So this is a completely obvious scam, right? I don't see anyone else calling this out and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
The thing that they showed off isn't something that they could legally sell, it would basically be a bomb. Also, the battery pack that would go in the car would be so large that they couldn't do the stunts they showed in their drone vehicle.
Are we not calling an obvious stock pumping charade what it is out of some sense of politeness?
There are close to 105 shills in here, or several busy ones. They’re ignoring the previous Roadster rugpull, sorry, ten year free loan to Tesla, the missing F and S from FSD, the mystery of the Cybertruck; the hyperloop; sundry Nazi nonsense.
Fool me once, I’ll drive your Model 3 for five years. Try to fool me this many times and I will never believe anything you say (except when you move your arms like that - I believe you mean that stuff)
China has had flying cars since 2023 so I don't see how this is a scam. The flying mechanism is unique for the Roadster so that's still to be seen how it would perform out in public.
It's an incredible engineering achievement to build in massive fans and rocket engines into a high performance car. It's truly wild.
It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) seemingly just for extra forwards acceleration (no flying) and one with real combustion rocket engines, the latter was in the video and is "invite only".
Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
Even just the cold gas variant seems like a nightmare for production, there's a high pressure COPV in that thing and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting, and Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways. But very few of these are ever getting sold anyways.
I don’t want to jinx this today, but one of these is so going flying into someone’s house and land on their bed. Likely within days of it being released into the wild.
Looks like a sensible turning down of the Cybertruck aesthetic into something that looks good.
That said, the production issues with the Cybertruck mean you’d be a fool to reserve one of these. Let others do it, find out how late it arrives, what glued panels fall off at speed and wait for the inevitable recalls. Tesla has torched their engineering reputation lately and this page is making a lot of promises about revolutionary things.
Everyone is talking about the Cybertruck, but both the 3 and the Y have plenty of engineering problems as well. I believe both cars are listed as below-average reliability by CR.
Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.
I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.
The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.
This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.
Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).
> Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones
That's pretty standard. An M3 has long pushed the tolerances of things in the engine more than a base-model 3 series. An S-class has more whiz-bang-hope-it-still-works-in-ten-years stuff than a C-class. A Lexus has more going on than a boring base Corolla.
This type of vehicle isn't intended to drive at speed, at least not very far. It's targeted at collectors who will park it in a garage with their other supercars. It's a status symbol with wheels, not transportation or even a toy for track days. (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)
That was my first thought, Cybertruck: The Car. But then it drove up a wall and stopped on the ceiling and flew down. That was awesome. I'm sure it will be a nightmare to own.
The latest car Tesla released, the cybertruck, was one of the biggest automotive flops ever, production is essentially halted, demand is non-existant.
Tesla announced and started taking reservations for their roadster TEN YEARS AGO. People who made reservations and paid the $50k-$250k cost are STILL WAITING.
And now Tesla has announced yet another vapourware car, with a controversial design, taking reservation money again.
Yes, let's combine Twitter, an AI company, and a space company with a solar company, car company, battery company, and robotics company, so that we can have one huge valuation that can't be possibly delivered upon and losses will be absorbed for a short period. What could go wrong?
but... All elon companies. More valuable bundled, because all the elon lovers don't have to pick where they throw their tithes. I'd love it even more if they throw in a tunnel construction and a human brain implant company in the mix while they are at it.
Production and other realities aside, I've seen some cool shit in my life and this demo is high up there! Did you guys catch 0.5 mach target top speed? That's 600kmh. It'd better do that flying because there probably aren't any rubber tyres that could endure that before exploding within seconds.
- Performance: road ready, seats two, active aero and a “multi-mode suction system.” 0-60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. Available by reservation.
- Thrust: race ready, seats two, adds rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters. 0-60 mph in under 0.9 seconds. Limited release.
- Rocket: seats one, adds thrusters around the perimeter of the car for upward and rotational movement. 0-60 mph in under 0.59 seconds and a top speed of over 230 mph. Invite only.
I really wonder why I think the N Vision 74 looks so much better; it just has more personality somehow. I do agree though that the new Roadster looks a lot less bad than the Cybertruck.
I'd agree with you and merit the design has more thought as an upgrade to the look of the cybertruck. However it still looks like something to be left in a scrap heap of a destruction derby within Tron.
Dislike the design, look and edge of it. Feels cold. Each to their own.
I guess you didn't see the video of a car sitting on a ramp upside down, doing flips in the air, jumping over a semi and other cars...
Odd world we live in when we don't see that as being cool. But, we're seemingly headed there. At some point, it's going to be hard to imagine something that could surprise me.
>> It is weird. I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.
For what? For an unpractical vehicle that now has the ability to launch and crush another car? If said to be true. As if driving wasn't already dangerous and stupid enough.
If he would show maturity for a change rather than his childhood antics then I would give him credit.
<< If he would show some and maturity for a change rather than his childhood antics then I would give him credit.
Man only manages to coordinate an engineering feat and your response is "why can he not offer something responsible like a lightly breaded toast"?
Beyond the obvious part where I say that his antics are part of the product demonstration ( roadster is space moment being another notable moment ), is your objection truly that he didn't come to the podium with a clipboard and say:
"
Begin communication
- it jumps
- it go up upside down
- it can go 0-60 in 1 sec
End of communication."
The video goes against my intuition for how much performance you can get out of cold gas thrusters. I wonder if someone could do some back of the envelope maths on how much thrust and impulse you can get from a setup like this?
My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.
The fact that the one that can fly is invite-only makes me wonder if there would be ITAR issues with the guidance mechanisms that they have to put into it.
I'm not saying that there aren't lower hanging fruit reasons why they wouldn't make more of those, but you can see how the guidance necessary to make this move the way that it does could be dual use.
Can this be scaled down to a Roomba? Then it would both be more useful at picking stuff up off the floor, and able to recover from falling down the stairs.
They first started taking deposits on the Roadster 9 years ago in 2017 with a 2020 production date. It’ll be shocking if they ever sell this car they showed today. If they do, it’ll be many years late, not fly, and cost twice what they are saying. Just like the CyberTruck.
I've been recently playing a game called Approximately Up. You start from simple building blocks, thrusters and can use the in game logic system to build complex controls. One of the things I came about to learn was something to make a hover system for my ship was a simple PID controller. The side and bottom firing thrusters just remind me of my ship in the game. While the game is oversimplified and a bit arcadey, does anyone know what actually goes into this in the real life and is the huge feat the improvement on the weight of the whole car?
Been a while since I was impressed with a tech presentation. I was waiting for a clear case of AI assisted movement ( though I personally expected to see it for the first time in a military chopper ).
**
Side note, as I was looking for the right stream, youtube gave me a link to a different deep fake 'Musk' stream where he extolled virtues of sending him money ( https://roadster-tesla.com/#participate ). Everything has changed man. I am sure the scammer actually got some people.
I absolutely detest the leadership and what he is actively doing to this country... but holy fucking shit. I want to reserve one, but when you're broke as a joke... ooph.
What's up with wheels not being round anymore? How is that supposed to work? I understand it for Formula 1, but for real world driving, it doesn't make any sense
I hate Tesla for their politics, broken promises, and all the drama that we are all aware and tired of hearing about.
That being said, that was the coolest damn thing I've ever seen a car do.
I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that it'll never make production like this, but what I see as being demonstrated is a suborbital lander/off-world ground transport concept that can work in low gravity environments etc. This will aid autonomous delivery vehicles etc to be dropped from low orbit and find their own landing sites, and then drive to location.
I wonder how many maimed kerbals are stranded around the space X facility while testing this.
Yea, i was going to reserve one of these sub 1 sec 0-60 vehicles with rocket motors and suction fans, but then I didnt because of the ergonomics of the door handle design.
Yes, Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip (and damn near every other skate trick), but the reference here comes from a time when Tony Hawk would drive around and yell "do a kickflip" at skaters, if they did a kickflip he would sometimes give them a signed board or other things. Example video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob0dI05Xz8s - it became a thing for a little where people would yell "do a kickflip" at skaters they saw on the street.
> Our multi-mode fan and ground sealing system acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the vehicle. This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Bullshit, no it can't.
> Advanced cold-gas thrusters use all-electric actuators to offer precise thrust, completing micro adjustments within a fraction of a second. This helps stabilize the vehicle in flight.
In flight? What? Did I miss the joke, or what? It's a fucking car... The image even shows it hovering off the ground. How is this not blatant false advertising?
ETA: okay, skimmed some of the livestream. These is absolutely no way that any of these features will ever be part of a production model. People get serious whiplash injuries just from being rear-ended at low speed. What do they think is going to happen to the occupant when they tell their car to jump over a semi and do a fucking barrel roll? Seriously, what are we doing here?
Watch the video - the car jumps into the air. Not exactly flight or what we’d consider a flying car, but it’s careering through the air off the ground.
I mean, this isn't crazy. In fact, it's already been done. Ever heard of McMurtry? (https://mcmurtry.com/). They're notorious for exactly this - using fans to provide extreme downforce (urr... upforce if you're hanging upside down?).
> In flight?
Did you see the stunt where it literally flew over vehicles? I mean, maybe it's a bit closer to a controlled super-leap like the original Superman, but... yeah, my personal reaction to that was more "holy shit" than "well, that's not flying".
If you scroll down on the page, it shows that the "rocket edition" is invite-only. Probably gonna sell it to a few friends in hopes that the 3-5 they make sell for millions down the road, so to speak.
Listen, if you rightfully believe Elon Musk is a white supremacist piece of shit who used his wealth to buy his way in to Trump's regime to steal huge amounts of data on the american public and who attempts to influence foreign democracies and who promotes far right conspiracies, please don't buy his fucking cars.
I recommend everyone watch the live event video. It is a master class in everything you could possibly do wrong when producing a product reveal event. It's really amazing.
It's like watching their rehearsal, and also like watching The Rehearsal.
Yeah Apple really synthesising a platonic ideal of Steve’s product release smarm without any of his hubristic charm at this point. Tesla and SpaceX seem like humans just getting on with sh*t and onto the next.
I can’t do a tech demo of a simple software feature on zoom without at least one thing messing up. They launched a car off a ramp live and were honest from the beginning of the stream it might not work.
The last decade of social media has shown that humans care more about authenticity than perfection in presentations.
It did work! The point is they did a terrible job of producing the event and being clear what they were talking about and showing the product. The product, for all four people who will be able to buy it ("invite only"), seems very cool. But that is not what I was commenting on!
Pretty big nothingburger. Production starts 2028 and honestly, the taunted feature... it's not a flying car, it's a jumping car. Do people actually want this for themselves? I'd wager the valuation would go down after this presentation.
So this is a completely obvious scam, right? I don't see anyone else calling this out and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
The thing that they showed off isn't something that they could legally sell, it would basically be a bomb. Also, the battery pack that would go in the car would be so large that they couldn't do the stunts they showed in their drone vehicle.
Are we not calling an obvious stock pumping charade what it is out of some sense of politeness?
That’s why it’s invite only.
There are close to 105 shills in here, or several busy ones. They’re ignoring the previous Roadster rugpull, sorry, ten year free loan to Tesla, the missing F and S from FSD, the mystery of the Cybertruck; the hyperloop; sundry Nazi nonsense.
Fool me once, I’ll drive your Model 3 for five years. Try to fool me this many times and I will never believe anything you say (except when you move your arms like that - I believe you mean that stuff)
China has had flying cars since 2023 so I don't see how this is a scam. The flying mechanism is unique for the Roadster so that's still to be seen how it would perform out in public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpQZSBTi7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2c-B3y7yGQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5viDOjWLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjXf7IUSDw
wow i did not realise this. are there videos of these flying cars? can you buy them?
The only one I can think that they might mean is the BYD Yangwang U9. It can jump a tiny bit.
Yep, just google: china flying cars. They're basically human sized drones/quadcopters.
Ok, so it actually flies. That was unexpected.
It's an incredible engineering achievement to build in massive fans and rocket engines into a high performance car. It's truly wild.
It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) seemingly just for extra forwards acceleration (no flying) and one with real combustion rocket engines, the latter was in the video and is "invite only".
Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
Even just the cold gas variant seems like a nightmare for production, there's a high pressure COPV in that thing and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting, and Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways. But very few of these are ever getting sold anyways.
> kinda wild they devoted this much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.
Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.
It's very economically feasible if it pumps up the stock price
It's cool as fuck but calling it flying is misleading. It jumps and can maneuver in space.
to be fair we don’t actually know yet that this is a high performance car. We only saw it drive a few mph without rocket assistance
Good point. It can't have much battery. Also wonder if the propellant/s are cryogenic. Monopropellant? You could tell from analyzing the plume.
I don’t want to jinx this today, but one of these is so going flying into someone’s house and land on their bed. Likely within days of it being released into the wild.
Looks like a sensible turning down of the Cybertruck aesthetic into something that looks good.
That said, the production issues with the Cybertruck mean you’d be a fool to reserve one of these. Let others do it, find out how late it arrives, what glued panels fall off at speed and wait for the inevitable recalls. Tesla has torched their engineering reputation lately and this page is making a lot of promises about revolutionary things.
Everyone is talking about the Cybertruck, but both the 3 and the Y have plenty of engineering problems as well. I believe both cars are listed as below-average reliability by CR.
Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.
I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.
> what glued panels fall off
The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.
This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.
Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).
> Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones
That's pretty standard. An M3 has long pushed the tolerances of things in the engine more than a base-model 3 series. An S-class has more whiz-bang-hope-it-still-works-in-ten-years stuff than a C-class. A Lexus has more going on than a boring base Corolla.
This type of vehicle isn't intended to drive at speed, at least not very far. It's targeted at collectors who will park it in a garage with their other supercars. It's a status symbol with wheels, not transportation or even a toy for track days. (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)
> (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)
there's a whole lot of systemic issues with wealthy people buying low-poly cars to their collection.
That was my first thought, Cybertruck: The Car. But then it drove up a wall and stopped on the ceiling and flew down. That was awesome. I'm sure it will be a nightmare to own.
> glued panels fall off at speed
Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.
Hardly a concern when you can't afford one.
at least the CyberTruck shipped.
9 years since the announcement of Roadster v2, people who paid 50k deposits are still waiting.
Time to up the promises, and ask for more $50k deposits for v3!
A lot of haters of Tesla on HN I see, I guess you all are trying everything to malalign Tesla and see what sticks.
Tesla's most recent project was the largest flop in automotive history lol.
You mean Cybertruck? Hate it or not, there are bigger flops in automotive history. The history is long and broad.
The latest car Tesla released, the cybertruck, was one of the biggest automotive flops ever, production is essentially halted, demand is non-existant.
Tesla announced and started taking reservations for their roadster TEN YEARS AGO. People who made reservations and paid the $50k-$250k cost are STILL WAITING.
And now Tesla has announced yet another vapourware car, with a controversial design, taking reservation money again.
If you fall for this, you are a fool.
I don’t hate Tesla, I do think their leader is a Nazi Saluting prick though. You like him?
I don't hate Tesla either. I'm actually a bit disappointed knowing that I will never consider buying one for the rest of my life.
This was 100% precursor to the absorption of Tesla into SpaceX and I’m here for it
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-spac...
Yes, let's combine Twitter, an AI company, and a space company with a solar company, car company, battery company, and robotics company, so that we can have one huge valuation that can't be possibly delivered upon and losses will be absorbed for a short period. What could go wrong?
Japanese companies manage fine doing this kind of thing.
Tesla-Yutani
but... All elon companies. More valuable bundled, because all the elon lovers don't have to pick where they throw their tithes. I'd love it even more if they throw in a tunnel construction and a human brain implant company in the mix while they are at it.
It would almost be as big a monstrosity as Amazon
Production and other realities aside, I've seen some cool shit in my life and this demo is high up there! Did you guys catch 0.5 mach target top speed? That's 600kmh. It'd better do that flying because there probably aren't any rubber tyres that could endure that before exploding within seconds.
There are three configurations:
- Performance: road ready, seats two, active aero and a “multi-mode suction system.” 0-60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. Available by reservation.
- Thrust: race ready, seats two, adds rear-mounted cold-gas thrusters. 0-60 mph in under 0.9 seconds. Limited release.
- Rocket: seats one, adds thrusters around the perimeter of the car for upward and rotational movement. 0-60 mph in under 0.59 seconds and a top speed of over 230 mph. Invite only.
Per Electrek: https://electrek.co/2026/10/15/tesla-unveils-cyberfied-new-r...
The livestream has the stunts: https://x.com/Tesla/status/2110788059008819215
Cool!!! Whoever thinks this is *not cool* please, leave your cool card at the door
This is something straight out of Rocket League. Completely impractical, but awesome at the same time.
What is the practical use case of this? https://x.com/JehovaTrades/status/2110906028971938252
You were never stuck in traffic I take it:D Insurance will be a bitch, but people will move out of your way.
To show off? Like whatever you think of it the market for supercars is rich men who want to show off so Tesla is playing in that market.
WTF, that the most cartoonist thing i've seen today. Does it really have to do the flip ?
Neat, but that car has to be practically empty. It appears to have very low inertia.
By rough estimate, using hydroxide jet packs as a reference, I’d say they got it down to about 400kg.
To brag to other, lesser billionaires.
To play Spy Hunter irl?
Uhh to be sick af?
Some smart cookies put up a scam video topping Google searches for the announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5lmBq00utE
AI Elon pressure selling "act decisively, double your money" by transferring crypto to some wallet and getting 2x back - yeah, right
(PS Google shut it down)
Okay that's one of the coolest things I've seen in a while since the rockets landing.
Car looks half decent too.
> Car looks half decent too
To me it looks like a mashup of a Ferrari and a Cybertruck. That's not a good thing.
Same; there are stylish super cars... this again looks like a 5 year old kid drawing like the Cybertruck does.
Not really. Looks like junk to me.
I like the fun retro look, similar to the N Vision 74 [1]. This actually has some taste unlike the Cybertruck.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_N_Vision_74
I really wonder why I think the N Vision 74 looks so much better; it just has more personality somehow. I do agree though that the new Roadster looks a lot less bad than the Cybertruck.
I'd agree with you and merit the design has more thought as an upgrade to the look of the cybertruck. However it still looks like something to be left in a scrap heap of a destruction derby within Tron.
Dislike the design, look and edge of it. Feels cold. Each to their own.
What price did you buy TSLA at?
I guess you didn't see the video of a car sitting on a ramp upside down, doing flips in the air, jumping over a semi and other cars...
Odd world we live in when we don't see that as being cool. But, we're seemingly headed there. At some point, it's going to be hard to imagine something that could surprise me.
<< I guess you didn't see the video of a car sitting on a ramp upside down, doing flips in the air, jumping over a semi and other cars...
It is weird. I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.
<< At some point, it's going to be hard to imagine something that could surprise me.
It is hard to believe your eyes -- I assumed it was magnetic or something initially.
Other demos, like the humanoid robot one, were entirely fake so wouldn’t be surprised.
>> It is weird. I am not fan of Musk, but one has to have some crazy blinders on not to give him credit here.
For what? For an unpractical vehicle that now has the ability to launch and crush another car? If said to be true. As if driving wasn't already dangerous and stupid enough.
If he would show maturity for a change rather than his childhood antics then I would give him credit.
<< If he would show some and maturity for a change rather than his childhood antics then I would give him credit.
Man only manages to coordinate an engineering feat and your response is "why can he not offer something responsible like a lightly breaded toast"?
Beyond the obvious part where I say that his antics are part of the product demonstration ( roadster is space moment being another notable moment ), is your objection truly that he didn't come to the podium with a clipboard and say:
" Begin communication - it jumps - it go up upside down - it can go 0-60 in 1 sec End of communication."
Fuck man. Where has your wonder gone?
The HN crowd isn't what it used to be. Technology doesn't excite most people here anywhere.
> Technology
Panem et circenses
Nah, this ain't it chief. I own exactly 0 directly. Too volatile and don't really care for Teslas at all. I love my gas cars.
The video goes against my intuition for how much performance you can get out of cold gas thrusters. I wonder if someone could do some back of the envelope maths on how much thrust and impulse you can get from a setup like this?
My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.
The fact that the one that can fly is invite-only makes me wonder if there would be ITAR issues with the guidance mechanisms that they have to put into it.
I'm not saying that there aren't lower hanging fruit reasons why they wouldn't make more of those, but you can see how the guidance necessary to make this move the way that it does could be dual use.
Good on Elon for putting out a car that embodies his best trait, sucking as hard as possible.
It also blows.
Okay, that's some of the most impressive feats I've ever seen. Congratulations to the engineers!
I could have used that when leaving Costco last Saturday.
[delayed]
Can this be scaled down to a Roomba? Then it would both be more useful at picking stuff up off the floor, and able to recover from falling down the stairs.
Genuinely impressed, incredible demo
Is that the Draco engine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Draco
aka a $245,000 loan to tesla with no interest for 10 years
They first started taking deposits on the Roadster 9 years ago in 2017 with a 2020 production date. It’ll be shocking if they ever sell this car they showed today. If they do, it’ll be many years late, not fly, and cost twice what they are saying. Just like the CyberTruck.
The one that doesn’t fly is only a $45,000 loan
> It challenges the limits of design, engineering and physics to deliver an expertly crafted extra-terrestrial vehicle.
closed tab. thanks.
Flying cars before GTA6.
I've been recently playing a game called Approximately Up. You start from simple building blocks, thrusters and can use the in game logic system to build complex controls. One of the things I came about to learn was something to make a hover system for my ship was a simple PID controller. The side and bottom firing thrusters just remind me of my ship in the game. While the game is oversimplified and a bit arcadey, does anyone know what actually goes into this in the real life and is the huge feat the improvement on the weight of the whole car?
I'd buy one for the police chases. Hell yes. Not that I'm in the billionaire invite-only inner circle, and not that they'll ever ship it.
Are they serious about the rocket version??
I never thought I'd live to see K.I.T.T
Been a while since I was impressed with a tech presentation. I was waiting for a clear case of AI assisted movement ( though I personally expected to see it for the first time in a military chopper ).
**
Side note, as I was looking for the right stream, youtube gave me a link to a different deep fake 'Musk' stream where he extolled virtues of sending him money ( https://roadster-tesla.com/#participate ). Everything has changed man. I am sure the scammer actually got some people.
So Elon's entities are really using SI instead of AI? Interesting. Or was he the one who actually suggested the name change to POTUS?
Super
I must be old. I just keep thinking about what kind of whiplash I'd get with those flips
The engineering team did an amazing job!
I absolutely detest the leadership and what he is actively doing to this country... but holy fucking shit. I want to reserve one, but when you're broke as a joke... ooph.
Technically very impressive. I wonder if they'll actually produce and sell any of these.
And too bad it's associated with a Nazi shitheel. That takes a lot of the joy out of this.
What's up with wheels not being round anymore? How is that supposed to work? I understand it for Formula 1, but for real world driving, it doesn't make any sense
Is the copy grok's writing style? It feels inhuman but still more readable than Opus
Rocket-inspired design hints at desire to merge Tesla and SpaceX?
As a father of a growing family, I am still waiting for the RoBovan.
Donate your money to charity instead of getting scammed by a Nazi.
I hate Tesla for their politics, broken promises, and all the drama that we are all aware and tired of hearing about. That being said, that was the coolest damn thing I've ever seen a car do.
I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that it'll never make production like this, but what I see as being demonstrated is a suborbital lander/off-world ground transport concept that can work in low gravity environments etc. This will aid autonomous delivery vehicles etc to be dropped from low orbit and find their own landing sites, and then drive to location.
I wonder how many maimed kerbals are stranded around the space X facility while testing this.
I guess robotaxi is failing? This is my only explanation of that jumping gimmick.
It can fly? Wow! What a time to be alive!
Other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112380
I've never seen a site allegedly about technology, hate technology so much.
Good luck with the food delivery apps fellas.
At least this one doesn't look horrible. I can't see myself buying it, but I don't feel like I want to gag either.
A car that jumps - am I missing something? The speed numbers are cool.
Still with the deadly door-handles that first responders can't open, I see.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-door...
Yea, i was going to reserve one of these sub 1 sec 0-60 vehicles with rocket motors and suction fans, but then I didnt because of the ergonomics of the door handle design.
"Ergonomics" is an interesting phrase to use for "critical safety issue".
But yeah, that's not the part of the vehicle that's gong to kill its first victim.
Is this a broken link for anyone else?
Unavailable to visit?
He has finally gone bonkers. Drugs are bad, mmmmkay.
Imagine the engineer hours wasted on this gimmick, while he is losing market share everywhere.
"Tony Hawk would be called, we call that the kickflip."
Uh what? Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip
Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI
Yes, Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip (and damn near every other skate trick), but the reference here comes from a time when Tony Hawk would drive around and yell "do a kickflip" at skaters, if they did a kickflip he would sometimes give them a signed board or other things. Example video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob0dI05Xz8s - it became a thing for a little where people would yell "do a kickflip" at skaters they saw on the street.
Reading some of this feels like I’m having a stroke.
>This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Neat car though.
I cant wait to see what type of batshit crazy motorsport series they invent for these.
> Our multi-mode fan and ground sealing system acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the vehicle. This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Bullshit, no it can't.
> Advanced cold-gas thrusters use all-electric actuators to offer precise thrust, completing micro adjustments within a fraction of a second. This helps stabilize the vehicle in flight.
In flight? What? Did I miss the joke, or what? It's a fucking car... The image even shows it hovering off the ground. How is this not blatant false advertising?
ETA: okay, skimmed some of the livestream. These is absolutely no way that any of these features will ever be part of a production model. People get serious whiplash injuries just from being rear-ended at low speed. What do they think is going to happen to the occupant when they tell their car to jump over a semi and do a fucking barrel roll? Seriously, what are we doing here?
Amazing such instant expertise.
Watch the video - the car jumps into the air. Not exactly flight or what we’d consider a flying car, but it’s careering through the air off the ground.
It's supposed to be funny. Or it's not? Really not sure.
This isn't even the first car to demo holding and driving upside down using a ground effect fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6LYcgaQ46c
There is another car [1] with a fan to improve downforce.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray_Automotive_T.50
> Bullshit, no it can't
I mean, this isn't crazy. In fact, it's already been done. Ever heard of McMurtry? (https://mcmurtry.com/). They're notorious for exactly this - using fans to provide extreme downforce (urr... upforce if you're hanging upside down?).
> In flight?
Did you see the stunt where it literally flew over vehicles? I mean, maybe it's a bit closer to a controlled super-leap like the original Superman, but... yeah, my personal reaction to that was more "holy shit" than "well, that's not flying".
Watch the livestream
If you scroll down on the page, it shows that the "rocket edition" is invite-only. Probably gonna sell it to a few friends in hopes that the 3-5 they make sell for millions down the road, so to speak.
Very COOL, I like this Roadster retro style
Wow, this might be the most phenomenal tech demo I've ever watched.
This is just amazing, congrats to everyone who worked on this.
From an engineering pov, it must be the highlight of someone's life and a massive amount of fun to be able to work on a product like this.
Who writes like this?
A lot of musk shills in these comments. This is a terrible idea, and just like all his other promises, won’t happen.
I don't think people want to buy it - we just think its cool that its possible.
You should try having fun and enjoying things once in a while...
Maybe avoid speaking for others ( "we" ) and snark at other HN users ( "You should" ).
Does musk get final say on all of the latest car designs?
The cybertruck? And now this?
Vomit inducing, truly.
Listen, if you rightfully believe Elon Musk is a white supremacist piece of shit who used his wealth to buy his way in to Trump's regime to steal huge amounts of data on the american public and who attempts to influence foreign democracies and who promotes far right conspiracies, please don't buy his fucking cars.
I recommend everyone watch the live event video. It is a master class in everything you could possibly do wrong when producing a product reveal event. It's really amazing.
It's like watching their rehearsal, and also like watching The Rehearsal.
It was fine? I'd rather this than hyper rehearsed CGI human Apple launch video. At least its just real people talking like humans.
Yeah Apple really synthesising a platonic ideal of Steve’s product release smarm without any of his hubristic charm at this point. Tesla and SpaceX seem like humans just getting on with sh*t and onto the next.
It was not fine.
I can’t do a tech demo of a simple software feature on zoom without at least one thing messing up. They launched a car off a ramp live and were honest from the beginning of the stream it might not work.
The last decade of social media has shown that humans care more about authenticity than perfection in presentations.
It did work! The point is they did a terrible job of producing the event and being clear what they were talking about and showing the product. The product, for all four people who will be able to buy it ("invite only"), seems very cool. But that is not what I was commenting on!
Pretty big nothingburger. Production starts 2028 and honestly, the taunted feature... it's not a flying car, it's a jumping car. Do people actually want this for themselves? I'd wager the valuation would go down after this presentation.
I never thought I would say this, but.. have you been like.. born 70 or something?
Bro the car literally jumped over a semi like its the TF2 soldier. Nothingburger???
Kind of disturbing how hard he's leaning into the futurism aesthetic here, given its history.
Tesla has been doing this for a while, having all their promo shots at night etc. The terafab announcement stuff has an especially dystopian vibe
I mean, he also did a straight-up Nazi salute. We already know the guy is a fascist.