No, both versions use cold gas thrusters. There are no combustion rocket engines involved here.
The difference between the “thrust” and “rocket” versions is the number of thrusters: “rocket” has additional thrusters that enable it to fly. The “thrust” version just has them at the back for acceleration.
For a few seconds. It's a parlor trick. And the flying configuration will not be street-legal.
Many of the best parlor tricks are.
Yeah just like the Tesla screen in the car. Quite a problem since it lacks physical buttons.
And frankly I'm not sure the engineering is all that impressive. I'm sure someone could've done similar a long time ago, there's just no point to it beyond, well, the parlor trick. Even millionaires have no use for a single seat, road-illegal vehicle with no storage that happens to be able to jump
Do you know what gets me excited? Have you seen the new Porsche Mission S?
Form, function and beauty ...
It's a glorified Beetle.
> Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...
Working backwards from their stats & FARS data, I calculated that for their claims to be true, each Model Y would need to accumulate only 4,300 miles per year. This is far below Tesla's reports of 13,000-14,000 miles per year. Also iSeeCars claimed that an average of 2.8 vehicles were involved in fatal accidents for every billion miles traveled. But at the time the US had 13.3 deaths per billion miles traveled. So for their data to be correct, the average fatal accident would need to have five fatalities.
> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws.... Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well....
> “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities”....
and if you've been in Teslas that are a few years old, you might have experienced phantom braking. random hard braking for no apparent reason. i try to avoid being behind Teslas on the road if i can help it.
Perhaps some billionaires will buy it, good for them.
Why do you guys contort yourselves into knots trying to find any and every conceivable problem with something that doesn't affect you ... get over it already. Go ahead and flag me.
i remember reading about the first cobra in the 60's, where a huge percentage of the owners didn't live to make the second payment.
As for US safety standards, that seems a lower bar...
Quite ironic.
https://vsp.virginia.gov/virginia-state-police-trooper-rescu...
And 14 others - that I'm aware of - to date.
[has X]
[has X designed, built, and visible in the car such that it can be easily found and operated whilst panicking for your life, or rushing from outside while trying to save a trapped passenger's life]
There are people who would tell you that while Tesla may have the first, it does not have the latter, but they cannot because they are dead, and should not be.
I personally saw one in Krakow, Poland.
Cybertruck does not have EU homologation so Tesla can't sell it in EU. Because at the moment they don't want to.
You can buy it, import it and certify for legal use. It requires minor modifications but is perfectly legal.
That things which are good for an individual but bad for everyone else deserve scrutiny?
This is just going to make it even more desirable to a certain market segment.
Swipes are not allowed on HN, and comments that invoke national/regional/cultural stereotypes are particularly out of line here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Like leaded gazoline, whose effects can still be seen presently...
No. That's the road safety mind speaking.
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.
It wouldn't be the first time Musk demoed something and promised something and then never ships.
Here's an RC car that can drive on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA
You fell for Elon's three-cup monte.
My general assumption is that anything and everything that wasn't necessary for that demo was removed to trim enough weight to make the demo possible.
Tesla's website literally says the Rocket version is "Not approved for public road use." And has "Seating for one." Any battery that can perform that demo can certainly power basic driving. You're accusing them of deception when every modification you describe is plainly stated on their website. (E.g. It's drive-by-wire, and the seats are modeled chassis elements. Yes, it's wildly minimal.)
The expectation that a vehicle that did a literal standing barrel roll (even if only a single time) be functionally equivalent to a Toyota Camry is madness to me. The much more interesting question is what type of localization system in 3D space were they running?
What we saw was impressive, but it’s a trick. The car’s tanks are surely empty after this, and now you have a loud compressor filling them up for minutes. You can’t use those thrusters near people and cars cause you’re at risk of getting them in trouble.
It’s part of a long history of useless tech in supercars. Impressive, but useless.
I'm not saying its impossible but it seems pretty naive to just assume on face value
For what it’s worth, my $600 hunting rifle will go clean through both sides of any bulletproof vest, and it’s nothing special.
For everything that is bulletproof, there is always a calibre of projectile that will go through it.
I'm going to quote Buzz Lightyear: this is falling... with style.
On a serious note, this was unexpected. You can't deny, he has style
Those SS uniforms were snappy.
But what is the point of this? Did Musk think everyone would forgive him, turn to white-supremacy and re-vote in his patsy's associates if only they saw a weird car demo?
And supercars are typically not submitted for NCAP testing, so It'll likely be less safe than a Model Y for example (to be determined, no reports out yet)
This is explained in the deep dive video with Lars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts
Add it to the list, boys! "Inflatable Rescue Submersible", FSD, Bulletproof windows, Mars any day now, Hyperloop... am I missing anything?
Or an easier way to escape rioters blocking the road and threatening your life.
We actually do already have Jetsons style flying cars - those things that look kind of like big drones are basically that, and those are actually practical.
Forget the comparison to the Jetsons if it upsets you, let's just compare to actual flying vehicles.
You could only pressurize it right before your jumping stunt.
They can’t even build a proper Mini anymore because the hood was so low it elked pedestrians face first into the windshield.
It’s cool tech demo. I’m not expecting to see one fly in private hands ever.
However, those assuming it will never be sold or even legal to be sold may not be aware there already exist astronomically expensive, completely impractical, quite unsafe, track-only hypercars which are not legal to drive on any street.
As for the technical legality of the 'flying' features ask your LLM about: the Ground-Effect & "Sustained Flight" Jurisdictional Boundary in FAA / NHTSA regs, Off-Road Track-Only exemptions from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and PHMSA / DOT-SP (Special Permit) authorization for consumer COPV pressure vessels. Making the "hopping" version for sale is a wildly impractical marketing stunt but they can probably do it, although it'll cost far more and ship much later than whatever they promise and will sell at most a few dozen.
Sorry, I'll start it from the app!
chug chug chug chug
Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.
Musk keeps it running as a mouthpiece/propaganda and vanity project, but it's not a viable business anymore due to all the $13B Musk borrowed to acquire it, as well as loss of advertizers. It's estimated to break even on an operational basis, but loses about $1B/yr when you include interest on the debt.
I'm looking at the same post on a players status for this weekend from 2 hours ago on 3 platforms:
- Threads: 5 likes, 2 comments, 15 shares
- BlueSky: 19 likes, 3 comments, 3 shares
- Twitter: 1500 likes, 105 comments, 281 shares
Doesn't really seem like twitter is the one that's almost dead...
For anything politics related the activity is almost all bots.
Turns out you just love Trump.
I am not sure you can detach these two concepts. Tesla is currently valued around 3x the next top 5 auto companies combined, so to an extent you need to judge the company on these expectations. I happen to think they do have a pretty good business selling cars, and maybe a very good business selling autonomous cars, but there's so much uncertainty I think it is hard to see the current market cap as anything other than hugely inflated.
I'm interested to meet someone online who's short both on-shore US silicon fabs and the market for humanoid robots. Can you say more about your thinking?
Musk is similar to Zuck in that they get some credit for sheer courage to turn the wheel on their massive businesses, but they also have to be right. Aside from his anticompetitive behavior, Zuck continues to miss. Musk's pattern has been that the more Musk is personally involved, the worse the outcomes. Cybertruck was his baby. Optimus is his baby.
If Tesla is doing so well as an automotive business, then why doesn't he just continue making it a great automotive business?
Maybe a mid length answer is if you agree with his assessment on say humanoid robots in terms of market and you believe they might have a geometric growth factor in production (eg robots can make more robots) then you’d want that business build out done by a team that can scale rapidly.
For fabs spacex and Tesla are significant consumers of the output- vertical integration is preferred by lots of companies.
Correct, and I think having a CEO who's totally unaccountable to a board and is temperamentally unable to focus on his core business is not good.
SpaceX and Tesla are nowhere near large enough consumers to justify vertically integrating a fab. The demand is predicated on Optimus producing millions of units per year.
This circularity will probably end up being seen in retrospect as so transparently absurd that it'll beggar belief that anyone accepted it.
That said I think these bets will pay off. Let’s check in in five years!
Do you have particular predictions we can evaluate in five years?
2) more than 1mm optimus produced and sold in the US
Happy for any counters :)
I'd bet that in 5 years time Optimus total sales are in the 10's of thousands at best, with few to no large scale industrial users (other than self-use by Musk). Customers will be similar to what AgiBot and Unitree currently have - entertainment, hospitality, academic, small scale trials, plus a few Tesla fanboy sales that don't do anything actually productive.
1MM Optimus sold in the US is hilarious too.
Want to make bets on these?
My prediction is Musk will become less and less stable, more and more flamboyant and performative, and less and less effective.
He's already saying he suffers from occasional AI psychosis, and there is no chance that's going to get better on its own.
The only new western car company in decades to not fail, based on a technology nobody believed in at the time, least of all other car companies
SpaceX being a private space company, which was completely unheard of. No experts though they could succeed
Smaller earlier businesses like Zip2, paypal, etc
These are gigantic high risk companies with high failure probabilities, the chance they they all happened to be successful despite Musk and not at least in part because of him is stretching reasonable doubt for me.
I'm absolutely no fan of his politics or personality, but the man can run a business that nobody else even dares try (at least until he demonstrates viability and the market starts to generate competitors)
Three sucesses.
Not so successful: Solar City, Neuralink, TBC, X.
(X exists, but before it was valued-and-bought by one of Musk's other companies, it appeared to have lost about half its value).
Richard Branson he aint.
They put out this video of a patient with ALS regaining the ability to communicate.
Hard to see that not being successful, once it passes the FDA, assuming it's real.
Of course it’s still early days for all these companies and they’re not exactly fiscally solid, but if Tesla had not made all those cars, someone else would have.
Why exactly do you think he keeps repositioning them as a robotics oh wait no I mean an AI company? Why is he clearly positioning Tesla to be acquired by SpaceX? Why is Tesla investing into xAI to be converted into SpaceX shares?
Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade. The Roadster (obviously) is not going to help.
They have a huge balance sheet so it’ll take a while but Musk obviously sees the writing on the wall. The sheen is wearing off their shitty products and he doesn’t know how to add the sheen back or make the products less shitty.
No it's not.
>Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade.
False. Revenue and deliveries beat so far this year, Q3 also a beat.
Don't let your Elon Derangement Syndrome cloud your ability to think rationally.
TSLA is down 18% YTD. That's because their business is doing so well?
You're aware that the "expectations" are they run a profitable company, right?
>You're aware that expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is struggling?
You're aware that the expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is stable, and showed record deliveries and backlog in Q2?
>TSLA is down 18% YTD. That's because their business is doing so well?
Auto manufacturing sector (DJUSAU) is down 16% YTD, and Tesla's stock is overpriced to begin with. Tesla's most direct competitor in the US, Rivian, is down 34% YTD. Stop getting your business/economic news from BlueSky/reddit.
And where should they get them? From Twitter?
Credible business/economic news outlets.
>From Twitter?
No.
October 2: Tesla deliveries fall 2% as US consumers buy fewer EVs
July 23: Tesla shares tumble 11% as discounts hit profits
April 2: Tesla reports weaker than expected 6% rise in global deliveries
January 29: Tesla scraps models in pivot to AI as annual revenue falls for the first time
Tesla growth is slowing, margins are getting crunched, competition is heating up. Tesla knows they're fucked so they're pivoting into AI. The pivot into AI might work, but Musk himself unambiguously thinks Tesla is fucked as an automotive company.
That's why Musk is trying to claim Tesla isn't an automotive company (except when comparisons to such suit him and his cultists, of course).
All that can be definitively proven by Musk’s own statements is that the Epstein files convinced him that Trump is a child rapist and Musk has nonetheless chosen to defend Trump, work with him, fund him, and according to Musk single-handedly get him re-elected.
Thank god Musk is not a scam artist though. That’d be a real indictment of his character. And you know, it might even be an indictment of the character of his valiant supporters.
That isn't even snark, it's plain cold hard on-the-record facts.
Example RC toy car that drives on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA
Even if it is, they show interior, wheels & a distance shot of the rear opening showing a large air tank - very little can be seen of the actual chassis or engine.
Whatever tricks were done for the demo - whether the car is real or fake - it's highly unlikely what was shown today will ever be like-for-like accessible to consumers in the production model.
Aku: You can fly?!
Jack: No, jump good.
Okay, so I guess it doesn’t fly in the same way a rocket doesn’t fly? Distinction without meaning in this case.
Just like economically infeasible Twitter, it has tremendous PR value. There is a huge economy revolving around people annoying other people just for a glimpse of their attention. This captures the attention and pleases people. Other car companies should start getting creative too.
The power to shape governments to his liking is worth a lot more than what he paid for Twitter.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/how-the-military-will-hack...
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_B_Meyer_Inc.
that sounds quite amazing, and it looks like something out of ghostbusters.
And that makes a big difference, right? Right?
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."
Teslas evaluation is based on hype. This is as hype as it gets for a car. To me it looks like they were in need for "the coolest thing". To me, this has the smell of desperation implying the beginning of the end of their high evaluation.
Guess it is for advertising mainly.
I don't think they'll sell these, at all in the future. No way they'll hound out actual rocket engines to en users. Too much IP in there.
1. Why don't they show a driver entering or exiting? 2. How much do that particular "car" weigh?
It's compressed air RCS. The compressor, regulators and a ton of hardware take up the entire space from the seats back to literally the very last inch of the car. Hard pipes run along the door frame for the forward RCS, meaning only one person (driver) can sit in it and enter from the drivers side. Huge carbon RCS tanks fill every other space.
No idea how long it would take to recharge the tanks after venting them.
There's no room for 'car' stuff in it.
Interestingly there is a big... sleeve of wizard... that extends down under the car to assist the ground effect fan. Packaging that and the RCS stuff into it is a real engineering feat.
But it didn't look to have crash structures, or any other production ready hardware.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/03/13/nasa-releases-summary-...
So I got no idea how you can even compare these two completely different systems and go from a launch failure to an explosive car accident?
Including boring old nitrogen blowing up a Starship: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
> "Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship's nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing," the company wrote in an update on Thursday (June 19).
If you SCUBA, your tanks need regular checks (https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/inspecting-and-testing-s...), because pressurized air can indeed kill (https://divemagazine.com/scuba-diving-news/diver-killed-in-s...) if the tank fails. The gas for these thrusters will happily accelerate you with the same force they're using to make a car fly given the chance.
Just for reference this is 50% more pressure than the pressure that crushed that submarine at the titanic.
A regular Tesla that sucks, you mean?
Even the base model has “active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system that maximizes downforce for next-level performance on and off the track.”
"Integrating SpaceX thruster tech is absolutely essential to Tesla in the future!"
It's only wild if you ignore Musk's role in this. Not even trying to bash him or anything, but he's a trillionaire. This is the kind of shit you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly waste.
I mean, if this is how he wants to spend his money, then I guess that's his prerogative. But I think it's a bit misleading to suggest this is a decision made by "Tesla" when this is clearly an irrational decision for a company to make. This is a decision made by Musk based on satisfying his own personal goals.
In terms of net worth, you are closer to Jeff Bezos than Bezos is to Musk.
If that is what they have done. That may just be a large drone looking like a car.
You could say the same thing about the Cybertruck.
If this ships, it will deliver a fraction of what's promised here. My money is on the "flying" version being delayed repeatedly until it's quietly cancelled. Anyone remember the fast battery change stations[1]?
Hopefully there will also be a warning siren while it is pressurized. "Dangerous enough to need a warning siren" seems like a plus for the target market, honestly.
Impressive engineering but utterly impractical. There are semi-practical flying car designs around folding wings or quad rotors (basically a big car sized drone) and the reason we don’t see them has more to do with safety, traffic control, and energy cost. Aircraft, like rockets, tend to get more energy efficient with size, so tiny flying machines are power wasters.
It's staggering to consider how many resources we've diverted from people who could use them into building this novelty.
If ever there was a sign of a society of decadence in decline, it's that the most powerful person on earth is free to create toys like this exclusively for others in the ruling class.
"Crazy new thing also crazy expensive" is the norm, not a regression.