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.

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.

> 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.

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.

They save on advertising to spend on mind-blowing demos.

> 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."

> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.

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

It's cool as fuck but calling it flying is misleading. It jumps and can maneuver in space.

It's very economically feasible if it pumps up the stock price

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

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>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.

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

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.