New Tesla Roadster Up Close and Personal

Spaghetti said:
Some versions of the GTR actually did this with it's top speed limiter.

More on topic, I don't get why anyone thinks there will be a 'car' version of this with rockets. The demo is pretty literally a spaceship wrapped in a car-shaped body, not a car. While it's kind of cool as a tech demo, so was the moon lander, that doesn't make it something that anyone will ever drive on a road. It's just like the 'flying cars' we've had for years that were just foldable airplanes, or the 'flying cars' that were car-shaped drones.
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This must be why the latest Fast and Furious movie is delayed... although they did technically launch a car into space a movie or two ago... but hey, maybe that was the inspiration behind Musk's tech demo?

Spaghetti said:
Pairing a 'fan car' with batteries and string electric motors on the other had, does have potential (see the Spierling, the GMA T50, or the Chaparral 2J for a historical example). It's still not useful in the real world because you can't run the fans on a public road, but the performance gains on track are real, at least with a lightweight car. Something with a 'real world' battery range, and the associated weight, it's harder to say.
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Oh, I could imagine this on public roads, pulling a semi-vacuum to allow the car to turn on a dime, think TV show Automan (if you want to age date yourself), and sucking up all the loose gravel and crap on the roads through those fans... oooh that would not last too long at all.
 
Spaghetti said:
Some versions of the GTR actually did this with it's top speed limiter.

More on topic, I don't get why anyone thinks there will be a 'car' version of this with rockets. The demo is pretty literally a spaceship wrapped in a car-shaped body, not a car. While it's kind of cool as a tech demo, so was the moon lander, that doesn't make it something that anyone will ever drive on a road. It's just like the 'flying cars' we've had for years that were just foldable airplanes, or the 'flying cars' that were car-shaped drones. Sure, they can technically drive on a road, but are hugely impractical for it, and can only 'fly' from an airport with a pilots license. Rockets are even less safe than giant spinning propeller blades, and the fuel has to go somewhere.

Pairing a 'fan car' with batteries and string electric motors on the other had, does have potential (see the Spierling, the GMA T50, or the Chaparral 2J for a historical example). It's still not useful in the real world because you can't run the fans on a public road, but the performance gains on track are real, at least with a lightweight car. Something with a 'real world' battery range, and the associated weight, it's harder to say.
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For one, he claims it'll have jets that fire compressed air from a tank. Also, this version has less range due to a smaller battery than the one announced nine years ago, which makes sense if you plan to make this fly. As a track car I feel there are better cars, unless the track is really small and you only have to go around it once?
 
DukenukemX said:
For one, he claims it'll have jets that fire compressed air from a tank. Also, this version has less range due to a smaller battery than the one announced nine years ago, which makes sense if you plan to make this fly. As a track car I feel there are better cars, unless the track is really small and you only have to go around it once?
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My understanding on the range is that he made that promise back then thinking he'd have better batteries but, according to everything I've read, Tesla has kind of slept on the battery thing for a while.
 
Ididar said:
My understanding on the range is that he made that promise back then thinking he'd have better batteries but, according to everything I've read, Tesla has kind of slept on the battery thing for a while.
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The battery in this allows for about 30 minutes all out full power, and charge back up to 85% in 10 minutes. That's great for track driving.
When most people do track driving theyh're doing it in 15 minutes sessions. They aren't doing professional marathon Le Mans type stuff.
For example nurburgring is the longest track and takes about 10 minutes a lap for a novice in a regular car.

The reason for a smaller battery is so they can make it lighter.
 
sharknice said:
The battery in this allows for about 30 minutes all out full power, and charge back up to 85% in 10 minutes. That's great for track driving.
When most people do track driving theyh're doing it in 15 minutes sessions. They aren't doing professional marathon Le Mans type stuff.
For example nurburgring is the longest track and takes about 10 minutes a lap for a novice in a regular car.

The reason for a smaller battery is so they can make it lighter.
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Oh, I get it. They flipped the script on what the car was going to be. It was originally a roadster and instead they made it into a track car because that would make a bigger splash and provide more "cool" videos. Same with the cybertruck and the windows. He is more concerned with doing momentary "wow" stuff with Tesla than he is with putting out solid vehicles. I personally think a long-range roadster would have taken the industry by storm and seriously repaired the reputation of Tesla as a vehicle company. This is just pushing it closer and closer to a SpaceX merger.
 
Ididar said:
He is more concerned with doing momentary "wow" stuff with Tesla than he is with putting out solid vehicles.
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Tesla put electric cars on the map, in part, due to stunts like this.

Brand recognition and presence is important.

Get people to want the cars before making them available is not a bad strategy.

While practical cars like the Bolt faded out, Tesla rose. 🤷

Time will tell though.
 
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SticKx911 said:
Tesla put electric cars on the map, in part, due to stunts like this.

Brand recognition and presence is important.
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Tesla's brand value right now is based on the Model S/X/Y, not on the cybertruck or the flashy roadster presentation. People don't know Tesla just because Elon broke a cybertruck window, they know it because of the charging network and the high number of S/X/Y on the roads. Presentations are "wow and gone" messages. Cars on the road make or break the value of the brand as an automotive badge. Ferrari can make all kinds of wow videos but if they don't deliver the cars on the road so people can see them driving around then they're just as well off making posters instead of cars. Having hundreds of thousands of $100,000 long range roadsters driving around America would send a far stronger long-term message than a video stunt ... if your goal is automotive. As I claim, though, his goal isn't automotive at all. I think he's largely bored with Tesla and just wants to focus all his efforts on AI and Rockets. The rockets were more about bragging about SpaceX than anything else.
 
Ididar said:
Tesla's brand value right now is based on the Model S/X/Y, not on the cybertruck or the flashy roadster presentation. People don't know Tesla just because Elon broke a cybertruck window, they know it because of the charging network and the high number of S/X/Y on the roads. Presentations are "wow and gone" messages. Cars on the road make or break the value of the brand as an automotive badge. Ferrari can make all kinds of wow videos but if they don't deliver the cars on the road so people can see them driving around then they're just as well off making posters instead of cars. Having hundreds of thousands of $100,000 long range roadsters driving around America would send a far stronger long-term message than a video stunt ... if your goal is automotive. As I claim, though, his goal isn't automotive at all. I think he's largely bored with Tesla and just wants to focus all his efforts on AI and Rockets. The rockets were more about bragging about SpaceX than anything else.
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I agree, it was a good demo of their propulsion and controls technology, and "hey we got a roadster!" too. Anybody in that line of business was taking notes, for sure.

Edit: that said, it was also a good demo of the vacuum tech, although we don't know how effective it actually is without weight numbers and actual track testing.
 
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Ididar said:
My understanding on the range is that he made that promise back then thinking he'd have better batteries but, according to everything I've read, Tesla has kind of slept on the battery thing for a while.
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Except there are a lot of electric cars that have higher range than the new Roadster. It's likely meant to keep the car light as possible.
 
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