Two days after Tesla rolled a production-intent Roadster off a launch ramp and into a brief, thruster-assisted flight, the loudest reaction in the hypercar world did not come from a rival CEO dismissing the stunt. It came from Bugatti Rimac chief executive Mate Rimac, who told reporters his own engineers had quietly run the same experiment six years earlier. According to MotorBiscuit, Rimac said his team “did a whole project in 2020 to add the cold thrusters” to a planned successor for the Rimac Nevera, the 1,914-horsepower electric hypercar that still holds a string of production EV speed records.
The admission reframes a story that, until October 17, 2026, looked like a one-company spectacle. Tesla unveiled its SpaceX-built cold-gas thruster package on October 15, 2026, in Texas, promising sub-one-second 0-60 mph runs and a short, controlled flight. Now the narrative includes a second data point: a major European hypercar maker explored nearly identical hardware years before Elon Musk’s team brought it to a stage, and shelved it for reasons that say as much about engineering trade-offs as about marketing timing.
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Rimac’s 2020 Thruster Project, in His Own Words
Speaking publicly after the Roadster reveal, Rimac did not treat Tesla’s thrusters as a novelty. According to MotorBiscuit’s report, he said: “And then the second part of it is the cold thrusters, and here we did a whole project in 2020 to add the cold thrusters to the Nevera.” The clarification matters: the thrusters were never meant for the Nevera currently in customer hands. They were designed for whatever came after it.
Rimac described the packaging concept in similarly plain terms, saying the plan called for storing compressed-air tanks in the vehicle’s boot. The ambition behind the project was bold even by hypercar standards. “The idea was to have all of this in the Nevera’s successor to go less than one second (from) 0 to 60 and do the flying and all of that,” Rimac said, according to MotorBiscuit. That is nearly the exact pitch Tesla made on stage in Texas, five years later and an ocean away.
What the 2020 project never became is just as important as what it was. Reporting on Rimac’s comments does not establish that the thruster system was built, bench-tested, or fitted to a prototype. It also does not establish a production date, retail price, or finalized specification for a thruster-equipped Nevera successor. The project appears to have remained a simulation and packaging exercise rather than a hardware program that reached the shop floor.
Why Bugatti Rimac Chose the Tourbillon Instead
If the physics pencilled out, why did the project disappear? Rimac’s answer points to a familiar constraint in a company running two brands under one roof: limited engineering bandwidth. “But then, we started working on the Tourbillon V16 naturally aspirated, and we can’t do so many things in parallel, so we had to prioritize, and we prioritized that,” Rimac said, per MotorBiscuit. The Bugatti Tourbillon, built around a naturally aspirated V16, became the flagship program that absorbed the resources a thruster-equipped Nevera successor would have needed.
That decision is a useful data point for anyone trying to understand how a dual-brand, resource-constrained automaker allocates engineering talent. Bugatti Rimac is not short on ambition or technical depth; Rimac himself has spoken admiringly about the scale of Elon Musk’s ventures, telling Teslarati in an earlier interview that people underestimate what Musk’s companies are attempting. But even a well-funded, vertically integrated manufacturer has to choose one moonshot at a time. Tesla, backed by a sister company that builds orbital rockets for a living, did not face the same either-or choice.
What Tesla Actually Unveiled on October 15
Tesla’s event, delayed multiple times before landing on October 15, 2026, introduced a production-intent Roadster with three configurations. The base model is a standard high-performance EV. The “Thrust” trim is a two-seat, race-oriented version with rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters designed to push 0-60 mph below one second, with a figure of 0.81 seconds cited in early coverage. The “Rocket” trim is a single-seat, invitation-only variant with ten total thruster nozzles distributed around the car, built for attitude control maneuvers including rotation and brief, low-altitude flight rather than ordinary road use.
The hardware behind the spectacle traces back to a concept Musk first floated in 2018. A tweet at the time described a “SpaceX option package” with roughly ten small rocket thrusters arranged around the car, built on composite overwrapped pressure vessels, or COPVs — the same tank technology SpaceX uses for spacecraft and Falcon 9 maneuvering systems. That lineage is detailed in a Kelley Blue Book explainer published around the original announcement. Tesla’s SpaceX-engineered hardware uses compressed air rather than combustible rocket fuel, a distinction that separates the system from an actual rocket engine even as it borrows aerospace tank design.
Tesla engineering vice president Lars Moravy described the production system during the event, noting it draws from roughly 600 liters of compressed air, equal to about 250 kilograms of mass, to feed ten nozzles that can lift and spin the car. Four rear-mounted thrusters were reported to generate more than 80 kilonewtons of combined thrust, enough for the brief airborne maneuvers Tesla demonstrated, including a controlled barrel roll before the car returned to the ramp. A separate underbody fan-based suction system, also built with SpaceX, was said to generate up to two g of downforce, independent of the thruster package.
The Torque Math Rimac Says Tesla Still Has to Solve
Rimac’s skepticism is not about whether thrusters can add thrust. It is about what carrying them costs the rest of the car. “It is possible with thrusters. We did the simulation,” Rimac said, as reported by CarThrottle. But he immediately flagged the catch: a cold-gas burst is short. “Problem is, you release the air in two to three seconds and then you have a lot of dead weight that you are carrying around (tanks, compressor, valves, nozzles, etc.),” he said, per the same CarThrottle report.
Rimac also put a number on the conventional-drivetrain alternative. Hitting the acceleration figures Musk has described through wheel torque alone, without thrusters, would require roughly 30,000 Newton-meters of torque at the wheels, or about 22,000 lb-ft — a figure far beyond what current EV powertrains, including the Nevera’s, can deliver without help. That estimate, detailed further in Electrek’s breakdown of Rimac’s earlier public comments on the subject, is effectively an engineer’s way of saying the thrusters are not a gimmick stacked on top of an otherwise ordinary drivetrain. They are doing real, necessary work, at the cost of extra mass the car hauls around after the burst ends. Several independent engineering assessments have echoed that concern about the redundancy standards aerospace hardware typically requires compared with what a consumer road car can realistically carry.
Cold Gas vs. Combustion: Why Nobody Is Actually Strapping On a Rocket Engine
Tesla’s Compressed-Air Architecture
Tesla’s system is a cold-gas thruster setup, not a chemical rocket. Compressed air, stored in high-pressure composite tanks, is released through nozzles to generate thrust without combustion. This is the same basic principle used for small satellite maneuvering thrusters, scaled up and adapted to a two-ton road car. The appeal is simplicity and relative safety: no propellant to ignite, no exhaust plume beyond compressed air, and tank technology that is already mature thanks to SpaceX’s own COPV supply chain, discussed in detail in the reporting on the Roadster’s pressure-vessel engineering.
Rimac’s Proposed Nevera Successor Concept
Rimac’s 2020 proposal reportedly used the same cold-gas principle, which is part of why his reaction to Tesla’s unveiling carried technical weight rather than reading as a rival’s dismissal. The difference is that Rimac’s team stopped at simulation, while Tesla, with a sister company that builds and tests rocket hardware at industrial scale, pushed the concept through prototyping and into a public demonstration. The gap between the two companies was never really about who understood the physics. It was about who had a rocket company on speed dial.
Rimac’s 2020 Concept vs. Tesla’s 2026 Roadster
| Attribute | Bugatti Rimac 2020 Project | Tesla Roadster, Unveiled Oct. 15, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Development status | Internal simulation and packaging study; not built as a running prototype | Production-intent vehicle shown publicly with a working thruster demonstration |
| Target vehicle | Successor to the Rimac Nevera (not the current Nevera) | Next-generation Tesla Roadster, delayed roughly nine years from original timing |
| Thruster type | Cold-gas (compressed air), per Rimac’s public comments | Cold-gas (compressed air), engineered with SpaceX |
| Tank placement | Rear storage area (“the boot”), per Rimac | Composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), SpaceX-derived design |
| Claimed 0-60 mph target | Under one second | Under one second; 0.81 seconds cited for the Thrust configuration |
| Flight capability | Described as part of the original goal, never demonstrated publicly | Demonstrated briefly, including a controlled barrel roll |
| Reason project changed course | Engineering resources redirected to the Bugatti Tourbillon V16 program | Not applicable; Tesla proceeded through to a public reveal |
| Torque-only equivalent cited by Rimac | Roughly 30,000 Nm (about 22,000 lb-ft) to match acceleration without thrusters | Not publicly disclosed in available reporting |
A Timeline: From a 2018 Tweet to a 2026 Flight
The idea of strapping SpaceX hardware to a Tesla Roadster is not new. It has simply taken eight years, several delays, and one competitor’s quiet confession to arrive at a public demonstration. The sequence below, built from dated reporting across multiple outlets, shows how long this specific idea has been in circulation and how recently the competitive picture changed.
| Date | Development | Company |
|---|---|---|
| June 2018 | Elon Musk first describes a “SpaceX option package” with about 10 small rocket thrusters for the next Roadster | Tesla |
| 2020 | Internal project explores cold-gas thrusters for a Nevera successor; later paused for the Tourbillon program | Bugatti Rimac |
| Sept. 20, 2026 | Tesla sets an October 1 target date for the delayed Roadster reveal, its latest in a string of delays | Tesla |
| Oct. 15, 2026 | Production-intent Roadster unveiled with Thrust and Rocket thruster configurations | Tesla |
| Oct. 16, 2026 | Detailed specs emerge on nozzle count, air volume, and suction-fan downforce | Tesla |
| Oct. 17, 2026 | Mate Rimac publicly discloses the 2020 thruster project in reaction to the reveal | Bugatti Rimac |
Market Impact: A Credibility Boost Tesla Didn’t Have to Buy
For a company that has absorbed years of criticism over Roadster delays, Rimac’s comments function as an unintentional endorsement. When a rival hypercar maker says it considered the same approach and ran the same simulations, it tells the market the concept is not an Elon Musk fantasy sketched on a napkin. It is an engineering path serious competitors evaluated independently and found technically credible, even if they judged it impractical for their own roadmap at the time.
That matters for how investors and enthusiasts read Tesla’s claims heading into a planned 2028 manufacturing start. Skepticism about the Roadster’s performance figures has followed the car through years of physics-based pushback, much of it centered on whether a thruster-assisted sprint time reflects a repeatable production spec or a one-off demonstration run. Rimac’s disclosure does not resolve that debate, but it shifts its framing: the question is no longer whether the physics work in principle. Rimac already said they do. The remaining question is whether Tesla can productionize the hardware at scale, with the reliability and regulatory clearance a shipping car needs, in a way Bugatti Rimac judged not worth the engineering trade-off in 2020.
Competitive Landscape: Who Else Is Playing in This Space
Bugatti Rimac occupies a unique position in this story because it operates two brands with very different performance philosophies under one roof. The Nevera chases EV speed records with a four-motor, 1,914-horsepower drivetrain and no thrusters. The Tourbillon chases a different kind of record, built around a naturally aspirated V16 engine that leans into combustion-era engineering rather than compressed-air novelty. Both approaches compete for the same ultra-wealthy buyer that Tesla is now courting with the Roadster’s SpaceX-derived package.
Other hypercar makers have stayed quiet on thrusters specifically, but the broader acceleration arms race is intensifying across the segment. Pure-EV rivals continue to push wheel-torque-based acceleration figures toward their physical limits, which is precisely the ceiling Rimac’s 30,000-Nm estimate describes. Tesla’s bet is that bypassing that ceiling with aerospace hardware, rather than squeezing more torque out of conventional motors, is the more efficient path to the next performance milestone. Rimac’s team concluded the opposite was worth prioritizing in 2020, choosing a V16 combustion program over a thruster program. Both companies were solving for the same sub-one-second target; they simply picked different tools.
Historical Context: Hypercars Have Always Borrowed From Aerospace
Pulling ideas from aerospace into road cars is not a new habit for the hypercar segment. Carbon-fiber monocoques, active aerodynamics, and underbody ground-effect techniques all migrated from racing and aviation programs before landing in road-legal hypercars. What makes the thruster story different is the directness of the borrowing: this is not an aerodynamic principle adapted for a car’s shape. It is literal rocket-adjacent hardware, COPV tanks and all, installed in a vehicle meant to drive on public roads part of the time.
That directness is also why Rimac’s 2020 project is a meaningful historical marker. It shows the idea was not unique to a company with an in-house rocket division. A hypercar maker without a sister aerospace company reached a similar conclusion about the physics independently, using its own simulation tools, years before Tesla brought the hardware to market. The difference in outcome came down to resource allocation and risk appetite, not a gap in engineering insight.
What Comes Next: Five Predictions
- Expect Bugatti Rimac to field direct questions about reviving the shelved 2020 thruster concept for a future Nevera successor, now that the Tourbillon program is further along and engineering bandwidth may free up.
- Expect continued scrutiny of Tesla’s 0.81-second and sub-one-second claims as independent reviewers attempt to separate demonstration-run performance from a validated, repeatable production spec ahead of the 2028 manufacturing target.
- Expect other hypercar makers to publicly address whether they explored similar aerospace-adjacent hardware, following the pattern Rimac set by volunteering the comparison rather than waiting to be asked.
- Expect regulatory bodies overseeing both road-vehicle safety and compressed-gas systems to face new questions about certifying thruster-equipped consumer vehicles, an area with little existing precedent.
- Expect the “dead weight” critique Rimac raised, the mass of tanks, compressors, valves, and nozzles that remains after a short thruster burst, to become a standard engineering counterpoint whenever thruster-assisted acceleration claims are discussed going forward.
The Engineering Hurdles Still Ahead for Both Companies
Even with a working demonstration behind it, Tesla’s thruster package faces the same dead-weight problem Rimac flagged for his own abandoned concept. A car that carries tanks, a compressor, valves, and ten nozzles for a two-to-three-second burst is hauling that hardware around for the rest of the drive, every trip, whether the thrusters fire or not. Managing that mass penalty without compromising handling, battery range, or crash structure is a harder problem than firing the thrusters once on a stage in Texas.
For Bugatti Rimac, the hurdle is different: deciding whether a thruster-equipped Nevera successor is still worth pursuing now that a competitor has proven the public demonstration is achievable. Rimac’s comments suggest the company’s engineers already believe the simulation math holds up. What is unresolved is whether reviving the project would pull resources away from the Tourbillon program a second time, or whether Bugatti Rimac is willing to let Tesla own this particular spectacle while it focuses on combustion-era engineering for its flagship.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Bugatti build a thruster-equipped car before Tesla?
No. Mate Rimac described an internal 2020 project at Bugatti Rimac that explored cold-gas thrusters for a future Nevera successor. Available reporting does not confirm that a running prototype, flight test, or production vehicle resulted from that project.
Was the 2020 project for the current Rimac Nevera?
No. Rimac specified the thruster concept was intended for the Nevera’s successor, a future model, not the Nevera currently sold to customers.
Why did Bugatti Rimac stop working on the thruster project?
Rimac said the company redirected engineering resources toward the Bugatti Tourbillon, a naturally aspirated V16 hypercar program, because it could not pursue both programs in parallel.
How is Tesla’s thruster system different from a rocket engine?
Tesla’s system uses cold-gas thrusters powered by compressed air rather than combustible rocket propellant. The tanks are composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), a design borrowed from SpaceX’s spacecraft hardware, but no combustion is involved.
What acceleration figures has Tesla claimed for the Roadster?
Reporting around the October 15, 2026 unveiling cited sub-one-second 0-60 mph performance for the thruster-equipped Thrust configuration, with a figure of 0.81 seconds mentioned in early coverage of the event.
What was Mate Rimac’s main criticism of the thruster approach?
Rimac said the compressed air empties in two to three seconds, after which the car is left carrying the added weight of tanks, a compressor, valves, and nozzles for the rest of the drive. He also estimated that matching the claimed acceleration through wheel torque alone would require roughly 30,000 Newton-meters, or about 22,000 lb-ft.
Is a thruster-equipped Nevera successor still coming?
Available reporting does not confirm any revived plan, timeline, or specification for a thruster-equipped Rimac model. Rimac’s comments describe a paused 2020 project, not an announced upcoming vehicle.
When is the Tesla Roadster expected to reach production?
Coverage of the October 2026 unveiling described the vehicle as production-intent, with Tesla targeting a manufacturing start around 2028.
