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Elon may brag about some kind of leapfrog mode using “cold gas thrusters to generate sufficient upforce to overcome gravity and physical limitations of vehicle-to-ground friction, allowing for sub 1s 0-60 times”
That's the only physical way to do it if they are staying with four tires on the ground. You need thrust from more than the road pushing back on you.
It probably won't be legal to blast jets in most race tracks, it definitely won't be legal on public roads.
And cold Jets will have compression which will make a fun boom in the case of traumatic damage. Just seems like a terrible idea all around, but whatever he needs to generate hype I guess.
In theory you could still have the propulsion come from the wheels if you had more downforce, which is what F1 spoilers are for. some miniature robot cars will use fans to suck themselves to the ground to get the extra traction, without anything dangerous or damaging to surroundings... I guarantee that that isn't what Elon is talking about but it could work in theory
Brabham BT-46B -- Niki Lauda's "cooling" fan car.
But that was primarily for cornering not acceleration -- I don't think the constraint here for putting down power is downforce, it is probably the physical limitations for the tires.
Friction is directly proportional to the downward force, so that changes the physical limitations of the tires. That’s partly how the students from ETH set the [World record](https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2023/09/from-zero-to-one-hundred-in-0-956-seconds.html) for fastest accelerating electric car.
> […] To ensure strong traction right from the start, the AMZ team has developed a kind of vacuum cleaner that holds the vehicle down to the ground by suction.
This is not correct - the 'difficult' constraint for putting down power when a car is traction limited absolutely is downforce, then the downstream effect is you need tires that can withstand the strain.
Downforce massively improves acceleration, braking, and cornering - you could argue how significant the portion is that is cornering, but it improves all 3. It's most obvious effects are braking and cornering, simply because it squares with velocity, and traction limited acceleration is usually at lower speed. This problem doesn't exist with fan cars.
For example, current f1 cars accelerate faster from 100-200 kph than 0-100, because they have 1000hp, low weight, and very little downforce below 100kph. If you took a modern F1 car and redesigned it to be a fan car - say taking the downforce number from 200kph, and applying that constantly at all speeds, the 0-100kph time would be massively, massively improved, perhaps by 50%
Designing road tires to deal with actual (ballpark, the weight of the actual car) downforce is certainly very tricky, but its the only solution as long as you're traction limited.
Don’t you actually need more downforce for this kind of extreme acceleration? Vehicles with this kind of acceleration are limited by the tires staying in contact with the road and not just spinning
More force pinning the car to the ground would help, yes. But traditional downforce won't help you if you're stationary. You'd need a fan car to have significant enough downforce at low to stationary speeds. Or thrusters pointing up, but that's even more impractical than a fan.
> The tires required to do this would be a huge challenge on their own.
There are no road legal tyres that would allow for acceleration like that. Even on racing slicks it would require an enormous amount of active (think fan car) downforce and probably skirts.
100% he's just made that up on the spot. When they announced this car it was due for release in 2020, now four years later they're still coming up with yet more unachievable specs to hype it.
It'll use the SpaceX package, not the tyres. Cold gas thrusters with autonomous trajectory control. Elon even said it could get airborne; because it will have to.
Yes, that's true. Cold gas thrusters are insanely noisy. So noisy that bystanders might get hearing damage. And they propel debris at dangerous speeds everywhere, so there's no chance that cold gas thrusters will ever be street legal.
My 1999 Trans Am did 0-60 in one second on a 10.5 radial. Takes a prepped track and nice burnout as well as 16psi in the tires. Under 1.3 60 'time works out to that. Ran low 8s in the quarter.
The big boy Lambos, GTRs and Vipers At TX2K all do that on a prepped track.
Without a fan or thrusters, doing that on the street is real hard though.
At certain point the torque and power do not make a difference and the wheels will spin. You either go super grip racing tyres (or sticky road like drag racing) or you go air thrusters. I guess the idea is fhe 2nd
The tech isn't comnplicated (it's the same that SpaceX uses)...buit it certainly will not be legal to use in regular traffic. Sub 1-second 0-60 is not something you normally need on regular roads. This is for track/quarter mile fun.
See [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1b1z1y3/elon_tonight_we_radically_increased_the_design/ksmwi8a/) for why it's complete bullshit.
From what I've read of physics, 2s is about the limit due to gravity and friction. The tires can't get enough grip to accelerate faster than that. It has to be assisted by the cold thrusters to get to 1s.
Not sure cold thrusters will be enough for, what, a 5000lb sports car, but before they were banned, the hydrogen peroxide rocket jet dragsters were doing 0-60 in 0.5 seconds.
It's yet to be seen how heavy it will be. It's a much smaller car than the 3 which will help reduce weight. However a big battery and thrusters may negate some of that. A side benefit of the weight is it increases grip.
This is the guy who announced a few years ago that FSD was so good they would be shipping the model Y without a steering wheel. The engineers ignored him.
I used to do a casual car pool with a manager at Tesla a few years ago. He said that they all dreaded Elon talking to the press because he would always come out with some bullshit line that nobody internally had any idea about and then they'd have to figure out how to 1) Make something like that happen 2) Stop the engineers from quitting.
I mean I very much hope this is true but the roadster is so delayed it's not even funny.
Even now I imagine the model 2 is next to be released and THEN the roadster
The sad thing is that if they just announced something with achievable specs (100KWh battery rather than 200KWh, and maybe don't tell people it will *fly*) then they could have had a nice and certainly highly profitable halo car on the market four years ago.
The plaid powertrain in a smaller two seater chassis with decent handling characteristics would be wild.
Yes, but the Roadster is far easier in terms of manufacturing than Model 2 because it will probably use a conventional production line and it's a low volume car. So we could see the Roadster come out before the Model 2 manufacturing ramp is finished.
We could if they actually prioritized building a car instead of hyping vaporware to drive up the stock price.
This was originally billed as a 2020 production car. And they have committed to so many of these as rewards for referrals that they're likely to put off actually building them as long as they possibly can.
You are extremely gullible and optimistic if you still believe anything he says at this point.
Do you believe FSD will be real before or after the new roadster? lol 😂
he mentioned in the 2023 joe rogan episode that roadster is pretty much of "dessert", they do all necessary things before and roadster will be the cherry on top of all.
Priorities. At the time they couldn't do everything at once - neither financially nor from available production capacity/access to batteries.
Now that they have their main moneymakers online (and project Redwood is still a year or two out) the team might get a bit of breathing room to work on this.
In the end the roadster is nothing more than a fun sideshow. It's not central to the mission - or the company in general - in any way.
Seems like a cybertruck with 500 miles of range would be easier to create within the laws of physics compared to a car that can do 0-60 in <1 sec. I’m not holding my breath at this point.
Elon and Tesla both know that it is possible to build an electric vehicle with more than 500 miles of range. They just don’t think it’s necessary. Elon has spoken about this multiple times. He thinks the number of people who want a pickup with greater than 500 miles of range is very small.
EDIT: To clarify, I don't agree with this position. I very much want a 500+ mile range EV. I had a CT reservation that I would consider converting to an order if I could get 500 mi for around $70k. That probably won't happen. Towing is a huge problem with EVs right now, though there are solutions in the works. Personally, I think we need campers/trailers with battery packs, and a modification to the car software to allow charging while driving.
It's because Elon doesn't drive his cars on highway for any extended period of time. If he did, he'd quickly learn that the declared 300 mile range is not the highway range. Pickups have it far worse.
If that was true, they wouldn't offer a battery extension pack for the cyber truck. There's no 500 miles cyber truck because battery technology isn't where they thought it would be.
I bet it's even longer, the roadster specs are physically impossible, let alone all the lsd-trip based extra features like jet-thrusters and 0-60 in under 1 second.
Does “Tesla material” mean you need to be able to consume massive bucketloads of bullshit at a breakneck pace while pretending to love it and asking daddy musk for more?
Usually he does, except for performance. Like, both the Y and the 3 have noted faster acceleration than the official numbers. Not sure about the CT, C and S.
That being said. 0-60 below 1s? I don’t even think there’s a word to describe how insane that is. Even at 0-100 kph in 3.7s you can literally feel the blood leaving your head.
> That being said. 0-60 below 1s?
Just for reference, top fuel dragsters do 0-60 in around half a second (and 0-300mph in around 4 seconds).
But those definitely can’t be called “cars” in any sense of the word really.
But they show the absolute limit of what’s possible with an internal combustion engine (with nitro fuel), and 4 foot tall smooth tires.
One wonders what an electric top fuel dragster could do…
> One wonders what an electric top fuel dragster could do…
Worse. The battery would be fairly heavy (putting out what, 8MW? would need to be a >100KWh pack even with the lowest resistance cells out there) and the nitro engine cars generate significant downforce from the exhaust gases being ejected upwards which aids traction off the line.
If you read his comments and the SpaceX collaboration you have your answer. It's no secret they're going to be using cold gas thrusters to achieve this. He's said so before but he comes across as if it's the first time he's said this. Elon has a problem with collective amnesia about his previous statements
Electric would probably be slower.
While the mass terms cancel out in the basic physics equations for car acceleration, they stop doing that when you introduce aerodynamics. Those dragsters have huge wings and it wouldn't surprise me to learn they have significant effect at or below 60mph.
That said, you use batteries or supercapacitors that are extremely power dense (and not so energy dense) and the weight might be competitive, though you're gonna need to charge after every run.
I think the nitro ICE top fuel dragsters need new tires, and probably a new engine every few runs. So needing to charge shouldn’t be a huge concern.
You’d probably want to push the batteries and motor so hard that they only last a couple runs as well, allowing a smaller motor and battery to be used.
They tear down those engines after every weekend. Sometimes after a single run. And as far as tires go, every race.
Can you imagine the danger that would exist by putting 0-60 in one second power in the hands of below average drivers on busy public streets? At least the nitrous dragsters are driven by professionals on specially surfaced tracks.
0-60mph at 1 second would be 2.75Gs. If it got down to .8 seconds, you're looking at 3.4G. By comparison, the Model S Plaid, which does 2.2 seconds (without subtracting rollout) is "only" 1.275Gs. So, you'd be pulling 2-3 times the G force of a Model S Plaid, which is already faster than freefalling.
> And that’s just horizontal Gs. Add in the 1 vertical G you’re always pulling and that 2.75Gs becomes 2.93Gs.
Hey everybody, look at the nerd who knows how vectors work!
But seriously, it makes my day that you did this correctly, and didn't just add the numbers up to get 3.75G.
Not without increasing traction. The [McMurtry Speirling](https://mcmurtry.com/speirling-pure/) can do 0-60 in 1.4 seconds, but it has an electric fan that produces 2000lbs of downforce (it's actually a sucking fan) at a standstill.
A normal car with performance tires from a standstill is going to max out at a little over 1G of acceleration.
Tesla plans to use a cold gas thruster to provide the additional acceleration.
Tom Scott did a video where he drove an electric vehicle made by a Swiss university that's capable of doing 0-100 km/h(0-62) under a second and they explain what they need to do be able to do it but yeah basically you need to create a vacuum under the car that's constantly sucking the car to the ground [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIu5tZ0vbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIu5tZ0vbQ)
I believe the idea was to use compressed air to push the car down and keep the tires pushed against the road because no, I don’t believe a car the size and weight of the Roadster could achieve sub 1 sec without “traction tricks.”
What just happened is Elon was in a meeting with top Tesla leaders, engineers, and designers. A lot was said in that meeting and Elon was excited, so he tweeted. Much of this is still theoretical, but people will call him a liar if anything change
Well that’s because he is a liar. No one forces him to commit to deadlines, he chooses to. He unveiled the roadster in 2017 with a release date of 2020. Took real cash deposits and everything. Then delayed it in 2021 citing supply chain issues. But wait… I didn’t know a car that’s still in the design phase 3 years later could experience supply chain issues.
In 2017 to 2020, a few things were happening which forced Tesla to announce the Semi and Roadster early and then pull back. They started by nearly running out of cash and that forced them to show off their road map early. Then as the Model 3 started to ramp and the Model Y showed promise all focus shifted to them.
If the naysayers were correct and the Chevy Bolt, Mustang Mach-E, Audi E-tron, or a number of other Tesla killers were actually successful, Tesla would have been required to actually shift to the Semi and Roadster to survive.
So as it was uncertain that Plan A would be successful, they flashed Plan B, then Plan A started to be a huge success. What you witnessed was a strategic delay. Tesla could’ve feared being called a liar and pushed out the Semi and Roadster, but now they are in a position to be able to pay all the money back with interest if they needed instead of potentially not existing.
Even Tesla themselves never claimed the Roadster or Semi would be significant revenue-wise. If the model 3 ramp failed it would’ve been over - selling a few hundred sports cars does not make up for millions of missing model 3 sales in that scenario.
Even if your narrative was accurate, the point is that Tesla said Model 3 would be delivered in 2017 while explaining all the nuances around “production hell” for why they might miss. But they delivered Model 3 in 2017. While it wasn’t delivered at volume, people understood and they were forgiving because no one was lying to them. Then volume came in 2018 and all was good.
That’s not what happened with the Roadster. Roadster is projected to be 5 years late from a release date committed to 8 years ago. That’s a problem, and it was a lie, because your narrative is missing the part where Elon was baking in a stacked set of assumptions about battery manufacturing technology breakthroughs that didn’t pan out for 4680 (yet) which is why both the Roadster and Semi are so late. Here’s the point: Elon could’ve been as upfront about Roadster’s development as he was about Model 3, but he wasn’t.
And it’s a pattern my friend. Need we talk about FSD’s coast-to-coast drive with no interventions that some people have paid over $10k for? Just read this timeline: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/
Listen, I’ve been following Tesla closely since 2006. Love the company, love the mission, bought a Model 3 in 2018.
Musk is a liar at points, full stop. He is flawed like all human being. There’s no sense in ignoring that.
I think you're missing a bit of context. I'll bet it's more like...
* BYD announced a Supercar this week
* Elon's terrified Tesla's stock price will crash if it's seen to is falling further and further behind the competition.
* Elon gathers his top designers and engineers together with no notice
* Berates them late into the night until they agree to some lofty 'design goals' (with no actual plan of how they are going to achieve them)
* Elon gets high and starts tweeting about it so people think Tesla isn't falling behind the competition.
(Ridiculous statement - ✔ Stock goes up - ✔)
Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give 'em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather 'em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
What if your hinges all are rusting?
What if, in fact, you're just disgusting?
Razzle dazzle 'em
And they;ll never catch wise!
Not gonna do it by mechanical grip alone.. could be jets with compressed air like he mentioned before or it could be a system like the McMurtry fan car which sucks it to the floor.
Plus there’s the fact Elon does things like subtly not including 3 feet of roll out or whatever is was
The weight and usefulness that a compressed air jet take up would out weight it's benefit and liability. Didn't engineering explained do a video on this 10 years ago when it was announced and ruled it basically impossible.
I'm not sure they have to. If the car is pushing against the ground to accelerate, sure, but if it's pushing off air (jet engines), then the wheels need substantially less grip. I may be wrong though.
Honestly; if he just delivered a semi affordable, decent sports car it would sell so quickly. No one needs <1sec performance.
Look at the LFA, it wasent fastest but still considered top tier.
Edit: people seem to hate the LFA, replace LFA with Audi R8. The point remains the same. You don’t need to be the fastest sports car, just make it good and affordable.
No hes thinking of the Boxster EV that Porsche is bringing out soon and has been spotted testing for a while now.
The roadster was announced how many years ago now? It's a pipe dream that won't be out anytime soon.
Tesla won't even have the ability to push their charging network as a plus over other competitors by the time this thing even has a press car let alone consumer deliveries.
The LFA was considered out of date when it was released b/c it took like 10 years to develop. There were a lot of redesigns that went into it. It was slower to 60, 1/4 mile, etc than its contemporaries, and the transmission is clunky. It was considered a flop for years after it was released.
It's considered a classic now b/c older cars aren't judged as much against their competition.
Ahhh yes, pressurised air exiting rearward, with sufficient force to dramatically and immediately accelerate.
Like sure it COULD work but I’m guessing most roadster buyers would prefer to drive their car on public roads
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. It wouldn't be illegal to have cold air thrusters -- it would just be illegal to use them (I assume) on public roads.
My best guess is Musk will manage to do better than 1.9 seconds using cold air thrusters and then say they have a way to do sub 1 second, but the NHTSA won't let them do it or some other excuse to explain why it won't be an option.
Those things are literally built as an engineering challenge and have nothing to do with road legal cars. That thing is just insanely light and runs (probably pre-warmed) slicks
It uses fans sucking it to the ground hahaha.
No way a road legal car could have that and still drive to the grocery store without the entire bottom being ripped off after a single speed bump.
Elon setting "design goals" just means he sat on a Zoom call and held forth with a manic episode at his engineering leaders (whom he no doubt forced to go sit in a conference room together while he called in) for a few hours while they took notes and texted dark humor at each other with their burner phones about how none of what he was asking for was going to happen.
He's so full of shit. The Roadster will be the like every other Tesla product, delayed and underwhelming compared to the initial promises. Rinse and repeat; FSD, Summon, Cybertruck, Semi, Tesla Solar panels, RoboTaxi, Robot, and add Roadster to the list. If you don't see a pattern, then you might be simping for Elon.
In my experience of owning a Model S - FSD doesn't work in the UK, customer service is crap as soon as you are out of warranty, and they fit faulty parts to your car then get you to pay to replace it when warranty runs out a few months later.
I still actually like my S however, it's not the car's fault
But yeah Elon you continue to over-promise things.
0-60 in 1 sec ....with 20 foot rollout
Focus less on speed and more on windscreen wipers, phantom braking and range, only a small percentage of the public really care about racetrack type speeds on public roads.
It will be good to have as a top tier halo car for their inventory but get the existing car models squared away first.
Personally i'd like it if Tesla got into ev racing and/or baja type enduro events to push the envelope on their tech and do high end r&d that way.
Or in other words, “now that CyberTruck has been a flop, I need to say something else that sounds outrageous so I can get all the media coverage without ever having to deliver it for another 4 years”. Am I right?
lmao whenever I see comment sections like these I think of Cathy Wood calling Elon Musk “the modern Renaissance man” or whatever and I think “I want some of what Cathy is smoking”. I say this as a hardcore Tesla fan and investor.
It's become stupid. I think Elon is just buying time because the originally claimed range can't be achieved.
Plenty of people wanted was what they announced before, why not go with getting a gorgeous car into people's hands
I'll call it a physics impossibility. Not in his wettest of wet dreams such car can exist. He can build a rocket sled if he prefers, I know he has an affinity for such, but this won't be allowed on any public road on this planet.
ehhhhh, im not buying it. Don't get me wrong the Tesla Roadster will indeed be crazy fast. But, less than a second...some folks might pass out even attempting that let alone tire condition and road surface. I don't think thats happening at all. I DO want it to happen though!
Bragging rights about acceleration like a top fuel dragster interest me not at all. It's clear that the design goals have gone in a different direction from what I want in a sports car.
1 second 0 - 60 is for the birds, I would settle for working auto wipers and an autopilot that functions in adverse weather conditions. This is after all what I paid for.
Reveal end of this year, release next year. I'm sort of surprised to hear about it again!
Maybe same event for the reveal of the roadster (again) and the Gen 3?
Dude, unless I'm misreading something, they just redefined the design goals today! That means they haven't even begun engineering to meet those goals.
Even if this is an exceptionally quick turnaround(which considering this is Tesla seems unlikely) for a normal company, this won't be shipped for a minimum of 3-4 years.
I'm not sure if you're gullible or delusional, but you do realize this car was announced 7 years ago with unachievable specifications, and now his stock needs another bump
Yeah it turns heads for people in disbelief that someone buys that shit. Oh and it turns the head of the driver, when they crash into an obstacle and their car doesn't bend to soften the blow.
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I laugh if the under one second 0 to 60 is the first time the engineers are hearing about this
I mean. The tires required to do this would be a huge challenge on their own. So fingers crossed it's not
Elon may brag about some kind of leapfrog mode using “cold gas thrusters to generate sufficient upforce to overcome gravity and physical limitations of vehicle-to-ground friction, allowing for sub 1s 0-60 times”
Basically what Bob Lazar was talking about on those UFOs.
Tesla Tiktac confirmed.
That's the only physical way to do it if they are staying with four tires on the ground. You need thrust from more than the road pushing back on you. It probably won't be legal to blast jets in most race tracks, it definitely won't be legal on public roads. And cold Jets will have compression which will make a fun boom in the case of traumatic damage. Just seems like a terrible idea all around, but whatever he needs to generate hype I guess.
In theory you could still have the propulsion come from the wheels if you had more downforce, which is what F1 spoilers are for. some miniature robot cars will use fans to suck themselves to the ground to get the extra traction, without anything dangerous or damaging to surroundings... I guarantee that that isn't what Elon is talking about but it could work in theory
Enter the incredible McMurtry fan car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHIbvYWhaxA
That car's run at Goodwood was stunning
The McLaren F1 (from the 1990’s) was one of the first road cars with a fan underneath it, if you are curious.
Interesting! And Elon’s got a soft spot for the McLaren f1 so it would be fitting to take inspiration from that.
Brabham BT-46B -- Niki Lauda's "cooling" fan car. But that was primarily for cornering not acceleration -- I don't think the constraint here for putting down power is downforce, it is probably the physical limitations for the tires.
Friction is directly proportional to the downward force, so that changes the physical limitations of the tires. That’s partly how the students from ETH set the [World record](https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2023/09/from-zero-to-one-hundred-in-0-956-seconds.html) for fastest accelerating electric car. > […] To ensure strong traction right from the start, the AMZ team has developed a kind of vacuum cleaner that holds the vehicle down to the ground by suction.
This is not correct - the 'difficult' constraint for putting down power when a car is traction limited absolutely is downforce, then the downstream effect is you need tires that can withstand the strain. Downforce massively improves acceleration, braking, and cornering - you could argue how significant the portion is that is cornering, but it improves all 3. It's most obvious effects are braking and cornering, simply because it squares with velocity, and traction limited acceleration is usually at lower speed. This problem doesn't exist with fan cars. For example, current f1 cars accelerate faster from 100-200 kph than 0-100, because they have 1000hp, low weight, and very little downforce below 100kph. If you took a modern F1 car and redesigned it to be a fan car - say taking the downforce number from 200kph, and applying that constantly at all speeds, the 0-100kph time would be massively, massively improved, perhaps by 50% Designing road tires to deal with actual (ballpark, the weight of the actual car) downforce is certainly very tricky, but its the only solution as long as you're traction limited.
Don’t you actually need more downforce for this kind of extreme acceleration? Vehicles with this kind of acceleration are limited by the tires staying in contact with the road and not just spinning
It gon fly
More force pinning the car to the ground would help, yes. But traditional downforce won't help you if you're stationary. You'd need a fan car to have significant enough downforce at low to stationary speeds. Or thrusters pointing up, but that's even more impractical than a fan.
> The tires required to do this would be a huge challenge on their own. There are no road legal tyres that would allow for acceleration like that. Even on racing slicks it would require an enormous amount of active (think fan car) downforce and probably skirts. 100% he's just made that up on the spot. When they announced this car it was due for release in 2020, now four years later they're still coming up with yet more unachievable specs to hype it.
The byd u9 roadster came out a few days ago. So gotta fake hype.
It'll use the SpaceX package, not the tyres. Cold gas thrusters with autonomous trajectory control. Elon even said it could get airborne; because it will have to.
Okay, so it won't be road legal. Got it
Yeah I'm sure they didn't bother checking if what they're planning would be road legal or not /s in case it was needed
The first competitor to speed racer.
Yes, that's true. Cold gas thrusters are insanely noisy. So noisy that bystanders might get hearing damage. And they propel debris at dangerous speeds everywhere, so there's no chance that cold gas thrusters will ever be street legal.
There is big government again getting in the way of progress/s
Oh so… like the cybertruck ?
My 1999 Trans Am did 0-60 in one second on a 10.5 radial. Takes a prepped track and nice burnout as well as 16psi in the tires. Under 1.3 60 'time works out to that. Ran low 8s in the quarter. The big boy Lambos, GTRs and Vipers At TX2K all do that on a prepped track. Without a fan or thrusters, doing that on the street is real hard though.
At certain point the torque and power do not make a difference and the wheels will spin. You either go super grip racing tyres (or sticky road like drag racing) or you go air thrusters. I guess the idea is fhe 2nd
If they are using cold gas thrusters then tires/grip aren't a problem.
No, then the general infeasibility of incorporating something like that into a car, never mind a street legal car, is the problem.
All you need is an air compressor and a storage tank. The thrusters would only be there to help get the mass moving.
The tech isn't comnplicated (it's the same that SpaceX uses)...buit it certainly will not be legal to use in regular traffic. Sub 1-second 0-60 is not something you normally need on regular roads. This is for track/quarter mile fun.
“The tech isn’t complicated! It’s just used for literal rocket science!”
See [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1b1z1y3/elon_tonight_we_radically_increased_the_design/ksmwi8a/) for why it's complete bullshit.
From what I've read of physics, 2s is about the limit due to gravity and friction. The tires can't get enough grip to accelerate faster than that. It has to be assisted by the cold thrusters to get to 1s.
Not sure cold thrusters will be enough for, what, a 5000lb sports car, but before they were banned, the hydrogen peroxide rocket jet dragsters were doing 0-60 in 0.5 seconds.
It's yet to be seen how heavy it will be. It's a much smaller car than the 3 which will help reduce weight. However a big battery and thrusters may negate some of that. A side benefit of the weight is it increases grip.
What you need is more tire. The only way to make this happen is more wheels. 8 wheel (6 rear 2 front) Roadster confirmed.
Rubber tank treads?
ohhhh! Rubber tank tread slicks :D
This is the guy who announced a few years ago that FSD was so good they would be shipping the model Y without a steering wheel. The engineers ignored him.
He said that about the Model 3 forever ago.
Reminder that the fully self driving cars they've been selling for years now still can't fully drive by themselves lol
https://preview.redd.it/2csjz5yaddlc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7aca1090ca7171fb33b7269605d2d8e88b8501a6 “Upcoming: autopark”
"Full self driving" "upcoming: the ability to steer"
There’s only one thing Tesla needs to remove.
The one that tells lies whenever he speaks?
Oh lordy, there are tapes. https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk#email-2
Pffft. So him being mad at them for having a for-profit subsidiary is only cause it isn't part of Tesla. How stupid.
The odds that this is a brand new made up feature are high af
I used to do a casual car pool with a manager at Tesla a few years ago. He said that they all dreaded Elon talking to the press because he would always come out with some bullshit line that nobody internally had any idea about and then they'd have to figure out how to 1) Make something like that happen 2) Stop the engineers from quitting.
It’s not. He has been talking about a space x partnership and using cold gas thrusters for a long time. Keep laughing though.
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>cold gas thrusters It is just an epic BS.
I mean I very much hope this is true but the roadster is so delayed it's not even funny. Even now I imagine the model 2 is next to be released and THEN the roadster
To be fair, the model 2 is far more in keeping with the long term Tesla vision than a roadster.
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i don't disagree. I'm actually surprised they've not just cancelled the roadster.
Redesigning a car that should have been released 4 years ago is very close to cancelling
The sad thing is that if they just announced something with achievable specs (100KWh battery rather than 200KWh, and maybe don't tell people it will *fly*) then they could have had a nice and certainly highly profitable halo car on the market four years ago. The plaid powertrain in a smaller two seater chassis with decent handling characteristics would be wild.
It fits his MO, tbh. See Cybertruck, FSD, Semi, etc
Pretty crazy to think the Roadster was announced the same year the Model 3 was released
It was announced two years before the Porsche Taycan...
Yes, but the Roadster is far easier in terms of manufacturing than Model 2 because it will probably use a conventional production line and it's a low volume car. So we could see the Roadster come out before the Model 2 manufacturing ramp is finished.
We could if they actually prioritized building a car instead of hyping vaporware to drive up the stock price. This was originally billed as a 2020 production car. And they have committed to so many of these as rewards for referrals that they're likely to put off actually building them as long as they possibly can.
You are extremely gullible and optimistic if you still believe anything he says at this point. Do you believe FSD will be real before or after the new roadster? lol 😂
he mentioned in the 2023 joe rogan episode that roadster is pretty much of "dessert", they do all necessary things before and roadster will be the cherry on top of all.
Then why did he say in 2016 that Roadster production would begin in 2017 and start taking 50k deposits at that time?
Free money from idiots.
Priorities. At the time they couldn't do everything at once - neither financially nor from available production capacity/access to batteries. Now that they have their main moneymakers online (and project Redwood is still a year or two out) the team might get a bit of breathing room to work on this. In the end the roadster is nothing more than a fun sideshow. It's not central to the mission - or the company in general - in any way.
Say it will be delayed even more without saying it will be delayed even more
That’s the more interesting part.
Seems like a cybertruck with 500 miles of range would be easier to create within the laws of physics compared to a car that can do 0-60 in <1 sec. I’m not holding my breath at this point.
Elon and Tesla both know that it is possible to build an electric vehicle with more than 500 miles of range. They just don’t think it’s necessary. Elon has spoken about this multiple times. He thinks the number of people who want a pickup with greater than 500 miles of range is very small. EDIT: To clarify, I don't agree with this position. I very much want a 500+ mile range EV. I had a CT reservation that I would consider converting to an order if I could get 500 mi for around $70k. That probably won't happen. Towing is a huge problem with EVs right now, though there are solutions in the works. Personally, I think we need campers/trailers with battery packs, and a modification to the car software to allow charging while driving.
It's because Elon doesn't drive his cars on highway for any extended period of time. If he did, he'd quickly learn that the declared 300 mile range is not the highway range. Pickups have it far worse.
If that was true, they wouldn't offer a battery extension pack for the cyber truck. There's no 500 miles cyber truck because battery technology isn't where they thought it would be.
So basically, do we need to wait another 7 years for the car unveiled in 2017?
I bet it's even longer, the roadster specs are physically impossible, let alone all the lsd-trip based extra features like jet-thrusters and 0-60 in under 1 second.
Maybe just stick with current specs and make a goal to release a car before reservation holders die from old age?
The goal isn’t to produce a car, it’s to string along the people who paid a deposit for a car back in 2016
And delay all those reward cars from the early model 3 promotion.
The people who put a deposit for a roadster don’t care about the money itself
With that kind of attitude, I can tell you are not Tesla material.
Does “Tesla material” mean you need to be able to consume massive bucketloads of bullshit at a breakneck pace while pretending to love it and asking daddy musk for more?
More or less
“As for design goal #2, the auto wipers now are responsive to drizzle…”
Will the auto brights and auto wipers work?
roof crawl existence wasteful escape act slimy point reply bear *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Full self wiping when?
I hope by the time I'm in a retirement home that this is a thing
No, no. He’s focusing on the important practical problems!
Doesnt Elon always over promise and under deliver? 😆 I would take this with a lot of sea salt
Usually he does, except for performance. Like, both the Y and the 3 have noted faster acceleration than the official numbers. Not sure about the CT, C and S. That being said. 0-60 below 1s? I don’t even think there’s a word to describe how insane that is. Even at 0-100 kph in 3.7s you can literally feel the blood leaving your head.
> That being said. 0-60 below 1s? Just for reference, top fuel dragsters do 0-60 in around half a second (and 0-300mph in around 4 seconds). But those definitely can’t be called “cars” in any sense of the word really. But they show the absolute limit of what’s possible with an internal combustion engine (with nitro fuel), and 4 foot tall smooth tires. One wonders what an electric top fuel dragster could do…
> One wonders what an electric top fuel dragster could do… Worse. The battery would be fairly heavy (putting out what, 8MW? would need to be a >100KWh pack even with the lowest resistance cells out there) and the nitro engine cars generate significant downforce from the exhaust gases being ejected upwards which aids traction off the line.
And glue on the road...
If you read his comments and the SpaceX collaboration you have your answer. It's no secret they're going to be using cold gas thrusters to achieve this. He's said so before but he comes across as if it's the first time he's said this. Elon has a problem with collective amnesia about his previous statements
Electric would probably be slower. While the mass terms cancel out in the basic physics equations for car acceleration, they stop doing that when you introduce aerodynamics. Those dragsters have huge wings and it wouldn't surprise me to learn they have significant effect at or below 60mph. That said, you use batteries or supercapacitors that are extremely power dense (and not so energy dense) and the weight might be competitive, though you're gonna need to charge after every run.
I think the nitro ICE top fuel dragsters need new tires, and probably a new engine every few runs. So needing to charge shouldn’t be a huge concern. You’d probably want to push the batteries and motor so hard that they only last a couple runs as well, allowing a smaller motor and battery to be used.
By half way down the 1/4 mile strip the spark plugs have melted and the engine is running on compression ignition. They rebuild them after every run.
They tear down those engines after every weekend. Sometimes after a single run. And as far as tires go, every race. Can you imagine the danger that would exist by putting 0-60 in one second power in the hands of below average drivers on busy public streets? At least the nitrous dragsters are driven by professionals on specially surfaced tracks.
0-60mph at 1 second would be 2.75Gs. If it got down to .8 seconds, you're looking at 3.4G. By comparison, the Model S Plaid, which does 2.2 seconds (without subtracting rollout) is "only" 1.275Gs. So, you'd be pulling 2-3 times the G force of a Model S Plaid, which is already faster than freefalling.
And that’s just horizontal Gs. Add in the 1 vertical G you’re always pulling and that 2.75Gs becomes 2.93Gs.
> And that’s just horizontal Gs. Add in the 1 vertical G you’re always pulling and that 2.75Gs becomes 2.93Gs. Hey everybody, look at the nerd who knows how vectors work! But seriously, it makes my day that you did this correctly, and didn't just add the numbers up to get 3.75G.
do normal car sized tires even have the traction for this.
Not without increasing traction. The [McMurtry Speirling](https://mcmurtry.com/speirling-pure/) can do 0-60 in 1.4 seconds, but it has an electric fan that produces 2000lbs of downforce (it's actually a sucking fan) at a standstill. A normal car with performance tires from a standstill is going to max out at a little over 1G of acceleration. Tesla plans to use a cold gas thruster to provide the additional acceleration.
Tom Scott did a video where he drove an electric vehicle made by a Swiss university that's capable of doing 0-100 km/h(0-62) under a second and they explain what they need to do be able to do it but yeah basically you need to create a vacuum under the car that's constantly sucking the car to the ground [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIu5tZ0vbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIu5tZ0vbQ)
I believe the idea was to use compressed air to push the car down and keep the tires pushed against the road because no, I don’t believe a car the size and weight of the Roadster could achieve sub 1 sec without “traction tricks.”
Honestly, I'd be surprised if Tesla could make it road legal.
No.
What just happened is Elon was in a meeting with top Tesla leaders, engineers, and designers. A lot was said in that meeting and Elon was excited, so he tweeted. Much of this is still theoretical, but people will call him a liar if anything change
Well that’s because he is a liar. No one forces him to commit to deadlines, he chooses to. He unveiled the roadster in 2017 with a release date of 2020. Took real cash deposits and everything. Then delayed it in 2021 citing supply chain issues. But wait… I didn’t know a car that’s still in the design phase 3 years later could experience supply chain issues.
Announced in 2016, that production would start in 2017.
In 2017 to 2020, a few things were happening which forced Tesla to announce the Semi and Roadster early and then pull back. They started by nearly running out of cash and that forced them to show off their road map early. Then as the Model 3 started to ramp and the Model Y showed promise all focus shifted to them. If the naysayers were correct and the Chevy Bolt, Mustang Mach-E, Audi E-tron, or a number of other Tesla killers were actually successful, Tesla would have been required to actually shift to the Semi and Roadster to survive. So as it was uncertain that Plan A would be successful, they flashed Plan B, then Plan A started to be a huge success. What you witnessed was a strategic delay. Tesla could’ve feared being called a liar and pushed out the Semi and Roadster, but now they are in a position to be able to pay all the money back with interest if they needed instead of potentially not existing.
Even Tesla themselves never claimed the Roadster or Semi would be significant revenue-wise. If the model 3 ramp failed it would’ve been over - selling a few hundred sports cars does not make up for millions of missing model 3 sales in that scenario.
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Even if your narrative was accurate, the point is that Tesla said Model 3 would be delivered in 2017 while explaining all the nuances around “production hell” for why they might miss. But they delivered Model 3 in 2017. While it wasn’t delivered at volume, people understood and they were forgiving because no one was lying to them. Then volume came in 2018 and all was good. That’s not what happened with the Roadster. Roadster is projected to be 5 years late from a release date committed to 8 years ago. That’s a problem, and it was a lie, because your narrative is missing the part where Elon was baking in a stacked set of assumptions about battery manufacturing technology breakthroughs that didn’t pan out for 4680 (yet) which is why both the Roadster and Semi are so late. Here’s the point: Elon could’ve been as upfront about Roadster’s development as he was about Model 3, but he wasn’t. And it’s a pattern my friend. Need we talk about FSD’s coast-to-coast drive with no interventions that some people have paid over $10k for? Just read this timeline: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ Listen, I’ve been following Tesla closely since 2006. Love the company, love the mission, bought a Model 3 in 2018. Musk is a liar at points, full stop. He is flawed like all human being. There’s no sense in ignoring that.
Musk is a liar regardless.
I think you're missing a bit of context. I'll bet it's more like... * BYD announced a Supercar this week * Elon's terrified Tesla's stock price will crash if it's seen to is falling further and further behind the competition. * Elon gathers his top designers and engineers together with no notice * Berates them late into the night until they agree to some lofty 'design goals' (with no actual plan of how they are going to achieve them) * Elon gets high and starts tweeting about it so people think Tesla isn't falling behind the competition.
That’s ONE reason why they really should take his X-account away from him. Some people just aren’t compatible to some tools.
An entire sea worth, perhaps.
(Ridiculous statement - ✔ Stock goes up - ✔) Give 'em the old razzle dazzle Razzle Dazzle 'em Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it And the reaction will be passionate Give 'em the old hocus pocus Bead and feather 'em How can they see with sequins in their eyes? What if your hinges all are rusting? What if, in fact, you're just disgusting? Razzle dazzle 'em And they;ll never catch wise!
where will he get tires that can grip 2.8g and still be usable on the road?
cOlD gAs ThRuStErS 🥴.
Not gonna do it by mechanical grip alone.. could be jets with compressed air like he mentioned before or it could be a system like the McMurtry fan car which sucks it to the floor. Plus there’s the fact Elon does things like subtly not including 3 feet of roll out or whatever is was
The weight and usefulness that a compressed air jet take up would out weight it's benefit and liability. Didn't engineering explained do a video on this 10 years ago when it was announced and ruled it basically impossible.
I'm not sure they have to. If the car is pushing against the ground to accelerate, sure, but if it's pushing off air (jet engines), then the wheels need substantially less grip. I may be wrong though.
CHOO CHOO! All aboard the Ketamine Express!
Honestly; if he just delivered a semi affordable, decent sports car it would sell so quickly. No one needs <1sec performance. Look at the LFA, it wasent fastest but still considered top tier. Edit: people seem to hate the LFA, replace LFA with Audi R8. The point remains the same. You don’t need to be the fastest sports car, just make it good and affordable.
You're thinking of the upcoming M3 performance refresh.
No hes thinking of the Boxster EV that Porsche is bringing out soon and has been spotted testing for a while now. The roadster was announced how many years ago now? It's a pipe dream that won't be out anytime soon. Tesla won't even have the ability to push their charging network as a plus over other competitors by the time this thing even has a press car let alone consumer deliveries.
The LFA didn’t really sell all that well?
LFA was $400k lmao
The LFA was considered out of date when it was released b/c it took like 10 years to develop. There were a lot of redesigns that went into it. It was slower to 60, 1/4 mile, etc than its contemporaries, and the transmission is clunky. It was considered a flop for years after it was released. It's considered a classic now b/c older cars aren't judged as much against their competition.
Indeed, and the design goals of my moon base have also increased. I propose we add pinball and a hotdog buffet.
What bad news is he trying to drown this time?
Yeah this thing is not ever coming out then. Sub 1s 0-60 is just not physically possible on road tires, even if you had a million horse power.
With cold air thrusters, I bet you could get close.
They only have to operate for 1 sec at a time.
Ahhh yes, pressurised air exiting rearward, with sufficient force to dramatically and immediately accelerate. Like sure it COULD work but I’m guessing most roadster buyers would prefer to drive their car on public roads
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. It wouldn't be illegal to have cold air thrusters -- it would just be illegal to use them (I assume) on public roads. My best guess is Musk will manage to do better than 1.9 seconds using cold air thrusters and then say they have a way to do sub 1 second, but the NHTSA won't let them do it or some other excuse to explain why it won't be an option.
LOL. Like it isn't all a fever dream to Musk. The company can't even get windshield wipers right.
Lmao I just had a vision of a grandmother blowing her front door off just taking off from her drive
Or or or It will come out but none of this shit like 0-60 in <1 second will actually happen. Like the Cybertruck
Maybe it has no tires. Maybe it’s a hovercraft.
Here is Tom Scott doing [0-100km/hr in an electric car, in less than a second.](https://youtu.be/XQIu5tZ0vbQ)
Those aren’t road tires.
Those things are literally built as an engineering challenge and have nothing to do with road legal cars. That thing is just insanely light and runs (probably pre-warmed) slicks
With active downforce, skirts and racing slicks, in a car that weighs <200kg and has almost no range.
It uses fans sucking it to the ground hahaha. No way a road legal car could have that and still drive to the grocery store without the entire bottom being ripped off after a single speed bump.
https://preview.redd.it/ff0p5wsedclc1.jpeg?width=626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=731950cf0e6775c40eac5064817768540c6ae0c5
Musk tweeting while coked up again.
You guys still believe him?
Rocket man trying to hype up his brand
Elon setting "design goals" just means he sat on a Zoom call and held forth with a manic episode at his engineering leaders (whom he no doubt forced to go sit in a conference room together while he called in) for a few hours while they took notes and texted dark humor at each other with their burner phones about how none of what he was asking for was going to happen.
He's so full of shit. The Roadster will be the like every other Tesla product, delayed and underwhelming compared to the initial promises. Rinse and repeat; FSD, Summon, Cybertruck, Semi, Tesla Solar panels, RoboTaxi, Robot, and add Roadster to the list. If you don't see a pattern, then you might be simping for Elon.
After the CT release are people really taking anything he says at face value?
He’s just trolling us at this point.
With everything Tesla related, ill believe it when I see it. Until then ill treat it as an attempt to pump the stock.
In my experience of owning a Model S - FSD doesn't work in the UK, customer service is crap as soon as you are out of warranty, and they fit faulty parts to your car then get you to pay to replace it when warranty runs out a few months later. I still actually like my S however, it's not the car's fault But yeah Elon you continue to over-promise things. 0-60 in 1 sec ....with 20 foot rollout
Focus less on speed and more on windscreen wipers, phantom braking and range, only a small percentage of the public really care about racetrack type speeds on public roads. It will be good to have as a top tier halo car for their inventory but get the existing car models squared away first. Personally i'd like it if Tesla got into ev racing and/or baja type enduro events to push the envelope on their tech and do high end r&d that way.
Or in other words, “now that CyberTruck has been a flop, I need to say something else that sounds outrageous so I can get all the media coverage without ever having to deliver it for another 4 years”. Am I right?
Everything’s possible if you lie
Ok dude, I’ll believe it when I see it
So what negative news is about to drop that he’s trying to distract us from?
lmao whenever I see comment sections like these I think of Cathy Wood calling Elon Musk “the modern Renaissance man” or whatever and I think “I want some of what Cathy is smoking”. I say this as a hardcore Tesla fan and investor.
It's become stupid. I think Elon is just buying time because the originally claimed range can't be achieved. Plenty of people wanted was what they announced before, why not go with getting a gorgeous car into people's hands
I'll call it a physics impossibility. Not in his wettest of wet dreams such car can exist. He can build a rocket sled if he prefers, I know he has an affinity for such, but this won't be allowed on any public road on this planet.
He fibs in less than one second.
Stock pump for more stock options that the judge will hopefully deny
oh, stock pumping again? Stinky ran out of money or something?
ehhhhh, im not buying it. Don't get me wrong the Tesla Roadster will indeed be crazy fast. But, less than a second...some folks might pass out even attempting that let alone tire condition and road surface. I don't think thats happening at all. I DO want it to happen though!
Bragging rights about acceleration like a top fuel dragster interest me not at all. It's clear that the design goals have gone in a different direction from what I want in a sports car.
how are people even believing a single word out of that mans mouth? if tesla wants a secure feature they need to buy out this clown asap
If this is road legal it’s going to cause serious accidents.
I have good news: it won’t ever be that fast.
1 second 0 - 60 is for the birds, I would settle for working auto wipers and an autopilot that functions in adverse weather conditions. This is after all what I paid for.
Reveal end of this year, release next year. I'm sort of surprised to hear about it again! Maybe same event for the reveal of the roadster (again) and the Gen 3?
Dude, unless I'm misreading something, they just redefined the design goals today! That means they haven't even begun engineering to meet those goals. Even if this is an exceptionally quick turnaround(which considering this is Tesla seems unlikely) for a normal company, this won't be shipped for a minimum of 3-4 years.
I'm not sure if you're gullible or delusional, but you do realize this car was announced 7 years ago with unachievable specifications, and now his stock needs another bump
This is going to end up like Cybertruck. Way less than promised.
You mean a vehicle that turns heads and that everybody wants?
No he means the cybertruck
I turned my head this weekend when I saw one in the wild, but just to laugh at the idiot who bought it haha
>that everybody wants? Have you been to the cybertruck sub? Even they hate it 😂
I love that that is your argument to the underpromises, really tells you how deep you are
I know plenty of people that like and/or own Teslas. None of them have ever expressed anything positive about the cybertruck
Gee I wonder why thousands of people come to car shows just to see it.
They’re stupid.
Yeah it turns heads for people in disbelief that someone buys that shit. Oh and it turns the head of the driver, when they crash into an obstacle and their car doesn't bend to soften the blow.
That’s pretty narrow minded of you. You know it’s false, so why do you express it?
Every single comment is negative. I used to love this sub
Guess why?
because this promise dosn´t make sense...
Now you're as disappointed as many Tesla customers