Tesla's new Roadster makes a flying debut, hitting 60 MPH in under a second

68 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by nsoonhui
(foxbusiness.com)

116 Comments

CommieBobDole

5 hours ago

So this is a really neat technical demo, using spacecraft cold-gas thrusters and guidance hardware/software to do crazy stunt stuff in a car, but what's the relevance to an actual product that can be sold, even as a small-volume exotic? These are pressurized gas thrusters, so either the tanks, valves, and piping take up most of the interior of the car, or it has a low-single-digit number of seconds of thrust before recharge, probably both. Also the tanks for these things tend to use incredibly high pressures and are apt to explode spectacularly in any sort of accident.

This is sort of like demonstrating a car that softens the asphalt in front of it with lasers to get a better grip; difficult, technically impressive, and zero chance that it will ever be allowed on a public road.

Edit: According to this Motor Trend article, it uses a big carbon-fiber pressure vessel at 5500psi, so basically an enormous fragile bomb. And the one that did all the stunts had two of the pressure vessels which would have filled most of the interior.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-roadster-thrust-system...

jameskilton

5 hours ago

Well, yeah. The full thruster version only seats one, and is invite only for purchase, and is not street legal.

andor

5 hours ago

I'm wondering if it could even be sold to individuals given that the thrusters probably count as restricted military technology?

m463

4 hours ago

> a big carbon-fiber pressure vessel at 5500psi

Other cars have these tanks, but full of flammable fuel, not just air.

Off the top of my head, the honda civic CNG (3600 psi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_GX#Specifications

the toyota marai (10,000 psi hydrogen)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#High-pressure_hyd...

and probably the other cng or hydrogen cars.

bamboozled

3 hours ago

I thought carbon fiber wasn't good with pressure, hence OceanGate Titan implosion

xnx

3 hours ago

Different forces: expansive (Roadster) vs compressive (OceanGate). This makes some logical sense since fibers/strands/ropes are good for tensile strength vs. compressive forces.

TiredOfLife

an hour ago

Professor Farnsworth: "Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure!"

Fry: "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"

Professor Farnsworth: "Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one."

akudha

5 hours ago

Why do car manufacturers brag about hitting 60 mph in 1, 2 or whatever seconds? For a normal person, does this really matter - what is the big deal if a car hits 60 mph in 5 seconds instead of 1? There are more important things like safety, repairability, longevity etc right?

dghlsakjg

5 hours ago

It’s standard measure of acceleration. If you are going to sell a car on performance (like say… a sporty roadster), it’s a great metric.

People in the market for a car like this care far more about performance than they do safety, repairability or longevity.

That’s why performance oriented cars talk about their acceleration, and minivans talk about safety, and pickup trucks talk about longevity. Their target market determines which of the various metrics are going to be the headline.

andrewchilds

5 hours ago

Not to mention top speed. The US should have a federal or at least NY/CA state law that modern cars be electronically limited to 112 mph, as it is in Japan. There is no valid reason for a street legal passenger car to be travelling faster than that.

searedsteak

an hour ago

I live in Germany, and routinely drive faster than that. With good roads and reasonably trained drivers this isn't an issue

zulux

4 hours ago

I take my road car to racing events (SCCA) and get above 112 routinely.

I think Nissan had a workaround I could live with: GPS fencing around known tracks would activate/deactivate the speed governor.

m463

4 hours ago

Cool, just bring a gps jammer to point at the guy behind you on the straight.

weird-eye-issue

5 hours ago

It's just one stat and it makes for a good headline. Obviously those other things are important but they don't exactly fit into a headline. Oh and some people like fast cars. Why is that so confusing?

user

5 hours ago

[deleted]

randysalami

5 hours ago

You answered your own question in your very second sentence. “For a normal person”. The modern economy increasingly does not cater to the “normal person” and they prove this constantly. Granted “normal people” stopped existing a long time ago. You have poor people, soon to be poor people, and people who think they will soon be rich but will really soon be poor. Of course then you have the rest but they are not people.

m463

3 hours ago

> The modern economy increasingly does not cater to the “normal person”

Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?

If you're a "normal person" you don't need a 8000dpi mouse with RGB, or a Louis Vuitton purse, or a large big mac meal.

This is not poverty it is prosperity.

csa

2 hours ago

> Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?

Sure.

I think the poster you are replying to is trying to say that the “k-shaped” economy is incentivizing the market to cater only to the high end and simply ignoring the low end.

A few businesses I own are dealing with this issue now. It’s just much more profitable and logistically easier for them to charge what seems like an absurd price, justify it with some inexpensive “white-glove” service, and just ignore the rest of the market.

On the one hand, this is a tribute to modern marketing that high value-add products and services can match with customers more efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential to create a bizarre “race to the top” such that only suckers will cater to anything other than the top 1% of their target market (in terms of wealth / willingness and capacity to pay).

Where I currently live, this is happening with frightening efficiency with health care. Almost all of the “good” PCP doctors are going concierge, and the concierge prices are increasing at a rapid clip.

randysalami

an hour ago

Normal person as in position in economic distribution, not normal as in not quirky or strange. Lots of quirky people all across the spectrum.

But to be clear, in my example products aren’t the only thing to which the economy doesn’t cater to normal people for (lower-middle class but increasingly middle and lower class). War, corruption, and genocide are all bad for the average person. Generally things that funnel money into hurting or enriching individuals. Both of these are inefficient and the inefficient use of resources, is hurtful to normal people. E.g. enriching an oligarch to build roads could be twice as much road if he takes a 50 percent cut. And the money sitting with him does harm, oppresses people. Food for thought.

judge2020

5 hours ago

For the Roadster, it's a supercar. None of those things matter much.

For something like the performance versions of their high-volume vehicles, it's partially for the same reasons people like sports cars, or at least how some people like a sports car that is faster / quicker and gives them more excitement while driving (obviously a lot of the appeal for sports cars otherwise is the sporty look/sound of the engine, which Tesla doesn't really deliver on at all).

zen_kernal

5 hours ago

People are interested in speed performance. What other measure should we use?

gambiting

5 hours ago

As someone who has had a Mercedes AMG that could do 0-60s in less than 4s for a few years, it just gets boring so fast, and it makes you question why you bought the thing in the first place. It's unusable in almost every situation on the road, except for the rare "opportunity" when you stop at traffic lights next to a Golf R and yes turns out you have a bigger.....turbo.....than them. Well done, that 5 second ego boost was really worth all the money and looking like a dick to anyone above the age of 25.

Nowadays as a "petrol head" when I look at stats I want to see weight - as little of it as possible. Horsepower needs to begin with 2, maybe with 3 in some cars, any more than that and it's silly. I want reviewers to say the car puts a smile on their face driving it to work every day, not doing 160mph on the race track. And of course, high speed is "fun" - one of my favourite memories is driving at 158mph past Berlin at 4am - incredible. But the modern obsession with horsepower and 0-60 is...just stupid. Fast 0-60 time does not make for a fun or an engaging car. It just makes it fast.

dingaling

5 hours ago

" It's unusable in almost every situation on the road"

Yet it's a useful, comparable, measure for acceleration and is frequently exercised on track. If you had an AMG and haven't taken it for at least one track day then I question why you bought it. Image?

Maybe 30-70 would be more useful for determining overtaking capability, but that would require everyone in the motoring industry to agree to change at the same time.

gambiting

4 hours ago

>>If you had an AMG and haven't taken it for at least one track day then I question why you bought it.

Oh I have, and it was awesome. But 99% of the time I drove it to work and back, sitting in traffic, thinking to myself I'd much much much rather be in something more comfortable, more quiet, something that isn't using quite so much fuel just sitting there and something that didn't require new tyres every 8000 miles.

Like yes, speed is awesome - fast acceleration is cool. But the obsession with it is destroying the industry - like, it's so clear that a lighter Lamborghini with 400bhp would be a lot more fun to drive than a 2 tonne one with 1000 horsepower, no? Even if the latter does pretty good on the race track. But because everyone only cares about 0-60 times and horsepower we are where we are.

oliwarner

3 hours ago

I'm sure the roads I drive must be different from yours, but when I started driving a Tesla in traffic, it felt like you can just teleport into spaces. The threshold for being able to overtake and pull into traffic without obstructing is so much lower.

Of course, it's also less safe. But the threat of a quick death in a lithium fire is the only reason some of us get up in the morning.

jubilee33

5 hours ago

Your just getting old, I mean I agree with u but I'm also old,

Most young boys have the Lamborghini poster on the wall even if it actually sucks to drive, especially the iconic Countach, I find pure joy in driving my old beetle now, or the past weekend a friends 1957 MGA, horrible safety, tiny engines, zero comforts, not even a radio, just a pure carthat can't even be sold anymore, but there will never be a better driving experience than an proper ancient British roadster.

dreamcompiler

4 hours ago

Speaking for myself I love the quick acceleration of electric cars because it enables you to safely pass other cars quickly on two-lane roads without needing to linger in the oncoming lane.

NordStreamYacht

5 hours ago

The more powerful the motor, the better the brakes and safety features.

I hope.

m463

3 hours ago

lol.

I think of F-150s that have quickly climbed over 400hp and can pull a giant trailer... but I don't think the brakes and suspension match.

(f-250 or f-350 might be more balanced when pulling those 30'+ trailers)

wat10000

5 hours ago

This is a sports car with a deposit that costs more than an ordinary new car, and with a price that would probably buy you a decent house. Nothing about this is meant for a normal person.

fg137

5 hours ago

It's one thing they can brag about, you know. Dumbing everything down to a single number, regardless of whether it's meaningful, feels impressive.

The vast majority of LLM users -- not the average person here on HN -- doesn't know which "model" they are using, can't tell the difference and don't care, including many software engineers. You could ask the same thing about those LLM benchmarks.

FrustratedMonky

5 hours ago

Bruh. Chicks man. Chicks dig fast cars.

4ggr0

5 hours ago

as with lots of muscles, it's actually the dudes who care about this the most :D get hugely muscular, buy a nice sports car and dudes will absolutely love you.

m463

3 hours ago

You remind me of a friend who bought a nice sportbike. He thought he would attract lots of women.

He complained to me "I keep getting guys coming over to talk about the bike"

4ggr0

3 hours ago

yup! got a sports bike as well, same experience. actually the biggest fans of my bike are boys between ~3-15 years of age. smiling, pointing at me, telling me to rev or do a wheelie :D

andor

4 hours ago

Haha, that's exactly the reaction you could hear from the crowd in the demo video. Made for bros by tech bros.

lgl

6 hours ago

Tesla Roadster vaporware edition MK2: now with actual vapor!

romaaeterna

6 hours ago

Amazing tech demo. I would have liked to see more discussion of the cold-gas thrusters in the earlier Hacker News article. Some people seemed confused and made claims that the demo was a separate "rocket" version that used a combustion technology.

judge2020

5 hours ago

Well it is a separate rocket version, it just doesn't take jet fuel. "Invite only" for the rocket version means probably less than 5 will ever be made, if that.

romaaeterna

5 hours ago

I strongly suspect that the invite-only version is the tech that was described in the demo, and differs from the $250K version by the size of the air tank and compression motor.

sandworm101

6 hours ago

Cold gas or not, these are still rocket motors.

romaaeterna

5 hours ago

Without fuel or an oxidizer or combustion? Not really. It's compressed air, like an air rifle.

andor

4 hours ago

Motors don't need combustion, they just need to provide power. See electric motors or compressed air engines.

sandworm101

4 hours ago

I doubt it is actual air. When compressing gas to 10,000+ psi and then running it through a rocket motor, clean/dry nitrogen is the way to go. Normal air has moisture, which can form ice, and oxygen which gets extremely reactive when heated.

And many a rocket scientist would be insulted by the comparison of a nozzled rocket motor to the simple pipe of an air rifle.

TheOtherHobbes

5 hours ago

It takes genius to take rocket motors and cover them in cringe.

birdland

5 hours ago

Looks like more hype nonsense to keep excitement going while continuing to delay actually delivering a real product.

jgalt212

5 hours ago

I agree. I remember as a kid getting so excited for Detroit concept cars that never hit the market. Now, unless something is actually for sale, I basically ignore it.

ivanjermakov

6 hours ago

Original roadster is one of the best looking car designs for my taste. This... subdivision modifier over the Cybertruck.

selectodude

5 hours ago

Makes sense, it was a Lotus Elise.

raxxorraxor

5 hours ago

With a weird horizontal loop cut.

dralley

5 hours ago

It's just a Lotus body, though I agree that Lotus cars are pretty

oniony

6 hours ago

All they were missing was the shark.

mittensc

6 hours ago

is it me or does it just look ugly?, was expecting the original roadster looks...

kec

5 hours ago

The original roadster was a Lotus Elise, all Tesla did was swap in an electric drivetrain.

Tesla has never really shown they can design anything compelling that doesn’t look like a lumpy shoe.

judge2020

5 hours ago

I think OP means the one they revealed 8/9 years ago, which still had a less-boxy supercar look.

mittensc

4 minutes ago

both are much nicer then what was shown but perhaps taste changes and I'm old

ftchd

an hour ago

Maybe they meant the original v2 Roadster

touwer

5 hours ago

What??!? You don't like the design of the cybertruck?

causesothere

5 hours ago

Tesla has been in the business of ugly cars for some time.

spiritplumber

5 hours ago

one seat, designed by and for the most friendless man in the world.

alexaholic

4 hours ago

I no longer like Elon and Tesla but, damn, that's a great looking Lamborghini, and a cool stunt to launch it!

bamboozled

3 hours ago

Nice way to insult Lamborghini ?

m000

5 hours ago

With such a powerful suction system, I can see this replacing street-sweeping trucks in a few years.

raxxorraxor

5 hours ago

I you sweep up an hedgehog, will it be thrown out through the exhaust?

red75prime

4 hours ago

Sure, you'll get a finely chopped hedgehog [1] (the video doesn't depict any animals, it shows roadster suction fans). Things happen. With a conventional car you can get a tendered deer.

[1] https://youtu.be/_lq-DpCE9rU?t=1011

m000

5 hours ago

Or a banana. Mario Kart suddenly starts making sense.

mingus88

4 hours ago

So where is FSD that has been promised since 2017?

Cool stunt car though

andyjohnson0

5 hours ago

Nobody needs that kind of acceleration on a car designed for use on public roads, and anyone who uses that capability in the vicinity of other people or vehicles deserves to be arrested. Its just criminally dangerous.

Like the Cybertruck, this is just the Musk "fuck you, get out of my way" worldview realised as metal and plastic.

zen_kernal

5 hours ago

Totally thought this was AI when I first saw this.

Arainach

5 hours ago

> An invite-only "Rocket" variant is a single-seat model with a "full flight system."

Tesla should be sued into oblivion over "full self driving", but after that, if you believe this nonsense and buy one that's on you.

nailer

5 hours ago

Why? I’ve sat in a self driving Tesla, with the attendant’s body rotated towards me while we chatted in Florida. What specifically is wrong?

Rohansi

4 hours ago

What's wrong is all of the older models they sold do not have what you experienced. They were sold FSD but their car's hardware can't run the latest software, and the older implementations required much more babysitting (aka not FSD).

nailer

3 hours ago

Got it - thanks for answering.

throwaway85825

5 hours ago

This is going to be the next oceangate and I fully support it.

pluc

8 hours ago

Awesome, another technology we want to implement before we have the infrastructure to support it.

harlequinetcie

6 hours ago

Exactly this... Which city will allow for a car they cannot chase with a patrol?

It would have been much better if it was a skateboard, tbh.

raxxorraxor

5 hours ago

Not from the US, but I don't see political pushback on rocket launchers for police cars.

jansan

6 hours ago

It is not a roadster. A roadster is defined as an open-air, two-seat convertible.

This one is a hard-top super-coupe and I recommend calling it the "Cyberwedge"

m463

3 hours ago

i thought the top came off?

shadowtree

5 hours ago

Can we get the original Dropbox hater guy to comment here too?

What has HN become - just endless anti-tech hate, downstream from idiotic TikTok politics.

Is it the moderation system that amplifies this nonsense here?

If those cold-air thrusters are getting commoditized, the real discussion here should be around what could be built around them. How to HACK them.

Reddit exists for this other nonsense pile on.

throwaway85825

5 hours ago

I'll bite. What do you see as applications of for commodity cold gas thrusters? Excluding rockets.

shadowtree

4 hours ago

Rapid adjustment of drone flighpaths with micro-thrusts? Getting interceptors out of tubes faster without explosions/temps/fumes? Anything where rocket propellant, heat is a problem?

Breaking, emergency braking in trucks? Kind of like reverse thrust in airplanes.

mvdwoord

5 hours ago

More important to signal that they think Elon is a nazi, apparently.

orwin

4 hours ago

(i do not think he's a nazi, I think he is an edge lord who dogwhistle to Nazis to look 'cool'. Which honestly is fine for a teenager influencer, but should stop once you're 25)

sidibe

5 hours ago

> just endless anti-tech hate, downstream from idiotic TikTok politics.

The hate and politics obsession of the people you're complaining about on here pales in comparison to the guy doing this presentation. He is doing it 24/7 I'm not even sure he sleeps he is so engaged in it.

kakacik

5 hours ago

[flagged]

sidibe

5 hours ago

Why is this all so political? Why can't you meanies just maintain my priors that this man is personally engineering the coolest tech and saving humanity despite all evidence he is an idiot and hates people? I am going to find a forum where I'm not subject to this

FrustratedMonky

5 hours ago

Was this real? I thought some wires were visible?

FrustratedMonky

2 hours ago

Re-watching it, the wires are on the ramp. Part of the support of the loop.

shilgapira

5 hours ago

Really disappointing to see such low quality discussion here. Feasibility aside, we would not be seeing such reactions even 5 years ago. Polarization ruins everything.

BugsJustFindMe

5 hours ago

> we would not be seeing such reactions even 5 years ago

5 years of broken promises and actively fighting to make the world worse will do a lot to opinions.

xnx

3 hours ago

The main polarization with Tesla is between fantasy and reality.

wat10000

5 hours ago

Why blame this on “polarization” and not on the guy who did the polarizing? Nobody forced Elon to do all that stupid shit that got so many people hating on him. He did it if his own free will. He ruined it.

cbeach

4 hours ago

If you don’t like his politics and lean into that difference in opinions to criticise something orthogonal, like his technical innovation, then it’s YOU that is being divisive and partisan.

wat10000

4 hours ago

Why is it my responsibility to carefully compartmentalize every aspect of someone no matter how loud and outrageous they are, and not their responsibility to stop being a colossal asshole in public? He gets to publicly disown his children and support proto-fascist political parties and call people pedophiles for displeasing him, but we are the ones who have to carefully manage our feelings so we don’t accidentally let them spill over? Nuts to that.

cbeach

4 hours ago

You think he's being terrible in public. I don't, and I'm not alone. The way certain people judge his actions is quite obviously partisan and a subject of great emotional overreaction. Those exaggerated, sensationalised negative traits you described (which were fed to you by a leftwing media with vested interests) actually have zero effect on your life - so you are simply choosing to be offended by them.

If, instead, you had a grounded, balanced opinion about the man, you'd understand the great good he's delivered, and continues to deliver for the world, from Tesla (making electric cars desirable and mass-market) to Neuralink (making viable brain computer interfaces to give heavily disabled people back their lives), to SpaceX (giving humanity hope for a brighter, more exciting future in space, as governments once did, but have since failed to do).

wat10000

an hour ago

Right, it’s all the “leftwing media’s” fault. I got those things straight from him, dude. Here’s him calling a rescuer a pedophile, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20180715143426/https://twitter.c...

(I assume your instinct will be to defend him because said rescuer was mean first. Don’t bother, as you can see I am well aware and it doesn’t change my opinion.)

I can totally understand if you think the good outweighs the bad. I tend that way myself: I own two Teslas and I eagerly watch every Starship launch. But I also think Musk has shown himself to be a real piece of shit. A real piece of shit who has done some great stuff, but that doesn’t negate it.

_DeadFred_

3 hours ago

'Why you judging on the nazi salutes at a political rally bro? Let him be him without making it political. Try to be more grounded/balanced. It's not like after that he took political positions and made choices that killed people on a mass scale. Rocket people just tend to like nazi salutes and to act like nazis. You need to just chill/be grounded'

ryandvm

5 hours ago

Is this polarization or is this just people finally figuring out the grift after 10 years of "we'll be on Mars in 2 years"?

cbeach

4 hours ago

Name a single person on Earth who has got us closer to Mars than Musk.

kec

4 hours ago

Well, NASA has conducted surface operations on mars 5 times without any involvement from Musk, the CNSA has gone once....

What has Musk actually done to get us closer other than talk about how humanity ought to do it?

cbeach

4 hours ago

Musk built the first rocket capable of transporting a base, and humans, to Mars. NASA has nothing close to Starship, and if they ever did, it would come at a trillion-dollar cost to the American taxpayer.

kec

3 hours ago

NASA is currently the only organization to ever take humans beyond LEO.

Starship has only even achieved LEO once, in an unmanned mission a few weeks ago. Starship has so far cost about $15 Billion, the entire Saturn V launch program (excluding Apollo, to keep things apples-apples here) cost about $35 Billion in today's dollars.

hawaiijoe

5 hours ago

Greatest American company run by an African American ever.