A red Roadster drove up a curved ramp at SpaceX's test site in McGregor, Texas, hung upside down for a moment, flipped through the air and landed on its wheels. Then it jumped over the rest of the Tesla line-up. Hundreds of thousands of people watched it live. (VRT NWS, TopGear)

It was a good stunt. The gap between what Tesla showed and what Tesla said about it is the most reliable thing this company produces. Measuring that gap explains two things: the people who paid a deposit in 2017, and the share price that fell the same afternoon.

Did it fly?

The grip for the upside-down section comes from suction fans. Tesla claims acceleration from standstill to 100 km/h in under a second and a top speed of 370 km/h. (VRT NWS) Three versions were announced. The expensive one, called Rocket, carries SpaceX thrusters. (TopGear)

Tesla describes that version as air ready. The company's own line was "Dus ja, hij kan vliegen": so yes, it can fly. (Airwork) Nothing in the demonstration flew. A car that leaves the ground and comes back down is jumping. Expensively, with the landing nailed, but jumping.

Musk said production starts in 2028, and no price was given for the Rocket. (Airwork) Other reporting puts the line at 2027 or 2028. Ranges like that tend to resolve in one direction. (TopGear)

The same car, unveiled in 2017

This Roadster was shown once before, in 2017, with deliveries promised for 2020. That did not happen. (Airwork, Bright) Buyers paid deposits at the time. Those people have now waited nine years, and the new announcement asks them for two or three more. (TopGear)

Bright called the whole thing a marketing stunt rather than a product launch, and placed it in a longer run of Tesla promises that missed their dates. (Bright) The affordable Tesla belongs on that list, and so does the fleet of self-driving taxis. The Hyperloop was never Tesla's product, although the sales pitch had the same author and the same tone.

A shareholder who has held since 2014 would answer all of this without blinking. Every electric car on the road today, including the dull ones from Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, exists because one company set targets nobody thought were sane and then dragged an industry toward them. Judging that by a scorecard of kept promises misses what the promises are for. A deadline is a way of pulling the future forward.

That is a fair answer, and it is why writing Tesla off as a hype machine is lazy. Tesla put the EV industry on the map more or less single-handedly, and somebody has to be willing to look ridiculous in front of a livestream for a few years. But credibility is spent each time. A deadline is a tool. A deposit is money someone handed over. At some point the audience stops hearing a target and starts hearing a trailer.

What the market did with it

Premarket enthusiasm did not survive the afternoon. TSLA traded up to $371.13 before the bell and opened at $368.51. By early afternoon it was at $351.62, with JPMorgan sitting on a Neutral rating. (Investing.com) It closed at $354.72, down 2.13 percent, on volume about 64 percent above the three-month average. (The Motley Fool) Measured from the morning high rather than the previous close, one outlet put the fall at 4.3 percent. (Torque Cafe)

That is not a clean referendum on the car. Quarterly results were due the following week, and the reporting says attention moved there. (The Motley Fool) Which is rather the point. A real product launch holds a share price through an earnings week. A demonstration gets about four hours.

The people watching the livestream saw something real. The people holding the stock saw a car with no price and a date two years out, and priced it accordingly.

Production is scheduled for 2028. The jumping car will probably reach its first customers on the same day the first people move into a house on Mars.