honestly both companies are getting good exposure here for relatively low lift on behalf of space-x team (it's a compressed air tank, nozzles and actuator valves).
It is hard to make that decision without a conflict of interest. How much do you charge Tesla to use SpaceX engineers? At the very least a lot of disclosures should be happening for investors on both sides.
That is incorrect - there are three versions slated, one with no cold gas nozzles, one with forward-only (the 4 in the rear) and a tank in the rear "acceleration", one with 10 nozzles (4 under, 2 side, 4 rear) and a tank in the rear and passenger seat "flight". None of the variants use rocket fuel or other ignited propellent, they're all just compressed gas release systems.
I'm not sure I'd agree that "Traditional wheel powered transportation vehicle" is in the same category as "Useless hovering car with giant dangerous high-pressure nitrogen tank that can cause serious bodily injury to pedestrians and occupants"
On the other hand "Hoverboards" became famous for bursting into flames so vigorously that people thought they were exploding, so maybe there is a deep connection. Then again "Hoverboards" were actually available on the market as advertised for quite some time, which is probably going to differentiate them from yet another Musk gimmick.
Add it to the list, boys! "Inflatable Rescue Submersible", FSD, Bulletproof windows, Mars any day now, Hyperloop... am I missing anything?
The Batpod bike was also practical, although infamous for being super hard to drive unlike the batmobile leading to a now infamous crash with an imax camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMpxN-7_rw
I think future technology will allow the car to detect another car or pedestrian too close to the exhaust system and disengage it. I don’t know, some wild thought I just had.
You can't just "disengage" a car that's six feet off the ground. You have to land it gently with the nozzle engaged or you don't have a car anymore, and maybe you don't have a driver either.
my quick search says LPG-installed cars run at 5-10 bar. the roadster apparently at 350 bar. by comparison one is on the scale of car tires and the other is like 35x that.
This is enough pressure to launch a car and flip it in the air, you can't just "safely leak" it at any useful rate of speed in an emergency. In an emergency it will rapidly explode.
"Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door. With the escaping air and pressure, gross dismemberment ensued; it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in fragmentation of his body, followed by expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine. These were projected some distance from the bell, with one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door."
It will yeet you, and you weigh a lot less than the flying car does.
The point is that a car flying for 10 seconds is nowhere near the Jetsons car.
We actually do already have Jetsons style flying cars - those things that look kind of like big drones are basically that, and those are actually practical.
Forget the comparison to the Jetsons if it upsets you, let's just compare to actual flying vehicles.
I was mostly being pedantic in response to the extreme pedantry required to differentiate between “doing a barrel roll using cold gas thrusters” and “flying”. My point is that it is of course flying, and the reason cars don’t fly at all normally is because it’s insanely dangerous, so saying it’s not a flying car because it’s dangerous is both disingenuous and wrong.
If the flying version is ever sold (unlikely) it will be subject to flying thing rules (FAA). Best case it would be like buying a used F1 car from Ferrari. They retain possession and you get to occasionally fly in on the private jet and drive it under supervision on a racetrack.
It’s cool tech demo. I’m not expecting to see one fly in private hands ever.
People saying the flying features are wildly impractical, potentially dangerous, and a waste of space, weight and money which make it worse at being a car are correct.
However, those assuming it will never be sold or even legal to be sold may not be aware there already exist astronomically expensive, completely impractical, quite unsafe, track-only hypercars which are not legal to drive on any street.
As for the technical legality of the 'flying' features ask your LLM about: the Ground-Effect & "Sustained Flight" Jurisdictional Boundary in FAA / NHTSA regs, Off-Road Track-Only exemptions from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and PHMSA / DOT-SP (Special Permit) authorization for consumer COPV pressure vessels. Making the "hopping" version for sale is a wildly impractical marketing stunt but they can probably do it, although it'll cost far more and ship much later than whatever they promise and will sell at most a few dozen.
The cybertruck is so dangerous to pedestrians it would never pass homologation pretty much anywhere outside of USA, and yet it sells there. If the roadster is sold anywhere it will be there too.
Hagerty has a very good walkthrough video with Lars and it looks pretty real. The thing they failed to mention was that the "flying" version is separate and the entire passenger seat is replaced with a pressure tank.
You can make a brick fly if you strap enough thrust ($$$$) to it. That doesn't mean a human without suicidal thoughts would ever want to be strapped to the same brick.
This is hot wheels. It's pretty clear Musk finally had enough of the culture wars at X and decided to go interfere with Tesla some more. Instead of producing a car people might actually want, he made them do this. This is the worst waste of a company you're likely to see in your life.
TSLA is probably not a good stock to be holding right now.
Not at a PE of ~336 in a world where BYD will eventually arrive in the US.
But TBF if they offered the SpaceX thrusters as an option, the SF effective altruists would slurp them right up to be their daily drivers even if they have to be strapped in next to a tank of toxic boom boom to use them. And Sam Altman would cry into his protein-supplemented energy drink because his Koenigsegg doesn't have them and I'd happily hand over 50 Quatloos to watch that.
1. The kind of person who buys a sports-car often doesn't want the "base version". They want luxury. They want status. They don't want to face the choice of being upsold to an impractical deathtrap or driving around in the "base version" like someone who could barely just afford it.
2. This demo does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the abilities of the base version. I reiterate, a brick could have been made to fly in this way. The base version will no doubt have good paper stats because Musk understands that numbers must be big, but that doesn't mean the base model will be pleasant to drive.
3. The styling of this car is "wankpanzer with a few extra polygons". Given how well the wankpanzer sold, demand for this thing, even if the base model is a competent auto, will be limp.
4. Musk is currently trying to buy another election. With Musk visibly taking an interest in Tesla again, that's likely to backfire on Tesla. They need to cut ties with Musk, not keep doing the sort of puerile things he's known and frequently lambasted for.
5. When does this silly thing even release? They say 2028, but do we believe them? How long has it been since the last model released? We're talking half a decade between models. What the heck are they doing at Tesla? Making bricks fly apparently.
> You can think of the COPV like the fuel tank in a compressed natural gas (CNG)- or liquid propane gas (LPG)-powered vehicle, except the nitrogen mixture in the COPV is stored at a much higher pressure, up to 10,000 psi, similar to the pressures in modern hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
LPG explosions are real combustion due to tank rupture (often due to installation damage or rust). A nitrogen COPV can not rupture (that's why the CO in COPV is there) but it can leak. And that COPV, when it leaks, will be a rocket. But not an explosion.
10,000 PSI? That is beyond absurd. I can not imagine what alloy and how wrapped that pressure vessel is... Or what type of crazy pump is recharging it!
"'Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship's nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing,' the company wrote in an update on Thursday (June 19)."
> LPG explosions are real combustion due to tank rupture…
That first video is terrific - but it demonstrates bringing the pressure vessel far beyond design limitations. Would you like to see what a tank of gasoline does when taken far outside design limitations?
The other two videos are triggered by the copv failing, but the explosion is due to the methane and lox.
My point still stands. The composite overwrap either survives a collision (crash tests will determine this) or doesn't (the vehicle will not be legal for sale in the US and Europe). The crash conditions are inside the design limitations, just like the batteries are and just like a standard fuel tank is.
I'm not able to find solid numbers on that, but given the shared heritage (I presume those gas thrusters come straight from SpaceX) and premium in a space vehicle for payload space, and the fact that SpaceX lost four vehicles to the things, I suspect similarly quite high.
My assumption was that pressures would be lower to help with the longevity of the air chamber, versus a more “disposable” nature of rocket equipment. I am assuming they are replaced between launches.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you probably pass at least one very explosive tank of something very volatile each and every day on your commute.
This thing is literally a fucking bomb if it fails, through accident or degradation.
The down-force negative pressure aspect they gleaned from McMurtry though? Really cool. Genuinely useful. I just hope they don't claim it as their own invention.
Are we surprised? Humans evolved with communal success and collaboration engrained over millennia. Agents are trained as individual "all knowing" single entities, effectively rendering them single person players.
These models all have the same knowledgebase as well and thus see no value in the opposing agents contributions since they are "obvious".
There is definitely an under-served target memory size of 48GB - almost everything aims for: 12, 16, 24, 32, 64, ...) But most dual-gpu setups, 3090/4090 (and some mac configs afaik) have 48GB, and most 64GB systems would do well with the extra 16gb of overhead saved. 48GB is also moderately common in PC memory configurations since 24gb DIMMs are a thing.
Amazing, now if we could just get this for silicon wafers :D All joking aside, would be great to get something like this for shuttle run wafer taping vs the current 6+ month window.
reply