A car frame with modified spacex boosters doing some stunts so Elon can build hype before he rolls Tesla into spacex so he can keep the shell game going on company profits.
Can you imagine being the engineer that was working on rocket thrusters for a mars rocket and your boss comes in and says “yea for the next year or so can you stop that and instead work on thrusters for a car”.
I think it's likely the funnest project any engineer could ever work on. Other than the fact that they can't say a fucking word about it until the demo.
There were rumours about this for a couple of years because Elon tweeted it was coming.
Another wild project some lucky engineer got to work on was an insanely high pressure gas pump for the water jets to cool the Starship launch pad. There's a small rocket nozzle inside a drum, liquid methane and liquid oxygen making fire then liquid nitrogen being sprayed into the flame from all sides like a showerhead. Which boils the liquid nitrogen into a bajillon litres of high pressure nitrogen gas that can pump a bajillon litres of water onto the pad.
"So honey, what did you design today at work?"
"Just a showerhead of liquid nitrogen surrounding a flamethrower, nothing fancy."
"so you are telling me I get paid the same and get to work on something never before done?"
This kind of shit is like catnip for engineers. The amount of absolutely stupid "because I could" shit that happens at engineering schools is astronomical.
I bought a used 2018 model 3 that had a headlight out. I was surprised that new replacements were $1600. So I ended up getting one off of eBay for $300 that had a very minor and unnoticeable dent in the corner, and I replaced it myself to save the labor cost
Pretty common. Bosses Audi had a side marker light go out it's part of the headlight assembly and not replaceable. The part was like $1250 before labor. Found an aftermarket one on ebay for $500 figured if the Audi one only lasts 3 or 4 years this one couldn't be much worse.
The curved ramp was to demo the fan system that sucks the car down to the road with 2g of force. Then to reveal the thrusters, it just drove off the fucking end of the god damn ramp while upside down, did a motherfucking barrel roll, then landed gently enough to stay in one piece.
Later a car jumped off the ground and did another barrel roll over a Tesla semi while it was driving and it kept driving when it landed. Then they showed a car going from 0 to 60mph in 0.82 seconds using the rear thrusters. Then, for good measure, they did one more standing barrel roll at the end to parallel park.
It is unclear if the three stunts and 0-60 were done by the same car, but the car they drove up onto the stage was not the stunt car. The one on the stage only had thrusters on the rear, while the stunt car had EDIT:8 6 more thrusters pointed down and to the sides.
Axial roll, not aileron role, if we're being pedantic about it
An "aileron roll" refers specifically to the control surfaces (ailerons) used to produce the roll on an airplane. A rocket, submarine, car, helicopter etc with no ailerons performs an "axial roll" instead
This was literally the most incredible demo I’ve ever seen for a car. I did NOT have this jumping off an upside down ramp and flipping to land anywhere near my bingo card pile. Insanity has its benefits 😂
I remember someone earlier saying this was the least likely thing and we’d likely see it just roll to the top then back down. . . Well here we are, lol
I'm not a fan of musk and Tesla but this cool as fuck and people who are trying to pretend this is terrible are just consumed by their biases and unable to think independently or rationally.
It is very cool tech and an amazing demonstration of engineering. There is no doubt about that. That said, can you imagine a world where people on the highway are trying to leap over each other? He said 2028. That is just not feasible. He might be able to sell some, but you won't be able to use them anywhere other than private property. The laws and infrastructure just won't be able to support a timeline that short.
They probably aren't street legal, and theres debate on whether or not they talk under FAA regulations as aircraft instead of cars. They'll probably only be able to pull those stunts on private property and doing so will probably be prohibitively expensive that only really rich people can do it a couple of times to flex.
That being said alot of simmilar concerns about the validity and costs of ev technology in general were around when tesla first started. Sometimes you need pointless cool af tech to keep people interested, and to eventually find practical ways to make the tech useful. The vacuume tech will probably be very useful on wet roads ect
It was not going fast. As far as I know upside down thing is because of the fans which were already a proven concept (see McMurtry). I am shocked on how soft it landed and how controlled the flip and turn is.
Well the Harrier Jump Jet has been around for 60 years. Eventually aerospace engineering makes its way into cars: ABS, GPS, HUD, nitrogen filled tires, eventually TCAS (Tesla To Tesla) fly by wire, etc.
It’s pretty amazing how much someone can drive innovation with the right mindset. Even if they’re not the ones engineering the products. People like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos push humanity forward and make science exciting. When you see Apple now after Steve Jobs left it just doesn’t have the same excitement. It takes a certain kind of mindset.
Say you’re on a bridge and it’s collapsing, well you just hit the thrusters and everyone else dies except you. Also it adds a z factor for accident avoidance.
I see a few uses. 1. You’re doing 130 around a mountainous bend and you slide off the side of the road you’ll salvage your vehicle and your life if it hit so happens to be a cliff. 2. You’re at a stop light and a Honda comes up on your rear attempting to give you the Honda kiss or totality. Your car can frogger behind at the last second so the Honda takes out the car in front of you instead. lol.
Heard about that guy that drove off the cliff in his Tesla to kill his whole family? They survived, but this would have made it more comfortable. It’s for that. It’s for the children.
That guy is what convinced my wife we should get a tesla. i was getting it no matter what that wa sa if deal for her. fast forward 3.5 years later she wants for herself
I am amazed by the engineering and this is definitely a step towards flying cars from back to future. But, this car truly doesn't have infrastructure or safety standards to use in near future.
The normal road versions won't be flying around doing flips. The point of the fan is for downforce around a track, not to literally drive around upside down. The Cold thrusters are to accelerate incredibly fast, not so you can do kickflips in traffic.
Unless we can figure out making incredibly small fusion reactors then flying cars won't ever be a thing, not a mainstream like everyone drives them thing at least
The amount of energy to stay airborne and have a car fly rather than drive is so much higher compared to driving that it just isn't feasible. And that's a physics problem, you can't reduce that energy you just gotta come up with a way to have more energy available.
This is a cool tech demo, not a real step towards flying cars.
Excuse me?! Are you telling me... Are you LEADING me to believe that the entire purpose of all supercars is for engineering and design teams to go wild and jerk themselves off and the company uses the supercar platform as a keystone in marketing to demonstrate the brand's values?
...
I don't believe you!
/s
(Yeah, y'all, supercars aren't really built to be driven like a normal car)
Going very fast around a track, going very fast in a straight line. Flying and driving upside down aren't the main purpose....the fans for suction are for cornering at very high speeds (see the mcmurtry speirling as an example) and the cold thrusters can allow you to accelerate much faster as the thrust can push you forward even when the tires don't have any additional grip and are pushed to their limits.
This isn't a practical daily driver, it's more of a halo car showing what's possible.
Okay so picture this, you're going to the grocery store and there are several cars and a ramp infront of you, and you're running late for the dinner party you're hosting...
I'm still confused about the utility, can the car also hover? It's super cool but also how in the world are they gonna let any normal driver control this 😭
Reddit is gross. So many people who think they’re smart and impressive who are actually just parroting the same, often incorrect, talking points as everyone else on Reddit.
There is no way this thing is legal to operate on public roads or with a normal drivers license right? You can't even operate too big a truck without additional licensing and this thing is practically a fucking space ship wtf.
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u/andreglud oderator 2d ago
No need to mass report as "manipulated content" y'all. It's legit.