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?

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.

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.

This was 100% precursor to the absorption of Tesla into SpaceX and I’m here for it

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

The livestream has the stunts: https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110788059008819215

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.

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

Okay that's one of the coolest things I've seen in a while since the rockets landing.

Car looks half decent too.

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.

Okay, that's some of the most impressive feats I've ever seen. Congratulations to the engineers!

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?

I could have used that when leaving Costco last Saturday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Genuinely impressed, incredible demo

aka a $245,000 loan to tesla with no interest for 10 years

Good on Elon for putting out a car that embodies his best trait, sucking as hard as possible.

This is an incredible feat of engineering. I have my doubts of the 2028 mass production timeline, but I am quite amazed.

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.

> It challenges the limits of design, engineering and physics to deliver an expertly crafted extra-terrestrial vehicle.

closed tab. thanks.

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.

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".

I dig the commitment to the low poly look! Really cool and fits in with the new design direction.

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 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.

I never thought I'd live to see K.I.T.T

Tesla hitting their lambo era?

Flying cars before GTA6.

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?

Is the copy grok's writing style? It feels inhuman but still more readable than Opus

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

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

Rocket-inspired design hints at desire to merge Tesla and SpaceX?

I must be old. I just keep thinking about what kind of whiplash I'd get with those flips

If this is real, it's going to kill people.

Other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112380

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.

So they are going to send one of to space again?

It can fly? Wow! What a time to be alive!

Relevant.

* The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw

As a father of a growing family, I am still waiting for the RoBovan.

Nice Testarossa!

A car that jumps - am I missing something? The speed numbers are cool.

Are they serious about the rocket version??

Is that the Draco engine?

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

The engineering team did an amazing job!

> 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?

At this point this is some sort of IQ test right?

Is this a gas that needs to be refilled with the cold thrust one?

You can hate the man, but you must respect him. Flying cars have truly arrived.

Very COOL, I like this Roadster retro style

Is this a broken link for anyone else?

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?

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.

He has finally gone bonkers. Drugs are bad, mmmmkay.

Imagine the engineer hours wasted on this gimmick, while he is losing market share everywhere.

Unavailable to visit?

Sorry about the eggs honey, I had to use the thrusters to get past this cyclist.

Ai slop on a billion dollar company should tell you everything you know about how we are doomed by this ai experiment

I cant wait to see what type of batshit crazy motorsport series they invent for these.

"Tony Hawk would be called, we call that the kickflip."

Uh what? Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip

Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI

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.

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.

Technology: spectacular, design: ugly as fuck

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.

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.

Does musk get final say on all of the latest car designs?

The cybertruck? And now this?

Vomit inducing, truly.

A lot of musk shills in these comments. This is a terrible idea, and just like all his other promises, won’t happen.

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.

I've never seen a site allegedly about technology, hate technology so much.

Good luck with the food delivery apps fellas.

I recommend everyone watch the live event video. It is a master class in everything you could possibly do wrong when producing a product reveal event. It's really amazing.

It's like watching their rehearsal, and also like watching The Rehearsal.

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.

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.

Kind of disturbing how hard he's leaning into the futurism aesthetic here, given its history.

I guess robotaxi is failing? This is my only explanation of that jumping gimmick.

Still with the deadly door-handles that first responders can't open, I see.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-door...

Tesla has completely lost the plot at this point. Yes, the Model Y and 3 are still selling well today, but they increasingly can't compete with the Chinese on price or features. And instead of even trying to stay relevant in the consumer market, they're focusing on niche toys like the Cybertruck and now this.

At this point Tesla's future hinges pretty much entirely on Cybercab and Optimus, and neither is looking great.