Ranbir Kapoor Says India Made a Flying Car 5,000 Years Ago

Ranbir Kapoor is not treating Elon Musk’s flying car as the future. To him, it is a rerun. During the promotional trail for Ramayana, the actor linked Musk’s redesigned Tesla Roadster, unveiled on October 15 with SpaceX-developed air thrusters, to the Pushpak Viman, saying India “did it 5000 years back.”

A flying car, but make it mythology

Speaking on a chat show hosted by TV presenter Suma, Kapoor said, “Elon Musk recently invented a flying car; I think India did it 5000 years back.” Co-stars Yash, Ravie Dubey and Rakul Preet Singh, along with director Nitesh Tiwari, joined the interview.

The comparison landed because it collapses centuries: Musk’s Roadster is being framed as a breakthrough, while for many Hindi film fans, a flying chariot is already woven into the Ramayana.

How the Pushpak Viman took shape

Tiwari explained that the Pushpak Viman was not a one-step design. The team went through 40 to 50 versions before finalising the lotus-shaped chariot seen in the film. In the story, Ravana flies it to Lanka after abducting Sita.

The final look then reshaped the action. Because the Ravana-Jatayu fight had been built around an earlier design, it had to be reworked across “a lot of iterations.” Tiwari said, “It took us so long to shape the Ravana and Jatayu fight.”

He also said the aim was not just a beautiful object that looked as if it could fly: “We wanted some kind of science to go into it. Because I believe, we all believe, there was science behind everything that happened that time.”

Why the comparison works

The moment is classic filmi marketing: a new two-part epic borrows a present-day tech talking point as an entry point. The Pushpak Viman is already familiar to the audience, so linking it to a globally discussed Tesla Roadster makes the film feel current, ambitious and rooted in Indian imagination at once.

There is also a deeper pitch here. Tiwari’s “science behind everything” line signals that Ramayana is not leaning only on spectacle or nostalgia; the team wants its mythology to feel credible, with the Viman operating by a logic of its own.

Ramayana: the essentials

• Two-part adaptation; the first part releases November 5 in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, including IMAX.
• Ranbir Kapoor plays Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi plays Sita, and Yash plays Ravana.
• Produced by Namit Malhotra’s Prime Focus Studios with DNEG and Yash’s Monster Mind Creations.
• Music by Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman; action by Terry Notary and Guy Norris.

What to watch for

The proof of the “science” framing will be in how the Pushpak Viman moves on screen. If it feels designed rather than decorative, it could carry the larger promise of an epic that respects both faith and detail. With Zimmer and Rahman scoring and the release only days away, the first part is shaping up as one of the season’s biggest cinematic experiments.

Source: The Times of India