If you have taken physics or you are science-oriented, you'll realize that this is very likely a sham. I'm not 100% certain, but if you think about the physics, what is being suggested is impossible.
Think about the enormous amount of energy required to keep this car afloat if it's based on propellant. Consider how Harrier Jump jets spend so much fuel to do something similar for a few seconds.
The only way to accomplish this practically would be to rely on a technology that counteracts gravitational forces without expending energy. The aliens that have been spotted sporadically likely use such a technology. But we are nowhere near that level of technology yet. [Edit - deleted: Our scientists still don't know where gravity comes from.]
100%. I am confident that the car that did a 0-60 test is not the same car that flew. That car I’m certain was just a shell with thrusters - A tiny motor and a tiny battery. It is all smoke and mirrors.
But even if it is 100% real, we will never see a single car on the road do any of this. The only thing you might see is the thrust 0-60 on a track. And if we see that, you will only see it once or twice a day. It would take way too much time and electrons to pressurize the car to consistently do this during a full lap on a track. Back to physics…it just isn’t practical.
The show was cute but not grounded in anything real.
With all this said, he tricked us in 2017 about the roadster. Odds are, he is just tricking us again. Plus, the new car does not look nearly as good as the 2017 roadster.
As fun as this was to watch, it is all meh. I guarantee that the Mission S will be a far superior driver’s car.
I am confident that the car that did a 0-60 test is not the same car that flew. That car I’m certain was just a shell with thrusters - A tiny motor and a tiny battery. It is all smoke and mirrors.
If what you said above is true, I think it's outright fraud. I don't know if there is a law against this type of fraud. It's kinda' similar to how game shows were once rigged but are now illegal. It gives a false impression that deceives the public. Nobody directly gets hurt but I think it does long-term damage as people start believing in nonsense. In this case, people would invest in Tesla stock based on the false assumptions.
With all this said, he tricked us in 2017 about the roadster.
If what you said is true, I'm wondering why the SEC didn't get involved as it would affect investors' belief about the company.
Oh I think more that the mission s will actually exist. This tesla will not exist with these capabilities for years to come if ever. 2017 roadster still isn’t here, add this to the lineup of promised Tesla such and such.
Crazy thing is that just because we will never buy this, doesn’t mean a bunch of other people won’t fall or the grift yet again. Again.. I actually don’t know how many agains we are at now.
Plus, the new car does not look nearly as good as the 2017 roadster.
Fuck no it doesn't and it's a damn shame. It looks like he doubled down on the dumbass choices made for the Cybertruck and decided to make a car version of a Cybertruck. If I was a Tesla investor, I'd be furious and thinking of selling my stocks, cause that roadster is probably not gonna sell as well as the 2017 version.
Yes it's smoke and mirrors
Apparently the chassis is glowing red from the heat of this one trick too
The base car costs $50k, the suction cup function bumps it up to $250k and the propellant version is 'invite only' and requires FAA approval for each usage.
This is the equivalent of showing a microwave that makes a three-course meal - only that specific microwave isn't for sale, is heavily modified, works only once and costs ten times as much as a normal microwave
It is 100% a hollow shell of a car with multiple pressurised air jets. It’s a stunt for Tesla stock holders to wet their pants to. No electric car full of engine, interior and passenger would ever be able to manoeuvre like that
I was thinking the same thing the amount of gas you would need to control that thing mid air would be insane. Unless they have discovered some technique to super pressurize gas or something 😂 Your probably right most of this "car" is probably pressure tanks
Well obviously it wasn’t the same car. It currently takes 2.5 hours to refill the high pressure tank that it completely empties to achieve the crazy 0-60.
Elon created what may be the world's most expensive RC car ever made. None of the demos (flying or 0-60) ever showed a turning car. These are just shells of vehicles hollowed-out without real drivers or functionality other than the demo tasks. Definitely no battery packs in either of the prototypes shown in action.
The 0-60 car did NOT have any thrusters or nitrogen tank. The flying one did NOT have a battery or drivetrain (only tiny 1/20 size battery to crawl slowly)
It's a Mythbusters build. Like seriously it's exactly like something Mythbusters would do to prove that a car could technically fly in a Back of the Future II themed episode. There is zero practical value in this.
They demonstrated technology that already exists. This is the dumbing down of people method. You need people to forget your rockets explode, your satellites are again shut down in favor of Russia, then promise them flying cars while delivering a very expensive impractical parachute for a cardboard vehicle. Trillionaire plays hot wheels with the economy. if you're 8 it's the future.
But Russia loves us! 😂 PUTIN IS SPREADING LOVE AND JOY TO UKRAINE! HE JUST WANTS THE CHILDREN TO BE HAPPY THATS WHY THEY ARE GOING TO HEAVEN! Sorry thought I was the president for a minute
Zoom in on the bottom of the car, its obvious its fake, its a rig that probably weighs a few hundred pounds, not thousands. Also if you consider the speed it goes up the half pipe, its obviously being assisted by vacuum or magnets.
This is everything that musk is, a phony thats just convincing enough for the average person that doesnt know better. He's the personification of smoke and mirrors.
It is a vacuum assist. Musk says there will be 3 versions of this roadster, one with the vacuum downforce assist, the second will have the launch assist thruster, and the last will be the full one that won't be street legal that can do the jumps and flips and such and will be sold as invite only. I don't really think any of them are realistically going to come to the market, even the vacuum assist portion will drastically increase the energy expenditure of the vehicle severely limiting mileage. The vacuum downforce assist alone is unrealistic to be used on any normal road and would be restricted to track use only, think of all the road debris it would be sucking up and any bumps in the road would cause damage.
Further, for the vacuum assist to work, it requires side curtains to drop down and scrape along the ground. So yeah, definitely specialty use only if ever at all.
This is everything that musk is, a phony thats just convincing enough for the average person that doesnt know better. He's the personification of smoke and mirrors.
He's pretty good at it though. Sadly, that's what it takes to make it in business.
Everything Elon does is a sham to inflate his stock price. The Cybertruck, Semi, boring company, Mars teraforming, etc... His greatest asset to his companies is being a meme generator. Nothing else. Having known people who have worked for him directly and talked with him. They have all said hes just a spoiled dumb 12 year old idiot who does more harm than good whenever he walks into one of his offices.
Yes. We can see why this is a sham using Tsiolkovsky's formula.
∆v = ln(m0/m1)•Isp•9,8.
For every second of hovering, the car expends 9,8 m/s of ∆v. This means that a single hour of flight will cost you around 36000 m/s ∆v.
To put this into perspective, the orbital speed of the ISS is 7,66 km/s, or 7660 m/s. This means that, with this amount of ∆v, if our car ended up in LEO height, it would take less fuel to orbit Earth. And now look at the size of rockets we have to deliver stuff into LEO. Obviously, it's a very gross oversimplification, but it can give you a sense of how unrealistic flying cars would actually be. Unless we use an engine with ridiculously high Isp (similar to one of an Ion engine), and it somehow has enough thrust to lift the car off the ground (which ion engines don't, and they also don't even work in the atmosphere), this remains extremely impractical. What would be more practical, is if we used lift to make the car fly, which actually has already been done.
This, if you can hover using non oxygen breathing engines for more than like 20minutes, and if you can increase thrust to double (2x thrust to weight) for half the time (10min) your 'car' could very likely get into orbit with that much time and thrust
The harrier is notoriously unreliable. However, it at least is a solution to an actual problem which is how do you launch jets from an amphibious ship. There is at least a reasonable justification for aiming at this tech.
This car has no actual need. It only serves as keys to jingle for his fanboys. Everyone else sees through it for what it is.
My Model Y has a GVW of ~4500 pounds, mostly battery and motors.
The Roadster likely has a GVWR of closer to 2500-3000 lbs, because it's a smaller and lighter vehicle. That's an insane amount of force needed to get it off the ground.
Musk's incredibly stupid, which isn't surprising given that he's in a K-hole most of the time and is at best incompetent, willfully malicious, and evil. Dude's a clown with too much money and not enough punches to the face.
Sadly, it was incredibly easy to make money back 30 years ago if you went into the tech sector. Every single one of the original PayPay founders became billionaires, as well as more than a third of the 20 PayPal mafia general alumni.
It makes me sick to see those people make money even though they screw up because so much money has been pumped into that sector. For example, consider Marc Lore. His first idea was mediocre but he made $$. Then he poured everything into Jet.com, an incredibly stupid idea that was executed poorly. He was about to go bankrupt but Walmart not only bailed him out but multiplied his net worth by a factor of 10. I mean WTF!
I just read the Wikipedia article, and who thought that selling products at a loss was a good idea? What was the game plan? Is this like Uber where they lost money for years and were only held up by investors when Uber would go "please, we're so close to generating returns"
which wiki article? I'm curious what you read. I want to read it too.
Btw, selling products at a loss (or just even) is a common marketing tactic for tech companies. They do this as well as try to establish a monopoly without the DOJ noticing. It's actually illegal to do either under antitrust laws but companies do it anyway. Kinda' the universal business model for tech companies.
It absolutely is a sham. I'm a mechanical design engineer and this is just laughable. That system could very likely only be used once without totally refueling it. The electric fan needed to hold a light car upside down would drain that battery super fast, and if the car was really loaded with the motors and battery pack it should have, it would be too heavy to do that at that speed. Maybe full speed, with enough inertia, plus that fan, it could. But all of this seems very fucking suspicious and fake as fuck. It's like seeing stunts they do in movies with vehicles(think fast and the furious 5 type shit), the vehicle definitely does the thing, but it's only able to do the thing for a moment. To get the shot they need. That's this.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but I believe science does know “where gravity comes from” and can even describe it mathematically. It comes from the curvature of space-time around mass.
But that point aside yes Elon Musk is a fucking dolt and this is a stupid trick.
We still don't know specifically where gravity originates in a proton/neutron. It comes from mass but which sub-atomic particle and why? We also don't know exactly why electricity causes magnetism, another basic principle of classical physics. It's just accepted as a given, and we move on. Basic physics has only been discovered in about the last 100 years, so it's relatively new.
Magnetism and electromagnetic field is well described.
The gravity as well is quite well described.
We still don't know specifically where gravity originates in a proton/neutron
This sentence doesn't even make any sense.
The main gap is between quantum mechanics and general relativity, but this gap doesn't invalidate either. And has nothing to do about understanding the "cause of gravity" is basically about one describes and requires the reality to be smooth/continuous the other describes it as chunky, or quantised if you will. And there are several very plausible hypothesis on how to resolve the gap, the tricky part is to prove it, as for most of those we do not have the energy/tools required
Electricity causing magnetism can be explained by general relativity. Mass can also be explained by the Higgs field and the Higgs boson was experimentally verified in 2012. This discovery was actually the one people thought was going to make a black hole and end the world or whatever because of the Mayan calendar.
Also, science doesn’t really tell us absolutely where things come from. We come up with rigorous and predictive explanations that we can’t prove wrong despite trying or are of limited utility and we search for a more general explanation. Just because we don’t have a unified theory of forces doesn’t mean we don’t understand the forces.
Also, science doesn’t really tell us absolutely where things come from.
I respectfully disagree. I think a lot of people think like you do, and I think it's harmful to their understanding. I'm sorry for pontificating but I strongly believe we should always try to figure out the "why" of the mechanism or system. The impact is small; it's huge, IMO.
People's tendency to just accept and move on is why they don't see things that more perspicuous people do.
No, I agree. Isaac Asimov figured that out centuries ago, but I'm talking about what exactly within a proton/neutron causes them to attract each other. Scientists don't know where within this subatomic particle that causes gravity and how the mechanism works (besides the level of attraction).
I guess my statement is a bit misleading and I'll take it out. This level of understanding bothers, but I guess most people don't agree.
Isaac Asimov c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He would only be 106 yo today if he was still alive.
Gravity is similar to centrifugal force, a fictitious force that we observe in an accelerated frame of reference.
For the ultra nerdy: well yes not exactly like centrifugal force, because gravity emerges from spacetime curvature so we can not make it vanish all at the same time with a simple increase of frame size. But still irrelevant as for all intents and purposes gravity can be considered a fictitious force emerging from the way how energy shapes space-time
Wtf dude. Its just a fan car with a 10.000 psi nitrogen tank and some thrusters thats cleverly and impressively controlled. Nothing the car showed hasnt been done before and it won’t be selling like that. The car with both pressure tank and fan are invite Only and not street legal
You're probably right. He definitely would have done so if there was anything significant in Area 51.
One comforting fact is that he's not as intelligent as he and others think he is. He's moderately intelligent, but he's nowhere in the realm of people in top universities. A lot of successful people in the tech sector are incredibly dumb. In the past 30 years, tech investments made billionaires of mediocre people and even idiots.
I mean, ive seen enough lunar lander challange attempts that is plausible, obviously the "car" was heavily adapted for this to be very light, very short "flight". Also they very highly likely had multiple different cars for different stunts.
Is it a sham? Very, but not in the sense they necessarily faked it outright, but the sham part is that this is not something you could add to a fully functional car
Is it a sham? Very, but not in the sense they necessarily faked it outright, but the sham part is that this is not something you could add to a fully functional car
That's how I and I think most people meant. We don't necessarily believe it's CGI/AI or some type of fake. We just don't believe that Elon could make a flying car like the one in the video, which would transport people like regular cars.
I thought people meant hidden wires or whatnot. Making a lightweight carshaped thing to boost itself like that is nowadays easier than risking getting exposed for straight out fakery
I have to say it's rather exhausting seeing everyone fully misunderstand what this is. I am as much of an Elon hater as anyone, but what you're saying seems to assume the intent is for this car to fly, and that's just simply not true.
You absolutely can lift a car weighing a few thousand pounds off the ground with high output cold gas thrusters, which is what they did. There is probably only enough propellant for the thing to hover for a few seconds, which again is what we saw.
All you need is enough prop to spit out the thrusters at high velocity to achieve this. Composite over-wrapped pressure vessels store gas at immense pressure which allows it to hold significant volume in a small footprint thus making it possible to hop a small car. Again, what's that we see here.
There are so many things to complain about with respect to Elon, but this is not one of them. The car itself is dumb and completely pointless with these thrusters, but let's not argue that "the science shows this is a sham" when it's not. You're just misunderstanding the claim to begin with.
I am as much of an Elon hater as anyone, but what you're saying seems to assume the intent is for this car to fly, and that's just simply not true.
I agree with everything you said except your first and last paragraph. When making a claim, you need to consider the reasonable assumptions that reasonable people would make. Elon in that video is suggesting that they are going to build a car that can fly continuously for a long time and will be able to do similar feats as in the video. I believe that the vast majority of people interpreted it like this.
Funny thing is that I actually can see Elon's lawyer make the same exact argument that you made, but the legal argument would be flawed. If the claim is merely that they could life a car a few thousands off the ground for a few seconds, then what is the purpose of the demonstration? They could have achieved the same result 50 years ago. Doing a presentation like this necessarily assumes that the car can do something that could never be done before. Don't you think?
I honestly don't agree with that at all, but I am biased given my better than average understanding of physics and modern rocketry. It is simply not possible to make a car fly like this, continuously, with current technology.
The demo didn't show sustained flight. It showed controlled hops and maneuvers. I don't really think it's reasonable to then assume they are making the claim that it will be capable of sustained flight.
Making that assumption I believe is a result of anti-Elon bias. The guy makes absurd claims and doesn't follow through on many of them, and thus you want to stretch this claim to the point this demo is another one of those absurd claims that won't come to fruition.
The fact is, as much as we despise Elon, Tesla's are genuinely good cars, and SpaceX is the most successful rocket company to ever exist. Elon being associated doesn't automatically make something a scam. It does justify more scrutiny, however.
This is something our side of the aisle really struggles with. Elon and those like him are despicable people, and this we want to find fault in everything they do. We want to call them unintelligent as AOC did. It's just simply not the case that Elon is unintelligent, as it is the case that he is in part responsible for the shift to EV's and reusable rockets. Those two things are incredible accomplishments, it's just a shame he's such a piece of garbage. We have to learn to separate the man from the company. Elon is not his companies.
It is simply not possible to make a car fly like this, continuously, with current technology.
That's my point!
And don't you think that the video is implying that they are going to make a flying car that could do what the video does continuously for hours?
The demo didn't show sustained flight.
I'm sure that's what Elon's lawyer is going to argue if they ever get sued (probably no one will) and I think it's a lousy argument. In law, the standard is how a reasonable person would interpret the video, and I think sustained flight is a reasonable assumption. I might be wrong or you might be. The only way is to do a simple poll, but I have a strong feeling I'm right.
anti-Elon bias
Is it possible that you're giving him too much credit? Perhaps, you want to be objective, but you are overcompensating for the anti-Elon bias that you see?
It's just simply not the case that Elon is unintelligent
I didn't truly mean he was unintelligent. I just think he's somewhat smart…mediocre. We might have different definition since the word is a bit vague. He's like a guy who scored a 1450 on his SAT, which is in the 95% percentile. I mean it's impressive but nowhere the level of geniuses we see publicly.
I don't know if you have any finance background and so you've evaluated companies before. You might have fallen into a trap and believe that financial success correlates with intelligence. It's far from true. Research has shown that work ethic is far more important. In fact, the impact of work ethic is double. That's why you see people like Mike Lindell who made hundreds of millions of dollars. Especially with the tech sector, anyone who made anything made tons of money, even if it was mediocre. I've evaluated CEOs in tech sectors and many of them are truly mediocre or even dumb. Luck was a huge factor. This is not an exaggeration.
When I first heard of Elon, I withheld judgment especially when I heard he went to Wharton, although I'm not that particularly impressed with the school (lowest Ivy). But when I saw his interview where he claimed that he's absolutely sure—he's a billion to one positive—that our current reality is a simulation like the Matrix, I thought this guy's an idiot. That's the most moronic statement I've heard. But I still withheld judgment.
Then I heard his reasons for going to Mars. It's again the dumbest thing I've heard. It makes no sense. Yes, he might understand engineering at an average level but he's nowhere in the top 1%.
Maybe that’s why you don’t and will never be able to work for him. He tells his guys I want this, figure it out. The people that say “it’s impossible “ are fired and left behind.
What way do you vote? What are your interests? I just want to know so I never have anything in common with you. I’ve found the people that dog on this fly car thing are the biggest losers I’ve ever seen.
Also take into account the guy also owns Grok AI. A platform capable of creating very lifelike videos.
Even if it did do it for real.... Elon isn't the guy building these. He's just the guy paying the actual scientists and engineers that are building these things. It drives me nuts that people just assume because he owns the company he's personally building falcon 9 rockets. Yes he does hold the title chief engineer at Tesla... but when you own the company you can give yourself whatever titles you want, you don't need to be in any way qualified.
Even if it is real it would never go into production for legal reasons. So imagine you waited 8 years for this car to come out just to find out they spent that time developing a stunt that won’t be part of whatever car you end up with.
The car didn't fly, it fell slowly. It also jumped briefly. There is more than enough propellant for that.
The real issue is that the gas tank is then depleted and takes hours to fill, and this will never be legal anywhere.
Similarly the fans that keep it upside down are nothing new. Fan cars were banned from Formula 1 racing in the 1970s as they shoot road debris out of the back of the car. This will never be road legal anywhere.
So you are left with the no fan, no jet version of the car as the only one that will ever be driven on the road. Given that the 2020 roadster never appeared after 9 years, I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
The entire thing was just a publicity stunt to boost Tesla and Space X.
My point is that whether it's compressed air or the mechanism used by a Harriet jet, you can't sustain that without expending massive amount of energy. Such methods simply wouldn't be practical.
That's why I would never invest in those flying vehicles that rely on rotor blades like drones. The massive amount of energy required for sustained flight would never be practical. Why would you want to spend thousands of dollars on fuel/energy to go minimal distance?
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u/WritersChopBlock 4h ago edited 3h ago
CONSIDER THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS.
If you have taken physics or you are science-oriented, you'll realize that this is very likely a sham. I'm not 100% certain, but if you think about the physics, what is being suggested is impossible.
Think about the enormous amount of energy required to keep this car afloat if it's based on propellant. Consider how Harrier Jump jets spend so much fuel to do something similar for a few seconds.
The only way to accomplish this practically would be to rely on a technology that counteracts gravitational forces without expending energy. The aliens that have been spotted sporadically likely use such a technology. But we are nowhere near that level of technology yet. [Edit - deleted: Our scientists still don't know where gravity comes from.]