alt Hacker NewsTesla Roadster
Comments
Everyone's focusing on the cold gas thrusters, which of course is very cool, but not actually shocking that it technically could be done (economically is another question).
But can we talk about the just casually driving straight vertical or sticking to the ceiling? I didn't think that would be technically possible for a 1000kg+ car with probably at least 2" of ground clearance.
There's presumably very limited stores of compressed gas, so you might get one hop or a couple 0-60 boosts per charge. But with electric fans, suction is a feature with much longer duration (minutes?), so you could feasibly do the batman driving on the tunnel ceiling past traffic trick.
Tesla faking it at its best !
It would be an extremely cool demo if this thing was even remotely close to a car that can be produced and sold. Alas, this was something that could be used in a circus at best (where people would need to be very very far since it's very dangerous).
I definitely have my issues with Tesla and Elon but this was one of the coolest demos I have ever seen in my life. The engineering needed to do this must have been unbelievable.
This 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.”
The maths of the flying is a little puzzling to me.
Back of the fag pack, let’s say it is light for an electric car and weights 1000kg. I’ll also go on a limb and guess the air flow is actually subsonic - 200m/s would make it 0.6 Ma (still insanely fast!). Even then, that requires 50 kg of air every second. Or 40 m^3. Using everyone’s favorite metric, this empties an Olympic swimming pool in 1 minute. It also requires a MW of power. I mean… that’s a lot??? Though admittedly, only about as much as accelerating 0-60 in 1 sec (50% of that in fact). So the flying would draw as much power as accelerating at full throttle.
Power requirements would go down a lot with slower exhaust speed, but then you need to shift more fluid. 40 m^3 already seems like a lot to me.
I get it’s a neat little demo and they have to get SpaceX into the picture somehow, but still I don’t understand how it’s supposed to add up. Also, what do I know - just a humble physicist.
So this is a really neat technical demo, using spacecraft cold-gas thrusters and guidance hardware/software to do crazy stunt stuff in a car, but what's the relevance to an actual product that can be sold, even as a small-volume exotic? These are pressurized gas thrusters, so either the tanks, valves, and piping take up most of the interior of the car, or it has a low-single-digit number of seconds of thrust before recharge, probably both. Also the tanks for these things tend to use incredibly high pressures and are apt to explode spectacularly in any sort of accident.
This is sort of like demonstrating a car that softens the asphalt in front of it with lasers to get a better grip; difficult, technically impressive, and zero chance that it will ever be allowed on a public road.
Edit: According to this Motor Trend article, it uses a big carbon-fiber pressure vessel at 5500psi, so basically an enormous fragile bomb. And the one that did all the stunts had two of the pressure vessels which would have filled most of the interior.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-roadster-thrust-system...
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.
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...
As an engineer myself, watching the Hagerty interview [0] was an ...interesting experience.
Every time Tesla's VP of vehicle engineering [0] explains the Engineering of the product by stating that they are "breaking the laws of physics", everything he says is losing a bit of credibility...
Is this page geo-locked? All I get is a page telling me that I'm unauthorised to view the page.
Tesla has lost the battery tech, volume EV manufacturin, and humanoid robotics to China (when trade restrictions don't apply). It's time to hype something different.
The livestream has the stunts: https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110788059008819215
Okay that's one of the coolest things I've seen in a while since the rockets landing.
Car looks half decent too.
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...
I'm sure they'll release this one as soon as the release the Roadster introduced 9 years ago.
I”m not going to get into Musk himself. Nor will I get into the artistic absurdity that a moder supercar represents. But I will speak for the hackers amongst us:
The problem with the demo is that it was vapourware. Period, full stop. It is not the car they are selling to us, and they haven't even begun making them. I am personally not a fan of pure concept products that exist only to polish the company’s crown.
Steve Jobs said that "Real artists ship," because the act of shipping is the act of making the incredibly difficult and important decisions that manage the enormous number of constraints that go into the actual product.
If people like concept cars that don't have to actually work or meet a specific price point, fine. It is entertainment, nothing wrong with that. But I am not and will not be impressed until, like Apple, the thing they show on stage is so far along that you can be expected to buy one within weeks, not years.
I am not telling anyone how to judge this. But by my very old-school standards, vapourware sucks.
I like the spirit
sometimes u gotta just ignore economics and instead make history!
I know its marketing but still it's super inspiring to me. Try pulling it off in real hardware. It's incredible.
The audience for this must get really scared when the magician cuts the lady in half
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono... - Worth a read if you haven't already
When I saw the headlines “Tesla shows flying car” I got excited, then watched the demo and was thoroughly disappointed. How can anyone write that headline?
Tesla Roadster vaporware edition MK2: now with actual vapor!
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.
This is not a flying car. It's a falling car. It's good at falling though.
Does anyone have more info on the cupholders? I need to know it won’t spill my coffee.
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?
Okay, that's some of the most impressive feats I've ever seen. Congratulations to the engineers!
Why do car manufacturers brag about hitting 60 mph in 1, 2 or whatever seconds? For a normal person, does this really matter - what is the big deal if a car hits 60 mph in 5 seconds instead of 1? There are more important things like safety, repairability, longevity etc right?
What's so disruptive on these kind of events is, that companies always used to do development for PR-stunts, or to show off their capabilities and vision for the future, but never at this scale of pure engineering investment.
Drawing a parallel, manufacturers presented rollable mobile devices already a decade ago, modular devices with replaceable components, etc. The archives of Nokia and Ericsson (and others) are full with these kinds of products. Car manufacturers did the same. They presented a vision, not a commitment to a product because there is much more to this than just "being able" to build it.
But it was never economically feasible or sensible to do this at SUCH a scale of engineering cost, and presented with the unrelenting confidence of "this will be yours in two years", despite all the fundamental roadblocks still to overcome.
It appears that this is the most disrupting aspect of their presentations: People are not used to being presented a "vision" of such a scale with so little regards for practical execution.
They like the journey they are taken on, and willingly fill all gaps and doubts with "they wouldn't present this if they didn't think of everything already"
It's pretty cool that someone finally replicated the turbo boost jump function that K.I.T.T. had. Imagine having the boosters to avoid head on collision at 100km/h.
It looks like a DeLorean to me. Someone needs to do an AI mashup taking Back to the Future and replacing the car with this.
So, if you crash and the air tank ruptures do you just... die?
Apart from the supercar aspirational enthusiasts and the usual inspiration of innovation with concept cars give, I'm thinking of other audiences for this product. What's the actual future of this?
Ask yourself who would see the benefit of a vehicle that can jump over obstacles, other dangers or other cars?
Obstacles including barricades, flooded roads, tank traps, rivers, fences and burning cars. Dangers might include IEDs, mines, destroyed bridges, barbed wire, stinger strips, active munitions being fired at it, etc.
Even without such dangers, jumping over moving cars would be useful in pursuits where getting in front of a target gives an advantage.
And the extra mobility would be useful in humanitarian and disaster applications where getting to and from those in need in a timely fashion may save lives.
I wouldn't trust promo videos.
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 wonder if Musk is entering the brain rot phase, and Tesla will decline from now on. After all, this is something Tesla doesn't need, a second dud after the Cybertruck. I'm sure the decline will take some time though.
This is just Tesla marketing. Usually companies just dump money into marketing campaigns. Musk dumps it into engineering instead.
Remember when they sent one into space? Same thing, everyone in the world is talking about it without spending a single cent in ads.
Doesn’t mean we’re getting flying cars.
Did the car technically fly? To me it seemed more like a controlled graceful landing. Would we technically call that flying?
“This isn’t flying, this is falling with style.” - Buzz
It’s a remote controlled CO2 canister on wheels with a skin that looks like a car. It’s a stupid publicity “stunt”. Har har Elon.
I have to admit that the only thing I give Elon the title of “Genius” for is his ways of putting on shows to launder more money or get larger loans… this economy is a circus.
Looks like more hype nonsense to keep excitement going while continuing to delay actually delivering a real product.
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.
Amazing tech demo. I would have liked to see more discussion of the cold-gas thrusters in the earlier Hacker News article. Some people seemed confused and made claims that the demo was a separate "rocket" version that used a combustion technology.
Just don't press the button where you have wires over the road... or anything hanging over the road... like signs...Don't press the button when you are about to go into a tunnel... or inside the tunnel... Also, check your passengers have finished their shakes, coffee, and other liquids...
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.
Some cars, if you have to ask what it costs, you can't afford it.
Other cars, if you have to ask where the government will allow you to drive it, you can't afford it.
I personally see this like a 1UP for rich idiots that are about to drive themselves into oblivion. Beats the solution in Demolition Man.
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.