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[–] 142 points 5 days ago (86 children)

I genuinely don't even know who that demonstration was for other than 12-year-olds. None of these cars have any practical or road applications. Where are you going to need to flip your cap off of a ramp or over some cars? It's so fucking stupid.

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  • [–] 74 points 5 days ago (20 children)

    Okay, I know I could look this up indvidually, but for those of us who missed it, what happened today?

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  • [–] 138 points 5 days ago (11 children)

    They demoed a car that was loaded with a shit load of compressed gas, then they had it do a kick flip over a line of cars and a semi truck. They also drove it up a massive inverted ramp and then had it flip over and land smoothly.

    Looked cool as hell, but has absolutely no practical purpose other than allowing Nazi Musk to get headlines saying they have a flying car.

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  • [–] 38 points 5 days ago

    They did a demo of the new roadster model; they've strapped a suction fan and HPA thrusters to it so it can do 0 to 60mph in under a second, drive up walls, perform a running jump over a semi-truck without a ramp, spin and do a standing flip.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 days ago

    Elmo faked a tech demo showing a new car that can drive upside down thanks to vacuum suction and can fly thanks to compressed air rockets.

    Fine print: the car that goes on sale is not able to do that, only a very limited run that is sold to select customers at an unknown price (read: they don't sell it)

    It's like if a robot company does a tech demo where a dancing robot is actually a human wearing a costume, or a bartending robot is actually remotely controlled by a human with a VR headset

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  • [–] 18 points 5 days ago (4 children)
  • [–] 34 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    The frothing, uncritical comments from Musk stans on that video are insane. I hope they're mostly bots and don't represent real humans - nobody is acknowledging how impractical, unsafe, or illegal any of these moves are, nor how it's a just a stunt that will never reach real-world production or on-road use.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago

    Wow it watches like The Onion News Network, especially towards the end.

    Looks like they failed to make Roadster have any impressive parameters so they mounted an air jet to cheat, and then get carried away when preparing a demo.

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  • [–] 40 points 5 days ago (50 children)

    Very stupid investors?

    EV sales are flat or shrinking in the US (but growing extremely quickly outside the US, partially thanks to the Hormuz situation). Tesla's sales are flat. He's doing anything possible to show that Tesla has a future.

    So, he basically told his talented engineers to take the stabilizing parts of a SpaceX rocket, put them in the body of a car, and pretended that what was demoed is actually vaguely related to something people might be able to buy at some point.

    There isn't a chance that a vehicle with those kinds of thrusters would ever be road legal. You're basically driving a pretty large bomb around. You crash that vehicle and you don't just kill yourself, you kill everybody within a pretty large blast radius.

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  • [–] 37 points 5 days ago (14 children)

    There isn't a chance that a vehicle with those kinds of thrusters would ever be road legal

    Tesla sold a car for years with no way to open the back seat doors in the event of an emergency.

    US regulators allow Tesla to do anything.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 days ago (12 children)

    There is a way. Not practical, but if you pry off the speaker cover, there is a release cable.

    I blame regulators.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago (11 children)

    The Model X had it under a speaker cover. The model 3 didn't have it listed in the user manual. Fans discovered under a rubber door pocket cover, you could remove a flushed mounted plastic tab and fish out a pull wire to open the door.

    It wasn't until 2024 that Model 3's got a door release.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    It is actually a pretty cool stunt. Completely pointless from a commercial point of view, of course. But Tesla has been disconnected from market realities for a long time, so that's just in character.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    There might be some niche situation where it's helpful but that's not even relevant because there's no way it would be legal on public roads in most places. I also strongly doubt that it would be able to do it safely and compensate for different weight distribution of the vehicle with different passengers and such.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    I doubt they'd be able to even sit still safely, that amount of compressed air sitting in the undercarriage is much more dangerous than even the 10 gallons of gas sitting in a car.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago

    That's what I thought, the pressure vessels to get lift for a heavy electric car for just one second is a bomb extremely sensitive to crashes.

    That could not be legal on the roads.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago

    I genuinely can't wait for a fat cat to buy one of these, try and do the flip with him in the driver's seat, it partially roll, end up careening sideways into the side of a building, and finishing with a lithium grilled pancaked executive 😙 👌

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