Tesla Roadster(tesla.com) |
Tesla Roadster(tesla.com) |
Almost all the comments here are just the most generically negative I have ever seen on HN, with just general grumpiness everywhere.
This car is an incredible engineering achievement and a completely unexpected reveal.
At least the people who buy this will be unequivocally branding themselves as utter douchebags.
Whatever breakthrough they’re making, is it worth funding the dismantling of democracy?
[1]: Silicon Valley edition
Uh what? Rodney Mullen invented the kickflip
Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/LC97wdQOmfI
>This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
Neat car though.
Imagine the engineer hours wasted on this gimmick, while he is losing market share everywhere.
And too bad it's associated with a Nazi shitheel. That takes a lot of the joy out of this.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-door...
But yeah, that's not the part of the vehicle that's gong to kill its first victim.
Just like we will have 1 million robotaxis on the streets by 2021?
EDIT: wow it really can fly, that is crazy
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray_Automotive_T.50
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".
> Bullshit, no it can't.
A proof of concept already exists:
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.
* The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw
How delusional are people? The emperor is not wearing clothes y'all.
Is it going to be fun and engaging to drive? Absolutely not. It doesn’t even have a steering wheel.
Finally, a vehicle that’s perfect for the CEO in your life who wants to upload his brain to a data center powered by the body heat of his employees hooked up to the pods from The Matrix.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-079-introduction-to-convex-opt...
Dunno. Looks like it jumps. Fying seems to require some degree of control over direction but I'm just a gravity-impaired bidep.
I am skeptical that this feature will prove to be much more than a publicity stunt, especially since the availability of these models will be so limited.
hmmmm. spacex-tesla merger signalling?
My primary scepticism is how much the prototype weighs, and whether it can still jump with 2 passengers + 1000kg of batteries inside.
It just means you can do jumps and stunts programmed into the vehicle at the push of a button with zero skill at being a stunt driver.
The Dukes of Hazzard had to do that without the thrusters.
Can't wait to see how people kill themselves and other people with those things by being stupid...
Hopefully that shit gets blocked by the DOT and kept off public roads--which is probably the goal to get a bunch of drooling simps outraged over "government overreach" keeping them away from their "flying cars".
That's the bit where we diverge.
closed tab. thanks.
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.
The car is just a façade.
Edit: And to expand on this. Owners of GM T.50' say they can't use the ground effect fan anywhere in public due to the debris it picks up and throws, and are ineffective on anything but near perfect roads. So that's not impressive to me. And the jet boosters are also ridiculous, there is not real-world application where you could use them outside of completely closed environments with no one nearby. It's a huge investment into reaction thrusters for a car that would never, ever be used - unless it was to demonstrate thruster technology for another reason.
i.e. Space X.
Also, assuming the delivery vehicle is destroyed at the end of each "delivery", what will it cost?
I think you are on an entirely different page.
It's very impressive. Not useful, but impressive.
If they ever deliver a single unit that's a low enough bar to make it completely economically infeesable.
if they somehow managed to sell a couple of thousand... it might become profitable.
this has to be just a fantastic bit of marketing to jazz up their share price.
also.. I'd love to see a blooper roll of making it do these things...
Also "Beyond The Limits of Physics"... would any actual engineers at Tesla/SpaceX agree with that marketing statement?
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.
For Eg, we have self driving trucks. Nikola admits prototype was rolling downhill in promotional video: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype...
Tesla’s History of Faking Demonstration Videos: https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstrati...
This is probably just to hype up the stock. The stock is down 5% (5 days), up 1% (1 month), down ~7% (6 months), down ~20% YTD, down ~16% (1 year). It has a PE of 336 and dwindling YOY sales. Tesla’s U.S. vehicle sales fell approximately 14% to 20% year-over-year through the first three quarters of 2026. Rest of the world, Tesla is not competitive and will probably go down rapidly soon.
Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.
The site states it's cold-gas thrusters for both models: "Features a multi-mode suction system paired with cold-gas thrusters positioned around the perimeter of the vehicle that support forward and upward acceleration as well as lateral rotational movement."
Can't help but think of the not-a-flamethrower
(friend bought one for $500, now they seem to be worth $1500-$2000)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Merchandise
Aku: You can fly?!
Jack: No, jump good.
it's wild to me after all of the on-stage lying that we're even considering what the future economics of the rocket-powered-road-car are going to be.
it's wild to me that he has yet to deliver on the self-driving stuff, but has decided to progress into rocket-powered circus vehicles.
it's wild to me that he's getting credit for a fan car, after 50+ years of on-track existence and the recent production of the McMurty.
I'm curious to see how it all pans out, and whether or not he has enough Washington connections to get a fan-powered rocket car onto the streets, and I am curious to see the first LA block-shutdown street race accident involving an intentionally aerial vehicle.
Historically fan cars haven't been allowed on the streets because they 1) destroy asphalt and 2) throw chunks of destroyed asphalt into traffic.
I'm not entirely sure how thrusters that can lift a 3k+ lbs sports car off the road jibe with preserving the roads for others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
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.
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-spac...
Long-term investors would lose about 40% of their investment to subsidize the inflated valuation of X (bought by xAI), the inflated valuation of xAI (bought by SpaceX), and SpaceX (whose valuation is based on the assumption that demand for inference is effectively unlimited, and that everyone will prefer hardware in space over Earth).
The valuation of both companies was inflated prior to acquisition, and Tesla shareholders will be asked to dilute their investment by absorbing that cumulative inflation.
Not even to mention that Musk would have exclusive control over the entire conglomerate, with not even the pretense of a Board to check his power.
When even Steven Mark Ryan is like "let's pump the breaks a little bit," you know it's bad.
Well, that and being the only reusable rocket company ever with an even bigger version on the horizon and a global Internet service that's about to get a whole lot better thanks to aforementioned rocket. Both of which are hugely profitable.
- 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...
Hahah, the failure modes are going to be exciting.
Car looks half decent too.
To me it looks like a mashup of a Ferrari and a Cybertruck. That's not a good thing.
I'm more worried about the COPVs exploding in a crash, for the thruster version. Hopefully it will keep the tanks empty unless a special launch mode is enabled with a warning siren sounding as long as they're pressurized.
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?
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.
They have to sell one to say that it exists. It’s marketing.
Absolutely nobody who owns that vehicle will be “flying” it.
I'm so glad Elon exists. He must have spent over $100 million to build the flying variant with no hope of ever profiting off it. I can't imagine any other CEO ever doing that.
**
Side note, as I was looking for the right stream, youtube gave me a link to a different deep fake 'Musk' stream where he extolled virtues of sending him money ( https://roadster-tesla.com/#participate ). Everything has changed man. I am sure the scammer actually got some people.
The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.
This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.
Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).
That's pretty standard. An M3 has long pushed the tolerances of things in the engine more than a base-model 3 series. An S-class has more whiz-bang-hope-it-still-works-in-ten-years stuff than a C-class. A Lexus has more going on than a boring base Corolla.
there's a whole lot of systemic issues with wealthy people buying low-poly cars to their collection.
Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ 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.
FWIW, I'm into my fourth year of (Chinese-built) Model 3 ownership and it's been rock solid, the only services so far were to replace the air filter and wipers.
This is less about EVs vs ICEs and more about Toyota's engineering quality vs Tesla's engineering quality, which is hovering somewhere in the vicinity of Homer Simpson's barbecue pit.
Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.
https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Lamborgh...
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!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NextGenT...
(just personal preference)
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.
Patently absurd, of course, but amazing too.
It's like buying a car from Kissinger.
By rough estimate, using hydroxide jet packs as a reference, I’d say they got it down to about 600kg.
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)
- The cold-gas only version will shotgun debris into onlookers, and possibly yeet anyone behind it.
- Active suction is very cool until a rock punches through your intakes.
- Lithium batteries and pressurised tanks in the same package, yippee!
Thank god it'll take them years to manufacture this thing.
They'll make a handful that a select few billionaires will get to keep in a hanger somewhere for bragging rights.
There's a reason we don't see a driver in these demos and they don't do anything beyond very choreographed stunts. There's no way a human can actually control those thrusters in a way that doesn't kill you. Unless you're a fighter pilot.
Looks like 4 seconds or so.
The Tumbler? Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that.
The base model has the suction fans which will make huge gains.
Next model up has rear thrusters for the acceleration, which will be more insane. It’s limited production.
Final model that can fly is invite only and will be a joke on the track, using those thrusters to go around corners way, way faster than normal.
I wish they had shown track laps and 1/4 mile times instead of the gimmick of flying.
The existing tech fab plus this car maybe makes it harder to sue once the merger happens - but he will still be sued. “Look we’re making it rocket cars with AI of course we should be one company”
Was it a an amazing demo? yes.
Also yes you can legally sell it. Whether you can legally operate it is a different question.
Also Cybercab.
How many Optimus robots are out in the wild?
It is a scam, 100%.
The corvette ZR-1 had a special key that would unlock all the performance. I don't think it met emissions when unlocked.
Lots of newer muscle cars have performance modes and dragstrip modes that you shouldn't use.
Even other teslas, like model 3 performance and model s plaid have have track mode and dragstrip mode that shouldn't be used on public streets.
I think the bigger issue with be making it street legal. Kickflipping over traffic, and refusing visibility for everyone to 0 in the process, can't be good.
For closed courses, movies, etc it's really cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpQZSBTi7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2c-B3y7yGQ
Just because the technology is technically feasible doesn't mean that a specific company is not scamming you when they promise it.
And Tesla already has enough of a history of fake promises (your tesla will be a self-driving robotaxi earning money while you sleep within a few years, FSD will take you across the country while you sleep by next year, humanoid robots, the new roadster is taking reservations now and will deliver soon, regulation is the only thing holding up FSD, etc etc).
I can imagine the lateral thrusters helping it turn faster on the track. Although I wonder if the extra weight is going to net out positive for lap times.
But really, a few very rich people will buy the full-rocket version to impress their friends. They'll play with them on private property.
The Ford Edsel is widely regarded as one of the greatest car flops of all time and it sold 60k cars per year for their 2-year production run.
The CyberTruck is a massively bigger flop than that.
I doubt any program has lost the $1 to $1.5 billion that Cybertruck is reasonably estimated to have lost. And that’s including their quarter where SpaceX bought like 20% of their production for definitely-totally-legitimate-reasons.
Optimus is coming, the huge factory in Austin is being built now.
Late? Always. But coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_B_Meyer_Inc.
that sounds quite amazing, and it looks like something out of ghostbusters.
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/australias-first-flyin...
The Mitsubishi Outlander outsells it.
I can’t imagine a car without a steering wheel benign fun to drive. Tesla has never been known for handling and driving dynamics.
Numb steering, crashy handling, that’s what the gearheads seem to say about Tesla vehicles.
They go fast but they are absolutely not at the top of the class for driving dynamics.
I’ve test driven a Model Y Performance and the steering was lighter and more numb than my base model Mazda 6. The car goes fast but that’s all it does.
If the roadster has drive by wire like the cybertruck that’s going to be even worse.
“Cool” can’t be faked or bought, you have to actually be cool deep down inside.
This isn’t just an Elon thing. If Henry Ford was alive I wouldn’t be buying a car from him, either. Not cool.
also why can’t the rest of the world step up and do something for once btw. m
free loading is boring.
'cause these folks did the math: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(25)01186-9/full...
.jpg){kind=link}