Tesla held its Roadster launch event on October 16, 2026, taking a $5,000 credit card deposit with a $45,000 wire due within 10 days. Musk said the car goes into production in 2028 and will be Tesla's last human-driven vehicle, and Tesla will offer three versions, including a non-street-legal SpaceX-thruster model called Rocket. The car was built with SpaceX engineers using ultra-high-pressure air to lift it, feeding merger expectations. Prediction markets now put a 50% chance on a Tesla-SpaceX merger by April, and the discussion centers on the production timeline, what the human-driven claim means for the rest of the lineup, and whether the SpaceX involvement points to a merger.