News
New Tesla Service Center in Pittsburgh given the green light for construction
Tesla’s mysterious plans for a Pittsburgh Service Center have been rumored for several years but nothing could be confirmed. Then about a two months ago, concrete information began appearing on the public record. In June, Marshall Township planners gave their approval for the plans to move forward and now that they have been approved by the township supervisors, it’s time to release all the known details.
If you look closely at the pictures, you may recognize a logo imprinted on the face of the main entrance: the logo of Ethan Allen Furniture.
The store was sold to a Florida-based LLC in February. That LLC retains ownership of the building and will lease it to Tesla. In accordance with legislation already passed by the state government, the company is allowed five “dealerships” statewide. The property is located north of the city between Wexford and Cranberry in Marshall Township. As early as April, Tesla was on the agenda for the Planning Commission, but then postponed their appearance.
The upper red Tesla mark is the Cranberry Township Supercharger (map). I’ve placed a red dot on the site of the former Ethan Allen. The red Tesla mark in the middle of the map is the Ross Park Mall store location where the company recently held an exclusive grand opening event. The light grey Tesla mark is likely used to denote the geographic center of our local Ranger’s service area. The two smaller dark grey marks are destination chargers in the city.
The former Ethan Allen is on Route 19 (also known as McKnight Road as it passes through the closer suburbs), a busy commercial corridor that stretches through the entirety of the northern Pittsburgh region and on up through Cranberry (where the Supercharger is). The section pictured above is the third major concentration of car dealerships along the road, between the Wexford and Warrendale exits of I-79. The former Ethan Allen is circled in red. The brighter two blue circles are existing Lexus, Volvo, Land Rover and Jaguar dealerships. The blue circle closest to the Ethan Allen is currently being developed into a Maserati dealership. Somewhere in that row there will also be a Bentley dealership.
The new service center shares a plaza with another building that houses some medical offices and a backyard playground equipment store. The terrain necessitates that customers choose between driving down a blank-walled alley or around the side of the store (which looks like it should be the front).
The lot is somewhat awkward, but it does have a commanding view over the nearby dealerships from the side-oriented main entrance. The shaded parking spaces indicate Tesla’s planned areas for inventory cars. One of the supervisors questioned if that was an adequate number, but given Teslas are built-to-order they rarely have a lot of on-hand inventory– unlike a traditional dealership.
There is a lot of additional parking along the backside of the store– but that’ll expanded even further for service loaners, deliveries and customer cars waiting to be serviced or picked up.
Having never shopped for a retail property, it’s hard to gauge how big some of the stats on the realty company’s brochure are– but the building certainly seems large enough and Tesla will have no problem filling it from wall-to-wall.
The interior of the store looked wide open for possibilities on paper, but that ignores some of the facts on the ground as you’ll see in a moment. The side-mounted lobby splits the building down the middle, with service on the backside edges and retail on the front sides where the windows are. Not much can be done along the alley-facing wall other than offices and storage, since all the restrooms and utilities are there.
Here’s the approach from Route 19 to the building. The dated beige and pink will be going away, replaced with a clean and modern palette of white and dark grey.
It’s only after you drive up to the building that realize the front door isn’t the front door. There’s no parking here and no room to add any. Tesla will also be putting some money into new exterior lighting and removing the awnings and their metal frames.
A large side-folding door will be added to the road-facing façade. It will accordion open to allow customers to drive their newly delivered cars out onto the street for the first time.
Sneaking a peek inside the glass doors, the building’s former life is still quite evident. Walls for all of the display “rooms” for the furniture litter the floor plan. They’re not substantive but it will still be a lot of debris to clear. The tiled “path” around the store will also be demolished. Floor treatments are expected to be a combination of tile and polished or painted/sealed concrete.
Rounding the corner, it becomes clear that I didn’t respect the handicapped parking lines during my scouting run last winter. There, I admit it—but I wasn’t exactly putting anyone out, so save your letters for the bro-trucks blocking Superchargers.
The main entrance shows the Ethan Allen logo engraved into the façade. All the other signage was simply painted over with what seem to be black rattle-spray cans. Tesla will be renewing the stucco and painting it in their own colors with back lit signs similar to their other locations. You’ll note in all these pictures that the current state of the parking surface is not particularly inspiring either. More expense but also more confirmation that Tesla is willing to make some major capital investments into the Pittsburgh market.
Looking inside the main doors, you can see how the lobby splits the building into two halves. Tesla’s current floor plans indicate a receptionist will guide you to the right for sales, straight ahead to a lounge area or to the left where service advisors have their desks.
Like the road-facing façade, the main façade will be gaining a large door. Located on the far left side, the door will be a large commercial sized rollup door. The door will open into a drive-through passage leading behind the service desks and customer lounge and into the work areas of the service department. According to the plans, it seems necessary that this will designated as either an entrance or exit.
The layout of the building means that the back of the store is actually the side next to the front of the store… instead of the side opposite. For Tesla this presents an interesting opportunity in their renovations in that everyone who visits will get a clear look at the work going on as cars are driven in for service. For most dealerships the service area is hidden away behind the store and often a bit grimy, but for Tesla it’s actually a selling point with typically clean and bright work areas with colorful machinery and tools. Hopefully they’ll include windows from the customer lounge area to the service area.
If you consider that the existing loading dock is level with the internal floor, you can see there is an elevation change issue for that main wall’s new vehicle access. Not sure how they’ll resolve that discrepancy but the floor plans suggest a ramp up into the service area will be necessary while the loading dock is retained for parts delivery.
The rear of the property will be getting an additional 24 parking places and extensive landscaping. The parking expansion is probably just for the ebb and flow of deliveries but could also indicate that Pittsburgh might host some of the regions CPO cars as they await reconditioning and resale. A number of other parking stalls are added here and there as the lines are revised, but there is no immediate evidence of customer HPWCs or charging slots. Chargers for service/store use are expected to be in the ten shaded spots marked in the middle of the back lot.
The presence of an easement for utilities would suggest power for part of the lot could be made readily available even though the building’s utilities are currently located on the farthest alley corner.
Completing our lap around the outside, the alley/driveway between the former Ethan Allen and the neighboring building shows an arrow straight driveway from Route 19. This will be great for trucks delivering new cars and for the Rangers (and their trailers) who will be based out of here. Tesla’s plans indicate another large rolling garage door will be added to the front half of this side. That door will access the service area directly and will probably be designated as either entrance or exit only. Exiting the parking lot on the other side provides easy access to another arrow straight road back to Route 19.
If all goes according to what appear to be Tesla’s plans, it’ll– quite literally– be an uphill battle for the some of the local dealers because Tesla will hold the high ground in Marshall Township. Construction is expected to begin almost immediately with a grand opening late this year, perhaps November.
One interesting prohibition that did come from this meeting. The supervisors are limiting the site to the sales of car and associated retail merchandise and accessories. The company is specifically forbidden from selling “other product lines” such as the Powerwall. If Tesla decides later they’d like to market those (or SolarCity panels), they’ll have to reappear in front of the board for approval.
Investor's Corner
Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car
Analysts say the Roadster demo puts a Tesla and SpaceX merger back on the table.
The Roadster unveiling near Waco ended Thursday night, and by Friday morning much of the investor reaction had less to do with the car than with who owns the rocket technology inside it.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the event “puts the Tesla/SpaceX relationship on the table in a tangible way,” pointing to the propulsion, pressure vessel and control hardware sitting on a Tesla product. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called the demo “a ridiculous display of engineering” with “no commercial value” beyond embarrassing traditional automakers, though he said it showed Musk wants the two companies together.
The more specific forecast came a day earlier from Barclays. Analyst Dan Levy told clients a deal could be announced before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must happen by December 6, and that an announcement in late October or early November could make shareholder approval harder. Barclays expects SpaceX to be the buyer in an all stock deal, with Tesla holders receiving SpaceX shares at a premium, based on market values of roughly $2.1 trillion for SpaceX and $1.5 trillion for Tesla. If nothing lands around the meeting, the bank still sees an announcement within 6 to 12 months.
The Roadster demo just added more weight to merger speculations. Tesla’s demo used cold gas thrusters and pressure tanks of the kind SpaceX uses on Falcon 9, and Musk described the car as a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers, as we mentioned in our breakdown of the three Roadster configurations.
Musk has not publicly addressed a deal since the event, as far as we have seen. His most direct answer remains the one he gave at the All In Summit, when he said that with so much collaboration, “who can imagine what action one might take” without ruling anything out. Ives has held to a 2027 timeline since his March note, and Musk pushed back on the China piece of the speculation when ARK floated a year end announcement in August.
The next test is Tesla’s third quarter earnings call on October 21. However, we recall in July that Musk told analysts, “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a clear answer wouldn’t be expected.
News
How Tesla’s Roadster fan system and thrusters are built to dominate the corners
Tesla’s Roadster uses fans, active wings and cold gas thrusters to create grip at any speed.
Tesla’s new Roadster is best known for flipping through the air in Texas, but the technology that matters most for a race track is the stuff that keeps it on the ground. Tesla’s Roadster page describes a multi-mode fan and ground sealing system that acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the car. Tesla says it provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
That is the key difference from the wings and diffusers on a normal supercar. Conventional aero only makes downforce when the car is moving, and it grows with speed, so a car has the least grip in the slow corners and under hard braking. A fan system makes downforce at any speed. Tesla’s patent, which we covered last year, describes fans and deployable skirts that create sealed or partially sealed regions under the car, with the fans extracting air to lower the pressure and increase grip and stability.
Still processing this … the most unreal thing I’ve seen. https://t.co/HtEuvnkZjY
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 16, 2026
Tesla pairs that with active wings, a next generation steer by wire system and a Track Mode that lowers the car and changes the suspension, with high downforce and low drag settings for the circuit. To keep weight down, Tesla points to magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position, which it says lets the car respond to driver inputs almost instantly.
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
The cold gas thrusters are the other half. On the Thrust version they sit at the rear and Tesla says they take the car from 0 to 60 mph in under 0.9 seconds, while the Rocket version adds perimeter thrusters for forward, upward and lateral rotational movement. Tesla says the all electric actuators make micro adjustments within a fraction of a second.
Roadster transforms in Track Mode
These aero features aren’t just for looks: they provide the best passive downforce package of any road car (approaching F1 levels!) with wing actuation driven by the @Tesla_Optimus actuator system https://t.co/AqrC4qUga9
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Musk has been talking about records for years. In June 2019 he said, “We’re going to do things with the new Roadster that are kind of unfair to other cars.” That September, when a follower asked whether the Roadster would beat the Nürburgring production car record, he replied with one word, “Absolutely,” as we reported at the time. In February 2024 he said Tesla had “radically increased the design goals” for the car and that its sub one second 0 to 60 time would be “the least interesting part.”
There are caveats. Tesla has not published a lap time or a verified cornering figure, so the record talk is still a promise rather than a result. Tesla also says the car is not approved for public road use, and the thruster features are limited to the Rocket trim, which is invite only. Fan cars have also been banned or withdrawn before, and getting a sealed underbody to work on a rough public road is a harder problem than on a smooth track. The first real test will be an official lap at a circuit.
Featured
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
Tesla’s Roadster comes in Performance, Thrust and Rocket versions, with a claimed 0-60 under 0.59 seconds.
Tesla finally showed the next generation Roadster on Thursday night, and the demo had more in common with a SpaceX test than a track lap. At an event outside Waco, Texas, near SpaceX’s McGregor site, the car used a mix of fans and cold gas thrusters to drive up a curved ramp until it was upside down, then flew off, flipped and landed on the pavement. “Well, it worked,” Elon Musk said. “Flying cars are real.”
The Roadster also hovered itself over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y and Model 3 while moving, and that Tesla showed it going 0 to 60 mph in one second. Musk said “this will be the actual car that’s on the roads” and that it “literally is just going to puff itself up” to perform the maneuvers whenever an owner wants. He called the result a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers that is “better than any James Bond car,” with Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy on site.
Tesla published new mind-blowing stats for the car that replace the previous targets. The Performance version is road ready and seats two, with active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system, and Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. The Thrust version is race ready, also seats two, and adds rear-mounted cold gas thrusters for a 0 to 60 time of under 0.9 seconds. The Rocket version is described as air ready, seats one, and uses perimeter-mounted thrusters for forward and upward acceleration plus lateral rotational movement.
| Configuration | Seats | 0 to 60 mph |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 2 | under 1.6 s |
| Thrust | 2 | under 0.9 s |
| Rocket | 1 | under 0.59 s |
Tesla’s own description: “So…yes, it can fly.” It lists a 0 to 60 time of under 0.59 seconds for Rocket, a top speed of up to more than 230 mph, and range of more than 300 miles. Tesla has not yet given pricing in the information we have seen, but has reopened $50,000 reservations in the newly updated Tesla Roadster configurator. Production is planned for Giga Texas in 2027 or 2028, and Musk has said it would follow the demo by 12 to 18 months.
Every car on the road today is limited by one thing: tire grip
Roadster’s thruster system generates 4–5x the force the tires can.
More force on the same mass means significantly better acceleration – physics does the rest https://t.co/zdPRT2aKwZ
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Tesla’s Roadster page adds more on how the car works. A multi-mode fan and ground sealing system pulls air from under the car, producing enough suction to hold it upside down even when stationary. Active wings, steer-by-wire with a yoke, and a Track Mode that lowers the car round out the driving setup. The cold gas thrusters use all-electric actuators for micro adjustments to stabilize the car in flight. Tesla says it cut weight with magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position, and the exterior has hidden headlights, a full-length taillight and Ano White paint inspired by aerospace coatings. Inside are an Ultrawhite interior with gray microsuede, a center touchscreen and two smaller forward displays, and gold tinted glass modeled on spacesuit visors. Availability is tiered: Performance is by reservation, Thrust is a limited release, and Rocket is invite only. Tesla notes the car is not approved for public road use, and that Rocket is not available in all regions.
Tesla Roadster Highlights
- Aero and suction: a multi-mode fan and ground sealing system pulls air from under the car and can hold it upside down even when stationary. There are also active wings and a Track Mode that lowers the car.
- Controls and thrusters: steer-by-wire with a yoke. The cold gas thrusters use all-electric actuators for micro adjustments that stabilize the car in flight.
- Weight: magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position.
- Design: hidden headlights, a full-length taillight, Ano White paint inspired by aerospace coatings, and gold tinted glass modeled on spacesuit visors.
- Interior: an Ultrawhite interior with gray microsuede, a center touchscreen and two smaller forward displays.
- Availability: Performance is by reservation, Thrust is a limited release, and Rocket is invite only.
- Road use: Tesla notes the car is not approved for public road use, and that Rocket isn’t available in all regions.
Musk has described the Roadster as “the best of the last of the human-driven cars,” and he has been open that it is a halo product. He said he is “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint,” and has warned that anyone whose top priority is safety should not buy it. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Roadster is a true pilot’s car: active aerodynamics, a multi-mode suction system & cold-gas thrusters
Exterior
– Concealed headlights, full-length taillight & flush-mounted surfaces for a minimalist, highly technical form– Super light wheels w/ thin spokes that reinforce structural strength when earthbound
– Ano White paint brings an aerospace-derived finish w/ UV & cryogenic protection, electrostatic dissipation & corrosion resistance
– Gold Glazed tinted glass mimicking the copper coating of spacesuit visors, w/ subtle titanium accents
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car
How Tesla’s Roadster fan system and thrusters are built to dominate the corners
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
