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sidcool 60 seconds ago [-]
I don't know the practicality of this car, or if the production version will have these thrusters, but the demo was epic. It tickled my childhood dream of working with mechanical stuff.
synapsomorphy 3 hours ago [-]
Ok, so it actually flies. That was unexpected.
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 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.
jcheng 3 hours ago [-]
Reading https://www.tesla.com/roadster, it seems like both variants only use cold gas thrusters, and the difference is that the "normal" (lol) one only has them pointed rearwards while the flying one has them pointed in all different directions as well.
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
I'm sure having a cold gas thruster is going to be no problem at all for road approval. /s
lallysingh 2 hours ago [-]
Best guess is that it's disabled for anything but track/trick stuff. There will be some cool videos eventually showing up with tricks people pull with this. I don't know what else it's for.
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.
alxndr 35 minutes ago [-]
The crash photos are going to be Darwin-award-worthy
scheme271 1 hours ago [-]
Solo track use at that. I can't imagine that other drivers are going to be all that happy if they get hit by the exhaust from one of the thrusters in a corner.
delichon 3 hours ago [-]
> kinda wild they devoted this much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.
Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
Ford and Ferrari aren’t on the brink of extinction
dboreham 2 hours ago [-]
Tesla's stock price might be detached from reality, but is their actual business in trouble? I ask because anywhere I travel (Europe, UK, HK, NZ for example) there are just tons of Teslas, most of them the latest refresh models. There were more Telsas than BYD in Hong Kong!
billfor 3 hours ago [-]
I thought somewhere in the video they said that it is just regular compressed air that is held in a tank, and that the car itself has a compressor and regenerates the compressed air over time. Obviously to stabilize that amount of weight the gas has to be ejected at such a high rate it is practically frozen at the nozzle outlet, but it is still just regular air.
js2 3 hours ago [-]
> and one with real combustion rocket engines
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."
BigCatStuff 38 minutes ago [-]
The demo car they showed most likely has no batteries or even a metal frame. They basically built a car shaped drone powered by compressed air.
Reshaping of a classic blowtorch - if you're looking for a level up, try the Rodenator - less immediate flame, way more bang at the end.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
The Rodenator is an applicable device that injects a precise mixture of oxygen and propane into the dens of burrowing rodents, and kills them with a concussive force that collapses the rodents' tunnel system as well.
that sounds quite amazing, and it looks like something out of ghostbusters.
2 hours ago [-]
pastel8739 3 hours ago [-]
to be fair we don’t actually know yet that this is a high performance car. We only saw it drive a few mph without rocket assistance
synapsomorphy 3 hours ago [-]
Good point. It can't have much battery. Also wonder if the propellant/s are cryogenic. Monopropellant? You could tell from analyzing the plume.
40four 2 hours ago [-]
I think everyone is getting too caught up in the Thrust and Rocket variants. There aren’t going to be very many of those. But the base model will just be a regular Tesla.
LorenDB 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like it was just compressed air (rechargeable on the fly). Impressive if true.
2 hours ago [-]
alasdair_ 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
serf 2 hours ago [-]
>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.
it's wild to me after all of the on-stage lying that we're even considering what the future economics of the rocket-powered-road-car are going to be.
it's wild to me that he has yet to deliver on the self-driving stuff, but has decided to progress into rocket-powered circus vehicles.
it's wild to me that he's getting credit for a fan car, after 50+ years of on-track existence and the recent production of the McMurty.
I'm curious to see how it all pans out, and whether or not he has enough Washington connections to get a fan-powered rocket car onto the streets, and I am curious to see the first LA block-shutdown street race accident involving an intentionally aerial vehicle.
Historically fan cars haven't been allowed on the streets because they 1) destroy asphalt and 2) throw chunks of destroyed asphalt into traffic.
I'm not entirely sure how thrusters that can lift a 3k+ lbs sports car off the road jibe with preserving the roads for others.
I suspect it "actually flies" much the same way the cybertruck is bullet proof and has an ultra hard stainless steel exoskeleton, in that it doesn't. This seems like smoke and mirrors conman shit pumped up to 11.
scuppernong 51 seconds ago [-]
Insane feat of engineering, I do not want that thing on any roads near me.
afavour 4 hours ago [-]
Looks like a sensible turning down of the Cybertruck aesthetic into something that looks good.
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.
gopalv 3 hours ago [-]
> what glued panels fall off
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).
majormajor 3 hours ago [-]
> Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones
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.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
This type of vehicle isn't intended to drive at speed, at least not very far. It's targeted at collectors who will park it in a garage with their other supercars. It's a status symbol with wheels, not transportation or even a toy for track days. (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)
luqtas 3 hours ago [-]
> (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)
there's a whole lot of systemic issues with wealthy people buying low-poly cars to their collection.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
Don't make fun of the Delorean. Or The Thing.
alasdair_ 2 hours ago [-]
It’s not premium enough for collectors. I could see plenty of tech people buying one as a daily driver that they also take to the track though.
doginasuit 3 hours ago [-]
That was my first thought, Cybertruck: The Car. But then it drove up a wall and stopped on the ceiling and flew down. That was awesome. I'm sure it will be a nightmare to own.
jbm 3 hours ago [-]
Everyone is talking about the Cybertruck, but both the 3 and the Y have plenty of engineering problems as well. I believe both cars are listed as below-average reliability by CR.
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.
motionlessveloc 3 hours ago [-]
Early Model 3/Ys built in the US were unreliable. The ones built in Shanghai, though, are excellent. Berlin is somewhere in the middle.
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.
Waterluvian 1 hours ago [-]
Kind of a silly question but I want to be sure I’m piecing together a fair picture: both of those are five minute tasks you do yourself outside the auto parts store / driveway, right?
Rohansi 49 minutes ago [-]
Accessing the air filter on the Model 3 isn't great but yes, can do it yourself. Many people just pay someone else to do things like this though.
browningstreet 1 hours ago [-]
Yes. Or roll it into a $80 service charge when you get anything else done at a Tesla service center. Like the air filters.
rpmisms 24 minutes ago [-]
So many things you just said are wrong. The control arms are 100k mile parts, and you can easily replace them with Unplugged Performance versions for under $1k.
kibwen 2 hours ago [-]
> My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.
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.
Waterluvian 1 hours ago [-]
Hey now. Homer’s BBQ pit was a work of art, built through pure passion of emotion.
combobyte 4 hours ago [-]
> glued panels fall off at speed
Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.
sippingabonedry 3 hours ago [-]
Hardly a concern when you can't afford one.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
I think the front view reminds me of the old lamborghini countach.
A lot of haters of Tesla on HN I see, I guess you all are trying everything to malalign Tesla and see what sticks.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
Tesla's most recent project was the largest flop in automotive history lol.
mrheosuper 3 hours ago [-]
You mean Cybertruck? Hate it or not, there are bigger flops in automotive history. The history is long and broad.
pseudosavant 3 hours ago [-]
Not many. Elon said their plan was to produce 500k per year and they did less than 5% (15k) of that over the last year. Their installed production capacity is 125k.
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.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
Name a few that you think are bigger and by what metric you think so.
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.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
Following a loss of over $250 million (equivalent to $2.72 billion in 2025 dollars) on development, manufacturing, and marketing on the model line, Ford quietly discontinued the Edsel brand in November 1959, shortly after the 1960 model line was introduced
definitely not biggest flop but it has by far the biggest hype-to-flop ratio.
henrikschroder 3 hours ago [-]
The latest car Tesla released, the cybertruck, was one of the biggest automotive flops ever, production is essentially halted, demand is non-existant.
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.
LastTrain 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t hate Tesla, I do think their leader is a Nazi Saluting prick though. You like him?
mjmsmith 3 hours ago [-]
I don't hate Tesla either. I'm actually a bit disappointed knowing that I will never consider buying one for the rest of my life.
Cool!!! Whoever thinks this is *not cool* please, leave your cool card at the door
archagon 2 hours ago [-]
I think it's not cool to be excited about vapid shit like this after the CEO took a chainsaw to USAID and directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths through the abrupt cutoff of food and medicine.
It's like buying a car from Kissinger.
1 hours ago [-]
Grombobulous 49 minutes ago [-]
Over 700,000 deaths and counting. Basically Elon Musk killed the population of Nashville by ending USAID.
“Cool” can’t be faked or bought, you have to actually be cool deep down inside.
This isn’t just an Elon thing. If Henry Ford was alive I wouldn’t be buying a car from him, either. Not cool.
moomoo11 21 minutes ago [-]
cringe woke talking points not backed by reality.
also why can’t the rest of the world step up and do something for once btw. m
free loading is boring.
florkbork 10 minutes ago [-]
Refute it then with something other than name calling and hurt feelings.
Cool, but not realistic. This is a prototype, if you have enough money you can build a prototype car that does just about anything. When the car starts shipping the "cool" features will be missing.
Neat, but that car has to be practically empty. It appears to have very low inertia.
By rough estimate, using hydroxide jet packs as a reference, I’d say they got it down to about 600kg.
iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago [-]
You were never stuck in traffic I take it:D Insurance will be a bitch, but people will move out of your way.
mrheosuper 3 hours ago [-]
WTF, that the most cartoonist thing i've seen today. Does it really have to do the flip ?
jopython 3 hours ago [-]
yes
4 hours ago [-]
carlosjobim 1 hours ago [-]
What is the practical use case of having a bunch of high powered jets all around the car? It could be used to automatically avoid fatal accidents, or at least reduce risk and damage in an accident situation. I thought everybody who watched the presentation video would reach that conclusion.
sippingabonedry 53 minutes ago [-]
You are correct in that almost nobody commenting here watched the presentation.
4 hours ago [-]
ls612 3 hours ago [-]
To show off? Like whatever you think of it the market for supercars is rich men who want to show off so Tesla is playing in that market.
morkalork 4 hours ago [-]
To play Spy Hunter irl?
phoghed 3 hours ago [-]
Uhh to be sick af?
td521534f12 4 hours ago [-]
To brag to other, lesser billionaires.
silisili 3 hours ago [-]
This is something straight out of Rocket League. Completely impractical, but awesome at the same time.
Yes, let's combine Twitter, an AI company, and a space company with a solar company, car company, battery company, and robotics company, so that we can have one huge valuation that can't be possibly delivered upon and losses will be absorbed for a short period. What could go wrong?
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
Japanese companies manage fine doing this kind of thing.
Gigachad 3 hours ago [-]
Do they have a gigantic tumor like twitter and Space AI slapped on the side? If all of the products were profitable it would work.
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t have time to look up whatever Masayoshi Son has wasted a few billion dollars on today, but yes kinda.
3 hours ago [-]
wnmurphy 2 hours ago [-]
I'm glad someone else gets it.
AlotOfReading 3 hours ago [-]
What about Tesla's management style would you call Japanese?
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
I’m highlighting that companies can and do have all kinds of departments doing seemingly unrelated things if they want to.
AlotOfReading 2 hours ago [-]
I'm pointing out that Japanese companies can do that because they're organized and managed like Japanese companies. Tesla is not, and in fact lacks pretty much all the organizing characteristics and long term planning that enables keiretsu to function.
merekmob 2 hours ago [-]
Kamikaze
fnordpiglet 3 hours ago [-]
It would almost be as big a monstrosity as Amazon
killbot5000 3 hours ago [-]
Tesla-Yutani
burnerRhodov3 3 hours ago [-]
but... All elon companies. More valuable bundled, because all the elon lovers don't have to pick where they throw their tithes. I'd love it even more if they throw in a tunnel construction and a human brain implant company in the mix while they are at it.
wnmurphy 2 hours ago [-]
This would be a horrible deal for Tesla investors.
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.
parineum 47 minutes ago [-]
> 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).
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.
FabHK 3 hours ago [-]
There are three configurations:
- 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.
I really wonder why I think the N Vision 74 looks so much better; it just has more personality somehow. I do agree though that the new Roadster looks a lot less bad than the Cybertruck.
doublerabbit 4 hours ago [-]
I'd agree with you and merit the design has more thought as an upgrade to the look of the cybertruck. However it still looks like something to be left in a scrap heap of a destruction derby within Tron.
Dislike the design, look and edge of it. Feels cold. Each to their own.
johnnyApplePRNG 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gexla 4 hours ago [-]
I guess you didn't see the video of a car sitting on a ramp upside down, doing flips in the air, jumping over a semi and other cars...
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.
throwayay58373 4 hours ago [-]
The HN crowd isn't what it used to be. Technology doesn't excite most people here anywhere.
chrisstanchak 3 hours ago [-]
Yea a bunch of lamers. Bring back the hackers.
justinhj 3 hours ago [-]
Politics comes first. If you are on the naughty list you will be bullied until you submit to the allowed thoughts.
bigyabai 3 hours ago [-]
> Technology
Panem et circenses
3 hours ago [-]
raddan 3 hours ago [-]
I know you’re using a throwaway account but in case you come back to read this: we’re all tired of being scammed. Virtually every hot tech company now routinely overpromises and underdelivers. Some products are scams; some products kind of work but at great personal risk to oneself and others. The future we are excited about is one where technology SOLVES ACTUAL PROBLEMS.
thefourthchime 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago [-]
<< I guess you didn't see the video of a car sitting on a ramp upside down, doing flips in the air, jumping over a semi and other cars...
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.
dozerly 3 hours ago [-]
Other demos, like the humanoid robot one, were entirely fake so wouldn’t be surprised.
dawnerd 3 hours ago [-]
Also wouldn't be that crazy for them to put together a demo that'll never actually be a production vehicle. Dunno why anyone thinks this will ever ship like this. One thing to market a car, another to just show off features that just wont be real.
myko 2 hours ago [-]
Tesla have a history of doing exactly this
doublerabbit 3 hours ago [-]
>> It is weird. I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.
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.
iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago [-]
<< If he would show some and 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?
dpark 1 hours ago [-]
Despite your previous claim, you seem to be quite the fan of Musk.
doublerabbit 35 minutes ago [-]
> 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 damaged 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? You know 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.
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 republican reality.
I am English who lives in the United Kingdom. If you wanted an outside in perspective you got one.
joquarky 3 hours ago [-]
Hard to have wonder about billionaire toys when I have to choose between medicine and food.
iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago [-]
This is a real question and not a bait: if you are that hard pressed.. why are you here arguing with a rando over billionaire toys and not securing medicine and/or food?
dpark 1 hours ago [-]
You imagine people with lower means should spend 100% of their time working?
wnmurphy 2 hours ago [-]
> I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.
Tesla does have ~700k other employees.
Mawr 12 minutes ago [-]
Here you go: it's cool. A cool waste of money. You realize driving upside down and jumping is a) useless, b) illegal on public roads, c) staged? You think there are controls in the car that'll let you do 3D maneuvers? It's all preprogrammed.
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.
okdood64 4 hours ago [-]
Nah, this ain't it chief. I own exactly 0 directly. Too volatile and don't really care for Teslas at all. I love my gas cars.
mjamil 2 hours ago [-]
Using suction to create downforce is an idea that’s been built for race track usage in the past (and been successful in F1 in the ‘70s), but the near certainty of mortal injury from the system failing (and thus destabilizing the vehicle at high speed) made it unpopular and its incorporation has been very limited (McLaren and Ariel did versions, I think). I’m confused how this has (or will pass) regulatory approval for road use. Is the idea that the driver should only utilize this on a track?
modeless 2 hours ago [-]
I think others have used a skirt that needs to extend quite close to the ground to work, so uneven ground can cause sudden loss of suction. Maybe this is solvable somehow?
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.
carlosjobim 60 minutes ago [-]
Are they worse than a gasoline tank exploding?
margalabargala 28 minutes ago [-]
Very much so. A gasoline tank creates a fireball but not an explosion.
modeless 56 minutes ago [-]
Yes.
emkoemko 41 minutes ago [-]
gasoline tanks explode? how ... ?
emkoemko 42 minutes ago [-]
what about like a countless random debris on the road? wouldn't that get sucked up and damage the fan?
pbohun 3 hours ago [-]
Okay, that's some of the most impressive feats I've ever seen. Congratulations to the engineers!
cr125rider 2 hours ago [-]
Because it makes zero economic sense to make a car do that?
swyx 2 hours ago [-]
you fail to understand the psychology of billionaires
mullingitover 3 hours ago [-]
So this is a completely obvious scam, right? I don't see anyone else calling this out and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
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?
j4k0bfr 3 hours ago [-]
I feel like it's also crazy irresponsible to sell this deathtrap to the public, since it's pretty much guaranteed buyers will joyride this on public roads.
- 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.
zdragnar 2 hours ago [-]
It isn't being sold to the public. Of the three versions, the one that is "road ready" doesn't have the gimmicky thrusters. The one that is displayed is available by invite only, and even if you have a quarter of a million to reserve the racing model, you aren't likely to get a license plate for use on public roads.
javascriptfan69 2 hours ago [-]
They're not selling this to the public.
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.
maxgashkov 1 hours ago [-]
I agree with the first two points, but why do you think the thrusters have to be manually controlled? My expectation would be it'd just perform one of the pre-programmed tricks taking in the sensor data to adapt mid-way, the same way they do auto-landings in SpaceX (no one is controlling the landing booster manually, right?).
kccoder 36 minutes ago [-]
No kidding. Musk is SIX YEARS late on delivering the previous version of the roadster, which has been superseded by today's announcement, promising its delivery in a few years, and everyone is just lappin' it up.
tiku 3 hours ago [-]
Well I see no numbers saying how long it will fly. Perhaps it "hops", could easily see that happening with a burst of air below the car. (While standing still, accelerating the car upwards for 1 second with a burst of air)
I suppose at least we can say there is a working car that seems to be able to actually do the things as advertised, which is more than one could ever say for e.g. the Moller Skycar.
billfor 3 hours ago [-]
Well we could examine the history here, for instance when he bought Twitter that it would immediately collapse (now its more popular than ever and Bluesky is the one that's falling apart) and when the Cybertruck was announced there were lots of people saying it could never be made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21602437
40four 2 hours ago [-]
It’s crazy how many Cybertrucks I see in my hometown, and I don’t live in that big of a city. They are incredibly popular. This car will be incredibly popular to. Peoples are getting bent out of shape about the “thrust” and “rocket” variants, but who cares? Those will be few and far between. For rich collectors mostly. How about just the base model? It looks wild, I’m sure it will be fun as hell to drive. They are going to sell a ton of these things.
Grombobulous 34 minutes ago [-]
Cybertrucks objectively missed sales expectations by a lot. The numbers are well-documented.
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.
rpmisms 21 minutes ago [-]
The 3 handles quite nicely, I'd compare the performance model favorably to any BMW M3.
Grombobulous 17 minutes ago [-]
I have never heard any serious automotive journalist come up with that sort of comparison.
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 base model Mazda 6. 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.
jfoster 31 minutes ago [-]
Elon Musk causes incredible amounts of historical non-examination. There are now so many examples that it's actually difficult to list them all. My guess is that people just get very confused by the difference between late delivery and non-delivery.
WheelsAtLarge 2 hours ago [-]
My big question is, would anyone want one? It's an interesting life size hotwheels car but who would want one other than to show at a monster truck rally. The original Tesla Roadster was a masterpiece compared to this new one. Talk about missing the mark by a mile...
euio757 2 hours ago [-]
> who would want one
The Tumbler? Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that.
3 hours ago [-]
testing22321 2 hours ago [-]
Flying is obviously a gimmick, but when Elon said this will crush all track records he wasn’t kidding.
The base model has the suction fans which will make huge gains.
Next model up has rear thrusters for the acceleration, which will be more insane. It’s limited production.
Final model that can fly is invite only and will be a joke on the track, using those thrusters to go around corners way, way faster than normal.
I wish they had shown track laps and 1/4 mile times instead of the gimmick of flying.
speg 3 hours ago [-]
That’s why it’s invite only.
tdhz77 3 hours ago [-]
I was #12 Tesla Roadster owner. I spoke across the country with my father. We drove from coast to coast in 2014 at a time when there was a lot of doubt. — I supported elons “mission” and now we know it’s a neo Nazi front of a company. This company and Elon has been a scam since he stole JB Straubel. How do I know? JB Straubel is my father.
2 hours ago [-]
jacquesm 3 hours ago [-]
I can't make soup of this. Your dad is a billionaire and you're left to fend for yourself? That's got to be some story.
If it talks about politics like a Nazi and salutes like a Nazi…
tdhz77 2 hours ago [-]
Elon donates to white Christian fundamentalist. The largest donor in history to the Republican Party and does Nazi salutes.
sailfast 3 hours ago [-]
If you wanted another pretext to merge Tesla and SpaceX this would be a good way.
The existing tech fab plus this car maybe makes it harder to sue once the merger happens - but he will still be sued. “Look we’re making it rocket cars with AI of course we should be one company”
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
A pretext that convinces the most credulous people on the planet. Clever guy this Musk.
adocomplete 3 hours ago [-]
I mean is it ever actually being released? probably not.
Was it a an amazing demo? yes.
leesec 3 hours ago [-]
What are you talking about re: the battery pack?
qblv 3 hours ago [-]
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aaron695 3 hours ago [-]
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robrain 3 hours ago [-]
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sippingabonedry 2 hours ago [-]
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akerl_ 2 hours ago [-]
This is an especially interesting comment given that it misunderstands the Dropbox comment in the common way.
mlindner 3 hours ago [-]
I think calling it a scam is a crazy thing to say. Tesla has never not (eventually) shipped a product they said they would .
Also yes you can legally sell it. Whether you can legally operate it is a different question.
The roadster hasn't shipped after 9 years. Including a referral program for preorders. I find it incredibly more insane to be trusting of this
seabrookmx 3 hours ago [-]
The second generation Roadster (reservations for which opened in 2017) literally is the product they didn't ship.
Also Cybercab.
How many Optimus robots are out in the wild?
It is a scam, 100%.
testing22321 2 hours ago [-]
There are now 300 cyber cabs driving people around Austin, and they’re working on rolling it out.
Optimus is coming, the huge factory in Austin is being built now.
Late? Always. But coming.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 32 minutes ago [-]
Telling how you skipped his first paragraph.
sodra9000 2 hours ago [-]
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billfor 3 hours ago [-]
He actually says in the video that it might not be legal to operate but they could still sell you one. Anything is legal off-road on your own private property.
ygjb 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, once you leave the ground you aren't on your property anymore.
derektank 2 hours ago [-]
Not true, though the exact boundary is not well defined. See US v. Causby
Depends where you are, but generally you are good to around 400ft above your own property in most cases.
billfor 2 hours ago [-]
FAA jurisdiction over the airspace is not the same as a rule prohibiting every form of powered lift-off within it. There's a lot of grey area in FAA regs - for instance you can land a plane on your lawn in class E (if you could manage it).
m463 2 hours ago [-]
There are a long list of cars that have not-really-legal abilities.
The corvette ZR-1 had a special key that would unlock all the performance. I don't think it met emissions when unlocked.
Lots of newer muscle cars have performance modes and dragstrip modes that you shouldn't use.
Even other teslas, like model 3 performance and model s plaid have have track mode and dragstrip mode that shouldn't be used on public streets.
alasdair_ 3 hours ago [-]
He took preorders for the roadster nine years ago. It never shipped.
bakies 3 hours ago [-]
this is a new roadster, the previous roadster hasnt sold a unit
javascriptfan69 2 hours ago [-]
WAIT THIS ISN'T THE ONE THAT PEOPLE PREORDERED NINE YEARS AGO?
jrflo 2 hours ago [-]
I think it’s real, the “invite only” version could probably do the kickflip over the semis, but would probably completely exhaust the tanks and require special equipment to refill or take hours with an onboard pump. And the flip is certainly a scripted stunt, not something you’d actually be able to do live. The math doesn’t seem to be completely unreasonable as a one off demo
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
They said there is a compressor to re-pressurize the tanks while driving. It made it sound like a power-up in a video game. You can't use it all the time, but if you wait for it to charge up, use it as many times as you want.
I think the bigger issue with be making it street legal. Kickflipping over traffic, and refusing visibility for everyone to 0 in the process, can't be good.
For closed courses, movies, etc it's really cool.
jrflo 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t think it would be street legal, hence the invite only thing. More of a status symbol / car collector curiosity than an actual car
espeed 3 hours ago [-]
When I searched for Tesla on YouTube at the start of the event, the first live event returned was this, an AI generated Tesla presentation with Elon telling users to send bitcoin and he'll send you back double as a promotional event like an X Money thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5EDp2rEbFA. The QR code went to this site: https://roadster.tv. I reported it to YouTube.
40four 2 hours ago [-]
Why are you reposting links to scams?
espeed 2 hours ago [-]
So someone can look into it.
phyzix5761 3 hours ago [-]
China has had flying cars since 2023 so I don't see how this is a scam. The flying mechanism is unique for the Roadster so that's still to be seen how it would perform out in public.
XPeng has been spruiking flying cars (really just giant quadcopters) for a while now, but while they exist and can fly, they're more of a publicity stunt. For example, while you can buy the X2 in Australia, you can't legally fly it.
The only one I can think that they might mean is the BYD Yangwang U9. It can jump a tiny bit.
phyzix5761 3 hours ago [-]
Yep, just google: china flying cars. They're basically human sized drones/quadcopters.
TheDong 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, Tesla demoed, promised, and took reservation money for a roadster reboot that _also_ didn't contain any technology China didn't have in 2017, and at this point they still haven't delivered on that and it feels safe to call it a scam.
Just because the technology is technically feasible doesn't mean that a specific company is not scamming you when they promise it.
And Tesla already has enough of a history of fake promises (your tesla will be a self-driving robotaxi earning money while you sleep within a few years, FSD will take you across the country while you sleep by next year, humanoid robots, the new roadster is taking reservations now and will deliver soon, regulation is the only thing holding up FSD, etc etc).
phyzix5761 3 hours ago [-]
To be fair the main reason why FSD hasn't been a wide spread thing is mostly due to local regulations. The technology exists and performs fairly well. FSD is allowed in pretty much all the same cities Waymo is allowed to operate so we can see from this that its a regulatory issue not a technological one.
m4ck_ 3 hours ago [-]
I mean it looks cool but considering they haven't produced any of the other Roadster models in any meaningful quantity, and have repeatedly come up short on much more reasonable product offerings... Idk I have just the slightest doubt about a flying electric car hitting the market any time soon. Hasn't it been nearly a decade since the promise of a software update that would turn your Tesla into a self-driving taxi that can earn money while you're not using it?
bakies 3 hours ago [-]
none of these are videos of flying cars
Keyframe 3 hours ago [-]
Production and other realities aside, I've seen some cool shit in my life and this demo is high up there! Did you guys catch 0.5 mach target top speed? That's 600kmh. It'd better do that flying because there probably aren't any rubber tyres that could endure that before exploding within seconds.
zbrozek 4 hours ago [-]
Can this be scaled down to a Roomba? Then it would both be more useful at picking stuff up off the floor, and able to recover from falling down the stairs.
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
All the dust around it on the floor would end up airborne again.
zbrozek 2 hours ago [-]
That's OK if it's just to save itself from dying in the event of a fall down the stairs. Should be infrequent!
glimshe 4 hours ago [-]
I could have used that when leaving Costco last Saturday.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
Can't help but think of the super-large size toilet paper pack getting sucked into the fans...
gcanyon 2 hours ago [-]
Anyone know the physics of mach diamonds purely from compressed gas? I'm not a physicist, but I thought one of the key aspects of compressed gas is that it can't expand faster than the speed of sound in that gas -- the speed of sound is literally the limit to how fast it can expand?
10 minutes ago [-]
tekacs 3 hours ago [-]
The fact that the one that can fly is invite-only makes me wonder if there would be ITAR issues with the guidance mechanisms that they have to put into it.
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.
viraptor 3 hours ago [-]
I suspect it's more because some rando could actually try to use it in public space. The invite only means they could send it to people who will give them good PR, are known not to be idiots, and can be invited to sign many responsibility disclaimers.
tekacs 3 hours ago [-]
That makes a ton of sense, yes! To be honest, I was wondering less about their reasons for invite-only and more about whether this kind of gentle and precise guidance with cold gas thrusters might hit ITAR.
Grombobulous 47 minutes ago [-]
It’s way simpler than that, it’s just a collector car like a special edition Ferrari.
They have to sell one to say that it exists. It’s marketing.
Absolutely nobody who owns that vehicle will be “flying” it.
nhinck2 3 hours ago [-]
Good on Elon for putting out a car that embodies his best trait, sucking as hard as possible.
jjordan 2 hours ago [-]
I wish all the Elon haters put as much effort into making their comments as humorous as yours. Well done.
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
It also blows.
still-learning 4 hours ago [-]
Genuinely impressed, incredible demo
vladdoster 4 hours ago [-]
aka a $245,000 loan to tesla with no interest for 10 years
pseudosavant 3 hours ago [-]
They first started taking deposits on the Roadster 9 years ago in 2017 with a 2020 production date. It’ll be shocking if they ever sell this car they showed today. If they do, it’ll be many years late, not fly, and cost twice what they are saying. Just like the CyberTruck.
The suction and air recovery part might be forward thinking for how we design roads or tunnels. They might not all need to be flat. Especially when autonomous.
clintonb 3 hours ago [-]
So the CyberCab will drive on the ceiling of the Boring Company’s tunnel?
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
Definitely not upside down, I was thinking of short inclines, possible as a sort of tunnel bypass. Assuming all the cars are networked for mechanical failures and the batteries can handle it. But that's only after the 5 minutes I spent considering the idea and mostly stolen from I Robot movie like most of Tesla's ideas.
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
The biggest hurdle might be if the public would be tolerant of such extreme angles. It would feel like a slow roller coaster.
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah I was thinking it would suck for a passenger which is why it would only be useful for temporary bypass situations, since tunnels can clog up if cars fail. But that's a lot of engineering just for that one usecase. But I do except tunnels to become much more popular as cities become more dense and cars become automated.
m463 2 hours ago [-]
also parking.
iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago [-]
Been a while since I was impressed with a tech presentation. I was waiting for a clear case of AI assisted movement ( though I personally expected to see it for the first time in a military chopper ).
**
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.
george_max 3 hours ago [-]
This is an incredible feat of engineering. I have my doubts of the 2028 mass production timeline, but I am quite amazed.
__mharrison__ 2 hours ago [-]
Wow, cool aesthetic. I feel like the this is what the cybertruck should have looked like but they didn't quite finish the design.
aabajian 1 hours ago [-]
If I'm understanding this correctly, it uses the electric motor to compress air into large tanks? How much thrust could that generate (and for how long)? It'd be amazing to jump over East River or the Hudson.
4d4m 3 hours ago [-]
I dig the commitment to the low poly look! Really cool and fits in with the new design direction.
osigurdson 25 minutes ago [-]
When I first saw this I was convinced it was AI slop. Nope! This is absolutely incredible. I've also never really resonated with Tesla aesthetic in the past but they really nailed it here imo. This car looks phenomenal - I hope this style trickles down to other models.
1 hours ago [-]
etothet 3 hours ago [-]
I watched the ~16 minute presentation on YouTube and it was as if Elon and the two other guys presenting were doing a skit at a talent show. They seemed extremely unprepared. Maybe they were intentionally trying to come across as off the cuff, but it felt unnatural and cringey. Together they have the charisma of a paper clip. These guys are so full of themselves that it’s difficult to appreciate whatever accomplishment this may or may not be. And, of course, no
way it will be street legal with air thrusters. What a complete joke.
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
When presenting the world with a flying car, one doesn't need much extra charisma, the demo does it all. I think most people would be pretty excited (or full of themselves) knowing what they were about to show.
vpribish 1 hours ago [-]
really weirdly awkward
Grombobulous 42 minutes ago [-]
As Doug DeMuro would say, this is a “rich guy go fast” car.
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.
emkoemko 1 hours ago [-]
What's with the ugly design these days... even that new electric Ferrari just look terrible coming from Ferrari not even the right color
lefrenchy 1 hours ago [-]
I worked at Tesla when they announced the Roadster 2 and said they’d start production. That never happened. Funny to see everyone eat this up, let’s see when or if they deliver.
smoovb 2 hours ago [-]
I am amazed at how steady and in control the car was when flipping and jumping. If that kind of control on a vehicle is achieved today, it seems like flying car tech just took a giant lurch forward. Just in time for America's crumbling road infrastructure.
jesse_faden 3 hours ago [-]
I've been recently playing a game called Approximately Up. You start from simple building blocks, thrusters and can use the in game logic system to build complex controls. One of the things I came about to learn was something to make a hover system for my ship was a simple PID controller. The side and bottom firing thrusters just remind me of my ship in the game. While the game is oversimplified and a bit arcadey, does anyone know what actually goes into this in the real life and is the huge feat the improvement on the weight of the whole car?
The real feat would be to actually ship the gas-equipped models. The on-stage demonstration was certainly quite impressive but handling real world terrain is a whole different story. Not to mention compensating for drivers who will skew lead-footed without any experience of handling a third dimension.
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.
TheAtomic 1 hours ago [-]
Flies, or jumps?
Dunno. Looks like it jumps. Fying seems to require some degree of control over direction but I'm just a gravity-impaired bidep.
swyx 2 hours ago [-]
> an expertly crafted extra-terrestrial vehicle.
hmmmm. spacex-tesla merger signalling?
salamandars 3 hours ago [-]
The video goes against my intuition for how much performance you can get out of cold gas thrusters. I wonder if someone could do some back of the envelope maths on how much thrust and impulse you can get from a setup like this?
My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.
tristanj 3 hours ago [-]
Based on the statement that the suction fan generates 2g of downforce, and the telemetry showing the fan operating at 4,700 kg @ ~95% load, the Tesla Roadster weighs approximately 2,300 to 2,500 kg.
dualvariable 2 hours ago [-]
I mean, this is the gimmicky of gimmicks for the ultra-rich.
It just means you can do jumps and stunts programmed into the vehicle at the push of a button with zero skill at being a stunt driver.
The Dukes of Hazzard had to do that without the thrusters.
Can't wait to see how people kill themselves and other people with those things by being stupid...
Hopefully that shit gets blocked by the DOT and kept off public roads--which is probably the goal to get a bunch of drooling simps outraged over "government overreach" keeping them away from their "flying cars".
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
> and other people
That's the bit where we diverge.
vagab0nd 3 hours ago [-]
I never thought I'd live to see K.I.T.T
gtirloni 4 hours ago [-]
> It challenges the limits of design, engineering and physics to deliver an expertly crafted extra-terrestrial vehicle.
closed tab. thanks.
djeastm 3 hours ago [-]
I must be old. I just keep thinking about what kind of whiplash I'd get with those flips
Animats 2 hours ago [-]
People who already have a Veyron should go for this.
It's very impressive. Not useful, but impressive.
senectus1 2 hours ago [-]
there are approximately 450 in existence.. (ever made)
Lets assume this car costs 1M each. (i bet its less)
so if they sold 450 of these they'd make less than 500 million.
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...
sailfast 3 hours ago [-]
Nice Testarossa!
siwatanejo 2 hours ago [-]
It seems it's not a convertible anymore? Which means it shouldn't be called a Roadster.
Rebelgecko 4 hours ago [-]
Is the copy grok's writing style? It feels inhuman but still more readable than Opus
alexpadula 3 hours ago [-]
Flying cars before GTA6.
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
Rockstar better get to work adding this car to the game.
bradthebeaverfa 2 hours ago [-]
That surpassed all expectations.
I'm so glad Elon exists. He must have spent over $100 million to build the flying variant with no hope of ever profiting off it. I can't imagine any other CEO ever doing that.
archagon 2 hours ago [-]
Hundreds of thousands of dead Africans may not be so happy he exists.
gonzalohm 4 hours ago [-]
What's up with wheels not being round anymore? How is that supposed to work? I understand it for Formula 1, but for real world driving, it doesn't make any sense
carlosjobim 37 minutes ago [-]
What kind of car doesn't have round wheels? This comment section must be the craziest I have seen so far on HN:
3 hours ago [-]
dataking 4 hours ago [-]
Rocket-inspired design hints at desire to merge Tesla and SpaceX?
The rocket flip part looks like CGI, in my opinion. I get the same feeling as when I see CGI on some random B movie. Would be happy to be proven wrong if there was a crowd of people filming from their angle though.
Also "Beyond The Limits of Physics"... would any actual engineers at Tesla/SpaceX agree with that marketing statement?
Great, now how about putting some of those amazing engineering brain cells into solving the impending water crisis.
MaxHoppersGhost 2 hours ago [-]
Go back to Reddit, we’re trying to enjoy cool stuff.
Aeolun 4 hours ago [-]
At least this one doesn't look horrible. I can't see myself buying it, but I don't feel like I want to gag either.
reenorap 3 hours ago [-]
So it can fly?
Just like we will have 1 million robotaxis on the streets by 2021?
EDIT: wow it really can fly, that is crazy
tintor 1 hours ago [-]
Invite-only variant can jump, not fly.
Other two variants can't jump.
King-Aaron 4 hours ago [-]
I hate Tesla for their politics, broken promises, and all the drama that we are all aware and tired of hearing about.
That being said, that was the coolest damn thing I've ever seen a car do.
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.
j4k0bfr 3 hours ago [-]
Very cool stuff but all the "extra-terrestrial" stuff is complete bunk. This thing wouldn't survive Max-Q, let alone any kind of landing that isn't on a clean slab of concrete. It's a cool rich person toy, no other notes.
King-Aaron 3 hours ago [-]
You miss my point. They're demonstrating a landing system, it's just wrapped up in a car to fool the idiots that are going to pre-purchase it again so they can use that money to build more space X technology.
The car is just a façade.
Edit: And to expand on this. Owners of GM T.50' say they can't use the ground effect fan anywhere in public due to the debris it picks up and throws, and are ineffective on anything but near perfect roads. So that's not impressive to me. And the jet boosters are also ridiculous, there is not real-world application where you could use them outside of completely closed environments with no one nearby. It's a huge investment into reaction thrusters for a car that would never, ever be used - unless it was to demonstrate thruster technology for another reason.
i.e. Space X.
joquarky 2 hours ago [-]
What is this wonderful "autonomous delivery vehicle" capable of delivering?
Also, assuming the delivery vehicle is destroyed at the end of each "delivery", what will it cost?
King-Aaron 2 hours ago [-]
...why would you assume it would be destroyed? What even is your point?
I think you are on an entirely different page.
phyzix5761 4 hours ago [-]
It can fly? Wow! What a time to be alive!
sawjet 3 hours ago [-]
You can hate the man, but you must respect him. Flying cars have truly arrived.
dawnerd 3 hours ago [-]
No they haven't? It can hop at best, in a demo unit, designed specifically for that demo.
joquarky 2 hours ago [-]
No. Respect is earned.
arjie 58 minutes ago [-]
Absolutely incredible demo. Jesus Christ, I don't know what I was expecting. Didn't know this was planned and skipped forward to see what they were showing off and thought it was CGI for how outlandish it is. My god, man. This is amazing.
portmanteur 3 hours ago [-]
As a father of a growing family, I am still waiting for the RoBovan.
kwisatzh 3 hours ago [-]
A car that jumps - am I missing something? The speed numbers are cool.
LeoPanthera 3 hours ago [-]
If this is real, it's going to kill people.
tiku 3 hours ago [-]
So they are going to send one of to space again?
DeepYogurt 2 hours ago [-]
Tesla hitting their lambo era?
combobyte 4 hours ago [-]
> Our multi-mode fan and ground sealing system acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the vehicle. This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Bullshit, no it can't.
> Advanced cold-gas thrusters use all-electric actuators to offer precise thrust, completing micro adjustments within a fraction of a second. This helps stabilize the vehicle in flight.
In flight? What? Did I miss the joke, or what? It's a fucking car... The image even shows it hovering off the ground. How is this not blatant false advertising?
ETA: okay, skimmed some of the livestream. These is absolutely no way that any of these features will ever be part of a production model. People get serious whiplash injuries just from being rear-ended at low speed. What do they think is going to happen to the occupant when they tell their car to jump over a semi and do a fucking barrel roll? Seriously, what are we doing here?
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
Amazing such instant expertise.
Watch the video - the car jumps into the air. Not exactly flight or what we’d consider a flying car, but it’s careering through the air off the ground.
I mean, this isn't crazy. In fact, it's already been done. Ever heard of McMurtry? (https://mcmurtry.com/). They're notorious for exactly this - using fans to provide extreme downforce (urr... upforce if you're hanging upside down?).
> In flight?
Did you see the stunt where it literally flew over vehicles? I mean, maybe it's a bit closer to a controlled super-leap like the original Superman, but... yeah, my personal reaction to that was more "holy shit" than "well, that's not flying".
gcanyon 3 hours ago [-]
>> Our multi-mode fan and ground sealing system acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the vehicle. This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
If you scroll down on the page, it shows that the "rocket edition" is invite-only. Probably gonna sell it to a few friends in hopes that the 3-5 they make sell for millions down the road, so to speak.
No, they're cold gas thrusters. The car has an air compressor, a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) and 10 nozzles.
nilsbunger 3 hours ago [-]
Are they serious about the rocket version??
zhangchioulin 4 hours ago [-]
Very COOL, I like this Roadster retro style
ambicapter 3 hours ago [-]
Is this a broken link for anyone else?
t1234s 4 hours ago [-]
I cant wait to see what type of batshit crazy motorsport series they invent for these.
darksim905 3 hours ago [-]
I absolutely detest the leadership and what he is actively doing to this country... but holy fucking shit. I want to reserve one, but when you're broke as a joke... ooph.
NDlurker 4 hours ago [-]
"Tony Hawk would be called, we call that the kickflip."
Yes, Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip (and damn near every other skate trick), but the reference here comes from a time when Tony Hawk would drive around and yell "do a kickflip" at skaters, if they did a kickflip he would sometimes give them a signed board or other things. Example video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob0dI05Xz8s - it became a thing for a little where people would yell "do a kickflip" at skaters they saw on the street.
NDlurker 3 hours ago [-]
Oh yeah, I forgot about the origin of that meme.
atlgator 2 hours ago [-]
This is one of those products that offers a thrilling demo but I have no desire to own one. I much prefer the 2020 design that never made it to production.
latentsea 3 hours ago [-]
I'd buy one for the police chases. Hell yes. Not that I'm in the billionaire invite-only inner circle, and not that they'll ever ship it.
Yay the (almost) 10th anniversary of the 2nd generation Roadster reservations, and now it's got fucking rockets apparently?
How delusional are people? The emperor is not wearing clothes y'all.
luckydata 3 hours ago [-]
At this point this is some sort of IQ test right?
dyauspitr 3 hours ago [-]
Is this a gas that needs to be refilled with the cold thrust one?
archagon 2 hours ago [-]
Just as a reminder, Musk is a virulent white supremacist who funds far-right politics around the world and is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Africa through his reckless disemboweling of USAID. But yes, let's all look at shiny car.
At least the people who buy this will be unequivocally branding themselves as utter douchebags.
OZYMANDIASAK 1 hours ago [-]
I’m incredibly surprised as to how fast people are forgetting who the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla is.
Whatever breakthrough they’re making, is it worth funding the dismantling of democracy?
archagon 1 hours ago [-]
Money, power, and pleasure over everything else: the hacker[1] ethos.
[1]: Silicon Valley edition
macinjosh 3 hours ago [-]
Sorry about the eggs honey, I had to use the thrusters to get past this cyclist.
rvz 53 minutes ago [-]
At least this is a break from all the bullshit AI agent garbage posted on this site.
Almost all the comments here are just the most generically negative I have ever seen on HN, with just general grumpiness everywhere.
This car is an incredible engineering achievement and a completely unexpected reveal.
ofjcihen 3 hours ago [-]
Reading some of this feels like I’m having a stroke.
>This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Neat car though.
1 hours ago [-]
4 hours ago [-]
Kuyawa 3 hours ago [-]
Technology: spectacular, design: ugly as fuck
hristov 3 hours ago [-]
He has finally gone bonkers. Drugs are bad, mmmmkay.
Imagine the engineer hours wasted on this gimmick, while he is losing market share everywhere.
4 hours ago [-]
i_love_retros 3 hours ago [-]
Listen, if you rightfully believe Elon Musk is a white supremacist piece of shit who used his wealth to buy his way in to Trump's regime to steal huge amounts of data on the american public and who attempts to influence foreign democracies and who promotes far right conspiracies, please don't buy his fucking cars.
alexwrich 3 hours ago [-]
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chmorgan_ 4 hours ago [-]
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codevark 3 hours ago [-]
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ls-a 4 hours ago [-]
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dozerly 3 hours ago [-]
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andrewchambers 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think people want to buy it - we just think its cool that its possible.
You should try having fun and enjoying things once in a while...
defrost 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe avoid speaking for others ( "we" ) and snark at other HN users ( "You should" ).
The technology is jaw-dropping, the engineering staggering, and this thread -- it's just embarrassing. I've been on HN since the beginning and I don't even recognize it anymore.
2 hours ago [-]
useruser125524 3 hours ago [-]
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wilg 4 hours ago [-]
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kcb 4 hours ago [-]
It was fine? I'd rather this than hyper rehearsed CGI human Apple launch video. At least its just real people talking like humans.
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah Apple really synthesising a platonic ideal of Steve’s product release smarm without any of his hubristic charm at this point. Tesla and SpaceX seem like humans just getting on with sh*t and onto the next.
wilg 4 hours ago [-]
It was not fine.
dmix 4 hours ago [-]
I can’t do a tech demo of a simple software feature on zoom without at least one thing messing up. They launched a car off a ramp live and were honest from the beginning of the stream it might not work.
The last decade of social media has shown that humans care more about authenticity than perfection in presentations.
wilg 4 hours ago [-]
It did work! The point is they did a terrible job of producing the event and being clear what they were talking about and showing the product. The product, for all four people who will be able to buy it ("invite only"), seems very cool. But that is not what I was commenting on!
matthuggins 4 hours ago [-]
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gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
Leave Volkswagen out of this. Day belongs to Tesla.
robrain 3 hours ago [-]
Not just you.
motionlessveloc 3 hours ago [-]
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moralestapia 4 hours ago [-]
Wow, this might be the most phenomenal tech demo I've ever watched.
This is just amazing, congrats to everyone who worked on this.
From an engineering pov, it must be the highlight of someone's life and a massive amount of fun to be able to work on a product like this.
s5300 3 hours ago [-]
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dumberquestions 3 hours ago [-]
Who writes like this?
backtr4ck 38 minutes ago [-]
Suckers
tdhz77 3 hours ago [-]
Ai slop on a billion dollar company should tell you everything you know about how we are doomed by this ai experiment
phyzome 3 hours ago [-]
Technically very impressive. I wonder if they'll actually produce and sell any of these.
And too bad it's associated with a Nazi shitheel. That takes a lot of the joy out of this.
ThalesX 4 hours ago [-]
Pretty big nothingburger. Production starts 2028 and honestly, the taunted feature... it's not a flying car, it's a jumping car. Do people actually want this for themselves? I'd wager the valuation would go down after this presentation.
iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago [-]
I never thought I would say this, but.. have you been like.. born 70 or something?
ThalesX 3 hours ago [-]
Late 80's
kingstnap 3 hours ago [-]
Bro the car literally jumped over a semi like its the TF2 soldier. Nothingburger???
emkoemko 29 minutes ago [-]
yes its a nothing burger no one will be able to use this other then a few billionaires... just like that BYD car that can jump wtf are we doing? why do we need cars to jump... we need them to drive us from point a to b
ThalesX 3 hours ago [-]
OK sure. I don't have a lot of use cases in my day to day commute that would be better handled by this jumping over a semi like it's the TF2 soldier, hence, a big nothingburger.
maxnevermind 3 hours ago [-]
I guess robotaxi is failing? This is my only explanation of that jumping gimmick.
al_borland 2 hours ago [-]
The Robotaxi just started rolling out beyond Austin a few months ago. You think they threw together a flying car on a whim in a matter of weeks?
ijustlovemath 3 hours ago [-]
Kind of disturbing how hard he's leaning into the futurism aesthetic here, given its history.
pastel8739 3 hours ago [-]
Tesla has been doing this for a while, having all their promo shots at night etc. The terafab announcement stuff has an especially dystopian vibe
phyzome 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, he also did a straight-up Nazi salute. We already know the guy is a fascist.
chirau 4 hours ago [-]
So Elon's entities are really using SI instead of AI? Interesting. Or was he the one who actually suggested the name change to POTUS?
gizajob 3 hours ago [-]
Super
nullocator 2 hours ago [-]
I can't wait for some rich asshole going 120 mph to backflip their Tesla into my Outback on the interstate.
Glant 1 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, the first time they drive through a city the fans will suck up some trash and ruin the motors
johnnyApplePRNG 4 hours ago [-]
Still with the deadly door-handles that first responders can't open, I see.
Yea, i was going to reserve one of these sub 1 sec 0-60 vehicles with rocket motors and suction fans, but then I didnt because of the ergonomics of the door handle design.
phyzome 3 hours ago [-]
"Ergonomics" is an interesting phrase to use for "critical safety issue".
But yeah, that's not the part of the vehicle that's gong to kill its first victim.
emkoemko 27 minutes ago [-]
or one of these pressure tanks blowing... while your doing a barrel roll down a highway .... wtf are we doing lol
sippingabonedry 3 hours ago [-]
If you watched the video, which you didn't, you'd know it appears to have a traditional door latch with recessed handles.
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.
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.
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.
Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.
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."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA
Aku: You can fly?!
Jack: No, jump good.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_B_Meyer_Inc.
that sounds quite amazing, and it looks like something out of ghostbusters.
it's wild to me after all of the on-stage lying that we're even considering what the future economics of the rocket-powered-road-car are going to be.
it's wild to me that he has yet to deliver on the self-driving stuff, but has decided to progress into rocket-powered circus vehicles.
it's wild to me that he's getting credit for a fan car, after 50+ years of on-track existence and the recent production of the McMurty.
I'm curious to see how it all pans out, and whether or not he has enough Washington connections to get a fan-powered rocket car onto the streets, and I am curious to see the first LA block-shutdown street race accident involving an intentionally aerial vehicle.
Historically fan cars haven't been allowed on the streets because they 1) destroy asphalt and 2) throw chunks of destroyed asphalt into traffic.
I'm not entirely sure how thrusters that can lift a 3k+ lbs sports car off the road jibe with preserving the roads for others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Lamborgh...
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://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NextGenT...
(just personal preference)
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.
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
> 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.
Patently absurd, of course, but amazing too.
It's like buying a car from Kissinger.
“Cool” can’t be faked or bought, you have to actually be cool deep down inside.
This isn’t just an Elon thing. If Henry Ford was alive I wouldn’t be buying a car from him, either. Not cool.
also why can’t the rest of the world step up and do something for once btw. m
free loading is boring.
'cause these folks did the math: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(25)01186-9/full...
By rough estimate, using hydroxide jet packs as a reference, I’d say they got it down to about 600kg.
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)
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.
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.
- 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...
Hahah, the failure modes are going to be exciting.
Car looks half decent too.
To me it looks like a mashup of a Ferrari and a Cybertruck. That's not a good thing.
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.
Panem et circenses
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.
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 damaged 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? You know 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.
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 republican reality.
I am English who lives in the United Kingdom. If you wanted an outside in perspective you got one.
Tesla does have ~700k other employees.
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.
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.
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.
Looks like 4 seconds or so.
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 base model Mazda 6. 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.
The Tumbler? Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that.
The base model has the suction fans which will make huge gains.
Next model up has rear thrusters for the acceleration, which will be more insane. It’s limited production.
Final model that can fly is invite only and will be a joke on the track, using those thrusters to go around corners way, way faster than normal.
I wish they had shown track laps and 1/4 mile times instead of the gimmick of flying.
The existing tech fab plus this car maybe makes it harder to sue once the merger happens - but he will still be sued. “Look we’re making it rocket cars with AI of course we should be one company”
Was it a an amazing demo? yes.
Also yes you can legally sell it. Whether you can legally operate it is a different question.
Also Cybercab.
How many Optimus robots are out in the wild?
It is a scam, 100%.
Optimus is coming, the huge factory in Austin is being built now.
Late? Always. But coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Causby
The corvette ZR-1 had a special key that would unlock all the performance. I don't think it met emissions when unlocked.
Lots of newer muscle cars have performance modes and dragstrip modes that you shouldn't use.
Even other teslas, like model 3 performance and model s plaid have have track mode and dragstrip mode that shouldn't be used on public streets.
I think the bigger issue with be making it street legal. Kickflipping over traffic, and refusing visibility for everyone to 0 in the process, can't be good.
For closed courses, movies, etc it's really cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpQZSBTi7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2c-B3y7yGQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5viDOjWLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjXf7IUSDw
https://volonaut.com/
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/australias-first-flyin...
Just because the technology is technically feasible doesn't mean that a specific company is not scamming you when they promise it.
And Tesla already has enough of a history of fake promises (your tesla will be a self-driving robotaxi earning money while you sleep within a few years, FSD will take you across the country while you sleep by next year, humanoid robots, the new roadster is taking reservations now and will deliver soon, regulation is the only thing holding up FSD, etc etc).
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.
**
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.
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.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-079-introduction-to-convex-opt...
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.
Dunno. Looks like it jumps. Fying seems to require some degree of control over direction but I'm just a gravity-impaired bidep.
hmmmm. spacex-tesla merger signalling?
My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.
It just means you can do jumps and stunts programmed into the vehicle at the push of a button with zero skill at being a stunt driver.
The Dukes of Hazzard had to do that without the thrusters.
Can't wait to see how people kill themselves and other people with those things by being stupid...
Hopefully that shit gets blocked by the DOT and kept off public roads--which is probably the goal to get a bunch of drooling simps outraged over "government overreach" keeping them away from their "flying cars".
That's the bit where we diverge.
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...
I'm so glad Elon exists. He must have spent over $100 million to build the flying variant with no hope of ever profiting off it. I can't imagine any other CEO ever doing that.
Also "Beyond The Limits of Physics"... would any actual engineers at Tesla/SpaceX agree with that marketing statement?
Just like we will have 1 million robotaxis on the streets by 2021?
EDIT: wow it really can fly, that is crazy
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.
The car is just a façade.
Edit: And to expand on this. Owners of GM T.50' say they can't use the ground effect fan anywhere in public due to the debris it picks up and throws, and are ineffective on anything but near perfect roads. So that's not impressive to me. And the jet boosters are also ridiculous, there is not real-world application where you could use them outside of completely closed environments with no one nearby. It's a huge investment into reaction thrusters for a car that would never, ever be used - unless it was to demonstrate thruster technology for another reason.
i.e. Space X.
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.
Bullshit, no it can't.
> Advanced cold-gas thrusters use all-electric actuators to offer precise thrust, completing micro adjustments within a fraction of a second. This helps stabilize the vehicle in flight.
In flight? What? Did I miss the joke, or what? It's a fucking car... The image even shows it hovering off the ground. How is this not blatant false advertising?
ETA: okay, skimmed some of the livestream. These is absolutely no way that any of these features will ever be part of a production model. People get serious whiplash injuries just from being rear-ended at low speed. What do they think is going to happen to the occupant when they tell their car to jump over a semi and do a fucking barrel roll? Seriously, what are we doing here?
Watch the video - the car jumps into the air. Not exactly flight or what we’d consider a flying car, but it’s careering through the air off the ground.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray_Automotive_T.50
I mean, this isn't crazy. In fact, it's already been done. Ever heard of McMurtry? (https://mcmurtry.com/). They're notorious for exactly this - using fans to provide extreme downforce (urr... upforce if you're hanging upside down?).
> In flight?
Did you see the stunt where it literally flew over vehicles? I mean, maybe it's a bit closer to a controlled super-leap like the original Superman, but... yeah, my personal reaction to that was more "holy shit" than "well, that's not flying".
> Bullshit, no it can't.
A proof of concept already exists:
https://mcmurtry.com/upside-down-driving/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Draco
Uh what? Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip
Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI
* The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw
How delusional are people? The emperor is not wearing clothes y'all.
At least the people who buy this will be unequivocally branding themselves as utter douchebags.
Whatever breakthrough they’re making, is it worth funding the dismantling of democracy?
[1]: Silicon Valley edition
Almost all the comments here are just the most generically negative I have ever seen on HN, with just general grumpiness everywhere.
This car is an incredible engineering achievement and a completely unexpected reveal.
>This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Neat car though.
Imagine the engineer hours wasted on this gimmick, while he is losing market share everywhere.
You should try having fun and enjoying things once in a while...
see: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The last decade of social media has shown that humans care more about authenticity than perfection in presentations.
This is just amazing, congrats to everyone who worked on this.
From an engineering pov, it must be the highlight of someone's life and a massive amount of fun to be able to work on a product like this.
And too bad it's associated with a Nazi shitheel. That takes a lot of the joy out of this.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-door...
But yeah, that's not the part of the vehicle that's gong to kill its first victim.