The Tesla flying car is finally here... or at least it will be in 2028... maybe. At an event livestreamed from SpaceXAI's Texas testing facility yesterday, the company drove a concept model for the long-promised rocket-boosted Roadster up a ramp and into the air on a stage set reminiscent of a David Copperfield show.
In a pre-programmed sequence with no driver, the two-seater concept vehicle performed a kickflip off a half-pipe before gliding to the ground. It was later shown to lift off from stationary and 'hop' over a row of parked vehicles.
"Flying cars are real," Elon Musk said, perhaps referring to rival company Alef's Model A?
Tesla's next-gen Roadster electric sports car has been in development for around a decade. Musk wrote on Twitter back in 2018 that there would be a "SpaceX option package" featuring "10 small rocket thrusters" to improve acceleration, top speed, braking and cornering. "Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly," he wrote then.
Delivery was initially slated for 2020. The company now says 2028.
The concept car at yesterday's event was fitted with rechargeable "ultra high-pressure air tanks" to achieve vertical propulsion and to cushion landings. It was able to cling to the steel ramp in the demo thanks to a fan suction system.
The thrusters can also fire rearwards to increase acceleration. This allowed the car to reach 60 miles per hour in 0.81 seconds, Tesla said.
Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen has said that the Roadster's angular design and scissor doors were inspired by an "aerospace aesthetic", while Musk described the concept vehicle as "what happens when you have a collaboration with the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company".
"Success is not guaranteed" but "it will probably work" said the CEO, who in 2022 claimed that the Cybertruck would be "waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy".
Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppySeptember 29, 2022
The concept Roadster's impressive gymnastics appear to involve some genuinely novel engineering. Whether there's any real world use case is another matter.
On the Tesla website reserving a basic version with no boosters requires a £50,000 deposit while a “Thrust” version with rearward boosters for acceleration requires a $250,000 deposit. A single-seater “Rocket” variant with a “full flight system” is labelled as being available only by invitation. It's not clear whether that variant would be road legal at all, but buyers would not be allowed to jump over traffic or drive up buildings on public roads.
The bigger question is whether yesterday's theatre matters for regular customers and whether it can do anything to help repair confidence in the Tesla brand. Since the announcement of the Roadster in 2017, competitors like Rimac, Porsche, Xiaomi and BYD have already delivered high-performance electric cars, nudging Tesla out of the spotlight in a category it once hoped to dominate. There's also the upcoming Jaguar Type-01, Bentley Torcal and Ferrari Luce.
It seems the markets may have become skeptical of the CEO who cried wolf. Tesla shares remain down by 4.5% on last week and over 16% for the year to date.
The Roadster isn't the first design for a car that can hover a bit. Alef Aeronautics has begun limited hand-built production on its Model A for controlled testing.
“Welcome, Tesla, to the flying car race; we’ve been here alone for eleven years,” CEO Jim Dukhovny commented after Tesla's event. The California-based company posted a video on YouTube showing its Model A 'flying' over a Tesla Roadster. "This flight marks 1000th recorded flight by Alef flying car," it claimed.
While Tesla's Roadster uses compressed air thrusters for short hops and glides, Alef's much lighted Model A uses distributed electric propulsion via eight internal, enclosed propellers integrated into a mesh-like shell.
