 2023 as a "small potato situation" in financial terms.
Moneyweb places the model in a narrow range around two mid-range mass-market models. The articles do not give prices or volumes, and the local dimension, South African market or regulation, is not addressed.
