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 a cool demonstration, I'll give them that. From what I've seen online, people don't even seem to consider whether or not they would actually want this, just because the novelty of it.
I'd even ignore that and call it good marketing, if that's what they would actually try to sell here - but you need some kind of special invitation access to even get those, while they use this demonstration to boost the pre-orders for a car without the features everyone is talking about (or at least trying to, we'll see how many will actually go for it).
It’s cool, I’d love this if I had the money to afford it. Maybe in a decade, it will be more practical and have more legitimate use cases, I’m not sure!
Also a massive feat of engineering, congrats to their team.
I thought so at first but then Musk mentioned the thrusters can recharge themselves with pumps in the car. So it will actually be something owners can use repeatedly without needing complicated refills from Tesla service.
Not that I'd ever spend that much money on a car or need this at all, but for people who buy luxury vehicles I can see it. Definitely something we've never had in car history.
But where would you (be allowed to) use that and risk wrecking your car? I guess it’s for shows only, the reservation page says invitation only. It’s definitely impressive but it will probably stay a marketing tool.
I wonder whether they will actually be able to recharge to that pressure level in a production car. I kind of doubt it, plus it will be noisy, consume a ton of energy and take a long time.
Not to mention the mass. Perhaps the pressure vessels could be relatively lightweight, but a pump that could charge such a pressure vessel to the pressure and capacity needed for this type of stunt will not be lightweight.
And mass is one of the top engineering concerns for these types of performance vehicles, even those which do not need to fight gravity.
Finally. We've been waiting for flying cars for a while now!
I kind of concluded that they really don't want us messing around up in the air - for reasons. Now, combined with self-driving capabilities, maybe it's back on the table :)
That being said, I suspect that they way do this, as shown in the demo, is sustainable for seconds only. And if I understood it correctly, the system is not really for flight, but for correcting momentum while driving in turns and such.
The art of deliberately guiding or diverting an audience's attention away from a secret action (such as sleight of hand) so the trick can happen unnoticed. Instead of forcing the audience to look away crudely, good misdirection makes the audience want to look at something else naturally.
This isn't special though. 2023 was their best year and sales have been slowly declining since then. The share price has mostly been climbing since 2023. But soon they'll have a huge driverless fleet and robots or something.
Also true of being able to go over 90 MPH, despite many sports/premium cars touting an ability to reach a top speed above 150 MPH.
Some cars come with "Donut Mode" or drift modes. Donuts and drifting are definitely not road legal actions. These, and many other capabilities of sports cars, are obviously for track use only. These Roadster gimmicks are no different.
Cars seem so full of gimmicky features these days. A friend's car yesterday stopped us when exiting because it thought we left behind belongings in the back seat - it was just an empty package. That was not something I would have ever thought a car would flag. It's not that fancy of a car (entry level SUV) but it is fairly new, it just kind of bothered me.
One reason I hope Slate does well - newer cars have too much useless tech across the board. At least with a sports car the gimmicks are part of the appeal. Entry level new cars should be simpler, modular, and cheaper. Just let me drive and stop trying to be so helpful.
The back seat thing is probably the things cars have been adding to try to combat those freak memory accidents when parents forgot to drop the baby off at daycare and left them in the car in the sun all day with disastrous consequences.
I don't think this is true: drag increases with the square of velocity, so that's close to double the drag from 150 to 200, and I believe somewhere above 60/70 mph, aerodynamic drag starts to overtake road resistance as the main friction source, i.e. it takes significantly more horsepower to be able to do 200 than 150.
It's an awesome performance, but I don't know why you'd want this in your actual day to day car and pay a premium for it, all power to you if you do but I wouldn't call not sharing that preference 'poo pooing the incredible tech'.
On takeoff you can stabilize against opposing forces, so especially without the weight or inertia of a driver it is quite straight (rockets also don't need to stabilize on take-off).
But once that phase is overcome, how stable is the car actually mid-air?
It looks to me that they added the barrel-roll because everything else would have looked worse...
idk about the safety of involving jumping cars into car crashes, I'd still prefer the brakes (obviously not always enough time). The one useful situation I could see is if you're driving (accidentally I hope) off a cliff.
Even if it does, these features aren't useful and can't be used in any realistic scenario. At best they're just party tricks.
1. If you start flying and land on someone or something, that's a problem.
2. My strong bet is what they demonstrated is as far as the thing can fly, which is definitely cool as a party trick, but that's it.
These cars are obviously chock full of machine-learning algorithms to be able to control themselves in the air in that way. I'd much rather see that ML muscle used for something that actually benefitted someone.
It's apparently not fuel but pressurized air being refueled by the car itself.
> "Will it even be maintainable?"
Probably doesn't matter. I don't think it will be permitted on public roads anyway.
The presented variant is invite-only, so I guess it will be made to put in the garage of some (Saudi) investor who commits a billion dollar investment...
It's a tech demo marketing presentation with a jumping car in it, not a flying one. It does look pretty cool though. Let's first wait and see if/when this will even be available and not just a marketing stunt.
Very useful in England’s countryside, imagine all the puddles you can jump over! Eliminate these passing bays when cars can jump over each other in the narrow lanes!
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 a cool demonstration, I'll give them that. From what I've seen online, people don't even seem to consider whether or not they would actually want this, just because the novelty of it. I'd even ignore that and call it good marketing, if that's what they would actually try to sell here - but you need some kind of special invitation access to even get those, while they use this demonstration to boost the pre-orders for a car without the features everyone is talking about (or at least trying to, we'll see how many will actually go for it).
I'm reminded of that time that guy made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
It’s cool, I’d love this if I had the money to afford it. Maybe in a decade, it will be more practical and have more legitimate use cases, I’m not sure!
Also a massive feat of engineering, congrats to their team.
Cool marketing gimmick. The suction is cool though, let’s see how it will do on the track. Basically your own Brabham BT46, very cool
I thought so at first but then Musk mentioned the thrusters can recharge themselves with pumps in the car. So it will actually be something owners can use repeatedly without needing complicated refills from Tesla service.
Not that I'd ever spend that much money on a car or need this at all, but for people who buy luxury vehicles I can see it. Definitely something we've never had in car history.
But where would you (be allowed to) use that and risk wrecking your car? I guess it’s for shows only, the reservation page says invitation only. It’s definitely impressive but it will probably stay a marketing tool.
I wonder whether they will actually be able to recharge to that pressure level in a production car. I kind of doubt it, plus it will be noisy, consume a ton of energy and take a long time.
Not to mention the mass. Perhaps the pressure vessels could be relatively lightweight, but a pump that could charge such a pressure vessel to the pressure and capacity needed for this type of stunt will not be lightweight.
And mass is one of the top engineering concerns for these types of performance vehicles, even those which do not need to fight gravity.
What happens if there's a rock in the road and it gets sucked up?
We say McMurtry Spéirling this century :)
It's great to watch these types of videos and tech ideas. It makes me really happy.
Finally. We've been waiting for flying cars for a while now!
I kind of concluded that they really don't want us messing around up in the air - for reasons. Now, combined with self-driving capabilities, maybe it's back on the table :)
That being said, I suspect that they way do this, as shown in the demo, is sustainable for seconds only. And if I understood it correctly, the system is not really for flight, but for correcting momentum while driving in turns and such.
Misdirection
The art of deliberately guiding or diverting an audience's attention away from a secret action (such as sleight of hand) so the trick can happen unnoticed. Instead of forcing the audience to look away crudely, good misdirection makes the audience want to look at something else naturally.
> Tesla Sales Slump in Third Quarter
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-sales-fell-in-third...
Misdirection only works if you cash in during the interval immediately after the misdirect before the subject can refocus.
Tesla Q3 sales will be the same tomorrow.
It doesn't surprise me that any particular companies sales are down at the moment, how does Tesla compare to other car manufacturers out of interest.
Tesla board meeting last week: Board: So guys, our sales are slumping. What do we do? Elon: I have this cool idea...
> Tesla Sales Slump in Third Quarter
This isn't special though. 2023 was their best year and sales have been slowly declining since then. The share price has mostly been climbing since 2023. But soon they'll have a huge driverless fleet and robots or something.
Maybe the most useless feature for a car. I'd imagine you need some commercial performance license to actually own this feature.
Also true of being able to go over 90 MPH, despite many sports/premium cars touting an ability to reach a top speed above 150 MPH.
Some cars come with "Donut Mode" or drift modes. Donuts and drifting are definitely not road legal actions. These, and many other capabilities of sports cars, are obviously for track use only. These Roadster gimmicks are no different.
Cars seem so full of gimmicky features these days. A friend's car yesterday stopped us when exiting because it thought we left behind belongings in the back seat - it was just an empty package. That was not something I would have ever thought a car would flag. It's not that fancy of a car (entry level SUV) but it is fairly new, it just kind of bothered me.
One reason I hope Slate does well - newer cars have too much useless tech across the board. At least with a sports car the gimmicks are part of the appeal. Entry level new cars should be simpler, modular, and cheaper. Just let me drive and stop trying to be so helpful.
The back seat thing is probably the things cars have been adding to try to combat those freak memory accidents when parents forgot to drop the baby off at daycare and left them in the car in the sun all day with disastrous consequences.
150mph is the "gentleman's agreement" speed. If a car can do 150 chances are it can do 200.
I don't think this is true: drag increases with the square of velocity, so that's close to double the drag from 150 to 200, and I believe somewhere above 60/70 mph, aerodynamic drag starts to overtake road resistance as the main friction source, i.e. it takes significantly more horsepower to be able to do 200 than 150.
And it begins. I can't wait to hear all the ways people will poo poo this incredible tech tomorrow.
It's an awesome performance, but I don't know why you'd want this in your actual day to day car and pay a premium for it, all power to you if you do but I wouldn't call not sharing that preference 'poo pooing the incredible tech'.
Imagine driving on highway and suddenly a Tesla car fall on your car and kill the entire family
Just curious: Was there a demo of a stable straight jump as well, or always barrel-rolls?
It must be incredibly difficult to keep the car stable while mid-air at low speeds, I suspect it wouldn't look that "elegant"...
Wasn’t stable. The straight jump they did was more like a mini rocket launch over some parked cars.
You’d want something that smoothly hovers rather than a launch then catch with boosters.
the jump over the cars I saw also had a barrel-roll as soon as the thrust of lifting off was over.
Was there a second jump without a roll?
In the kickflip video it launches straight up and then proceeds to do a flip mid jump. The straight takeoff looks pretty solid to me.
On takeoff you can stabilize against opposing forces, so especially without the weight or inertia of a driver it is quite straight (rockets also don't need to stabilize on take-off).
But once that phase is overcome, how stable is the car actually mid-air?
It looks to me that they added the barrel-roll because everything else would have looked worse...
Don't be fooled! This is AI generated slop.
The car clearly does not have enough momentum to go on the ramp all the way upside-down, yet it miraculously does not fall.
I predict the next James Bond movie will be a Tesla ad.
It could have military applications; it's hard to imagine any civilian applications.
in theory it could avoid car crashes in practice the dudes that buy these cars will probably cause more crashes;)
idk about the safety of involving jumping cars into car crashes, I'd still prefer the brakes (obviously not always enough time). The one useful situation I could see is if you're driving (accidentally I hope) off a cliff.
I have no words. Its like Elon asked Grok where can I take my business, and it suggested combine rockets and cars.
"grok, my flying tesla is dirty and there is a carwash 50 metres away. should i walk, drive or fly?"
Will this car ever ship?
Did you see 0 to 60 in 0.81 second, now THAT is flying!
I recall that about 8 (10?) years ago the “Roadster 2” was advertised. Am I correct that that was repeatedly delayed and never delivered?
My sense is that this is just more Elon Musk bullshit that will never materialize.
Even if it does, these features aren't useful and can't be used in any realistic scenario. At best they're just party tricks.
1. If you start flying and land on someone or something, that's a problem. 2. My strong bet is what they demonstrated is as far as the thing can fly, which is definitely cool as a party trick, but that's it.
These cars are obviously chock full of machine-learning algorithms to be able to control themselves in the air in that way. I'd much rather see that ML muscle used for something that actually benefitted someone.
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112657
I'm sure having a bunch of rocket engines, fuel, plumbing, etc, on my car will make it great in the twisties. This is such a stupid compromise.
Will it even be maintainable? Never mind the rocket fuel...
Will the frame itself hold up?
It's apparently not fuel but pressurized air being refueled by the car itself.
> "Will it even be maintainable?"
Probably doesn't matter. I don't think it will be permitted on public roads anyway.
The presented variant is invite-only, so I guess it will be made to put in the garage of some (Saudi) investor who commits a billion dollar investment...
He literally made good on the long time promise of FLYING CARS and this is not the top post????
this site just toast
It's a tech demo marketing presentation with a jumping car in it, not a flying one. It does look pretty cool though. Let's first wait and see if/when this will even be available and not just a marketing stunt.
No way this is road legal in any country lmao
Very useful in England’s countryside, imagine all the puddles you can jump over! Eliminate these passing bays when cars can jump over each other in the narrow lanes!