alt Hacker NewsTesla Roadster
Comments
Can't wait for these things to endanger my family's life on some Colorado mountain highways. If the suction works at speed, people are gonna drive even more recklessly.
If someone cares so much about flying, wouldn't they get much better range out of a helicopter?
A car that jumps - am I missing something? The speed numbers are cool.
What, no Trixie or Chim-Chim?
As a father of a growing family, I am still waiting for the RoBovan.
Am I missing something? At what point did the car fly?
The thrusters were able to cushion a fall.
That seems useful in ruining the ending of Thelma and Louise, but isn’t really a flying car.
Is this a gas that needs to be refilled with the cold thrust one?
Very impressive prototype. Certainly an attempt to disrupt a specific segment of the car industry - "race cars", or "sports cars", or whatever you want to call it.
A few considerations, just my own thoughts.
1) I would bet that the actual car shown in the demo weights less than what will eventually be sold to the public. I am not an expert, but the way in which the car reacted to the air boosts suggests a relatively "lightweight" vehicle. Plus, I would imagine perhaps a smaller battery (again, for demo purposes).
2) It is a nice "exercise" as a game, or an expensive hobby for billionaires. I doubt, as Elon hinted, that using these thrusters will be allowed on public roads. Perhaps just on circuits?
3) Overall, Elon said that Tesla's strategy will no longer be about cars, but about robots and AI, and then proceeds to show a car that will cost billions to develop, and might not be the commercial success that justifies the investment.
4) Twitter (now X), Tesla, SpaceX... things are moving, tricks are being shown, and who knows, perhaps next year everything will be merged under ElonX, and he will finally be happy.
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.
What a downgrade from the renders we've seen so far.
Potholes no longer an issue, just hop over them.
Is there a betting market for if this car actually ships or? Cuz I don’t think it will.
This sounds exactly like what John Carmack discussed on Episode #309 of the Lex Fridman Podcast.
The thing that made the design of the original Tesla cars successful, before they went all in on this "future looks like the future" idiocy, is that they just looked good. Tasteful. All that crazy new tech was put in a package which hid it and it just became a sleek, good looking car on the road. Now Tesla design is obsessed with it cosplaying a Ridley Scott 80's wet dream and it looks stupid. The cars look like a show at universal studios theme park. When you do the "future looks like the future" it's always a sci-fi author's idea of "the future" which is cheesy and outdated as soon as its done. This is a boomer's idea of "future" aesthetics and it's not what the actual future looks like.
I'm no Musk fan. Like totally repulsed by the dude. But the comments here that there's nothing interesting about the demos are some serious cope. It's this kind of reality-bending bias that makes people disregard everything you have to say. When someone you hate creates something incredible, it's probably best to say nothing because any attempt to convince people otherwise will just backfire.
Didn’t expect an ad of a company with a muss murder aiding and abetting CEO staying so long on the front page.
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.
A though for the people doing the "boring" engineering at Tesla (like, you know, enhancing the range of the vehicles, improving security, making FSD closer to reality, etc...), who used to get some light (remember "battery day" ?), and are now on the backbench while the sycophants gets the budget for vanity projects like this. At least, at Tesla, the sycophants are _smart_ and pull out cool demos. Not the case in every "new clothes" kingdom.
Unavailable to visit?
so, can I program it over an API ?
Can I put it under grokbot's control?
Back in the days we used to call these kind of demo cars as concept cars which rarely see the markete. But Kudos to Elon Musk who single handedly running entire Tesla's marketing compaign and keep its stocks and markete value higher than the next 10 car brands combined. Tesla Robots, Robotaxies and now Roadster, these are R&D and concept projects.
Paid subscriptions everyere, I bet.
well Im suitably impressed
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.
Looks like Tesla didn’t learn from the abject cybertruck failure
There already are real flying cars though. They are vehicles with wings that extend out from the car's body and can take short flights. They fly in the sense of what people expect from any other plane -- and thus need flat ground to act as a run way. None of these designs use cold air thrusters because its simply not viable for extended flight.
The reason thrusters work well in space is minimal weight there. You need to work many times harder on Earth to counter act the weight of the object here.
If this is real, it's going to kill people.
So they are going to send one of to space again?
Jumping my way out of traffic.
I recall that about 8 (10?) years ago the “Roadster 2” was advertised. Am I correct that that was repeatedly delayed and never delivered?
My sense is that this is just more Elon Musk bullshit that will never materialize.
You guys. They made a car fly. It was damn cool. I know there’s more to the story and we all need a “take” but I remember watching Speed Racer as a kid and being totally enchanted by the idea of a flying car.
Yesterday, that’s exactly what we saw and it’s ok to just enjoy the spectacle.
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.
Are they serious about the rocket version??
Very COOL, I like this Roadster retro style
Loadstir, more like.
What a beautiful car!
Since some there's some misinformation in the top comment right now, here's a video with a lot more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts
of all the things you could do for the world.
When Musk does first principle thinking he’s unbeatable. When his inner child gets involved anyone can beat him.
This is the latter. Four propulsion mechanism that introduce tradeoffs in the structure that remove value for 99% of people.
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".
Fool me once, shame on you. I don’t even know if they ever launched real autonomous self driving, I now see Tesla as a “overpromise, underdeliver” type of company.
Amazing demo.
Also amazing stupidity of people believing anything close to this will hit the streets. Lies and lies for a decade, and now after a flashy demo it is again "2028".
No doubt, exceptional engineering achievement.
But, I just wish it didn't resemble a Lamborghini so much.
The unreleased roadster (2017) looked amazing. Tesla is capable of incredible totally original design.
He literally made good on the long time promise of FLYING CARS and this is not the top post????
this site just toast
Will this car ever ship?
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.
The PT Barnum of the 21st century