It's an incredible engineering achievement to build in massive fans and rocket engines into a high performance car. It's truly wild.

It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) seemingly just for extra forwards acceleration (no flying) and one with real combustion rocket engines, the latter was in the video and is "invite only".

Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.

Even just the cold gas variant seems like a nightmare for production, there's a high pressure COPV in that thing and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting, and Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways. But very few of these are ever getting sold anyways.

This is explained in the deep dive video with Lars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts

Or an easier way to escape rioters blocking the road and threatening your life.

They can’t even build a proper Mini anymore because the hood was so low it elked pedestrians face first into the windshield.

Sorry, I'll start it from the app!

chug chug chug chug

  > Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...

I'm going to quote Buzz Lightyear: this is falling... with style.

On a serious note, this was unexpected. You can't deny, he has style

Mind you that when Karl Benz invented the automobile in Germany, he didn’t have a permit as well

So many things that were invented in Europe couldn’t be invented today.

Like leaded gazoline, whose effects can still be seen presently...

No. That's the road safety mind speaking.

I can imagine the lateral thrusters helping it turn faster on the track. Although I wonder if the extra weight is going to net out positive for lap times.

But really, a few very rich people will buy the full-rocket version to impress their friends. They'll play with them on private property.

It wouldn't be the first time Musk demoed something and promised something and then never ships.

What we saw was impressive, but it’s a trick. The car’s tanks are surely empty after this, and now you have a loud compressor filling them up for minutes. You can’t use those thrusters near people and cars cause you’re at risk of getting them in trouble.

It’s part of a long history of useless tech in supercars. Impressive, but useless.

Here's an RC car that can drive on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA

My general assumption is that anything and everything that wasn't necessary for that demo was removed to trim enough weight to make the demo possible.

For what it’s worth, my $600 hunting rifle will go clean through both sides of any bulletproof vest, and it’s nothing special.

For everything that is bulletproof, there is always a calibre of projectile that will go through it.

Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.

Musk keeps it running as a mouthpiece/propaganda and vanity project, but it's not a viable business anymore due to all the $13B Musk borrowed to acquire it, as well as loss of advertizers. It's estimated to break even on an operational basis, but loses about $1B/yr when you include interest on the debt.

I am not sure you can detach these two concepts. Tesla is currently valued around 3x the next top 5 auto companies combined, so to an extent you need to judge the company on these expectations. I happen to think they do have a pretty good business selling cars, and maybe a very good business selling autonomous cars, but there's so much uncertainty I think it is hard to see the current market cap as anything other than hugely inflated.

Why exactly do you think he keeps repositioning them as a robotics oh wait no I mean an AI company? Why is he clearly positioning Tesla to be acquired by SpaceX? Why is Tesla investing into xAI to be converted into SpaceX shares?

Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade. The Roadster (obviously) is not going to help.

They have a huge balance sheet so it’ll take a while but Musk obviously sees the writing on the wall. The sheen is wearing off their shitty products and he doesn’t know how to add the sheen back or make the products less shitty.

No it's not.

>Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade.

False. Revenue and deliveries beat so far this year, Q3 also a beat.

Don't let your Elon Derangement Syndrome cloud your ability to think rationally.

TSLA is down 18% YTD. That's because their business is doing so well?

You're aware that the "expectations" are they run a profitable company, right?

>You're aware that expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is struggling?

You're aware that the expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is stable, and showed record deliveries and backlog in Q2?

>TSLA is down 18% YTD. That's because their business is doing so well?

Auto manufacturing sector (DJUSAU) is down 16% YTD, and Tesla's stock is overpriced to begin with. Tesla's most direct competitor in the US, Rivian, is down 34% YTD. Stop getting your business/economic news from BlueSky/reddit.

And where should they get them? From Twitter?

Credible business/economic news outlets.

>From Twitter?

No.

October 2: Tesla deliveries fall 2% as US consumers buy fewer EVs

July 23: Tesla shares tumble 11% as discounts hit profits

April 2: Tesla reports weaker than expected 6% rise in global deliveries

January 29: Tesla scraps models in pivot to AI as annual revenue falls for the first time

Tesla growth is slowing, margins are getting crunched, competition is heating up. Tesla knows they're fucked so they're pivoting into AI. The pivot into AI might work, but Musk himself unambiguously thinks Tesla is fucked as an automotive company.

That's why Musk is trying to claim Tesla isn't an automotive company (except when comparisons to such suit him and his cultists, of course).

https://companiesmarketcap.com/tesla/earnings/

I'm interested to meet someone online who's short both on-shore US silicon fabs and the market for humanoid robots. Can you say more about your thinking?

Musk is similar to Zuck in that they get some credit for sheer courage to turn the wheel on their massive businesses, but they also have to be right. Aside from his anticompetitive behavior, Zuck continues to miss. Musk's pattern has been that the more Musk is personally involved, the worse the outcomes. Cybertruck was his baby. Optimus is his baby.

If Tesla is doing so well as an automotive business, then why doesn't he just continue making it a great automotive business?

Maybe a mid length answer is if you agree with his assessment on say humanoid robots in terms of market and you believe they might have a geometric growth factor in production (eg robots can make more robots) then you’d want that business build out done by a team that can scale rapidly.

For fabs spacex and Tesla are significant consumers of the output- vertical integration is preferred by lots of companies.

Correct, and I think having a CEO who's totally unaccountable to a board and is temperamentally unable to focus on his core business is not good.

SpaceX and Tesla are nowhere near large enough consumers to justify vertically integrating a fab. The demand is predicated on Optimus producing millions of units per year.

This circularity will probably end up being seen in retrospect as so transparently absurd that it'll beggar belief that anyone accepted it.

That said I think these bets will pay off. Let’s check in in five years!

Do you have particular predictions we can evaluate in five years?

2) more than 1mm optimus produced and sold in the US

Happy for any counters :)

1MM Optimus sold in the US is hilarious too.

Want to make bets on these?

The only new western car company in decades to not fail, based on a technology nobody believed in at the time, least of all other car companies

SpaceX being a private space company, which was completely unheard of. No experts though they could succeed

Smaller earlier businesses like Zip2, paypal, etc

These are gigantic high risk companies with high failure probabilities, the chance they they all happened to be successful despite Musk and not at least in part because of him is stretching reasonable doubt for me.

I'm absolutely no fan of his politics or personality, but the man can run a business that nobody else even dares try (at least until he demonstrates viability and the market starts to generate competitors)

Three sucesses.

Not so successful: Solar City, Neuralink, TBC, X.

(X exists, but before it was valued-and-bought by one of Musk's other companies, it appeared to have lost about half its value).

Richard Branson he aint.

They put out this video of a patient with ALS regaining the ability to communicate.

https://youtu.be/_j806JHhCRo

Hard to see that not being successful, once it passes the FDA, assuming it's real.

Of course it’s still early days for all these companies and they’re not exactly fiscally solid, but if Tesla had not made all those cars, someone else would have.

Example RC toy car that drives on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA

And supercars are typically not submitted for NCAP testing, so It'll likely be less safe than a Model Y for example (to be determined, no reports out yet)

https://www.euroncap.com/assessments/tesla/model+y/0961/

Aku: You can fly?!

Jack: No, jump good.

Okay, so I guess it doesn’t fly in the same way a rocket doesn’t fly? Distinction without meaning in this case.

Can't help but think of the not-a-flamethrower

(friend bought one for $500, now they seem to be worth $1500-$2000)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Merchandise

And that makes a big difference, right? Right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_B_Meyer_Inc.

that sounds quite amazing, and it looks like something out of ghostbusters.

Teslas evaluation is based on hype. This is as hype as it gets for a car. To me it looks like they were in need for "the coolest thing". To me, this has the smell of desperation implying the beginning of the end of their high evaluation.

Guess it is for advertising mainly.

The site states it's cold-gas thrusters for both models: "Features a multi-mode suction system paired with cold-gas thrusters positioned around the perimeter of the vehicle that support forward and upward acceleration as well as lateral rotational movement."

Just like economically infeasible Twitter, it has tremendous PR value. There is a huge economy revolving around people annoying other people just for a glimpse of their attention. This captures the attention and pleases people. Other car companies should start getting creative too.

The power to shape governments to his liking is worth a lot more than what he paid for Twitter.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/how-the-military-will-hack...

I don't think they'll sell these, at all in the future. No way they'll hound out actual rocket engines to en users. Too much IP in there.

1. Why don't they show a driver entering or exiting? 2. How much do that particular "car" weigh?

It's compressed air RCS. The compressor, regulators and a ton of hardware take up the entire space from the seats back to literally the very last inch of the car. Hard pipes run along the door frame for the forward RCS, meaning only one person (driver) can sit in it and enter from the drivers side. Huge carbon RCS tanks fill every other space.

No idea how long it would take to recharge the tanks after venting them.

There's no room for 'car' stuff in it.

Interestingly there is a big... sleeve of wizard... that extends down under the car to assist the ground effect fan. Packaging that and the RCS stuff into it is a real engineering feat.

But it didn't look to have crash structures, or any other production ready hardware.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/03/13/nasa-releases-summary-...

So I got no idea how you can even compare these two completely different systems and go from a launch failure to an explosive car accident?

Just for reference this is 50% more pressure than the pressure that crushed that submarine at the titanic.

Including boring old nitrogen blowing up a Starship: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

> "Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship's nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing," the company wrote in an update on Thursday (June 19).

If you SCUBA, your tanks need regular checks (https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/inspecting-and-testing-s...), because pressurized air can indeed kill (https://divemagazine.com/scuba-diving-news/diver-killed-in-s...) if the tank fails. The gas for these thrusters will happily accelerate you with the same force they're using to make a car fly given the chance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/s/efxEqCJxQR

A regular Tesla that sucks, you mean?

Even the base model has “active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system that maximizes downforce for next-level performance on and off the track.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Draco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomethylhydrazine

It's only wild if you ignore Musk's role in this. Not even trying to bash him or anything, but he's a trillionaire. This is the kind of shit you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly waste.

I mean, if this is how he wants to spend his money, then I guess that's his prerogative. But I think it's a bit misleading to suggest this is a decision made by "Tesla" when this is clearly an irrational decision for a company to make. This is a decision made by Musk based on satisfying his own personal goals.

You could say the same thing about the Cybertruck.

If that is what they have done. That may just be a large drone looking like a car.

Hopefully there will also be a warning siren while it is pressurized. "Dangerous enough to need a warning siren" seems like a plus for the target market, honestly.

If this ships, it will deliver a fraction of what's promised here. My money is on the "flying" version being delayed repeatedly until it's quietly cancelled. Anyone remember the fast battery change stations[1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj6LaYFall4

"Crazy new thing also crazy expensive" is the norm, not a regression.

But can we talk about the just casually driving straight vertical or sticking to the ceiling? I didn't think that would be technically possible for a 1000kg+ car with probably at least 2" of ground clearance.

There's presumably very limited stores of compressed gas, so you might get one hop or a couple 0-60 boosts per charge. But with electric fans, suction is a feature with much longer duration (minutes?), so you could feasibly do the batman driving on the tunnel ceiling past traffic trick.

If there was a live audience anywhere near that stage they wouldn't have been able to use thrusters to fly something that actually weighs as much as a car.

It’s strange that people need to convince themselves that this is fake.

10 years from their initial offering of the roadster, I'd like to see them release a well functioning, cool looking car. Why are they spending time/energy trying to make it fly?

The new roadster is obviously cool, but it looks like a practically useless vehicle for 99.9999% of the population. It's purely going to be a track princess -- with lots of extra weight for frankly pointless (but very cool) thrusters.

Imagine a normal car having to carry around the added weight of fans, COPVs, and the plumbing to make it work. And only being able to use those only if the track is clean and there are no other cars nearby.

Not f1, Can-Am but yeah, I'm really surprised this isn't a more common approach to modern track cars. Obviously banned in most motorsport but I'm surprised with all of the one-offs these days that it's not more common.

[1] https://youtu.be/xkXvL8YCtIE?t=721

Did you typo this? Absolutely no way it's a 10 metric ton car.

Sad that people feel the need to add this qualification. I see it regularly.

Only the President and Congress were elected. The rest are all appointed.

> laid off thousands of government workers

He did at the direction of the President, who was elected. Government service is not a jobs program.

> the second order effects of that will affect millions

speculation

> All while he also toys with Ukraine and lives are lost so that he appeases an autocrat?

Decisions about Ukraine go through Trump. Musk is in a delicate position - it is illegal for him, as a private businessman, to be a combatant, but he seems thrust into that position.

Preferably those tasked regulating his companies.

Sorry for being skeptical but Elons track record of being honest at such demos isn't stellar.

I wonder what the point of this was? Seems likely related to anticipated purchase of Tesla by SpaceX. Maybe meant to (irrationally) justify a high offer price for Tesla?

Can't say I'm a fan of the styling of the car - I guess it'd look at home parked beside a Cybertruck, but something like the Porsche Mission S is way sexier.

Car manufacturers have been doing pointless things for over a century [1], with no plan to even try to make them available to the public. Why is this getting so much heat?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_car

The demos for the future tech are fun for sure, but the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi started this exact same way. The Cybertruck arrived incredibly late, wildly missing even conservative estimates of it's capabilities, and at damn near double the price they teased, AND the units that have shipped have been a fucking mess, to such a degree where Tesla seemingly can't even give them away. And the Tesla Semi has still failed to materialize at all.

So yeah it's a bit of a joke to me to have them hocking a flying car, when their pickup truck can't even drive up a steep unpaved hill, that even my old clapped out F-150 on it's SUV tires would manage just fine.

By that logic any performance car is useless. There are, albeit few, people that do track these cars.

most of the things a Tesla Roadster is advertised with is not street legal.

I'd bet most of them see this as a cooler, shinier toy.

Everyone here can probably still remember the time to the minute that Steve Jobs in 2007 said "an internet communicator, a music player, a phone" and the 3-faced cube transformed into a single device. That's what gimmicky demos are for.

I expect that motivates exactly zero percent of the criticism that Musk gets.

--

Sent from my iPhone

Could it theoretically help to avoid *some* crashes? Yes

But in most cases, it'll just trade a frontal crash for a crash against obstacles off/above the road... Which is way more dangerous for pedestrians, buildings, etc.

Driver assistance can in some cases brake before an obstacles. But we've also seen Teslas drive into obstacles. Regardless if it's going to be driver assistance or a human with too much confidence in their ability to avoid obstacles... I wouldn't want to be near a Roadster leaping off the asphalt

This engineering in this demo was only designed o get lucrative government contracts.

Only assuming it's real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts

That sounds extremely explosive and not something any random person should be irresponsibly driving around.

This is hot wheels. It's pretty clear Musk finally had enough of the culture wars at X and decided to go interfere with Tesla some more. Instead of producing a car people might actually want, he made them do this. This is the worst waste of a company you're likely to see in your life.

TSLA is probably not a good stock to be holding right now.

But TBF if they offered the SpaceX thrusters as an option, the SF effective altruists would slurp them right up to be their daily drivers even if they have to be strapped in next to a tank of toxic boom boom to use them. And Sam Altman would cry into his protein-supplemented energy drink because his Koenigsegg doesn't have them and I'd happily hand over 50 Quatloos to watch that.

Looks like the base version would be the one for that.

1. The kind of person who buys a sports-car often doesn't want the "base version". They want luxury. They want status. They don't want to face the choice of being upsold to an impractical deathtrap or driving around in the "base version" like someone who could barely just afford it.

2. This demo does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the abilities of the base version. I reiterate, a brick could have been made to fly in this way. The base version will no doubt have good paper stats because Musk understands that numbers must be big, but that doesn't mean the base model will be pleasant to drive.

3. The styling of this car is "wankpanzer with a few extra polygons". Given how well the wankpanzer sold, demand for this thing, even if the base model is a competent auto, will be limp.

4. Musk is currently trying to buy another election. With Musk visibly taking an interest in Tesla again, that's likely to backfire on Tesla. They need to cut ties with Musk, not keep doing the sort of puerile things he's known and frequently lambasted for.

CRS-7, Amos-6, Starship 36, and Super Heavy 18.

> You can think of the COPV like the fuel tank in a compressed natural gas (CNG)- or liquid propane gas (LPG)-powered vehicle, except the nitrogen mixture in the COPV is stored at a much higher pressure, up to 10,000 psi, similar to the pressures in modern hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

LPG cars have somewhere between 100 and 300 psi.

10,000 PSI? That is beyond absurd. I can not imagine what alloy and how wrapped that pressure vessel is... Or what type of crazy pump is recharging it!

They'll happily burst (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ-__PlU4gM) and blow up your vehicle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71AwkBt3_ts).

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

"'Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship's nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing,' the company wrote in an update on Thursday (June 19)."

> LPG explosions are real combustion due to tank rupture…

They're mostly designed to vent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupture_disc) to prevent a BLEVE. Big fire, big mess, but without oxidizer in the tank and much lower pressures, relatively safe by comparison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQDyNjCNxVY

This thing is literally a fucking bomb if it fails, through accident or degradation.

The down-force negative pressure aspect they gleaned from McMurtry though? Really cool. Genuinely useful. I just hope they don't claim it as their own invention.

Which they will, because Musk is all ego.

Making a car with a heavy EV battery and powertrain fly like that is probably not something they're able to do.

My only issue with it is that beyond being impressive and very cool, it's pretty useless.

First you have to build SpaceX.

This looks like a genuinely fun project to have worked on. That can be the difference between a top engineer burning out and staying motivated.

This is in the same category as the Tesla flamethrower or the Teslaquila.

After Cybertruck and the LARPing as a humanoid-robotics company, I was genuinely unsure if Tesla still had top-tier engineering talent. This shows otherwise. Maybe some of these improvements will trickle down to the Models Y and 3.

(It also looks like a lot of SpaceX engineering. I could see folks there wanting to take a break, particularly if this happened while the pad was busted.)

Also, I imagine the cold gas thrusters and control software are all from spacex, this is what starship uses to orient itself in the air.

You’re that confident none of the materials or techniques aerospace engineers used to lighten this car are relevant to the rest of the lineup?

> I imagine the cold gas thrusters and control software are all from spacex, this is what starship uses to orient itself in the air

Not really, it uses grid fins and gimbals. The closest cold gas comes to air on Starship is in the upper atmosphere.

Nice pedantry on the thrusters in air, but I imagine the software here to orient the car quickly using thrusters was borrowed from spacex, the thrusters certainly were.

Again, none of this has a practical application - it’s like the flamethrowers- Elon thought it would be cool, so they made it.

Come on. They literally sent a car into space.

The Roadster was Musks personal vehicle, so Tesla didn't pay for that either.

Telsa board doesn’t, they need moonshots to justify their valuation. Elon doesn’t care, the engineers sure as shit don’t.

Maybe a midline quality control and reliability person? That’s not likely where many of the engineers for this project came from though.

But, imagine instead being an engineer of any kind today and you’re only getting paid to work on boring things like advanced automotive technology and building cars that can maneuver themselves in midair and might possibly fly in the future? Ridiculous.

(This message should not be taken as support for Musk or any of his views or business ventures.)

“Play” “fun”, curiosity” and “challenge for challenges sake” are adaptive strategies for learning unexpectedly useful things.

RAM jets?

A car could get 10–30% better energy efficiency than a conventional car at the same speed. Initially, the air jets would reduce and then eliminate wheel drag, and then hold for safety maneuvers. At speed, off-wheel-lift would be generated aerodynamically, with the option to also spot redirect air pressure from the RAM jet, or the air jets.

Then 2.0 would be the fully redesigned one-eyed two-seated flying Tesla Bodywingster.

All for the environment!

https://youtu.be/JdkIOhFmbKI

[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/qt5p-_tE8d0?si=V5csPghK02wwd0or...

[1] https://youtu.be/JdkIOhFmbKI?si=ULvyIRWDRZRWlIWA&t=1340

it has its own pump, but if you don't want to wait 6 hours to recharge, you can fill it with a nitrogen cylinder.

I've seen some claims that the gas is stored at a pressure of 10000 psi/690 bar in a 200 l tank. If that's true, then that is a gas volume of 138000 l. A commercial, stationary scuba compressor compresses around 850 l/min [0] to 350 bar. A compressor like that would take around 160 min just to compress 138000 l to 350 bar (so significantly less than 690 bar), is a _large_ appliance, and _loud_. Compressing gas quickly also produces heat. An on-board compressor seems quite unrealistic to me unless I'm missing something.

[0] https://www.bauer-kompressoren.de/en_en/pe-ve1

[0] MIL-PRF-27401

Also, the stock market's id, aka WSB is not impressed in hilarious and sometimes insightful ways. [0]

From my nerd POV, this looks super cool! From any other POV, ummm, what are we supposed to do with this? This is neat as heck, but you cannot put COPVs on public roadways.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1x73hxs/tes...

And as a nerd, while it's a cool demo in a controlled environment, cars like that are the last thing I want on the road near me as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian!

But this technology is as useless as a toothbrush with a rocket engine. Some rich car crazy guys will buy it, sure. But maybe a few thousand units. This technology doesn't bring any substantial revenue for a billion dollar company. People who own this rocket car it will try it out once or twice and then it will end up in some pretty garage for a few decades.

There's a little secret you should know about all stocks...

What happens when a charged COPV is involved in a car accident?

What is the point of reaction thrusters that turn anyone on the wrong side of the car into pink mist?

Will anyone ever be allowed to drive this on a public roadway?

I can see this being a thing in a cyberpunk dystopia, so.. in a few years I guess?

uh.. zoom out a bit? The stock price is double what it was two years ago

Also 2 years ago is a pretty specific time point where it was near the lowest it's been looking back a less random 5d, 1M, 6M, 1Y and 5Y it's only up on the 5Y chart and that's a relatively meager 25%.

You'll see the stock go up when Robotaxi and the Semi hit the market.

Robotaxi is trying to enter an already crowded market and isn't exactly flourishing there. I'm still seeing every one in Austin with a human behind a steering wheel.

As for the Semi, yeah, if it actually comes to fruition. But like all things Elon ... let's wait and see.

There are 1000 variables that go into it

Back of the fag pack, let’s say it is light for an electric car and weights 1000kg. I’ll also go on a limb and guess the air flow is actually subsonic - 200m/s would make it 0.6 Ma (still insanely fast!). Even then, that requires 50 kg of air every second. Or 40 m^3. Using everyone’s favorite metric, this empties an Olympic swimming pool in 1 minute. It also requires a MW of power. I mean… that’s a lot??? Though admittedly, only about as much as accelerating 0-60 in 1 sec (50% of that in fact). So the flying would draw as much power as accelerating at full throttle.

Power requirements would go down a lot with slower exhaust speed, but then you need to shift more fluid. 40 m^3 already seems like a lot to me.

I get it’s a neat little demo and they have to get SpaceX into the picture somehow, but still I don’t understand how it’s supposed to add up. Also, what do I know - just a humble physicist.

I'm imagining this in two phases: phase one - you drive around, and excess energy goes to compressing air. Phase two - you use that compressed air which takes very little additional power, so you get to double up on force. I guess likely a 'running mode' where it's using some power to keep suction on.

I'm curious how much time you get at full blast vs 'just' enough to keep the car pinned to a wall, e.g. 1 vs 2 g.

It still doesn’t make much sense to me. And that’s before considering what happens when you get rocket stream hitting a tarmac road. Never mind public roads, this sounds like a major hazard anywhere. Plus the quantity of compressed gas son board (if that’s how it works)… not a pretty crash. At these numbers, imagine 10MJ released all of a sudden - apparently that’s about 2.5kg of TNT.

Surely I’m missing something… as I say, I can’t make sense of it.

ETA: this is a horrifying amount of energy to be sitting on top of.

It's an electric car - unless you've got an incredibly long charging cable, there is no "excess energy" when you're driving around.

napkins, and envelopes at least kind of make sense.

Who was ever writing on the back of cigarette packs?

British officers planning trench raids in the front lines during WWI. Or, at least, that's where I've been told the expression originates.

Really, though, is it impossible to imagine no one, ever, using a cigarette pack to jot something down? It's a colloquialism. It doesn't even have to be taken literally to make sense. What is gained by questioning it on that level?

Wouldn't the back have printing on it? I could imagine someone ripping the pack open and writing on the insides, which are blank.

I took the OP's question to really be a question about the origin of that phrase, and with your answer, I learned something I didn't know before. So I, for one, am happy the question was asked.

The OP's question was clearly skeptical though:

---

napkins, and envelopes at least kind of make sense.

Who was ever writing on the back of cigarette packs?

---

Implication being that writing on the back of cig packs does not make sense. I'd agree with your reading if not for the "at least kind of make sense" bit.

in india.

This is sort of like demonstrating a car that softens the asphalt in front of it with lasers to get a better grip; difficult, technically impressive, and zero chance that it will ever be allowed on a public road.

Edit: According to this Motor Trend article, it uses a big carbon-fiber pressure vessel at 5500psi, so basically an enormous fragile bomb. And the one that did all the stunts had two of the pressure vessels which would have filled most of the interior.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-roadster-thrust-system...

Other cars have these tanks, but full of flammable fuel, not just air.

Off the top of my head, the honda civic CNG (3600 psi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_GX#Specifications

the toyota marai (10,000 psi hydrogen)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#High-pressure_hyd...

and probably the other cng or hydrogen cars.

At this point I look at wikipedia what happened to the submarine bamboozled mentioned. Ooops. Heh, the pressure of water is as evenly distributed as can be. Seems my background in watersports is not enough to moonlight in material engineering.

Fry: "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"

Professor Farnsworth: "Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdkIOhFmbKI&t=1239

Doesn't look too big, tbh. They also explain some of the mechanics used to make it happen.

That said, the production issues with the Cybertruck mean you’d be a fool to reserve one of these. Let others do it, find out how late it arrives, what glued panels fall off at speed and wait for the inevitable recalls. Tesla has torched their engineering reputation lately and this page is making a lot of promises about revolutionary things.

Sound advice for people looking for a practical car. But if you have Lambo money who cares? I have never seen a supercar described as reliable.

The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.

This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.

Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).

Tesla has very different reasons for doing what they did on the cybertruck. It's very much a form over function. Lotus has always been function over form (to a fault, in terms of their financial position).

You can add glass microspheres to adhesives to guarantee bondline thickness. It's often done nowadays whenever you have different metals meeting with a glue bond because it keeps them electrically isolated, preventing galvanic corrosion.

That's pretty standard. An M3 has long pushed the tolerances of things in the engine more than a base-model 3 series. An S-class has more whiz-bang-hope-it-still-works-in-ten-years stuff than a C-class. A Lexus has more going on than a boring base Corolla.

The issue isn't glue, its that parts are falling off.

there's a whole lot of systemic issues with wealthy people buying low-poly cars to their collection.

Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.

I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.

FWIW, I'm into my fourth year of (Chinese-built) Model 3 ownership and it's been rock solid, the only services so far were to replace the air filter and wipers.

Besides that, EVs are just really heavy and weight wears out tires. Just a fact of life.

Rip away center tunnel carpet on rhs (lhd vehicle), remove 2 screws from below glove compartment, fold away panel, remove cap from filter compartment, remove 2 filters - put back together in reverse order.

That's literally a 20 minute job if you about know what you should be doing - a.k.a. read about the process in the free service manual of Tesla (only need an account, free) or watched a YT video...

This is less about EVs vs ICEs and more about Toyota's engineering quality vs Tesla's engineering quality, which is hovering somewhere in the vicinity of Homer Simpson's barbecue pit.

Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NextGenT...

(just personal preference)

9 years since the announcement of Roadster v2, people who paid 50k deposits are still waiting.

Time to up the promises, and ask for more $50k deposits for v3!

https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Lamborgh...

The Ford Edsel is widely regarded as one of the greatest car flops of all time and it sold 60k cars per year for their 2-year production run.

The CyberTruck is a massively bigger flop than that.

As for Cybertruck - they don't seem to be dropping the prices just yet and prices on secondary market haven't collapsed either. Like it or not - it's here to stay.

I doubt any program has lost the $1 to $1.5 billion that Cybertruck is reasonably estimated to have lost. And that’s including their quarter where SpaceX bought like 20% of their production for definitely-totally-legitimate-reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

Quite different from launching a failure into roaring consumer spending and cheap debt.

> https://www.drive.com.au/news/europes-biggest-loss-making-ca...

Tesla announced and started taking reservations for their roadster TEN YEARS AGO. People who made reservations and paid the $50k-$250k cost are STILL WAITING.

And now Tesla has announced yet another vapourware car, with a controversial design, taking reservation money again.

If you fall for this, you are a fool.

- Performance: road ready, seats two, active aero and a “multi-mode suction system.” 0-60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. Available by reservation.

- Thrust: race ready, seats two, adds rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters. 0-60 mph in under 0.9 seconds. Limited release.

- Rocket: seats one, adds thrusters around the perimeter of the car for upward and rotational movement. 0-60 mph in under 0.59 seconds and a top speed of over 230 mph. Invite only.

Per Electrek: https://electrek.co/2026/10/15/tesla-unveils-cyberfied-new-r...

Like any of this will materialise. Where’s the original Roadster people actually put down payments on?

Hahah, the failure modes are going to be exciting.

Yes, and at high speed, it helps make sure you don't take flight accidentally.

When you don't have enough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21ZjwZGjiQ

Every time Tesla's VP of vehicle engineering [0] explains the Engineering of the product by stating that they are "breaking the laws of physics", everything he says is losing a bit of credibility...

[0] https://youtu.be/22rvpUecLts?t=791

Patently absurd, of course, but amazing too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD2__BcAxSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9hdO8avWbo

https://journal.classiccars.com/2026/10/16/delorean-enters-f...

By rough estimate, using hydroxide jet packs as a reference, I’d say they got it down to about 600kg.

I find it genuinely hilarious that anyone could possibly think this is a good idea.

You can't possibly be serious lol.

Also where does the habit of ending angry messages with lol or lmao come from, which I only see here on HN?

I'm using lol here as an expression of rueful delight, not anger. I'm not being sarcastic - the mental image of vehicles autonomously leaping through traffic is really funny to me. However, I'm slightly perturbed by the lack of parsimonious thinking.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/air-bags/deadly-air-bag-replacements

"After the air bags were replaced and the vehicle was involved in a crash, the air bag inflators malfunctioned and ruptured, sending large metal fragments into drivers’ chests, necks, eyes and faces, leading to death or severe injury."

So yes, safety features sometimes have flaws.

> If not, then why do you think a system using these jets to avoid accidents would?

For starters, airbags are reactive to an impact, not predictive in anticipation of it.

"We're going to crash" is harder to assess than "hey a crumple sensor in the front bumper just got wiped out".

(The airbag is also deeply unlikely to obliterate a different car, pedestrian, or bike during deployment. They're simply not comparable to a rocket engine on the outside of the car!)

Or make a few! https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

> SpaceX thinks it knows why its newest Starship spacecraft went boom this week. "Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship's nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing," the company wrote in an update on Thursday (June 19).

AI Elon pressure selling "act decisively, double your money" by transferring crypto to some wallet and getting 2x back - yeah, right

(PS Google shut it down)

Car looks half decent too.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_N_Vision_74

Dislike the design, look and edge of it. Feels cold. Each to their own.

Odd world we live in when we don't see that as being cool. But, we're seemingly headed there. At some point, it's going to be hard to imagine something that could surprise me.

It is weird. I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.

<< At some point, it's going to be hard to imagine something that could surprise me.

It is hard to believe your eyes -- I assumed it was magnetic or something initially.

Tesla does have ~700k other employees.

For what? For an unpractical vehicle that now has the ability to launch and crush another car? If said to be true. As if driving wasn't already dangerous and stupid enough.

If he would show maturity for a change rather than his childhood antics then I would give him credit.

Man only manages to coordinate an engineering feat and your response is "why can he not offer something responsible like a lightly breaded toast"?

Beyond the obvious part where I say that his antics are part of the product demonstration ( roadster is space moment being another notable moment ), is your objection truly that he didn't come to the podium with a clipboard and say:

" Begin communication - it jumps - it go up upside down - it can go 0-60 in 1 sec End of communication."

Fuck man. Where has your wonder gone?

You can't wonder when the man offering the wonder is a man of fraud. It's 2026 and we are now spiralling in to a pit of despair with no return.

Elon shows no care to the world or you. It sounds like you have fallen hold to his playbook of a new shiny toy you'll probably never own outright.

We have wars going on killing innocent people and then have a man who disables Starlink.

A man who raided your country, America. Sabotaging jobs of hard workers, important folk and ruining their lives. Does that not matter now for which we should forget the governmental damage caused due to his "DOGE" antics?

There is no wonder in fracking, cruelty to animals or destruction of planetary resources.

You know he fracks right and know that his brain-chip has tortured innocent animals?

That is all fine if folk want to live in fantasy land, I do not. I want to live in a functioning real land.

You want wonder? I've been wondering when humanity will actually work together and improve society but that's just wishing upon a dying star.

His toys and vision do not align with mine and his fraud outweighs any ingenuity that may come from.

You want to know something else? He's not even American, he's South African.

If you're a democratic voter and you buy this car, you're no worse than the republican president. You might as well vote for republican seeing as you are supporting a fraudulent South African republican reality.

I am English who lives in the United Kingdom. If you wanted an outside in perspective you got one.

Not sure what you can't grasp.

What's cool about that?

I think that's extremely reckless, dangerous, etc.

The only half-usable feature here is super fast acceleration.

While you were busy getting baited by flashy non-features, you probably missed that this is coming out minimum 8 years late, with half the promised range, seat space, and the acceleration numbers all depending on unspecified consumable gas which you'll have fill up on somehow. If it ever comes out at all, what with Tesla's track record.

BTW, the reason you haven't seen this before is nobody in their right mind would have spent so much money on something this pointless, not because this is some cutting edge tech.

Im happy to discuss and debate views

It's an engineering demo. It obviously showcases impressive tech from several fields like automotive design, material science, etc.

Whether this turns into vaporware is something that will shake out in the future. Calling this a scam is jumping the gun.

> SOLVES ACTUAL PROBLEMS

Can you elaborate how the Mother of All demos suggested guis and networks and a mouse would solve actual problems?

Panem et circenses

To me it looks like a mashup of a Ferrari and a Cybertruck. That's not a good thing.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-spac...

Long-term investors would lose about 40% of their investment to subsidize the inflated valuation of X (bought by xAI), the inflated valuation of xAI (bought by SpaceX), and SpaceX (whose valuation is based on the assumption that demand for inference is effectively unlimited, and that everyone will prefer hardware in space over Earth).

The valuation of both companies was inflated prior to acquisition, and Tesla shareholders will be asked to dilute their investment by absorbing that cumulative inflation.

Not even to mention that Musk would have exclusive control over the entire conglomerate, with not even the pretense of a Board to check his power.

When even Steven Mark Ryan is like "let's pump the breaks a little bit," you know it's bad.

He wants control, so that he can use investor’s cash to do epic stuff like humanoid robots, cyber trucks, an AI that tells you that apartheid was actually cool, rocket cars, real life brain controlled robot bacon chungus, etc.

Well, that and being the only reusable rocket company ever with an even bigger version on the horizon and a global Internet service that's about to get a whole lot better thanks to aforementioned rocket. Both of which are hugely profitable.

We do, at least at the time of the merger, as it existed as separate parts prior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceXAI#Finance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering_of_Spa...

“Other shareholder meetings are snoozefests but ours are bangers. Look at this. This is sick.”

Elon’s pay package: he gets 400 million Tesla shares if he raises the market cap of tesla(xspacextwitterxAIx) to $8.5 trillion (nominal). He spent a cool 250 mil on making friends with the republicans, so as to ensure that his incoming epic awesome merger is not blocked.

A merger, plus the amount of inflation this government has already produced over the next decade, will probably see X co hitting Elon’s salary goals.

In the US, GE makes your microwave, aircraft engines, and also the gas turbine your power plant uses.

Siemens makes appliances, MRI machines, and even nuclear reactors I believe.

Or in Korea: Samsung, Hyundai, LG. Samsung makes chips, TVs, washing machines.

Japan: Mistubishi makes washing machines and excavators and mining equipment.

India: Reliance has cell phone service, grocery stores, and oil rigs. Tata makes cars, has tier 1 datacenters, and runs hotels too.

This is hardly a novel idea.

For a while, didn't Amazon do the same? They basically ran a loss with Amazon retail but profits on AWS, until they spun off?

So yes, this is fairly common with conglomerates, (Amazon sold diapers at a loss to put diapers.com out of business). And in fact, this tactic is a target for anti-trust laws where they exist.

Until they sold all their compute to anthropic, Ai was the boat anchor.

No way in hell is Twitter making a lick of profit.

The problem with the demo is that it was vapourware. Period, full stop. It is not the car they are selling to us, and they haven't even begun making them. I am personally not a fan of pure concept products that exist only to polish the company’s crown.

Steve Jobs said that "Real artists ship," because the act of shipping is the act of making the incredibly difficult and important decisions that manage the enormous number of constraints that go into the actual product.

If people like concept cars that don't have to actually work or meet a specific price point, fine. It is entertainment, nothing wrong with that. But I am not and will not be impressed until, like Apple, the thing they show on stage is so far along that you can be expected to buy one within weeks, not years.

I am not telling anyone how to judge this. But by my very old-school standards, vapourware sucks.

The first orders for this car were in 2017, still yet to be fulfilled. Tesla will keep taking money, without delivering anything, for decades to come.

For context: https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/24/apples-250-million-siri-settl...

I can’t recall the vehicle now but there was a futuristic car around the turn of the century that had a lot of buzz, but changed dramatically for production and nobody liked it. But an engineer on the project said the concept car had less aerodynamic drag going backward than forward, which is quite an achievement.

That is one of at least a dozen experiences I have had that tell me not to get attached until the prototypes ship to car reviewers for examination.

It’s somewhat notable that Tesla was up significantly overnight and closed the day down 2%.

I wonder if this is the beginning of a very lengthy period after which people will look back and wonder “what the hell was everyone thinking?”

Just because it's not your hobby or within your budget, doesn't mean that others must feel the same way as you.

What sad reaction to a real life flying car.

> This isn't flying, it's falling with style.

I’d need to go deep into something like being able to maintain altitude in the medium of air without positive impulse or something, but again, I don’t have a strong enough definition at this point.

Looking at the pictures, design-wise, I’m almost tempted to ask: “what was the prompt?”.

Disregarding that, all stuff that Tesla (and SpaceX) have demoed had become commercial products, so I wouldn't call Tesla a vaporware company.

Sure, it takes them decades ... but that's different from not shipping.

I am. These machines push the limits of prevailing technology. Strong organizations set stretch goals and pursue them regardless of market viability. Sometimes they share this with everyone, and convention has named this practice "concept" cars. I appreciate when they take the risk to do this. And when they do it well, credit is deserved.

There are real engineers and technicians behind this. A lot of them. And they will tell the story of this event for the rest of their lives. I've known a number of people with such stories. They're among the best people I've ever met.

It is possible to exist without cranking the cynical knob to 11 at all times.

Concepts cars are cars.

What was shown on stage is closer to the Apollo lander training rigs than a vehicle that you could purchase and drive on a public road.

It can never, ever be sold as a production vehicle! The COPV gas storage is under enormous pressure, and would explode with the force of a decent sized bomb if damaged in an accident.

These things would be regularly turning their owners into pink mist, emulating Stockton Rush at a larger scale.

> unsupervised

This guy might be the most biased reviewer on the planet. Dude practically cashes checks from Apple on camera.

They're typically used to affix your beer to the steering wheel of your boat.

Square-cube scaling being what it is, I think it'd be much more reasonable to use propellers (like quadcopters) than try to scale down COPV's to a Vroomba! size. That's actually an interesting product idea. A small flying vacuum cleaner could clean a variety of surfaces; not only floors.

(And you could even mount the charging station on the ceiling, so it doesn't take up floor space).

https://www.amazon.com/window-cleaning-robot/s?k=window+clea...

Fan cars are pretty old. From that perspective, the driving upside down part is "less impressive" but screw it, still cool.

I want to see it on a track going all out, but something about what they decided to focus on tells me nobody gives a damn about this actually doing anything performance car related.

It won't.

And this is also true of being able to go over 90 MPH, despite many sports/premium cars touting an ability to reach a top speed above 150 MPH. Some cars come with "Donut" or drift modes. Donuts and drifting are definitely not road legal actions. These, and many other capabilities of sports cars, are obviously for track use only. These Roadster gimmicks are no different.

I'm more worried about the COPVs exploding in a crash, for the thruster version. Hopefully it will keep the tanks empty unless a special launch mode is enabled with a warning siren sounding as long as they're pressurized.

Why would you solve that? Open roads aren't a track, we don't build highways with 90 degree turns, there is no need for such thing

This doesn't tend to end well. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

The suction system is interesting. It's possible for it to work on the street but incredibly dumb. The kind of gap you have to keep is millimeters off the ground and your typical streets in the real world have so much damage and inconsistency it's hard to imagine it working for anything but straight line acceleration on a newly paved road. This would be a suicide mission to drive this on Skyline with the expectation to get 2-3g in the bends.

The concerns about debris and so forth are somewhat valid but can be taken care of. Similar to dust collectors for woodworking - this will have a cyclone separator, mesh, and whatnot that will prevent the blades from getting wrecked by a rock. But wouldn't want to tail this thing. It'll be pelting your car.

It'll be another "car goes really fast in a straight line" feature which electric cars have always done well with. While it'd be cool to use the suction system to get incredible g forces in bends - it'll be too dangerous for public roads. You'd immediately fly off the road if you lost any suction and I don't know what public roads (especially in the Bay Area) you could run such a system reliably on.

People in the market for a car like this care far more about performance than they do safety, repairability or longevity.

That’s why performance oriented cars talk about their acceleration, and minivans talk about safety, and pickup trucks talk about longevity. Their target market determines which of the various metrics are going to be the headline.

For something like the performance versions of their high-volume vehicles, it's partially for the same reasons people like sports cars, or at least how some people like a sports car that is faster / quicker and gives them more excitement while driving (obviously a lot of the appeal for sports cars otherwise is the sporty look/sound of the engine, which Tesla doesn't really deliver on at all).

Nowadays as a "petrol head" when I look at stats I want to see weight - as little of it as possible. Horsepower needs to begin with 2, maybe with 3 in some cars, any more than that and it's silly. I want reviewers to say the car puts a smile on their face driving it to work every day, not doing 160mph on the race track. And of course, high speed is "fun" - one of my favourite memories is driving at 158mph past Berlin at 4am - incredible. But the modern obsession with horsepower and 0-60 is...just stupid. Fast 0-60 time does not make for a fun or an engaging car. It just makes it fast.

Of course, it's also less safe. But the threat of a quick death in a lithium fire is the only reason some of us get up in the morning.

Yet it's a useful, comparable, measure for acceleration and is frequently exercised on track. If you had an AMG and haven't taken it for at least one track day then I question why you bought it. Image?

Maybe 30-70 would be more useful for determining overtaking capability, but that would require everyone in the motoring industry to agree to change at the same time.

Oh I have, and it was awesome. But 99% of the time I drove it to work and back, sitting in traffic, thinking to myself I'd much much much rather be in something more comfortable, more quiet, something that isn't using quite so much fuel just sitting there and something that didn't require new tyres every 8000 miles.

Like yes, speed is awesome - fast acceleration is cool. But the obsession with it is destroying the industry - like, it's so clear that a lighter Lamborghini with 400bhp would be a lot more fun to drive than a 2 tonne one with 1000 horsepower, no? Even if the latter does pretty good on the race track. But because everyone only cares about 0-60 times and horsepower we are where we are.

Most young boys have the Lamborghini poster on the wall even if it actually sucks to drive, especially the iconic Countach, I find pure joy in driving my old beetle now, or the past weekend a friends 1957 MGA, horrible safety, tiny engines, zero comforts, not even a radio, just a pure carthat can't even be sold anymore, but there will never be a better driving experience than an proper ancient British roadster.

Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?

If you're a "normal person" you don't need a 8000dpi mouse with RGB, or a Louis Vuitton purse, or a large big mac meal.

This is not poverty it is prosperity.

Sure.

I think the poster you are replying to is trying to say that the “k-shaped” economy is incentivizing the market to cater only to the high end and simply ignoring the low end.

A few businesses I own are dealing with this issue now. It’s just much more profitable and logistically easier for them to charge what seems like an absurd price, justify it with some inexpensive “white-glove” service, and just ignore the rest of the market.

On the one hand, this is a tribute to modern marketing that high value-add products and services can match with customers more efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential to create a bizarre “race to the top” such that only suckers will cater to anything other than the top 1% of their target market (in terms of wealth / willingness and capacity to pay).

Where I currently live, this is happening with frightening efficiency with health care. Almost all of the “good” PCP doctors are going concierge, and the concierge prices are increasing at a rapid clip.

But to be clear, in my example products aren’t the only thing to which the economy doesn’t cater to normal people for (lower-middle class but increasingly middle and lower class). War, corruption, and genocide are all bad for the average person. Generally things that funnel money into hurting or enriching individuals. Both of these are inefficient and the inefficient use of resources, is hurtful to normal people. E.g. enriching an oligarch to build roads could be twice as much road if he takes a 50 percent cut. And the money sitting with him does harm, oppresses people. Food for thought.

I think Nissan had a workaround I could live with: GPS fencing around known tracks would activate/deactivate the speed governor.

I think of F-150s that have quickly climbed over 400hp and can pull a giant trailer... but I don't think the brakes and suspension match.

(f-250 or f-350 might be more balanced when pulling those 30'+ trailers)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Trumps

The vast majority of LLM users -- not the average person here on HN -- doesn't know which "model" they are using, can't tell the difference and don't care, including many software engineers. You could ask the same thing about those LLM benchmarks.

He complained to me "I keep getting guys coming over to talk about the bike"

No to mention there was no actual driver in it.

If you do the math that gets you about 13 seconds of hovering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts

If only I had been given fidicuary responsibility for millions of peoples life savings. Then I could build a car that has 0 chance of ever reaching production, just to impress my friends.

Imagination is powerful.

Ask yourself who would see the benefit of a vehicle that can jump over obstacles, other dangers or other cars?

Obstacles including barricades, flooded roads, tank traps, rivers, fences and burning cars. Dangers might include IEDs, mines, destroyed bridges, barbed wire, stinger strips, active munitions being fired at it, etc.

Even without such dangers, jumping over moving cars would be useful in pursuits where getting in front of a target gives an advantage.

And the extra mobility would be useful in humanitarian and disaster applications where getting to and from those in need in a timely fashion may save lives.

Drawing a parallel, manufacturers presented rollable mobile devices already a decade ago, modular devices with replaceable components, etc. The archives of Nokia and Ericsson (and others) are full with these kinds of products. Car manufacturers did the same. They presented a vision, not a commitment to a product because there is much more to this than just "being able" to build it.

But it was never economically feasible or sensible to do this at SUCH a scale of engineering cost, and presented with the unrelenting confidence of "this will be yours in two years", despite all the fundamental roadblocks still to overcome.

It appears that this is the most disrupting aspect of their presentations: People are not used to being presented a "vision" of such a scale with so little regards for practical execution.

They like the journey they are taken on, and willingly fill all gaps and doubts with "they wouldn't present this if they didn't think of everything already"

This event was like Disney presenting a mass-production rollercoaster you can pre-order for your home, but the general public seems to glance over how utterly irrational this is.

So far companies did alot of fundamental due diligence before making such an announcement (and the prior R&D investment!), because the consequences could be fatal.

The average consumer apparently still assumes that this due diligence phase was passed, thinking it's impossible that a known company presents something that big it cannot deliver on...

And also your point: It is a company presenting a jet-pack to actually sell a premium back-pack under the same name.

They invested in the engineering of 1-10 jet-packs, to sell 200-2000 backpacks...

The demonstrations seems to be very specific, it probably can't do anything more than fall to the ground. The practicality of actual levitating the car may out of reach.

Everyone calls it a "flying car" the idea is planted in people's mind and they let people's imagination or credulity do the rest. Stock price goes up.

Even if we would accept the premise that flying cars will be the norm at some point, I'm not sure what people imagine that would do for them. Technically you could solve traffic jams to some degree, but still not entirely because I can't imagine that at any point flying cars would mean that you just fly wherever you want. It would give us multilayered traffic, which is cool to reduce traffic jams, but does it really do anything else?

But prior to any of that, I'm fascinated by how irrational it is to think that this jumping car is even remotely feasible to participate in any kind of traffic.

That's why I assume that the general public expects that Tesla has already solved all these problems, as they otherwise wouldn't announce such a product.

In reality, we apparently have entered times where they could present a teleporting machine and start a 200k USD pre-order with little to no public scrutiny.

Or, if I'm making up stuff as I go along, you can't crash, the car can just auto-takeoff to dodge whatever you were about to hit.

For Eg, we have self driving trucks. Nikola admits prototype was rolling downhill in promotional video: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype...

Tesla’s History of Faking Demonstration Videos: https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstrati...

This is probably just to hype up the stock. The stock is down 5% (5 days), up 1% (1 month), down ~7% (6 months), down ~20% YTD, down ~16% (1 year). It has a PE of 336 and dwindling YOY sales. Tesla’s U.S. vehicle sales fell approximately 14% to 20% year-over-year through the first three quarters of 2026. Rest of the world, Tesla is not competitive and will probably go down rapidly soon.

Also Tesla events rarely (if ever) get followed by a durable stock bump.

--

Edit: Credible independent videos have been released on YouTube by reputable people. There's no doubt that the spectacle did happen as shown by Tesla. That's not to say it's anything more than a carefully staged spectacle, but claims that it's fake or AI or CGI are absolutely debunked.

There are lots of ways for sleight of hand. Do you remember the time that guy made the Statue of Liberty disappear?

Well then, I'm sure it'll be disproven very shortly, right?

They won't keep the vehicle hidden and out of sight, right?

Let's just revisit in a couple months, shall we?

Tesla will continue to rule the US for the next two years due to the admin but the Euro and Canadian markets are likely going to continue to close to them. It might be that home-grown competitors will step up to the plate or maybe they'll open their doors to Chinese exports - it's hard to say. So while it's hard to identify a winner, the loser is clearly Tesla.

A car company that has a long history of making false claims? Are you really asking me that?

I think it's the dead kids.

All those dead kids.

Here you go. AI can be so helpful when you're confused.

https://claude.ai/share/5d3b41f2-56e4-460e-84a4-4d34cef47fcf

And there are high-speed tunnels connecting major cities?

And that guy who saved those kids in Thailand is a pedophile?

And not a single person has died due to the USAID cuts?

Ok. Sure. I hear you. Perfectly.

That is of course very very far away from reality (though, progressing to a feasable program faster than any space observers predicted.)

THat, combined with Elon signaling to investors/market that tesla no longer produces cars.....it's hard to imagine the company splitting their very, very , very over-commited engineers to a flying car. At least, they aren't commiting the point that this will be a consumer-market car, or even a halo car.

Given that they have largely relied on reusability rather than strongly ramping up production of boosters for Falcon 9, and given that they have performed 3 launches in a single day, one launch per day is clearly achievable without any further advances, and without even using Starship.

To be clear, the stated goal for Starship is one launch per hour throughout the year, which would still be a tiny number compared to, say, airline flights, but quite impressive for orbital flight.

Nobody else comes close, whether considering individual companies or entire nations.

No contradiction between "more than everyone else combined" and "it is unfeasable to launch 36,500 metric tons per year compared to the about-2,500 tons in the last 12 months".

Especially as the working launch vehicle is getting retired and the replacement has only had one circularized orbit, and is currently behind the development pace set by the Saturn V, N1, and even the Space Shuttle.

Fool me once...

Even if they didn’t deliver FSD, the data says they delivered something people are choosing to pay $100 per month for.

This is a circus stunt.

It's not at all conspiracy theory. It's just same old over promise and under deliver that Elon does.

All major exterior panels are welded and/or bolted on. On the earliest revisions, the thin upper door trim strips were bonded using a bad structural adhesive which became brittle with temperature cycling. These were recalled and remedied with a different structural adhesive plus a welded stud. Such recalls are very common; the current generation Ford Explorer had multiple recalls for exterior panels falling off.

A car company that as a long history of making false claims?

I agree: one of us is delusional. I think we disagree about whom.

But hey, you're right. If it's not styrofoam I'm sure we'll see proof of that very soon now. Like a person riding in it. Or it out where someone can actually touch it. Try to lift it.

(And if we don't....)

The failure of the demonstration got vastly more coverage than if it would have if the, um rock?, just hit the window, went donk and fell down. If your goal was to communicate to the maximum number of people that you had put bulletproof glass in your cars, it would be quite a reasonable tactic.

It's surely not AI, but so far it is little more than all these Jetpack demonstrations of the past decade...

They've been promising those since the 1970s...

And inevitably two groups will clash, one pointing out how much this deviated from the original, often decade long promises vs another pointing at the identical naming, how it's still a product they like and of course the all time winner "I don't see you do X"...

For what it's worth, I'd file this as a RCS demo for SpaceXGrokSI (or whatever they call themselves this week) above all else and if I were a betting man, might be a prelude to fusing them into SpaceXSuperXTeslaXIntelligenceX...

His software company, named Green Hills, supplies the RTOS for Mobileye, which formerly supplied driver-assistance hardware and software to Tesla (and continues to do so for other car companies). Mobileye is no longer a Tesla supplier because Tesla insourced their ADAS.

So he has a very real financial incentive to convince the world that Tesla's system is bad.

Mobileye is no longer a Tesla supplier because Tesla wouldn't stop using their tech in ways they did not approve of, turning back all the safety limits to allow the public to do things Mobileye knew were unsafe. Mobileye publicly called them out, saying that Tesla was "going to hurt the interests of [Mobileye] and hurt the interests of an entire industry, if a company of our reputation will continue to be associated with this type of pushing the envelope in terms of safety".

This is one of the reasons why S/X ADAS performance famously got significantly worse in late 2016 with HW2, they had of course been working on their own tech but because they'd already built their brand around ADAS they felt compelled to put it out unfinished when they no longer had the Mobileye system to sell.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/11/tesla-s...

Also I feel like it should be said that anyone who doesn't like fascism and Nazi salutes should be a critic of Tesla, and if you aren't, that speaks volumes.

It would encourage me to sell, if I had, seeing this nonsense.

(To stop masking and start ‘musking?’)

Those Yandex data centers must be coming back online.

It clearly does not look like a smaller Cybertruck though. You're just wrong there.

It's a backpack company presenting the engineering of a jetpack to promote the sales of a premium backpack with the same name.

And, speculation by Chris Norland YouTuber is the Roadster being fitted with literal rocket boosters is a portion of an argument to help justify SpaceX financially helping Tesla.

I mean, it's fun but useless? It's like those semi trucks with a jet engine on them. It looks awesome but it's utterly useless.

If this is for entertainment, sure. But they're trying to sell you something here.

Remember when they sent one into space? Same thing, everyone in the world is talking about it without spending a single cent in ads.

Doesn’t mean we’re getting flying cars.

I'm not saying that there aren't lower hanging fruit reasons why they wouldn't make more of those, but you can see how the guidance necessary to make this move the way that it does could be dual use.

They have to sell one to say that it exists. It’s marketing.

Absolutely nobody who owns that vehicle will be “flying” it.

And many a rocket scientist would be insulted by the comparison of a nozzled rocket motor to the simple pipe of an air rifle.

Sports cars are designed to be impractical, but they can also be impressive feats of engineering.

I imagine the flying variant will be an extremely limited release and mostly just for stunts and shows.

Other cars, if you have to ask where the government will allow you to drive it, you can't afford it.

This is not and will probably never be practical, but it's something that's never really been done before, and for that alone I kinda like it.

The fact that Waymos don't get hit head-on by drunk drivers suggests this is a situational awareness versus last-minute dodge problem.

(still not buying a tesla thooughbeit)

Not that I'd ever spend that much money on a car or need this at all, but for people who buy luxury vehicles I can see it. Definitely something we've never had in car history.

And mass is one of the top engineering concerns for these types of performance vehicles, even those which do not need to fight gravity.

**

Side note, as I was looking for the right stream, youtube gave me a link to a different deep fake 'Musk' stream where he extolled virtues of sending him money ( https://roadster-tesla.com/#participate ). Everything has changed man. I am sure the scammer actually got some people.

(Calling it a "roadster" is cute, but this has nothing in common with a Boxster or Miata. If anything, the ICE analogue would be muscle cars.)

Because there are no real unique driving characteristics, the only engineering you can compete with is raw speed or price. That and crazy gimmicks.

911 is not really a roadster - it's a full on sports car. Even then the older ones top out at about a ton. Same as the Boxster and Miata.

Most serious sports EVs start at 2 tons or more. It's really impressive what they can do to hide the weight, but because it's all digitally controlled, it's really not a dynamic driving experience in the same way.

More importantly to my point - all of them have nearly identical drive characteristics. Outside of raw performance, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to describe the difference in handling between a Tesla, Mach-E, or a Polestar - I'm not sure I could give you anything.

You can't call this beauty of engineering a muscle car.

Are you referring to the Tesla Roadster? Because, if not, I am pretty sure that most EVs, except for maybe small compact EV cars, usually weights 2 tons or more.

Is it going to be fun and engaging to drive? Absolutely not. It doesn’t even have a steering wheel.

Finally, a vehicle that’s perfect for the CEO in your life who wants to upload his brain to a data center powered by the body heat of his employees hooked up to the pods from The Matrix.

It also has steer-by-wire which makes the steering yoke practical as they can tweak the steering ratio to prevent the need to go hand-over-hand. As they did for the Cybertruck.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=USSHxtHLHc8

Driving an F1 car is fun in the same way that cycling in the Tour de France is fun. Everything about that experience is purely for function and competition.

I think Louis Hamilton has a lot more fun in his Ferrari F40 than in his F1 car.

https://news.dupontregistry.com/blogs/ford-news/whatever-hap...

Tesla has never really shown they can design anything compelling that doesn’t look like a lumpy shoe.

Right now it has 80s delorean look... That was nice then but a bit out of place now especially for a supercar

Some cars come with "Donut Mode" or drift modes. Donuts and drifting are definitely not road legal actions. These, and many other capabilities of sports cars, are obviously for track use only. These Roadster gimmicks are no different.

One reason I hope Slate does well - newer cars have too much useless tech across the board. At least with a sports car the gimmicks are part of the appeal. Entry level new cars should be simpler, modular, and cheaper. Just let me drive and stop trying to be so helpful.

Kinda, but not really. In Germany you can do that on public roads. And there are many circuits you can do track days at that only require a street legal car and a helmet.

Meanwhile even the suction functionality of the roadster will probably be banned at most track days because it throws a bunch of rocks and dirt at cars behind you.

Surely the intake will need to be minimally filtered, my guess is something similar to fly screen mesh (screen door material, for the yanks) or finer. Debris would then just fall to the ground when the fans aren’t running.

Nope.

List of cars I know to go over 90MPH. Supposedly. 2000 Dodge Neon with 800 pounds of man in it and only 3 out of 4 cylinders functional. 2004 Toyota Camry with broken O2 sensors, and it loves it. Anything by VW. Pretty much anything parked in your local highschool.

Most modern cars can hit 90 MPH with ease, that's what modern aero and 145HP being "underpowered" means! Supposedly cars are electronically hard limited to 115mph and I have never been able to confirm that in practice

Of course, this implies that you might be able to own some of these features, with the actual crime being using them. Like that Beetle with a helicopter jet turbine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC97wdQOmfI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Kill_Vehicle

Rocket trim is not street legal.

The generally available car will have cold-gas thrusters which boost acceleration but is nothing like what was demo'd.

The flying trim will never be sold to general consumers. Even the rear-thruster trim is currently listed at a $250,000 pre-order fee, which is a deposit for a fraction of the full cost of the car. Final cost will be over $1M. Any of the thruster variants will be extremely rare; like, the one guy in your city that has one will show it off at car shows twice a year, McLaren P1, level of rare.

As an engineer who dislikes polished presentations of unimpressive things, it encourages me that it’s still possible to do a bad presentation about an amazing thing and (most) people don’t grumble too much.

No way?! Elon Musk? Unnatural and cringey?!

2: I still want a topless Tesla that could be a good daily driver; an SL63 competitor basically. So, I'm sad.

I'm not sure about those thrusters though, I doubt they'd be legal?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray_Automotive_T.50

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurtry_Sp%C3%A9irling

No advance. Its engineering gimmicks to hide the fact self driving is 15 years late, and all recently announced Tesla models are worst, and more expensive, than any Chinese alternative.

And this tech is simply part of the Tesla/SpaceX merge, and right in line with flamethrowers, tunnels, and chainsaws. It's going to funnel loads of cash his way, which was the idea.

Based on the record of Musk & co straight out LYING in such events (remember Solarcity?), I am very confident in saying that a large portion of what they demonstrated they have not actually solved how to fit in a real production car.

They could be in the unit when its happening and there would still be some counterclaim.

The software industry has taught me how sneaky a demo can be ;). That's without considering Tesla's history of bonkers claims and sus demos (anyone else remember the bulletproof windows?).

Edit: Removed a rhetorical question about the demo. Apparently there was a live audience, so they couldn't have just made a very tiny Roadster haha.

But you know, that's just off the top of my head.

It’s not like this is the first time that Elon has overpromised and underdelivered.

My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.

also wonder how comfy that is? i kind of welcome it tho!

I think there is a more rational explanation. Tesla sales have slowed, other companies are catching up, and if it weren't for import issues, Chinese cars would be eating Tesla's breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yet Tesla is trading at a 330 P/E and Musk has to do something to make it seem like Tesla is still light-years ahead of everyone else and just wait, that 330 P/E will be justified any quarter now. Just like shooting a roadster into deep space was just a PR stunt, this is a PR stunt to boost the brand with no actual market relevance.

Catching up? BYD has already surpassed Tesla and looks like the gap is going to continue to grow.

At this point it's not clear that there's anything other than a 14 year old in him. A greedy, sociopathic 14 year old.

Also a massive feat of engineering, congrats to their team.

https://casupercharging.com/

I kind of concluded that they really don't want us messing around up in the air - for reasons. Now, combined with self-driving capabilities, maybe it's back on the table :)

That being said, I suspect that they way do this, as shown in the demo, is sustainable for seconds only. And if I understood it correctly, the system is not really for flight, but for correcting momentum while driving in turns and such.

I kind of concluded that they really don't want us messing around up in the air - for reasons. Now, combined with self-driving capabilities, maybe it's back on the table :)

That being said, I suspect that they way do this, as shown in the demo, is sustainable for seconds only. And if I understood it correctly, the system is not really for flight, but for correcting momentum while driving in turns and such.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-079-introduction-to-convex-opt...

A lot of public funds go into these companies and it just feels like they are playing around with toys instead advancing humanity. I sometimes wonder if we are not allocating resources very efficiently.

you have to be pretty jaded to think a car that can fly through the air is not impressive.

If it was like "we figured out this technology and it will be available to the public and we will be working with regulators to usher in a new age of flying cars!" I would be pretty stoked. But it's pretty obviously just a stunt for the launch.

I don't know I just...I feel crazy but I feel like these resources could be doing something amazing and we getting like stunt tricks.

In other words, you are advocating for communism.

Also the public government funds being received are in the form of contracts. It's not like they can just use the money anywhere. Both Tesla and SpaceX are likely using private money (that is to say, funds not from the government) to fund this.

> It's not like they can just use the money anywhere

I mean SpaceX was literally caught buying Cybertrucks it's clear there's some corruption. But aside from that, they also just represent such a large chunk of the market that it's hard to argue that they aren't just siphoning funds from other ventures somewhat even outside of public misappropriation. I wouldn't even mind that if I felt like they earned it, but it just feels like the stock was pumped as a meme or something. The engineering is impressive but not impressive IMO for what they are worth.

I am skeptical that this feature will prove to be much more than a publicity stunt, especially since the availability of these models will be so limited.

Fan cars are old. Nothing about them is new or special or unique. Trying to build infrastructure dependent on such a feature would be the dumbest thing since monorails.

Just build subways for heaven's sake.

closed tab. thanks.

It's very impressive. Not useful, but impressive.

If they ever deliver a single unit that's a low enough bar to make it completely economically infeesable.

if they somehow managed to sell a couple of thousand... it might become profitable.

this has to be just a fantastic bit of marketing to jazz up their share price.

also.. I'd love to see a blooper roll of making it do these things...

[1] https://youtu.be/_lq-DpCE9rU?t=1011

It must be incredibly difficult to keep the car stable while mid-air at low speeds, I suspect it wouldn't look that "elegant"...

You’d want something that smoothly hovers rather than a launch then catch with boosters.

Was there a second jump without a roll?

A barrell roll is a specific manoeuvre involving pitching up vertically before commencing the roll.

Learnt something today, thank you!

But once that phase is overcome, how stable is the car actually mid-air?

It looks to me that they added the barrel-roll because everything else would have looked worse...

I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that it'll never make production like this, but what I see as being demonstrated is a suborbital lander/off-world ground transport concept that can work in low gravity environments etc. This will aid autonomous delivery vehicles etc to be dropped from low orbit and find their own landing sites, and then drive to location.

I wonder how many maimed kerbals are stranded around the space X facility while testing this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM-1#Lunar_landing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuto-R_Mission_1#Landing_att...

This feels like a delivery mechanism to drop hardware from terrestrial orbit. At least the last leg after parachutes

Also, assuming the delivery vehicle is destroyed at the end of each "delivery", what will it cost?

I think you are on an entirely different page.

Also amazing stupidity of people believing anything close to this will hit the streets. Lies and lies for a decade, and now after a flashy demo it is again "2028".

I think this is pretty unique demonstration for something that theoretically may be street legal one day.

Cool stunt car though

hmmmm. spacex-tesla merger signalling?

The thing that they showed off isn't something that they could legally sell, it would basically be a bomb. Also, the battery pack that would go in the car would be so large that they couldn't do the stunts they showed in their drone vehicle.

Are we not calling an obvious stock pumping charade what it is out of some sense of politeness?

- The cold-gas only version will shotgun debris into onlookers, and possibly yeet anyone behind it.

- Active suction is very cool until a rock punches through your intakes.

- Lithium batteries and pressurised tanks in the same package, yippee!

Thank god it'll take them years to manufacture this thing.

They'll make a handful that a select few billionaires will get to keep in a hanger somewhere for bragging rights.

There's a reason we don't see a driver in these demos and they don't do anything beyond very choreographed stunts. There's no way a human can actually control those thrusters in a way that doesn't kill you. Unless you're a fighter pilot.

I wouldn’t want to sit in it tho (and I’m guessing no one in the demographic this will be sold to would want this level of risk either).

I'm not even sure if a fighter pilot could. The passenger compartment of the "Rocket" model is probably packed full of tanks and other equipment, to deliver total of a few seconds of flight time. Doing anything in the air would probably require such precise timing no person could do manually, and it probably can't even be done automatically outside very controlled conditions.

When you were a kid, if you saw a car fly and flip you would be amazed. You are old and jaded like me so nothing gives you wonder anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

The Mitsubishi Outlander outsells it.

I can’t imagine a car without a steering wheel benign fun to drive. Tesla has never been known for handling and driving dynamics.

Numb steering, crashy handling, that’s what the gearheads seem to say about Tesla vehicles.

They go fast but they are absolutely not at the top of the class for driving dynamics.

I’ve test driven a Model Y Performance and the steering was lighter and more numb than my basic economy car. The car goes fast but that’s all it does.

If the roadster has drive by wire like the cybertruck that’s going to be even worse.

There is no universe in which I would compare any Tesla model to an M3 or WRX.

First of all we should consider that their direct competitor the Ioniq 5 N is a better performance car.

The M3 finishes Willow Springs faster than the Model 3, so we can’t even go by raw performance. In track conditions the battery thermals and stock tires on the Model 3 can’t keep up.

Comparing the emotions you’re going to get from a V8 gurgling and thrashing through gears compared to a silent EV motor is just not even in the same league. The Ioniq 5 N actually does something about that and reviewers are impressed. They directly state that it is more fun than Tesla performance models.

Then your other problem is that the Model 3 performance looks identical to your uber driver’s car. Someone dropping $60k on a performance car wants to feel special. The trim and upholstery options on the M3 alone are more exciting than the Model 3.

They sell 20k of them per year. It's the opposite of popular

They ARE popular, I see 10-20 a day when I drive around. Now if you want to compare to a corolla, I don't care.

They're distinctive.

Count Corollas for a day. You can probably see 10-20 at once in some spots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

(When I got a Toyota Echo back in the early 2000s, I suddenly saw them everywhere, too. And yet… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Platz#Sales)

Looks like 4 seconds or so.

The cybertruck is for sale and FSD is active in the US. The US lets automakers "self-certify" that they are safe. So although I don't think this thing should ever be sold, it may end of on US roads.

The Tumbler? Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that.

Flying / rocket acceleration are special versions they can sell one offs capable of doing the stunt once per canister change.

That kind of liar is what I would expect of someone who goes around claiming Elon's a Nazi though.

Straubel, in the year 2000 at the age of 25, may very well have had unprotected sex out of wedlock !!

Is that your claim?

with the most notorious pedophile on earth?

> Virginia Giuffre alleged in a lawsuit that in the early 2000s, when she was 18, she participated in an orgy on the island with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and eight girls who "appeared to be under the age of 18" and did not speak English.

What exactly are you defending here?

Go look at the emails. It kinda shows Elon was clueless about what the island was about.

Also he wasn't notorious at the time.

> What exactly are you defending here?

Ah you're going to accuse me of defending pedophilia now? Figures with your type.

There's absolutely an argument to be made there but in this case it's a bit more specific.

Anyone that repeatedly emails the most notorious pedophile on earth, begging to be invited to the wildest party on their private island is absolutely a pedophile.