The new Tesla Roadster can’t quite fly, but it can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in under a second using boosters, drive upside down, and propel itself through corkscrews in the air—at least under the conditions of the prototype’s unveiling at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas, on Thursday night.

“We need an audience to prove it’s not AI or SI,” Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told the audience (referring to the White House’s preferred language, “Super Intelligence”).

Tesla started taking deposits for the Roadster nearly a decade ago, and it launched a cherry-red first-generation Roadster with a mannequin named Starman into space on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in a 2018 publicity stunt. A 2019 demo for the Cybertruck resulted in Tesla’s design chief shattering two of its supposedly unbreakable “Armor Glass” windows, and Cybertrucks have subsequently become something of a signifier for jerkwads, selling more poorly than the infamous Ford Edsel. So it’s safe to say that this reveal was make-or-break.

This prototype is a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX and uses what Musk described as an “advanced ultra-high pressure air tank” to power SpaceX cold-gas thrusters. The demo took place well away from the actual stage for safety reasons. Musk told attendees, “Success is not guaranteed… But if it doesn’t work, we’re at a safe distance.”

Unbelievably enough, it did work. Tesla showed the prototype Roadster launching upside down off the top of a half-circle ramp before guiding itself through a corkscrew maneuver.

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