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> I’m confused how this has (or will pass) regulatory approval for road use.

It won't.

And this is 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" 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.

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I think others have used a skirt that needs to extend quite close to the ground to work, so uneven ground can cause sudden loss of suction. Maybe this is solvable somehow?

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.

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> Maybe this is solvable somehow?

Why would you solve that? Open roads aren't a track, we don't build highways with 90 degree turns, there is no need for such thing

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Are they worse than a gasoline tank exploding?
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Very much so. A gasoline tank creates a fireball but not an explosion.
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And this Tesla would then have air tanks going flying at explosive speeds, if I understand things correctly?
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Yes. Inside the car.

This doesn't tend to end well. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

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What movie physics are you referring to?
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gasoline tanks explode? how ... ?
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The "base" model will pretty much be McMurtry Spéirling at promised quarter of the price.
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what about like a countless random debris on the road? wouldn't that get sucked up and damage the fan?
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> I’m confused how this has (or will pass) regulatory approval for road use.

Corruption? Musk is already down a quarter of a billions in donations to the GOP for these incoming elections.

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Probably allowed outside of California.

The suction system is interesting. It's possible for it to work on the street but incredibly dumb. The kind of gap you have to keep is millimeters off the ground and your typical streets in the real world have so much damage and inconsistency it's hard to imagine it working for anything but straight line acceleration on a newly paved road. This would be a suicide mission to drive this on Skyline with the expectation to get 2-3g in the bends.

The concerns about debris and so forth are somewhat valid but can be taken care of. Similar to dust collectors for woodworking - this will have a cyclone separator, mesh, and whatnot that will prevent the blades from getting wrecked by a rock. But wouldn't want to tail this thing. It'll be pelting your car.

It'll be another "car goes really fast in a straight line" feature which electric cars have always done well with. While it'd be cool to use the suction system to get incredible g forces in bends - it'll be too dangerous for public roads. You'd immediately fly off the road if you lost any suction and I don't know what public roads (especially in the Bay Area) you could run such a system reliably on.

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