Elon Musk is serious about making the Tesla roadster fly

Gather round, for Elon Musk has made a new Twitter declaration.

The Tesla CEO informed Twitter followers on Wednesday that he is not joking about using rocket thrusters to get his upcoming Tesla Roadster to fly— or at least hover.

As Musk does, he responded on Twitter to a Tesla fan praising the advancements the car has made over the last six years. The fan (perhaps cheekily) included a gif of a flying DeLorean. Musk quote-retweeted the image, adding “The new Roadster will actually do something like this.”

The Roadster is a new super-fast Tesla that Musk has promised for 2020. Previously, he launched a Roadster into space for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch. And though that vehicle became airborne thanks to a rocket, Musk has since floated the idea that one day, it would use rocket launchers to fly.

Musk took that idea one step further Wednesday.

After Musk responded to the fan’s initial tweet, the tech vlogger Marques Brownlee responded to Musk, saying “The thing is I feel like you’re not joking.” And, of course, Musk made it clear — as clear and precise as you can be in 280 characters — that making the Roadster hover was seriously on the road map.

Musk believes that the future of transportation is going vertical, as he told press at a Boring Co. event. Most recently, that’s meant building down. Through work with the Boring Co., Musk thinks the solution to traffic is building dozens of high speed tunnels, one on top of the other, underneath cities. He debuted the test track for this system in December to underwhelming results.

But apparently going higher is in the cards, too. Or maybe, this has less to do with killing traffic than it does with outfitting his car with friggin’ rockets.