After nearly a decade of radio silence and grand promises, the new Tesla Roadster is almost here. And my god, is it ever much, much weirder than imagined. For one, it looks completely different to the second-generation Roadster we saw roughly a decade ago. Think less Model 3 and more Lotus Esprit, with a wedgy silhouette and billionaire doors. There’s even a touch of Reventon to the general headlight shape, a bit of Diablo GTR to the front bumper, and a whiff of Testarossa to the haunches. However, what’s around back is even more interesting.
As shown in the absurd launch video, like the McMurtry Speirling the new Tesla Roadster is a fan car, capable of sucking itself down to the pavement even when parked, seemingly with enough force to hold it upside-down at a standstill. The fans work with an active rear wing to manipulate downforce on demand, with a low-drag configuration for high-speed running, a high-downforce configuration for track work, and settings in between. From Tesla:
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. Powered fans and active wings maximize traction and cornering speeds in all conditions, achieving massive downforce at zero speed. A next-gen steer-by-wire system offers incredible feedback in various road conditions. Activate Track Mode to lower the car and transform the suspension. High downforce or low drag modes can then be used as needed on the track.
The fans aren’t the party piece everyone will be talking about, though, and neither is the inboard suspension. The Roadster features a bevy of cold-gas thrusters aim to aid acceleration and, um, other stuff. The former, resulting in a claimed zero-to-60 mph time of 0.81 seconds. The latter, well…
On Tesla’s livestream, the marque showed the Roadster kickflipping over the entire Tesla range, including the Semi. No ramp, just vertical takeoff. Is that even legal? Actually, don’t answer that. Other stuff you need to know: A 230 MPH top speed, steer-by-wire, and targeted production in 2028. Still, zero-to-60 mph in 0.81 seconds alone would be insane. The quickest production cars on the planet right now take nearly a second longer. And flight? Flight? Really?
If this actually makes it to production as-is, it’s going to be bonkers. Elon Musk, wearing a T-shirt roughly two sizes too tight, just announced he wants to see it jump the Snake River Canyon. Tesla also claims to be targeting an eventual top speed of Mach 0.5, or about 383 MPH. Dozens more miles-per-hour than even the fastest existing machinery, and that’s even being generous and assuming the from-behind-the-balls measurement of a unidirectional run is used. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical here. Skeptical of legislative approval, of the usefulness of the technology, of whether the Roadster will meet its lofty targets. It’s definitely warranted.
This isn’t the first time Tesla’s made grand promises, and a car with a vertical is perhaps the grandest yet. The marque’s light on information about how it’ll achieve its targets, how much it will cost, EPA range, and all that. But it can do a kickflip. Right. What we can say for now is that the first versions of the car will have the fan system, but will only have rockets at the back. Other axes of thrust allegedly come later, and are invitation-only.
In some ways, it’s like if Tesla took that Lamborghini bit from “Top Gear” literally. Invisible, lasers, can fly, etc. Of course the glass is tinted with copper. Of course Tesla claims the paint on the Roadster is optimized for space. Because that’s a real concern of most customers. Of course the seating position’s fixed like in a Ford GT, and of course it’s steer-by-wire like a Cybertruck. Come to think of it, steer-by-wire might be a benefit at high speeds, just slowing the ratio right down so the private equity guys who’ll buy these won’t immediately enter the nearest hedge backwards.
Even the concept of a rocket-assisted production car is very dumb. Sure, cold-gas thrusters don’t involve combustion and instead rely on pressurized inert gas to generate thrust, but is giving people the option to use them a brilliant idea? I mean, you’d draw some extraordinarily derisive gestures if you attempted to use them at the lights. Or in the McDonald’s drive-thru. And don’t get me started on thrusters beneath the car. That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, a real-life version of the vertical takedown from the “Burnout” franchise if used irresponsibly. Come to think of it, what would using it responsibly look like? Racetracks would generally frown upon it, airfields might not be happy, how many places in the world will give express permission to launch a Tesla Roadster straight up into the air?
However, one thing’s undeniable: This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. It leaves the world with so many more questions than answers right now, and it’ll be fun seeing where some of those answers lead. Especially because what we all saw basically redlines the bullshitometer. What an absolutely unhinged thing. You can certainly accuse the new Tesla Roadster of a lot, but ‘being boring’ isn’t on the list. Either we’re looking at the next Veyron or the next piece of vaporware. Only one way to find out, right?
More Images:
Top graphic image: Tesla
They’ve done it! They’ve managed to create a vehicle entirely out of gimmicks.
Gotta say, my ‘toilet full of shit’ prediction from yesterday was spot on.
Legislative approval: once an over ¿250 pound? object takes to the air I think it as already subject to FAA regulations, not just EPA and NHTSA. Right, Mercedes?
Usefulness: Yes, it will serve its purpose of getting the one or two billionaires in the world who can’t get laid, laid.
Meet targets: Apparently not — TSLA is currently down 1.16%.
SOP
Over promise/under deliver….
That’s not flying, that’s falling with style.
We need to see how the cupholders work in this thing – I think that’s where the true groundbreaking engineering innovations will be needed
I’m no Tesla/Musk fan, but I watched this with my 10 yr old and it brought me some joy to see his reaction. At his age, I was watching K.I.T.T. turbo boosting over trains and giving Michael A.I. attitude…and despite how dumb this might be in a world with real problems (that we refuse to put resources into solving), I can’t help but to get excited seeing the science fiction of my childhood come to life. Knight Rider and Back to the Future were major influences on me becoming an engineer and if Musk’s stunts can inspire the next generation to dream and imagine…maybe there is hope that we’ll still be able to solve some of our problems. Credit where credit is due.
If it was only a goofy kids’ show, sure. This is neither inspiring, nor does it solve any problem whatsoever except potentially boosting Tesla’s stock a bit more.
“Like, this will be an actual car that’s on the roads.”
Okay, tell me more.
”You know, I’m not sure it’s necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, but uh, like, there will be such a car that a per… that someone can own.”
There’s already talk of at least one person in the U.S. wth a registered McMurtry Spéirling, but that’s almost certainly on a show-and-display basis. A land speed racer is an actual car you can place on a road, but Hagerty’s probably not going to insure it for Sunday drives.
“So it’s gonna be, pretty, pretty wild that you can have a rocket car.”
I suspect the legality of the full suite of functions might face some barriers. But yes, definitely wild. Kinda like one of Tesla’s best-known customers, that Radimak guy. Hopefully not like that, but probably like that.
“Yeah, 0.1 seconds… I think we’d destroy the human if we did that.”
Hey now, if we thought like that, where would we be with FSD?
“We enter production, uh, in 2028. Actually.”
“Actually. For real.”
Hahahaha… [aspirates coffee into lungs] …absolutely! For real this time! I’m opening my calendar app right now and marking all of ‘28 “ROADSTRRRR”.
The upshot is that every single person who buys one of these is gonna kill themselves before they get far enough from the factory to put the rest of us in danger.
Win/win.
So…the only reason to create something this dumb is to get the press to write about it.
Just putting that out there…
I think there are a lot of reasons to create dumb things. I actually came here this morning for Autopian’s take on it specifically.
Extreme, exciting concept cars are important. In its day, the turbine ¿Oldsmobile or nuclear ¿Ford were awesome. But only one example of a rocket car needs be made.
“Only one example of a rocket car needs to be made”
The left side of my brain is like, ‘sensible statement, totally true,’ but the right side (the one that often wins) says, ‘A world where rocket cars are prohibited is a bit sadder.”
I think this car is foolish, and I don’t think anything that jerk does should be lauded, but I like foolish cars and this is one. We can critique this car without banning foolish cars.
Well in this particular case, I think the foolish car is inherently harmful. Sans the float-me thrusters and with only the acceleration and the turning ones, they would likely do harm to nearby vehicles. I also would expect a suction fan to either be effective and dangerous, or choked with screens and filters and ineffective.
That’s a fair point. BUT, I read exactly what I expected to read. For me this “car” is beyond the pale. The Semi was radical but had an obvious use case if the math mathed. The CT was radical, but also (at the time) plausible as having mass appeal and shaping the design of future cars. But this…this is a fever dream. Cars will not be vacuums. They will not have bow thrusters. It’s just “look at all the dumb shit we did for no reason.” I’ll grant it’s incredibly impressive, it just has nothing to add.
On Tesla’s livestream, the marque showed the Roadster kickflipping over the entire Tesla range, including the Semi. No ramp, just vertical takeoff.
ROADster? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
Elon Barnum.
I don’t like the guy, but he’s a showman, and he’ll still get millions in deposits for something that will never, ever exist, and good for him for getting the blind fools to pay him.
30% of this country still thinks Trump is great. There’s enough Elon fans to let him pay for this 10x over. Shit, the cybertruck, even as a failure, probably floated some projects from the millions he made in interest from deposits alone.
My money is on a fully enabled Optimus pleasure robot in every Model 3 before this moves anywhere beyond vapor. (and not from the cold gas boosters)
I appreciate the connection to P.T. Barnum, but despite Barnum’s real circus and use of humbug (humbug=fraud; i.e. Cardiff Giant), he, unlike Musk, actually had many redeeming qualities.
Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 mostly to vote FOR the constitutional amendments that ended slavery, and which gave former slaves the right to vote.
He also wrote an entire book “The Humbugs of the World (1865)” exposing the typical frauds that were used across many areas of society at that time. “A little reflection will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon — in fact almost universal.”
He also published a book on money making “Art of Money Getting (1880)”, [which unlike certain other “Art of…” books, and the modern tenants of politicians and business (Musk)], contains nuggets of wisdom like “Be polite and kind to your customers”, “Be charitable”, “Preserve your integrity”, and other quaint out-of-fashion recommendations.
Fake news, he clearly stole it from Trump’s Art of the Deal. /s
Can anyone explain how SBW can offer any feedback at all? I mean, I have other questions, but let’s start here.
Aside from the “We made a lunar lander-electric hybrid!” jibba jabba, I think it looks decent as An Car and if they just put a regular electric drivetrain in it and said nothing else, it would sell alright.
yeah i don’t understand why it also needs a “gimmick” to sell. the suction fans are a cool technology and banned in almost every race series after they famously forgot to ban it the first time. but I also can’t help but think about how quickly that must deplete the battery and also what about sand/rocks/pebbles/ plastic shopping bags on the road that get sucked up in the fans??
I don’t see what the big deal is. I saw a 1974 Dodge Monaco perform a similar maneuver in order to evade some Nazis in a Blues-documentary a few years back.
Maybe that’s where Elon got his inspiration from.
underrated comment
The most insane thing is that anyone thinks this will be an actual consumer product.
I’ll be up front, I despise Elon Musk. I think he’s a self-important, selfish, deeply unwell human with views I find reprehensible. He’s not an engineer no matter how much he pretends he is. Nor is he a genius.
That has nothing to do with my feelings on this thing. I would call it stupid if Bugatti claimed they were gonna release something like this. Or Pagani, or Ferrari, or Lamborghini, VW, Toyota, on and on. It’s being presented as an actual car you can buy, and I have my doubts that will ever happen. If this was pitched as “look at this cool shit we can do!” without the empty promise of a legit production version, well that’s just fine with me. But I can’t stand vaporware from anyone or any company. This just feels like another way to boost the stock price.
many (most?) concept cars don’t even have engines in them this one is to the other extreme.
He finally did it, and with compressed air at that. Of course, as an actual product I have the same insane doubts as everybody else, but anything to make BYD jealous is worthwhile to me.
I question the utility, but it tickles my inner (and outer) engineer a lot. The tech and R&D that went into the demo alone is astounding.
Exactly. Remove all of the tech bro baggage and it’s a marvel.
Many of the comments are just purely dismissive of it all because of Elon – fair enough. But let’s not let that blind us to the team that worked on all of the subsystems and packaged it into something that looks like a car, not a lunar lander.
Now, as for what they’ll actually sell… I put my money on a single butt thruster™ and/or side thruster to give a puff to the Youtubers making videos about it, geolocked to known racetracks and proving grounds.
I’ll buy one out of someone’s back yard in 27 years.
When do you think I’ll be able to fit these thrusters to my NA Miata?
I kind of want to make a Cold Gas Thruster setup for one of the vans, arranged at the top corners to prevent rollovers, and hit the Tail of the Dragon extra extra spicily.
It’ll demonstrate that the technology is definitely a thing and not made up for the people who are doubting it. As for concurrently packaging it with everything else they promised, well… let’s just to see what actually goes up for sale.
I would expect you-tubers to add some powdery substance (hint, look to India for inspiration) to the thrusters to add that extra spicy visual element!
Re: the steer by wire, and hedges, etc. I would like it if we could get some kind of OTA update so it can put tech bros backwards into a hedge when the bevy of computers and sensors that run this thing have established no one else will get hurt. That sounds useful, no?
TBH, they could have hired Jon Cena to do the presentation and called it the Matchbox Movie, and nobody would have batted an eyelash.
It would have been nice if they just released a nice, normal, roadster that maybe a lot of people would want to buy. It’s like they didn’t learn anything from the Cybertruck.
Think back to Iron Man 1&2, remember how absolutely intolerable
ElonTony was before he was abducted by the Ten RIngs and almost died of palladium poisoning? I’m not advocating for anything, it’s just Elon loved being compared to Tony Stark…I’m getting more Dr. Doom vibes than Iron Man vibes from Elon these days.
I’m with you, it just didn’t quite fit the bit I was going for…
Maybe he’s going for more a Lex Luther thing?
In the meantime, I’m driving a friend’s Tesla for a few days and it drives me around while I giggle at that ghost picture on the screen, with zombie cars around me and skeletons walking to depict the pedestrians, and I’m a 12 years old, and when I am like that, I hate nobody. How do you like them apples.
It will be a sad time when only the people we hate are still able to laugh because shallow or whatever, while permanent outrage sucks the smiles out of us.
100%
I liked the original design better. This car is a Temu Lambo.
Also, pigs will fly before this car does.
I’m stealing the 2nd line.
“Temu Lambo” really got me, well played Sir.
Everything about this seems OK*
Don’t we all want to be drop kicked through the goalpost of life?
*overdose of ketamine
Live fast die young leave a good looking corpse*
*or a fine smear of red across a flat surface, one of the two
It’s absurdly stupid. A stunt dedicated to the adult babies that clap like weasels before any new Musk toy.