Tesla - The leading car manufacturer of the future? (Part 2)

In case anyone didn’t understand or is letting the media mislead them:

That “flying car” is a custom-built publicity stunt. The Roadster’s chassis is crammed full of COPV tanks holding compressed air, plus some thrusters/motors placed around the car to put on a great show.

Here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes footage:

https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2110907551370137605

None of this will ever make it into a real, buyable Roadster. But the show intentionally didn’t spell this out, so they’re guaranteed to get tons of PR value as the media tries (and fails) to understand what they just saw, and in the process certainly misleads a lot of people who don’t know enough about the technology.

As far as engineering artistry goes, it’s a pretty successful flex—not many companies could pull that off. One could also snark that neither Tesla nor SpaceX could have done it alone; it took the Gyro Gearlooses of two companies, and who knows how much time and money was burned :slight_smile:

That fan car vacuum suction could apparently make it into the production version to deliver insane downforce, which would indeed make it an absolute track monster, but I doubt you’ll be allowed to fire those up on public roads, and there wouldn’t really be much use for them in normal driving anyway.

Let’s revisit this once the production version starts showing up on track tests. I’m sure they’ll go sweep the Nürburgring record once there’s actually a version you can buy.

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