alt Hacker NewsThis video states that it takes 2–6 hours to charge the compressed air for the cold-gas thrusters. And then you can use it exactly once before you have to recharge it. The journalist calls it “beautifully pointless.”
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The stock market agrees. TSLA continues trending downward.
Also, the stock market's id, aka WSB is not impressed in hilarious and sometimes insightful ways. [0]
From my nerd POV, this looks super cool! From any other POV, ummm, what are we supposed to do with this? This is neat as heck, but you cannot put COPVs on public roadways.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1x73hxs/tes...
It's just a supercar. Supercars are allowed to be pointless.
It's not pointless at all. The car needs wings to become a glider. It doesn't need the fans for downward force or any of the high speed stuff. You take the car as high as you can and glide down. So it would be an airplane first and a car second. That would be seriously cool. The military would use it too. An airphibious/wingsuit vehicle. It could also have a drop-out seat/s for skydiving out of or doing air drops. For landing, another central wheel can be deployed to absorb the main bump or the existing wheels are extended further down. If there's a problem mid-flight there is an emergency chute as well, or can be used if wings not fitted or used.
It could also be made into a water/air vehicle instead and useful for getting over rough seas or air-docking with superyachts or destroyers. Floating/inflatable solar panels would be great too. Another interesting use case would be for airplane passengers and their baggage to leave a plane without the plane actually landing. The landing car could re-dock with the plane on its return flight. That'd be tricky, though.
That sounds fine. Charging time isn't the problem though.
I would say it's beautifully pointless in about the same way that the tires on a Bugatti Veyron are rated for some absurdly low number of km before they need to be replaced, and they can only be replaced by shipping the entire wheels to specialized facilities which are equipped to do them. The whole levitating car on thrusters thing is a specialty novelty for rich collectors.
The obvious use case is to avoid a collision!
Single use is perfectly fine for that purpose. No one complains that airbags are single use.
It's a typical Tesla/Elon marketing stunt and nothing more.
The funny thing is that during the event, Elon claimed that the car can recharge the tanks itself [0], but in the Top Gear video, the Tesla folks say that it is recharged from an external source [1]. In the Top Gear video, they also say that they are filling it from a "high pressure nitrogen system", whereas Elon claims that the tank is filled with air. They can't even keep their own messaging straight.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/qt5p-_tE8d0?si=V5csPghK02wwd0or...
[1] https://youtu.be/JdkIOhFmbKI?si=ULvyIRWDRZRWlIWA&t=1340