- Tesla’s patent shows a detailed, previously unseen sports car.
- It could preview the new Roadster ahead of its October 1 debut.
- Its active wing can generate up to 1,543 lbs of downforce.
Tesla has been remarkably good at keeping the latest version of its long-delayed Roadster under wraps. We’ve seen the prototype unveiled nearly nine years ago and, more recently, a few carefully selected teasers, but detailed images of what Tesla plans to show on October 15 have been virtually nonexistent. That may have just changed.
A recent Tesla patent, first spotted by Car And Driver, shows off a rather wild active rear wing that provides multiple aerodynamic configurations. The interesting bit here, though, is the illustrated vehicle on which the innovative wing is displayed
Read: Tesla Is Once Again Accepting $50,000 Reservations For The Roadster
About the deployable spoiler, the company says the system can produce zero downforce in DRS mode and as much as 700 kg (1,543 lbs) of downforce in its most aggressive setting at top speed. The patent references speeds above 100 mph (161 km/h) in discussing its high-downforce operation. That’s an extraordinary amount of aerodynamic load from a rear wing on a road car.
To put that 700 kg (1,543 lbs) figure into perspective, the entire road-legal McLaren Senna generates 800 kg (1,764 lbs) of downforce at 155 mph (250 km/h). The track-only Senna GTR ups that to 1,000 kg (2,205 lbs), while Aston Martin has quoted more than 1,000 kg for the Valkyrie AMR Pro.
Tesla, remarkably, is describing as much as 700 kg from the Roadster patent’s rear wing alone. Look beyond that hardware, though, and Tesla has illustrated the system attached to a remarkably detailed sports car that looks an awful lot like an evolved Roadster.
Better yet, the car isn’t simply a carbon copy of the 2017 prototype. The illustrations show a complete low-slung two-door with pronounced rear haunches, a sweeping fastback greenhouse, full-width rear lighting, a substantial diffuser, defined side surfacing, and even specific wheel and window designs. Notably, it also appears to be a fixed-roof coupe rather than the removable-roof 2+2 prototype Tesla showed in 2017.
There’s an enormous caveat here. Tesla never identifies the car in the patent as a Roadster. The application, US 2026/0285418 A1, is titled “Deployable and Active Rear Wing Assembly with Safety Features,” and protects the aerodynamic system rather than the appearance of the vehicle surrounding it. It was filed in August 2025 as a continuation of an earlier March 2025 application and published by the USPTO on September 24.
In other words, we can’t say that this is the production Roadster. Still, if it’s merely a generic vehicle used to demonstrate the technology, somebody at Tesla went to an awful lot of trouble drawing it.
Photos: USPTO / Tesla
