logoalt Hacker News

BigCatStuff • yesterday at 5:42 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

What distance did you actually see it "drive"? There is no evidence that the car shaped object was anything but a lightweight shell using compressed air to levitate and do tricks like any modern day drone can do.

Here's an RC car that can drive on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA


Replies

rlt • yesterday at 11:00 PM

There's an obvious tradeoff between range and "flight" time, but if you ask your favorite AI it will do some napkin math for you that shows a 4 cold gas thruster system with a 3 foot diameter COPV (at pressures attainable by an onboard compressor) could hover a ~4000 lbs vehicle for a few seconds.

rlander • yesterday at 6:08 PM

Here's the evidence: https://youtu.be/_lq-DpCE9rU?si=DF8YVr5AB35pKN4i&t=924

➕ show 2 replies
vessenes • yesterday at 1:05 PM

Well, Elon said the final prod car would be lighter; whether or not they achieve that goal, the strong implication: the car has a battery and power train in it. Also, we saw it drive up the first part of the ramp without any air seeming to come out the back, and reverse down slowly; there don't seem to be forward facing fans/jets from the looks of the air coming out. I'd say Occam's razor is that the car has a full electric system in it.

➕ show 2 replies