As a Tesla owner, I can tell you that having a car that drives itself wherever I need it to go is pretty darn awesome. Of course, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is always looking to the future, and on Thursday night he showed the world exactly how far ahead he's looking.

At an event outside Waco, Texas, Tesla unveiled its redesigned second-generation Roadster, complete with SpaceX-built thrusters. You knew the demonstration was going to be wild the moment you saw the ramp Tesla had constructed for it.

Musk billed the Roadster as "the best of the last of the human-driven cars." Then the car went out and made one heck of a case. Musk said before the demonstration that he had a live audience so no one could accuse Tesla of using “AI or SI.”

Using high-powered fans and thrusters, the Roadster climbed an inverted ramp, clung to it at a 90-degree angle to the ground, and then hung completely upside down before going back down. Then it drove back up the ramp, launched off the top while still inverted, flipped over, and landed on the pavement.

That was only the opening act.

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In a second stunt, the Roadster soared over a lineup of Tesla's own vehicles (a Cybercab, a Cybertruck, a Tesla Semi, a Model Y, and a Model 3) and rolled in midair before touching down. Even Musk seemed stunned by what he'd just watched.

"I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen that before," he said.

Another demonstration had the car sitting parked, then lifting itself off the ground, doing a flip, and settling right back down. Tesla also showed the Roadster rocketing from 0 to 60 mph in one second.

"This will be the actual car that's on the roads," Musk said. "It literally is just going to puff itself up… and be able to do this, these maneuvers whenever you'd like."

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Musk made clear the project pushed both of his companies to their limits.

"This is the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and SpaceX Engineers working closely together to make something you haven't seen in any movie, better than any James Bond car," Musk said. "When I suggested this to the team, I thought, 'Am I crazy?'"

During the demo, Musk floated the idea of the new Tesla Roadster jumping the Snake River Canyon, the same spot where Evel Knievel made his famous attempt in a steam-powered rocket.

Before the event, Musk promised the new Roadster "will be very different from what was shown previously," and predicted the demo would be the "most exciting, whether it works or not, demo ever of any product."

It worked.

This is what happens when people are free to dream big and put their own talent and money behind those dreams. No government program or committee was ever going to build a car that defies gravity for the fun of it. It took an entrepreneur willing to chase an idea that sounded crazy even to him, and a team of engineers determined to prove it wasn't.