It seems many have built similar tools for solving this.
Mine lets me run Claude and Codex (and pi but then you have to pay API rates) from the same localhosted webserver, and also schedule feature implementations to always hit the weekly usage cap. chats logs in jsonl (used by both) are saved per project in a never-pushed git branch. All agents run in Podman containers.
I am just starting to play with a higher-level agent that just pushes the repo in a direction based on the human answering a thorough list of clarification questions.
These have been really useful
- Encourage short, commit-linked chats, to avoid the expensive cache writes.
- Plot of LOC over time. Use better models until this starts not spiking a ton with every new feature.
- Terminals kinda suck for agentic stuff IMO and we should stop cramming agent loops into them. Minimalism doesn't really help here, it's really nice to have built-in STT, real buttons, easy scrolling, etc etc etc.
- The minimal delta is a commit. Every implementation turn must end with one or multiple, and a clean worktree.
- Crystal clear, extremely granular usage data. This is something Claude Code and Codex will never give you, instead you get dark patterns nudging you to forget about the spend, while changing plan quotas every couple weeks.
It's an incredible engineering achievement to build in massive fans and rocket engines into a high performance car. It's truly wild.
It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) seemingly just for extra forwards acceleration (no flying) and one with real combustion rocket engines, the latter was in the video and is "invite only".
Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
Even just the cold gas variant seems like a nightmare for production, there's a high pressure COPV in that thing and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting, and Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways. But very few of these are ever getting sold anyways.
> ”It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) … and one with real combustion rocket engines”
No, both versions use cold gas thrusters. There are no combustion rocket engines involved here.
The difference between the “thrust” and “rocket” versions is the number of thrusters: “rocket” has additional thrusters that enable it to fly. The “thrust” version just has them at the back for acceleration.
The famous JATO Rocket Car story was one of the original Darwin Awards winners. I remember reading it out loud to my buddies and us all rolling withlaughter when it was published in News of the Weird. pre-Internet.
Interesting. Air is approx 1 kg/m^3, so that tank is 0.4 kg at 1 bar, and a typical COPV can go to say 300 bar, so we're talking 120 kg.
For a 1000 kg car and with 200 m/s nozzle exit velocity, to hover the car you need (with m_0 g = m_a v/t) about 50 kg of air per second, so we're talking about roughly 2.5 seconds of flight (from those 400 litres).
I believe the COPV was capable of 10k psi [1] or ~690 bar. The 400L is in addition to the 200L tank giving 600L total, which means roughly 300 kg of nitrogen. At that pressure the Z factor is around 1.5, so it’s closer to 500 kg/m³ than the 690 the 1 kg/m³ approximation gives. With the car at just under 1700 kg [2] you need about 83 kg/s to hover at 200 m/s, so you get roughly 3.5 seconds. That’s before tank mass and pressure falloff though.
Damn, maybe it doesn’t matter and a flying car has many other things to worry but I’d be shitless scared to sit next to anything that has 690bar of hydrogen (or even air).
Reading https://www.tesla.com/roadster, it seems like both variants only use cold gas thrusters, and the difference is that the "normal" (lol) one only has them pointed rearwards while the flying one has them pointed in all different directions as well.
1) Base model with a fan for downforce - no gas thrusters at all. This is the one that may actually ship (but bear in mind the last Roadster prototype he announced was 10 years ago, and that one never did ship)
2) One with a smaller compressed air tank in the trunk and rear facing thrusters that would give you a 0-60 < 1 sec launch mode. This will obviously never be street legal (you can't lay down a "smoke" screen on a public road), but conceivably he may build it if there is enough demand (but read the fine print - it says no guarantee it will ever ship)
3) The on-stage stunt version that can hover and flip, which consumes the entire passenger area with another much larger compressed air tank, and adds bottom and side thrusters to give you ~3 seconds of "flight". "Invite only". Maybe he'll sell one to SpaceX - unmanned operation only - just to say that he did.
Yes, the thruster versions both operate on compressed air, which is why you only get a few seconds of operation.
No, that's the mind of a person speaking that is thinking of the motorcycle standing at the traffic light just behind this car. Action, reaction, that sort of thing.
Red flag thing was the UK's Locomotives Act 1865, which dated from before what we call cars were invented. More aimed at traction engines (steam engines that go on the road). Exactly the type of regulation people like to mock the EU for.
Last year I went to a steam show and had to share the street with giant steam tractors for the first time. That law suddenly made sense. The visibility and stopping distance aren't great.
I can think of no better person to have been hoisted on his own petard than Midgley. He also gave us the ozone hole. Veritasium has a great hit piece on this utter maniac.
Best guess is that it's disabled for anything but track/trick stuff. There will be some cool videos eventually showing up with tricks people pull with this. I don't know what else it's for.
I can imagine the lateral thrusters helping it turn faster on the track. Although I wonder if the extra weight is going to net out positive for lap times.
But really, a few very rich people will buy the full-rocket version to impress their friends. They'll play with them on private property.
Solo track use at that. I can't imagine that other drivers are going to be all that happy if they get hit by the exhaust from one of the thrusters in a corner.
Gases dissipate very rapidly, even moreso if doing pulsing or whatever. Probably very unsafe for a human standing literally right behind it, but it'd likely have 0 effect on another car at typical driving distance.
Air is mostly nitrogen, about 80%. Pure oxygen as you might be thinking, would be quite dangerous - not only for long-term consumption but also in terms of its effects. Oxygen is fuel for fire so a 100% oxygen environment would quite create the pyrotechnic show! The 'white' you see from the exhaust isn't the exhaust itself - nitrogen is obviously colorless, but the moisture in the surrounding air freezing. It's going to be coming out quite chilly to keep the nitrogen liquified ( boiling temp of something like -196F).
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Whoa, was just watching the video (great link btw). People have been debating the specs, but they're shown unambiguously right here. [1] It has 95 kn peak thrust, 6g peak acceleration, pressure of 5500 PSI, and a min operating temp of -200F.
Of course air is mostly nitrogen. But if you replace 10% of the air with pure nitrogen you go into OSHA-angering levels of oxygen depletion, and if you replace 25-30% you get into serious danger.
Not easily achieved in a tunnel, but much more easily achieved in a garage.
10% of the air replaced with pure nitrogen would be 0.8 * 0.9 + 1.0 * 0.1 = 82% nitrogen, 18% oxygen. That's perfectly safe for brief exposure, which is all it would be before you return to ambient levels.
To create a dangerous scenario you've gotta do something like somehow gas out your entire tank in a garage and then just stand around for a while breathing it in. Kind of an improbable scenario unless somebody is trying a really weird suicide attempt.
The bigger tank apparently holds 250kg of air. That's about 200 cubic meters. A two car garage is likely less than 100 cubic meters.
You wouldn't need to dump nearly an entire tank of nitrogen to reach levels that are immediately dangerous. And oxygen deprivation makes you stupid well before it makes you pass out, with no "lack of air" panic since that is based on CO2 levels, so even when it would be survivable for a couple minutes you might not even think to escape.
I suppose I can see this also. It sounds horrifying. A head on collision is a pretty terrible thing but having one of the cars suddenly fly 30 feet in the air and crashing into on coming traffic does not sound like a great option. Reminds me of the cybertruck "this would make the perfect post apocalyptic vehicle."
you might have a better chance of surviving that 30 foot launch than a head on collision with a pole or a semi truck. don't get me wrong it seems wildly impractical but there may be rare situations where it's useful. ejection seats on fighters frequently injured their pilot but that is better than being dead.
This whole thing is incredibly stupid and yet, people are bending over backwards to defend it. There is not a single traffic situation where the ability of a car to suddenly launch itself into the air doesn't have more downsides than it staying put. This includes overhead wiring, other people nearby, tunnels, bridges, overpasses, lampposts, traffic lights and other street furniture. With a little luck you will survive the impact of your toy when it lands but the party that you land on does not. People have a hard enough time predicting trajectories with everything constrained to 2D, if cars start jumping around like fleas that is not an improvement. From a standstill with other parties around you this is already a serious problem, if it were moving forward at highway speeds in traffic it would be utterly irresponsible to trigger this kind of launch.
What, you don’t think the solution to a situation with too much out-of-control kinetic energy is to inject a whole bunch more semi-randomly-directed kinetic energy?
That depends on the landing zone being available in a way that's hard for the onboard safety system to predict. But if the car is, say, spinning out you could use these to restore stability or try to recover from the other sorts of disasters that overpowered cars can end up in even on clear roads.
The thrusters are primarily pointed rearward and to the ground. It's not capable of doing much at all for a flat spin, the typical scenario of a car spinning out
Incorrect - the Rocket trim (if it ever exists) has four thrusters pointed downward at the wheels for lift and they can rotate 180 degrees and two thrusters at the front pointing outward for use control.
This is a track car for the uber wealthy. It's only rarely going to be on public roads, and it'll probably have some unlock mechanism for the truly stupid stuff. Honestly, I'm here for it. Automakers have gotten complacent. Between Chinese automakers and stunts like this, we might see the return of outrageous engineering just to prove a point.
If I'm not mistaken, and please somebody correct me if I am mistaken, Teslas meet or exceed the absolute highest safety regulations in the US and in Europe.
Your link is to an article that references an iSeeCars study from two years ago. They got their crash data from NHTSA FARS, but got their mileage data from sales of used cars on their platform. At the time I noticed some issues with their mileage data.[1] It's very likely that Teslas sold on their platform have very low mileage compared to average, because people either sell a car quickly after buying it, or they hang on to it for years. This also lines up with the fact that the other cars in their unsafe list were all released recently.
Working backwards from their stats & FARS data, I calculated that for their claims to be true, each Model Y would need to accumulate only 4,300 miles per year. This is far below Tesla's reports of 13,000-14,000 miles per year. Also iSeeCars claimed that an average of 2.8 vehicles were involved in fatal accidents for every billion miles traveled. But at the time the US had 13.3 deaths per billion miles traveled. So for their data to be correct, the average fatal accident would need to have five fatalities.
That data is from an online survey of people who got insurance quotes using QuoteWizard, so hardly an unbiased sample. It’s not even data on insurance claims, just what people reported in the questionnaire. Also it claims that BMW drivers are the worst, not Tesla drivers. And both Ram & Subaru are more accident prone brands than Tesla. Oh and unlike you claim, it has no info about injury or fatality rates. Obviously an online survey would have difficulty getting accurate data on fatalities due to… survivorship bias.
Lastly, are you admitting that your first link was incorrect since you didn’t respond to my points at all?
Your comment is—at best—misleading. See the last two paragraphs of the article:
> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws.... Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well....
> “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities”....
could be that Tesla making fans believe their level 2 driving automation is better than it actually is and marketing BS terms like Autopilot and FSD contributing to the fatal accident stat. even if the car itself is rated safe by IIHS, isn't that mostly about how well driver and passenger of the car fare when they are involved in different types of accidents? the safety rating wouldn't take into account whether the manufacturer has done its best to accurately communicate capability of its driving automation system to its customers. and i think pedestrian or passengers of other cars dying is counted under the fatal accident stat.
and if you've been in Teslas that are a few years old, you might have experienced phantom braking. random hard braking for no apparent reason. i try to avoid being behind Teslas on the road if i can help it.
hater. i use it to go work every day while programming or scheduling things or reading and replying to emails in the car. no issues. today, right now, on this date there is literally no better ownable self driving car than a tesla. there need to be more. i will not buy a car without self driving again.
The discussion was about the car's safety, not driver behavior. A car can be the safest car, but if the drivers who choose that car all decide to drive it off a cliff, it doesn't speak at all to the safety of the car, it speaks to driver behavior.
The safest car is one that is not driven, but that is not a useful measure. Put a car on the road and you add a driver, now you can start compare risk.
Yes, it's a bomb, but there's no way in hell it's going to be legalized for public road use in the US or EU. It was a cool demo, it's literally a flying car, how could that not be cool.
Perhaps some billionaires will buy it, good for them.
Why do you guys contort yourselves into knots trying to find any and every conceivable problem with something that doesn't affect you ... get over it already. Go ahead and flag me.
That iSeeCars study is shaky. The death counts come from federal data, but miles driven are their own private estimates, so nobody can check the math.
The more rigorous data is the IIHS driver death rates, which use real registration data and adjust for driver age and gender (iihs.org/topics/driver-death-rates). It shows the RWD Model 3 is about half its class average (15 vs 29 deaths per million vehicle-years) and the Model S is about average. The AWD Model 3 is above average (39 vs 29), which points more to how fast cars get driven than to the car itself. IIHS hasn’t published a Model Y rate yet.
So Teslas aren’t the deadliest brand. The faster versions show more risk, which is the same pattern IIHS sees with muscle cars.
Safety of a car is a different axis than safety of the driver. That combines them. Related, it's why performance cars have higher insurance rates: people who buy fast cars go fast.
The fatality rate of an accident includes all parties involved. Most often when a Tesla hits someone, it kills the other guy, since it's basically an ultra-dense block of mass that can do 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, very quietly and without launch control[1]. Teslas are incredibly safe for the people inside the Tesla.
[1]Lots of other cars have technically faster times than Teslas, but most of them require launch control, good tires, and sound like the engine's about to explode. You can floor the Tesla at any time and the software will deliver however much power it can without slipping.
This is silly. I bought my Model Y specifically because its safety is so high. You can see it in (1) the crash rate numbers when using FSD, (2) the crash-test ratings are fantastic, and (3) impossible situations where people survived such as plummeting off a cliff on route 1.
but how well will the people in the other car fare if you crash into them? with the Cybertruck especially, its sharp edges make it seem like a set of knives on four wheels. the pommel is just facing the driver rather than the pedestrian or other vehicle.
Perhaps you should look at pedestrian fatality statistics in both the US and the EU. One is rapidly rising and one is falling year on year. I wonder which is which.
I can't reply to your original comment about how heads bounce, I will say that I had a friend on a bike late at night who got t-boned by a sedan. Her face went right into the hood of the car and the aluminum gave way and dented.
Her injuries were bad but not nearly as bad as they'd have been if the surface had just remained completely flat.
EU safety regs are pass/fail - there's no sources stating Tesla have exceeded anything there, they need to pass in order to be sold in Europe, so they've done whatever the minimum required is for that. To do so, they've needed to make numerous compromises & changes to their cars to make them fit for the EU market - notably no FSD. Hardly indicative of a car brand that exceeds anything.
As for US safety standards, that seems a lower bar...
> EU safety regs are pass/fail - there's no sources stating Tesla have exceeded anything there, they need to pass in order to be sold in Europe, so they've done whatever the minimum required is for that.
That falls under the purview of my phrasing "meet or exceed the absolute highest safety regulations in the US and in Europe". They meet European regulations and exceed US regulations.
Tesla's assisted driving is allowed in a lot of EU countries under varying conditions & caveats. It's a modified version of what's called "FSD" in the US, & while Tesla still market the feature under the "FSD" name in Denmark & NL, the name has been challenged as false advertising in other EU countries (e.g. Germany) & they've had to market it under a more conservative label like "Assisted" or whatever.
Here is the 2020-2024 Model Y manual's instructions on opening the back door with power loss, doesn't seem that obvious to me (you have to "remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket" !): https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2020_2024_modely/en_us/GU...
There was nothing deceptive about my statement. Every car has an obvious front door release. There are no cars where the non-obvious back door release is the only way out without electricity.
That's so patently unacceptable that I'm surprised you're taking that tack. You're in a lithium car fire, climbing into the front seat may not even be possible, and figuring out that your back door doesn't have an obvious release is time lost that all will have a cost in blood. There being two paths out of the maze doesn't make it not a maze.
At least on mine, if the car crashes, the child lock is disabled immediately.
BTW, the emergency release procedure should always be the same as the normal release process. All systems should fail to a safe state on a power loss. It’s easy to design a door lever that engages the powered open on pull and a mechanic mechanism when pulling harder or further.
Thank you for convincing me and everyone I know to never even ride in a Tesla, let alone buy one (and, sadly, I had planned to make one my next car).
I looked up the owner's manual description of the opening mechanism (posted by (ammar2, above) [0], and found it was an insanely dangerous design, literally worthy of an escape room as other sibling posters have described.
It is hidden below a mat, which must be removed, then a red tab pressed (not pulled), and there is a big caution AGAINST using it when the car has any power as it may damage the car.
So, you are in a rapidly expanding lithium fire, you must first determine if the car has power or not, and then you must fumble and root around to find which trim mat to pull, and then whether to pull (wrong) or push the red tab.
If you fail to do these steps quickly enough, you will die a horrible death in a fire (as many have).
If you use this lever at an inopportune time, you will damage the car.
In what other automobile does using a manual door-opening mechanism damage the vehicle?
This is one of the most insanely user- and owner-hostile designs I have ever encountered or heard of in life.
And it has actually unnecessarily cause at least a dozen people to be burned alive and conscious.
And here you are defending it in multiple posts like some idiotic fanboy. Seriously, rethink your priorities and your life. It is truly sad your identity so much depends on someone else's massively flawed personality and product designs.
I found it immediately (on a model 3) and the car started bitching at me for using the wrong door release. It took me longer to find the "correct", electronic door button.
Weirdly it's actually usually easier, in the sense of less force required, to open from the "bottom", non-stem end, but you end up with a less aesthetically pleasing result.
Unfortunately there also tends to be a little bit of a pith or seed cluster or something, at least when I've tried it, I'm sure it's edible, but I suspect the actual skin of the banana is probably edible also.
It should come with a flight attendant and an obligatory five minute safety instruction before each ride. I've ridden in multiple Teslas, including many Ubers, and no one has even given me the manual to read or shown me how to escape in case of a fire.
That may be so, but these are two very different things:
[has X]
[has X designed, built, and visible in the car such that it can be easily found and operated whilst panicking for your life, or rushing from outside while trying to save a trapped passenger's life]
There are people who would tell you that while Tesla may have the first, it does not have the latter, but they cannot because they are dead, and should not be.
I own a 2023 model 3. The rear door releases are behind the door panel, apparently used for production, and not accessible to rear passengers. The front doors are double paned but the rears aren't. So I can only open the front doors but not bash out the window and the reverse in the back. Fun little puzzle I have to deal with if I get in a bad accident with my child.
I could just punch a hole in the door and route it, as many have done, but it has no child lock integration which could be problematic.
Why take what risk? Every make and model has issues. This car has 5/5 safety with best in class accident avoidance.
This lock issue is not regulated and many electric cars have this and/or other issues. It's not like I have great choices if I want to drive an electric sedan.
And no one ever found it in a crash. The door release is also only accessible from the inside which means people on the outside cannot open the door to help unconscious passengers.
How is that different than any other car? Most modern cars lock their doors when you put them in gear, making breaking the glass the only option to get in during an emergency.
Most European brands I've tried only lock the cars when the speed exceeds 20 km/h.
In addition, most brands I'm aware of will unlock the car when the airbags are deployed (Kia/Hyundai, Renault, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW). Because these cars still have door handles, they can be opened by a bystander after a crash.
The issue is not that the doors are locked. The issue is that unlocked doors without door handles are still useless.
They make cars that are very safe from a testing protocol perspective, but cars that might also fall off their performance cliff quicker in some real world scenarios where the energy input is just a tad higher.
They engineer to robustly pass tests, seemingly without a lot of consideration of "beyond" the test. It's not uncommon for most OEMs to target the test metrics, but you can still make design choices along the way where you may recognize with EJ when there is a "design cliff" and you may avoid it.. if desired.
OK so we allow a car with 100ppm to go. Ok now my car is 101ppm that should be fine too right? How about 105ppm? Where is the actual limit?
In reality, when you're getting close to 99ppm you start getting "borderline" notices on your MoT that you should look into this before your car ends up in the failure zone.
That could be implemented as a tax that rose sharply after the limit, intended to pay for the externalities of exceeding the safe limits given by the law.
If you are ok to pay twice the value of the car for 101 ppm, then fine. Or four times for 102, eight for 103 and so on. There will be a point where no manufacturer will make a car with those numbers.
It's not a manufacture issue; it's a defect issue. Cars that do more than 100 are already not going to be road-legal. The test costs about £30 to have done, including emissions and brake checks. What is this going to achieve? What are the externalities worth pricing in for cars whose brakes are terrible?
Well, while I agree, they have been incredibly useful in improving car safety. Cars used to be death traps. Now, most people will be able to walk away from most car accidents. Modern car safety, especially on the restraints and bags side, is incredible.
My first comment was just meant to highlight why* a certain car might pass all tests but have more injuries in real life. Another reason could be the nature of Tesla accidents, with people either driving silly or people sleeping in the car while it drives itself into a wall, e.g.
Calling a cybertruck too dangerous shows a quite high degree of regulatory conservatism. That could be good from some perspectives, but in the long-term it will leave the EU increasingly irrelevant as things develop, because new things always come with risks. But if your standard of unacceptable danger is 'hardened electric truck' then you'll be increasingly far behind on the curve of adoption, to say nothing of creation, of new tech because they'll all certainly go well beyond that.
Go back to times past and think about electricity for instance. Can you even imagine? 'Yeah we'd uh like to set up these poles all around the countryside and string some wires between them. And yeah if anybody touches those wire, they die and all the electricity gets screwed up. If lightning strikes them or a tree falls on them, yeah they're gonna fall and start fires. And there will be live wires - and uh yeah again, touch 'em and you die. Anyhow, we good to go? In exchange for this totally-safe-tech we'll be able to have electric lights! I mean how cool is that? Err and in full disclosure about those lights, uh don't touch the sockets or well.. you know, yeah - you die. Okay, so we good to go?'
Ironically it's the US that's a lot more regulatorily conservative when it comes to automobiles than the EU, if you look at things like matrix headlamps, replacing the wing mirrors with cameras, flashing brake lights, etc.
"A car with sharp metal edges that slices up pedestrians" is not a technical development.
Don't be daft, I don't think Europe's at risk of becoming irrelevant because they put a greater emphasis on pedestrian safety than the US.
Perhaps just look at a few ancient European towns with cobbled streets with no pavements, no wider than 2.5M and hairpin turns at many junctions. Perhaps it's just a product that doesn't suit the market.
Can you argue, in good faith, that you think Europe, in its current state of regulatory bureaucracy, would have greenlit the deployment of electricity? How about of cars in general? And for electricity - mind you all that risk I mentioned was genuinely at first solely and exclusively for electric lighting. Obviously all the things that build on top of electricity rather required electricity infrastructure to exist first!
> Can you argue, in good faith, that you think Europe, in its current state of regulatory bureaucracy, would have greenlit the deployment of electricity?
I can and so can anyone else, but what fantasy scenario is this? Which specific rules of this "regulatory bureaucracy" would stop it?
The reason the cybertruck is banned is because, in part at least, it has square edges instead of round. So somebody might get hurt! Seriously, the law is UN-R ECE R26. Here [1] is the rather incomprehensible text of the law. By contrast with electricity you're putting up stuff all around the country knowing that it will catch fire, it will kill people, and then trying to run it into people's homes where it again will kill people, and more - for more convenient lighting. To this very day, after more than a century of safety improvements, tens of thousands of people die per year from electrocution, to say nothing of electrical fires. This is so many orders of magnitude beyond 'square edges' that I don't think anybody can argue, in good faith, that the EU would approve electricity.
Similarly for cars themselves. You're speaking of machines which operate on the basis of hundreds of small explosions per second hopefully contained within a metal chassis under a hood to let a person drive tons of metal around which can trivially be weaponized to cause mass deaths, as has already happened multiple times in Europe. Even when not behaving maliciously, the number of deaths caused by crashes is in the millions per year. And again that's also after a century of safety improvements.
If gasoline cars were invented today, they would be immediately banned because gas is a deadly poison and fire hazard. It would be considered crazy to allow just anyone to pump gas into their car.
I find that in online discussions people become much more downvote/hostile oriented when they know they're wrong, but can't really argue against it, rather than when people disagree and genuinely think they're right - which tends to lead to nice debate.
People, in the short term, don't like the cognitive dissonance being rattled, but I think in the longrun that's what has the biggest impact on our ideological direction shifting.
I would argue that neurotic bureaucrats forcing everyone to share their excessive worries are rent-seeking at best and actually-not-intelligent at worst.
It’s not a non sequitur. vovavili called regulators “neurotic bureaucrats” in a thread about pedestrian protection rules for cars, and I asked whether regulating the auto industry is neurotic. That follows directly. If you think I misread the point, say what the point was. That would be more useful than a one-liner.
I don't think anyone is arguing their car product is illegal. Legality seems more focused on the self esteem of boomer losers than it is on giving a shit about all other humans. We must learn to exist in a world where we don't have much and the state hates us—already reality, but we don't have to deal with liberalism
Euro NCAP rated the 2025 Tesla Model S Autopilot system only "Moderate" for assisted driving. So instead of repeating vague Tesla marketing claims, how about naming the specific regulations and providing actual evidence?
Really? Everyone is talking about it. Did you know Porsche announced a new supercar on the same day? Most people don't, but even non-"car people" can't stop talking about Tesla's flying car.
Tesla's stock price might be detached from reality, but is their actual business in trouble? I ask because anywhere I travel (Europe, UK, HK, NZ for example) there are just tons of Teslas, most of them the latest refresh models. There were more Telsas than BYD in Hong Kong!
This is historical artefact: HK with its short distances is very suitable to EVs, and the government initially supported EVs with tax breaks. In other words, people bought a lot of Teslas when it was the only game in town.
For new registrations, BYD overtook Tesla back in 2025 with a yoy growth of 67.8% vs Tesla -3.8%, and in the latest available month (June) had more than 4x as many registrations as Tesla.
It's not exactly market-dominating growth justifying a 300+ P/E ratio.
> Tesla's stock price might be detached from reality, but is their actual business in trouble?
I am not sure you can detach these two concepts. Tesla is currently valued around 3x the next top 5 auto companies combined, so to an extent you need to judge the company on these expectations. I happen to think they do have a pretty good business selling cars, and maybe a very good business selling autonomous cars, but there's so much uncertainty I think it is hard to see the current market cap as anything other than hugely inflated.
The business is doing fine, they’re profitable and regularly beating various targets. Honestly I think Elon is more level headed than people give him credit for, his companies are consistently profitable and generally produce competitive products.
Operating margin fell from 16% to ~2% over the last 10 years and will probably be negative in 2026 and 2027. They have a big cash pile to burn through but they’re spending it on ummm “a flying car,” humanoid robots, and an AI fab. They’re fucked.
Similar, to the time Tesla was fucked, because they wanted to sell EVs when there was neither demand nor charging infra. Or when SpaceX wanted to build a rocket that could land on legs, whereas every wannabe rocket scientists knew that to be impossible.
Yes, Elon's time tables are very aggressive. But that is by design. And FSD is here, although it took much longer than anticipated, no competitor caught up.
I'd be very surprised if the roadster project was particularly expensive. That operating margin tells you they are spending all the cash they are earning on cars on the other stuff, not that the cars suddenly became more expensive to make.
I'm interested to meet someone online who's short both on-shore US silicon fabs and the market for humanoid robots. Can you say more about your thinking?
I'm short on an allegedly successful automotive company that has a rapidly deteriorating automotive business (due entirely to management's own decision-making) pivoting into the most hyped business ideas in the world. I'm bearish on the type of creative accounting and self-dealing we see between the Musk companies.
Musk is similar to Zuck in that they get some credit for sheer courage to turn the wheel on their massive businesses, but they also have to be right. Aside from his anticompetitive behavior, Zuck continues to miss. Musk's pattern has been that the more Musk is personally involved, the worse the outcomes. Cybertruck was his baby. Optimus is his baby.
If Tesla is doing so well as an automotive business, then why doesn't he just continue making it a great automotive business?
I mean the short answer is that it doesn’t temperamentally suit him to do so.
Maybe a mid length answer is if you agree with his assessment on say humanoid robots in terms of market and you believe they might have a geometric growth factor in production (eg robots can make more robots) then you’d want that business build out done by a team that can scale rapidly.
For fabs spacex and Tesla are significant consumers of the output- vertical integration is preferred by lots of companies.
> I mean the short answer is that it doesn’t temperamentally suit him to do so.
Correct, and I think having a CEO who's totally unaccountable to a board and is temperamentally unable to focus on his core business is not good.
SpaceX and Tesla are nowhere near large enough consumers to justify vertically integrating a fab. The demand is predicated on Optimus producing millions of units per year.
This circularity will probably end up being seen in retrospect as so transparently absurd that it'll beggar belief that anyone accepted it.
Terafab profitability is really tough to get right, I'm open to ideas -- there's operating profit, operating profit net of amortization / depreciation, there's like six phases of the terafab specced out running through 203X (and as you say, slippage is inevitable there). I'd want to be considered a winner if the value of the EUV machines is up significantly, e.g. it was a balance sheet winner.
You've got to take Musk's forecasts with a massive grain (sack?) of salt. Pre-launch he was estimating making 250,000 Cybertrucks per year by 2025. So far, total sales over 3 years have actually been 60-70K.
I'd bet that in 5 years time Optimus total sales are in the 10's of thousands at best, with few to no large scale industrial users (other than self-use by Musk). Customers will be similar to what AgiBot and Unitree currently have - entertainment, hospitality, academic, small scale trials, plus a few Tesla fanboy sales that don't do anything actually productive.
On the cybertruck, I was going to suggest that's a function of demand, but actually I see there are substantial wait times for these. That might mean they cut factory capacity though, I haven't tracked it super carefully.
If Optimus is in use at factories in 2029 then it will absolutely be able to produce more than a thousand robots a month by the end of 2031, just using any sort of geometric production curve as a swag.
As to users, I think if it can provide home services, they're going to sell a ton of them.
As to Elon's forecasts, yes, double them at least. And, also, he's mostly right historically, if delayed substantially. I think there's near infinite demand for $1/hr robot labor in the US.
It’s so interesting. On the one hand you have our culture’s deserved rancor at late stage capitalist CEOs juicing the profits and squeezing every last drop of profit out of their customers. Tired derivative products and enshittified service models are exhausting us. Our institutions seem to be creatively bankrupt, and every single product and utterance they make has been through 500 different committees to ensure maximum profitability and minimum soul. We all fucking hate what almost corporate America has come to stand for.
And yet… when it’s Elon Musk’s company, we are suddenly all numbers and figures, and we waggle our fingers disapprovingly that he doesn’t have board approval. Yes, with Musk you have a childish huckster asshole. And increasingly it does appear he’s gone off the deep end, buying into his own self mythology. But the one redeeming quality he still demonstrates is refusal to settle for doing the same thing over and over. He continually and unreasonably pushes the envelope.
Tesla has definitively become a successful company. They defied all the naysayers in reaching that success, and it has turned into a global behemoth. They have oodles of money. The fact that Musk tirelessly insists on trying new moonshots that seem ridiculous is a GOOD thing - it’s the thing we _lack_. Inventive, audacious risk-taking is exactly what our stupid extractive scam economy lacks. Compared to you and me, yes, Musk is a cringey edgelord with the energy of a weird kid at the sleepover who tells bragging lies. But compared to his cohort who run large businesses, he is a goal oriented doer who attracts great talent and then relentlessly pushes them to achieve the impossible. And they actually succeed some non-zero amount of the time. It doesn’t matter that not every idea is a winner. That’s not how moonshots work. The point is that _some_ moonshot ideas do work though and actually move us up the tech tree. And the probable reality is that the delusional unrealistic asshole _helps_ push you there, precisely because they cannot be reasoned with. No, you cannot build moonshot companies without grandiosity, because the people working on it need to have a mission that is bigger than dollars and cents or common sense. If the only thing pushing you is good financials, you will quit as soon as “projections” start to look bad. In the area of moonshots, projections are just the opinions of uninformed non-believers who will ALWAYS mount until the world convinces you to stop working on the “stupid” thing.
All that said, the flying car is the dumbest thing I’ve seen him push and I don’t find it remotely exciting. Self-driving and robots are way cooler.
I don't really disagree with much here. I think Musk is a despicable piece of shit for reasons totally outside of his management track record.
However, the root of this conversation is not about Musk at all but about whether Tesla's core business (automotive) is in trouble. The answer to that, as Musk is demonstrably convinced as well as I am, is "yes."
Then we get into Musk's own personal idiosyncrasies and to what degree they're a liability or an asset to pull Tesla away from doom. For the reasons you mention, they're an asset. Not many leaders are willing to throw the wheel like he is (Zuck being another example). For other reasons, his idiosyncrasies are a liability. Like the fact that he personally was single-handedly responsible for destroying huge amounts of Tesla's brand power and that his personal project (the Cybertruck) inflicted such gargantuan direct and indirect cost on Tesla at such a critical moment.
Again, the question is whether Tesla's core business is in trouble. The answer is yes. Nobody remarks that it's such an incredible thing that a CEO of an unambiguously crushing-it company is willing to yolo the company into new directions.
Yeah - I guess not much I disagree with here. But, some food for thought: people on this website have been telling me Uber is going to fail for nigh on 10 years now. Constantly, breathlessly, they've explained to me it's NOT because they feel any one way about the misogynistic leadership elements at that company. No, they predict it will fail purely based on a dispassionate reading of the financials and fundamentals. It will definitely fail _because_ it's a bad company. Any day now, they assure me.
Point being: phrases like 'rationalization' and 'wishful thinking' exist for a reason. You should be extremely skeptical of how fairly you are assessing the prospects of a company run by people you hate. You are almost definitely interpreting the outlook uncharitably.
> our culture’s deserved rancor at late stage capitalist
Late stage capitalism was coined over a century ago. It still hasn't happened.
What does happen, however, is a company will grow until it strangles itself with committees and bureaucracy. And then gets replaced with a younger company. A good book on this is "The Innovator's Dilemma".
If anything his companies are doing well despite of him, not because of him. There's level-headed and competent leadership in them resisting his bullshit.
The counterpoint of course is that he has demonstrated a consistent ability to build and run successful businesses, many of which are extremely high risk
The only new western car company in decades to not fail, based on a technology nobody believed in at the time, least of all other car companies
SpaceX being a private space company, which was completely unheard of. No experts though they could succeed
Smaller earlier businesses like Zip2, paypal, etc
These are gigantic high risk companies with high failure probabilities, the chance they they all happened to be successful despite Musk and not at least in part because of him is stretching reasonable doubt for me.
I'm absolutely no fan of his politics or personality, but the man can run a business that nobody else even dares try (at least until he demonstrates viability and the market starts to generate competitors)
> The counterpoint of course is that he has demonstrated a consistent ability to build and run successful businesses, many of which are extremely high risk
Three sucesses.
Not so successful: Solar City, Neuralink, TBC, X.
(X exists, but before it was valued-and-bought by one of Musk's other companies, it appeared to have lost about half its value).
After 10 years, it is not particularly good to have to caveat that with "once it passes the FDA, assuming it's real".
The main problem isn't even the tech, though the tech isn't as good as it seems either.
Their main advance hasn't been the BCI: other teams also do this, main limiting factor is product lifetime rather than electrode count (though yes their count is higher).
The surgical robot is a much more interesting thing than the BCI. But even with the robot, "interesting" rather than "amazing" because (1) what else can that robot do? (2) what does it cost to use? (3) was it reliable enough for humans, or the reason for all the animal welfare issues? (4) some other BCI teams working on delivery via blood vessel and less invasive is better.
Main thing though for any sucessful medical tech is cost. Even with FDA (or non-US equivalents, somehow I don't even know the name of my local equivalent), medical interventions are famously expensive enough in the US to bankrupt and insurance in the US is famously reluctant to pay the full costs.
And up a level, the problem with Neuralink is their output suggests a lack of care to detail, of emphasis on speed over quality, and of having inherited Musk's personal attitude problem when faced with criticism.
TBC is The Boring Company, Zip2 was one of the three sucesses (and not IMO the x.com that became part of PayPal, that looks to me like pure luck for correct timing in the dot.com boom before the bust).
Hyperloop was a tech not a company and if I listed every tech he's done wrong I'd be rightly accused of misunderstanding how R&D investments are necessarily gambles.
paypal succeeded _despite_ musk and required a boardroom coup to remove him from leadership because he was about to tank the company. if he had is way nobody would remember paypal besides a couple people with merch for a long defunct company.
I'd still restrict this to an ability to pursue ideas that others find too risky with relentless persistence and a laser focus. He is able to get something off the ground and make others believe in it, but not good at actually running a stable business. And that's fine, mind you, I absolutely respect what has built. But the person who is responsible for turning SpaceX from an incredibly risky bet into a profit machine is Gwynne Shotwell, not Elon Musk.
Of course it’s still early days for all these companies and they’re not exactly fiscally solid, but if Tesla had not made all those cars, someone else would have.
Why exactly do you think he keeps repositioning them as a robotics oh wait no I mean an AI company? Why is he clearly positioning Tesla to be acquired by SpaceX? Why is Tesla investing into xAI to be converted into SpaceX shares?
Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade. The Roadster (obviously) is not going to help.
They have a huge balance sheet so it’ll take a while but Musk obviously sees the writing on the wall. The sheen is wearing off their shitty products and he doesn’t know how to add the sheen back or make the products less shitty.
>You're aware that "beat" means "beat expectations," right?
You're aware that the "expectations" are they run a profitable company, right?
>You're aware that expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is struggling?
You're aware that the expectations are increasingly that Tesla's business is stable, and showed record deliveries and backlog in Q2?
>TSLA is down 18% YTD. That's because their business is doing so well?
Auto manufacturing sector (DJUSAU) is down 16% YTD, and Tesla's stock is overpriced to begin with. Tesla's most direct competitor in the US, Rivian, is down 34% YTD. Stop getting your business/economic news from BlueSky/reddit.
Yes, profitable with slowing growth, shrinking margins, and increasing competition. This is a death spiral for Musk's ultra capital-intensive mode of operating.
That's why Musk is trying to claim Tesla isn't an automotive company (except when comparisons to such suit him and his cultists, of course).
October 2: Tesla deliveries fall 2% as US consumers buy fewer EVs
July 23: Tesla shares tumble 11% as discounts hit profits
April 2: Tesla reports weaker than expected 6% rise in global deliveries
January 29: Tesla scraps models in pivot to AI as annual revenue falls for the first time
Tesla growth is slowing, margins are getting crunched, competition is heating up. Tesla knows they're fucked so they're pivoting into AI. The pivot into AI might work, but Musk himself unambiguously thinks Tesla is fucked as an automotive company.
>October 2: Tesla deliveries fall 2% as US consumers buy fewer EVs
Tesla outperformed expectations and the overall US EV market by a landslide. [US EV] sales in Q3 2026 were down 39.5% from a year ago whereas Tesla was only down 2%.
>July 23: Tesla shares tumble 11% as discounts hit profits
The stock is up 19% since then.
>April 2: Tesla reports weaker than expected 6% rise in global deliveries
Subsequently crushed the next quarters, breaking previous records as stated above.
>Tesla growth is slowing
The EV market is slowing, yet Tesla outperforms.
>margins are getting crunched
This is true for every automaker.
>competition is heating up
LOL! Competition is getting crushed, some of it leaving the EV market entirely.
>Tesla knows they're fucked so they're pivoting into AI. The pivot into AI might work, but Musk himself unambiguously thinks Tesla is fucked as an automotive company.
Peak Elon Derangement Syndrome. Take the L, you're out of your league and your own sources proved you wrong.
> [US EV] sales in Q3 2026 were down 39.5% from a year ago whereas Tesla was only down 2%.
Tesla's global sales were down 2%. Their US sales were down 20%. Tesla's decline itself constitutes 1/5th of the overall US decline.
While Tesla's US EV sales fell 20%, Rivian's grew 45%, and Toyota climbed 328%.
You're aware that "they're in a cooling sector" is not a good rebuttal to "their core business is endangered," right?
> Peak Elon Derangement Syndrome. Take the L, you're out of your league and your own sources proved you wrong.
You're so right, king. Elon is pivoting out of cars because they're just crushing it tooooo hard in the car business. Excellent response. The [X] Derangement Syndrome formulation is just shorthand for "I've decided to shut my brain off."
>Tesla's global sales were down 2%. Their US sales were down 20%. Tesla's decline itself constitutes 1/5th of the overall US decline.
The slump in EV sales has Tesla's increasing it's share of the US EV market. Market share increased even though its US sales were down for the eighth straight month in September. US sales were down 16 percent compared to the same period last year, and just blew out the quarter.
Tesla gained market share while just delivering a record quarter.
>While Tesla's US EV sales fell 20%, Rivian's grew 45%, and Toyota climbed 328%.
GMC’s U.S. EV sales fell about 57%, Ford fell 80%, Volkswagen is down 90% nearly out of the market, Kia/Hyundai (one of the best non-Tesla EV sales) down 50%.
Of course Rivian grew, they're ramping their factory, but the stock just hit a 52-week low, did not give great guidance for Q4.
>You're aware that "they're in a cooling sector" is not a good rebuttal to "their core business is endangered," right?
You're aware that a "cooling sector" that ebbs and flows != "core business is endangered," right? No, you're not aware, you're oblivious.
>You're so right, king.
At least you admit your EDS.
>Elon is pivoting out of cars because they're just crushing it tooooo hard in the car business.
Pivoting out so hard they had a record quarter for deliveries and gained market share LOLOL, delusional.
>The [X] Derangement Syndrome formulation is just shorthand for "I've decided to shut my brain off."
Yes, you have shut your brain off, thank you for admitting it.
The October 2 headline is cherry picking. The preceding yoy quarter was inflated by the tax credit rush before it expired. Q3 was also higher than Q2.
You've also cherry-picked an instance where Tesla reported weaker than expected growth but you've omitted the times where it reported stronger than expected growth.
As for shrinking margins, that's largely due to growing R&D spending. That's not necessarily or even normally a negative thing.
The growing investment into AI and autonomy is part of a very long standing trend that has been declared for about decade. It's not an indication of desperation (beyond the ever-present desperation that companies always feel with the heat of competitive fires under their feet) or some failure of some previous plan.
I want to add one final point, and that is that every company's position is precarious, including Tesla's. So if that is what you're saying about Tesla, I would agree.
Where I would disagree is in the insinuation that its position is any more tenuous or precarious than any other company's.
Markets can change. Consumer tastes can change. Research and development efforts can fail. competitors can emerge. All these things hold true for every company all the time. And it holds true for Tesla. So, being a cynic when it comes to the prospects of a specific company is very likely to prove prescient. The only point I would disagree with you on is the idea that Tesla's position has recently degraded. Its position has always been precarious, and it has succeeded despite that, not because of some comparatively superior past position.
Just wait til all teslas are roving cell towers connected to star link. Always capturing 3d data of every single street driven. There’s still so much room for weird big things with the network being built. Scary.
Twitter is essentially dead. If I go to my "For You" tab, it is literally 100% pro-Trump bot posts.
Musk keeps it running as a mouthpiece/propaganda and vanity project, but it's not a viable business anymore due to all the $13B Musk borrowed to acquire it, as well as loss of advertizers. It's estimated to break even on an operational basis, but loses about $1B/yr when you include interest on the debt.
Is it dead? I feel like this is more of a "you" thing than you might realize. At least for sports, twitter is 100% still the dominant medium for reporting.
I'm looking at the same post on a players status for this weekend from 2 hours ago on 3 platforms:
- Threads: 5 likes, 2 comments, 15 shares
- BlueSky: 19 likes, 3 comments, 3 shares
- Twitter: 1500 likes, 105 comments, 281 shares
Doesn't really seem like twitter is the one that's almost dead...
The example I gave is for sports. Not politics. My point is specifically that the politics side of twitter is probably giving people a weird/not fully accurate view of the site as a whole.
Uh isn’t the “for you” literally the algorithm based feed for your direct interests? My for you page shows zero trump. And this is exactly the reason why it’s still so valuable, it can feed the echo chambers for individuals and keep them engaged (and seeing ads)
Trump has a 30% approval rating and will never run for office again. Rest assured that anyone engaged in a sophisticated right-wing propaganda racket would not be talking about Donald Trump.
I've no idea how the "For You" works, and my interests certainly do not include Trump propaganda. The only Twitter content I engage with is from people I follow, which is basically just AI/ML.
This is one of those funny times people don't realize "For You" is personalized. It's like when Google rolled out personalized search by default and people started asking "why do all my search results have porn in them" and it's like uhh dude because you look at porn all the time.
Well, not sure what the intent of the algorithm is - I'd guess increased engagement vs echo chamber (i.e. could be stuff you hate just as much as stuff you like), but in any case it's a failure since I'm not going to read stuff that is a) annoying and b) posted by bots.
It's really difficult to see such ridiculous levels of hyperbole in every single Tesla thread and not think people are doing this in a coordinated way for ulterior motives
I mean he's been called a nazi, a pedophile, and a scam artists multiple times in this HN comment thread. Not sure how much more slanderous it can get.
All that can be definitively proven by Musk’s own statements is that the Epstein files convinced him that Trump is a child rapist and Musk has nonetheless chosen to defend Trump, work with him, fund him, and according to Musk single-handedly get him re-elected.
Thank god Musk is not a scam artist though. That’d be a real indictment of his character. And you know, it might even be an indictment of the character of his valiant supporters.
There are three modes: Performance ($50k reservation), Thrust ($250k reservation), and Rocket (invite only). Thrust and Rocket mention cold gas thrusters. Where do you see a combustion rocket engine advertised?
https://www.tesla.com/roadster
He says in that video that they opened up the doors to show them that model, so it's unclear it's the same one "driven" for the demo.
Even if it is, they show interior, wheels & a distance shot of the rear opening showing a large air tank - very little can be seen of the actual chassis or engine.
Whatever tricks were done for the demo - whether the car is real or fake - it's highly unlikely what was shown today will ever be like-for-like accessible to consumers in the production model.
I thought somewhere in the video they said that it is just regular compressed air that is held in a tank, and that the car itself has a compressor and regenerates the compressed air over time. Obviously to stabilize that amount of weight the gas has to be ejected at such a high rate it is practically frozen at the nozzle outlet, but it is still just regular air.
I'm wondering if its going to be a model like I think Ferrari calls it Cliente Ferrari. Where the car stays with Ferrari, they put on track days at great tracks all over the world. Bring Pro Driver Coaches, Mechanics , Massage Therapists, five star chefs Data Analysts to review your performance. From my understanding Ferrari makes a lot of money doing that.
I have a feeling that the thrust versions (with thrusters) will find huge markets in the Middle East (UAE, Kuwait, Saudi, etc.), and maybe some other "few legal restrictions" jurisdictions (maybe the cartel bosses, African dictators, etc).
Where the heck did you see combustion based rocket engines? I haven’t seen that come up once. Was it an AI response? And the video feature only cold gas rockets as far as I knew.
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 like how "Jetson car" goes from driving George to work through the air to "10 seconds of air time is a Jetson car." No, it is nothing like the Jetsons. It is a cold air bomb waiting to explode and there is zero chance of it actually hitting the road other than in a few fake forms to pretend they did it.
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.
> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.
Teslas evaluation is based on hype. This is as hype as it gets for a car. To me it looks like they were in need for "the coolest thing". To me, this has the smell of desperation implying the beginning of the end of their high evaluation.
The site states it's cold-gas thrusters for both models: "Features a multi-mode suction system paired with cold-gas thrusters positioned around the perimeter of the vehicle that support forward and upward acceleration as well as lateral rotational movement."
The Rodenator is an applicable device that injects a precise mixture of oxygen and propane into the dens of burrowing rodents, and kills them with a concussive force that collapses the rodents' tunnel system as well.
> devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible mode
Just like economically infeasible Twitter, it has tremendous PR value. There is a huge economy revolving around people annoying other people just for a glimpse of their attention. This captures the attention and pleases people. Other car companies should start getting creative too.
He got the power to shape the US government because he spent hundreds of millions to elect Trump through PACs and was Trump's single largest political donor by miles
It glides in a carefully controlled demo. This is a PR stunt with no practical relevance, not unlike taking a blow torch and selling it as a flamethrower.
And supercars are typically not submitted for NCAP testing, so It'll likely be less safe than a Model Y for example (to be determined, no reports out yet)
I expect a future Bonneville speed run to get airborne and set some record. Could still qualify as fastest production car; even with no wheels on the ground.
> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
This is just going to make it even more desirable to a certain market segment.
This isn’t a flying car, which could conceivably have some use (like a personal aircraft). It’s a stunt to distract the gullible from Tesla financials, which do not justify the valuation. As you say, it’s not practical in production and never will be.
Musk clearly wants to merge all his companies, so that it’s too big to fail, and this probably came out of the questions that arise from that - how can we use Spacex tech at Tesla?
There’s no way this will ever directly make back the salaries and time spent on it so far. It’s not a way to make money for Tesla.
So no, Musk is trying to prepare the ground for a merger with spacex and distract from Tesla’s worsening fundamentals and the flop of cyber truck, the decade late delivery of roadster etc etc.
All this stuff was in motion while Tesla was in its COVID boom. It's hard to believe that this is all some PR stunt due to Tesla's current market posture, when the Cybertruck, Roadster, were all specced the same in 2021. It's not like they suddenly came up with these gimmicks. The gimmicks were there from day one.
Maskirovka (Russian: маскировка, literally meaning "masking" or "camouflage") is a long-standing Russian and Soviet military doctrine of deception, denial, and misdirection.
Depends how much they sell them for. It could probably make the investment back if they price it at $5M or something and sell 100 of them to the ultra rich.
> They will never sell a car with similar functionality to that demo to anyone
They're explicitly advertising selling exactly that car. They just say it's by "invitation only". Do you think it's just a marketing gimmick? I dunno who's crazy enough to buy one. But for the right price, they could definitely sell a few.
I could maybe see a major movie studio buying one or two, but I think the major problem with the stunt functionality is not so much making the vehicle, its finding a building/structure where it is safe to hang a multi-ton vehicle off the wall or the ceiling.
Nope, they'd build something custom if such an effect was required. It would be done on wires with the wires removed in post... Just like Fury Road. The results would be more predictable, the liability would be contained in existing insurance configurations and moreover directors trust their practical effects team.
I think 'directly' is doing a lot of work in OP's comment. I agree, this is never going to make sales that pay for the engineering effort involved in this machine, but keeping Tesla in the news, having this amazing POC, and the lessons learned that might apply to other parts of Musk's enterprises (SpaceX particularly) are not worth zero.
Plus, whatever you think of Musk, this is really fucking cool.
I don’t think much of Musk since the Nazi salutes, but why is this really cool?
It’s taking work done for rockets which are cool IMO (the control systems and software will all be from those) and sticking it on a car to make a circus act out of it.
I do have a problem with the fake spectacle of it and don’t think it’s cool in any way.
Yeah and if you do a kickflip over traffic your drinks will fall out of your cupholder. If that's your standard for cool I don't know what to tell you.
> There’s no way this will ever directly make back the salaries and time spent on it so far. It’s not a way to make money for Tesla.
Tesla in particular and all Elon Musk's ventures aren't exactly renowned for being sound investments. Even snake oil salesmen were seen as proper entrepreneurs at one point.
Personally I can't shake off the feeling that every single announcement is a con job, starting with the autonomous driving claims. I'm baffled why people still put any trust into anyyhing coming out of that field.
> autonomous driving is a con job? You can stop the trolley at any point but doing so would admit you were wrong.
What? You do understand that in Europe Tesla was forced to market their feature as "Tesla assisted driving" instead of FSD because regulators in multiple European countries determined that it is unable to drive the car on its own and the FSD claim is misleading.
we get another prototype that is evidently not even safe for a human to be in during demo.
it's a good trick tho, hey, now it's a flying car, so we gotta delay it more. that way they can delay the release and just collect pre order money infintely;)
Who cares about the inflation adjustment. He didn't hedge for inflation when he laid down that number. Then after 16 years he STILL couldn't pull it off.
You're making excuses for a trillionaire who would happily watch you starve.
Wasn’t aware of that detail thanks, it’s such a bizarre idea.
I disagree that it couldn’t come out of thinking of how to justify merging spacex and Tesla which he’s wanted to do for a long time.
This isn’t a cool car, it’s a gimmick. It will never be road-worthy, would lose money, and I doubt they’ll ever even sell it to customers.
As to why he’s going this dog and pony show now, we can only speculate, but I can’t think of any reasons that are good for Tesla (vs Musk personally) can you?
Why do anything? Why don't we all live in a joyless, pointless world where nobody does anything on a whim because it doesn't contribute to efficiency and shareholder profits?
Musk also said production was starting on the Roadster in 2020. It turns out that things Musk says don't mean much.
And it can still be a distraction. The fact that they went through all this effort for a fantastically unreasonable thing just to wow for a company that is off the rails is...pretty telling. Have you never worked with someone who is late for everything, always overpromising and underdelivering, and as it becomes more apparently their promises get more exaggerated and unreasonable? That's Musk. Like "look you can play games on your screen", which absolutely no one asked for in a car, and for which it does much shittier than a $200 pad.
For that matter it's Trump too, and they're both cut from the same cloth -- don't like the dumb arch? Well now it has snipers and drones! And also it will eliminate the debt, deficit, income taxes, and...
So instead of just starting production of a vehicle 8 years behind schedule, look, new distraction! Amazeballs! Don't worry coming real soon now. Just put in those deposits!
I mean, the one part of this story that is unclear and no one seems to be asking hard questions is the compressor status -- there are vague, handwavy (oh we'll build a compressor claims, but I have huge doubts). A 5000 psi to 10000 psi compressor in the real world today is enormous. It's industrial equipment that generates enormous amounts of heat, is hilariously loud, and takes enormous power. While I am 100% certain this dog and pony show had their tanks filled by external massive compressors out of sight, I am pretty skeptical Tesla has any magic innovation in that field.
It can hardly be a "new distraction" when it was evidently planned and announced in 2018.
I also find it unconvincing that the purpose of the stunt is to receive deposits.
This being a prestige project to show off Tesla's advantage in experimental technology, or a personal pet project, would seem a much more likely explanation. Do we really need to bend everything into a malicious scam?
When it's by a repeat scammer, yes. Like, good god.
Hey remember when all of the Tesla factories were being retooled to make robots, and the hilarious robot demo where some remote controlled junk was pitched as next gen? Also SpaceX would be to Mars by 2021, and would have landed a crew there in 2023. Totes!
Musk is Elizabeth Holmes who lucked into buying a growing business. Like, he 100% does exactly what Theranos did, and which she is sitting in jail for, trying to boost the stock on bullshit and lies.
"prestige project to show off Tesla's advantage"
Advantage? The entire engineering world is going "why?", for a wide range of reasons.
Not unlike the CyberJunk nonsense where he needed to boast that it can stop bullets and double as a boat (https://nationalpost.com/news/world/cybertruck-texas-wade-mo...) and is made out of impractical materials. That massive, colossal flop didn't show any "advantage", it showed that a toddler was running the show, and when people just want cars he's off desperately trying to regain his Iron man allure, now that he's just a vile, garbage human being.
They shut down model x and s production to retool those Fremont lines for Optimus robots. They actually are making them btw. They’re using them in their own factories currently just like they used the Tesla semi for like two years for their own freight before selling them to the public.
> They shut down model x and s production to retool those Fremont lines for Optimus robots.
Another narrative that also fits the facts is that demand for their cars is so bad that they had to idle the X and S lines at that factory and they used Optimus as an excuse.
If demand was booming they'd set up a new facility to manufacture Optimus rather than dismantling a car factory
They’ve wanted to shut down the s and x lines since the y and 3 were first being manufactured at scale. His timelines are always wrong but Elon has said this for years.
> Do we really need to bend everything into a malicious scam?
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 10 times, shame on me
Wild people are still falling for Musk's fake products. I guess what they say is true, there is a sucker born every minute despite the evidence of the last twenty years. This will never ship.
Tesla’s machine vision research wing became xAI and the compute and resource were transferred over. SpaceX then bought cursor.ai, a small but goated frontier lab. They merged cursor with xAI and it’s now SpaceXAI. So each Tesla uses models trained by SpaceX AI.
The model s has always had Inconel in the frame for strength since relatively early on. But the Inconel came from SpaceX. Inconel is primarily used in aerospace applications. It made the frame of the model s so strong it broke the NTHSA machine used to test rollover strength. Look this up it is easy to verify.
SpaceX materials science has always been a big part of Tesla’s success since the very early beginning. Likewise inversely.
Ok I looked this up because I found it very strange.
Inconel would not be a good choice for an automobile frame. Not only is it expensive and heavy it also can be pretty brittle. You want a frame that's strong but ductile so that it will absorb impact energy.
From what I've been able to find, Tesla uses inconel in some battery components. This makes sense because the thing inconel is really good at is staying strong even when very hot. This is why it's used in turbines and jet engines.
This thread points out that inconel is not unused in the automotive world, high-end ICE cars have used it for their exhaust systems. Another advantage of inconel in this application is that it's highly corrosion resistant:
You’re absolutely right and I clearly remembered this incorrectly. I conflated the model S actually breaking the NTHSA press that crushes cars to test rollover strength with the fact that the model s does use Inconel. My apologies. I wasn’t acting in bad faith, just remembered wrong.
“””
That was combined with upgrading the main pack contactor to use inconel (a high temperature space-grade superalloy) instead of steel, so that it remains springy under the heat of heavy current. The net result is that we can safely increase the max pack output from 1300 to 1500 Amps.
What this results in is a 10% improvement in the 0 to 60 mph time to 2.8 secs and a quarter mile time of 10.9 secs. Time to 155 mph is improved even more, resulting in a 20% reduction.
“””
Fair pushback in this thread. Watching the Roadster reveal I saw his boyish enthusiasm and gave it too much weight in judging his character; a heavy dose of recency bias thrown in. I’m not well versed on his actions but those should be how we judge him.
Ok, he outright supports the AfD in Germany. A party that has literal known Nazis in it. And no this isn't debatable, its outright facts.
He is ultra far right wing and he did the salute as a 'joke', but even if you want to ignore that, his support of AfD is 1000X worse.
He also associated and support far-right wing skinheads in Britain and moved from the far-right reform to the even further far ultra right 'Restore' party in Britain.
I don't know how anybody can justify unless they themselves are a far right extremist.
Ok, he outright supports the AfD in Germany. A party that has literal known Nazis in it. And no this isn't debatable, its outright facts.
He is ultra far right wing and he did the salute as a 'joke', but even if you want to ignore that, his support of AfD is 1000X worse.
He also associated and support far-right wing skinheads in Britain and moved from the far-right reform to the even further far ultra right 'Restore' party in Britain.
I don't know how anybody can justify unless they themselves are a far right extremist.
Are you not aware of his blatant Nazi salutes or his DOGE attempt to dismantle oversight/regulation of his business concerns or him cancelling USAID (700,000 deaths and counting) or his interference in UK/European politics to promote far right violence and riots?
If you had that amount of money and power, you could be anyone you wanted, so why on earth does Musk choose to be as he is?
He recently shut down Starlink for Ukrainians, thus contributing to Putin's genocide. Have you not been reading the news? Calling Musk a "nerd" is the wrong term here. That is deliberate support of a genocide.
But he didn’t. Starshield is used for military operations and it is controlled by the US government, not Musk.[1] Starlink cannot be used for offensive military applications. Those that try are shut off entirely. If Ukraine is illegally using consumer Starlink in drones (which would not work particularly well), SpaceX wouldn’t even know which receivers to turn off. If they did, they’d turn them off entirely, not slow them as is alleged.
The Musk invective in HN is just wild to me. No, it wasn’t a Nazi salute (unless Biden, and Hillary and Obama are all Nazis too having made the same motion). No, he hasn’t cut Ukraine’s internet. All of these are lies, repeated over and over and over. He’s just a Republican accelerationist and unapologetic about his race. His companies create legitimately awesome products that millions use daily. Shocking that today that’s enough to breed such extraordinary hate from the left.
exactly this! But people seem to only see things they want to see. Oh well. Personally I find that Musk have done more good for the US, than most other americans.
Ok, he outright supports the AfD in Germany. A party that has literal known Nazis in it. And no this isn't debatable, its outright facts.
He is ultra far right wing and he did the salute as a 'joke', but even if you want to ignore that and argue it away, his support of AfD is 1000X worse. He actually supports a party that literally wants to overthrow German democracy like the actual Nazi party did historically.
He also associated and support far-right wing skinheads in Britain and moved from the far-right reform to the even further far ultra right 'Restore' party in Britain.
I don't know how anybody can justify unless they themselves are a far right extremist.
Talk all you want, but video is available for you to make up your own mind. Imo, it was very obviously a Nazi salute coupled with an angry face reminiscent of Hitler, and then repeated to make sure it was seen.
It really is pretty embarrassing that the forum of a venture capital accelerator is debatably the most anti-tech, anti-capitalist tech forum on the internet. Now I remember why I stopped coming here. Just goes to show how these types of forums always get infiltrated and taken over by tankies... see reddit/wikipedia/etc
Yes pro-tech and pro-capitalist means that you have to outright support the AfD in Germany, Trump in the US and Restore in Britain right?
Because those ultra far right wing parties really care about science and long term technology development. They also super love capitalism. I mean ignore that they want to destroy free trade, destroy the international order, dismantle equality before the law that is the bases of capitalist labor markets, that they are incredibly and openly corrupt and make it clear that contracts are given out based on loyalty rather then any serious evaluation of technical quality.
The far right wants a old school hierarchical society, based on loyalty and traditional values, not capitalism. Capitalism is literally what has opposed this world view for 100s of years.
The list goes on, if you actually believe that these people are pro-tech, pro-capitalism you are fucking delusional.
Go ‘head big dog. Share a single source of Obama, Clinton, or Biden making “the same gesture”. A video, please. No cheap photos of waving hands at just the right moment.
LOL - and how many were we killing by not funding USAID twice as much? How many are you personally killing by not mortgaging your house and sending the money to African NGOs? The entire angle is so childish.
Suddenly destroying a massive system of aid, upon which millions had already depended, is very different than not donating to NGO’s. There was even a responsible way to cut that funding, with planning, with forewarning, with cooperation from other nations. This was completely reckless, and will kill millions.
And China could have replaced that funding just as rapidly. Or Britain or France. All they needed were the wire instructions. Yet I see no finger wagging their direction. Please stop pretending it’s the pace of defunding that offends you.
It takes a special kind of intellectual laziness to believe that comparing a national budget to a personal mortgage is a clever substitute for a logical argument- it's a "choice" to call a position "childish" while relying on a rhetorical strategy that wouldn't pass muster in a middle-school debate.
I mean in theory if it did work you could use it to take shortcuts or go over very difficult terrain or a flood or something but I don’t think traffic or aviation laws are anywhere near to allowing that
Suppose you accidentally drive your car off a cliff. Accelerometers and other sensors (cameras) could detect the fall and activate the cold gas thrusters to rotate the car into a safe orientation and bring it to a soft landing.
It should even be possible to use the thrusters as an emergency braking system in case of loss of traction, rollovers, departing the roadway, etc, to avoid or reduce impact damage and injuries.
In theory it could be a car that avoids nearly every accident. Say you're at a red light behind a semi truck and an SUV is about to rear end you. The car could detect the impending crash and lift you up and away from danger.
A supercar that can't crash would be very popular among the ultra rich even at 5 mil a pop.
I would love a non-street legal car ... that didn't need streets.
The car is fun as a concept. Amazing as a demo. And the actual street legal versions will still be fun and amazing to drive relative to "ordinary" hypercar criteria.
Have they announce pricing on the rocket version? I could see it being priced like a bugatti or koenigsegg, where selling 100-500 of these is a great business.
But what is the point of this? Did Musk think everyone would forgive him, turn to white-supremacy and re-vote in his patsy's associates if only they saw a weird car demo?
Both versions have giant nitrogen tanks that expel gas. Neither has combustion. I won’t say it’s not novel, I will say that there’s 0 chance it’s street legal with the vertical thrusters, little chance it’s legal with the rear thrusters, and given that it takes 6 hours to fill the tank for a single use that is good for 1/3rd of a quarter mile, almost useless.
It made for a great marketing stunt, it is absolutely useless for a production car. And you can tell the designers realize it but were at the whims of Elon in their interview.
We were promised an awd, 620 mile range monster almost a decade ago, and then again 6 years ago. We were delivered a “maybe 310 mile” range, rwd doorstop.
I’m not sure who this car is for, but it’s definitely not car guys. It is the cybertruck of sports cars, and that’s not a good thing…
you have to take into account that reddit in general is completely Anti-Elon. He could cure cancer and folks on that site would find a way to blame billionares.
It probably has more to do with what he has actually done than what he might theoretically do with all his wealth and power in some alternate reality where he was a decent human being.
Likewise, I was left feeling like this is just more fodder for the circus. Tesla's stock is attention-driven more than anything at this point. By that measure, this car makes sense. By any other, it's more grift and gimmick.
We literally have flying AI cars now - they thing we all dreamed about and watched TV shows and movies about as kids - and people are all "it sucks!". It’s crazy how blinded people are by TDS (Elons support of him) that they are not able to see the forest through the trees. It’s not about flying cars, it’s a demonstration of engineering chops and the ability to control flight with extreme precision in real time. Those space rocks are not going to mine themselves.
I was a little kid the last time I dreamt about flying cars. Then I grew up and realized it's a silly idea.
Also if it was just a demo for space mining, why is it marketed as a car for consumers and why can I buy a $250K reservation to maybe (!) buy one for an unknown price and with an unknown set of features at an unknown point of time in the future?
I think it's very simply just a scam to extract money from Elon's fans.
"Elon's fans" - you have TDS. You can think this is neat without being a fan of him or Trump (I'm certainly not). I can recognize the great engineering and cool things coming out of China without supporting their political system.
I wasn't talking about recognizing something as cool or whatever. I'm talking about giving Elon $250K without getting anything back. No rational person would do this - only a fan would.
Jesus Christ, if I hear TDS one more time, I will scream. The man has proven himself a fool with a useless war in Iran that has destroyed the global economy. And, we're not even talking about him!! We're talking about someone else!
There's only one deranged person in this conversation.
Like I said, TDS. I didn't vote for Trump and think he's a bag of farts, Elon is well, Elon - but I think the self flying car is cool as is the rocket stuff from a pure engineering perspective. No need to project and lash out at everything. Sometimes a cool ass flying car is just a cool ass flying car. Btw, in the real world (not costal enclaves, not reddit) my opinion is the majority one. I hope you get the help you need.
TDS isn't real. And if it were real, it would describe the people who support him even though they would never support someone else who has done or said even 100th of the things he's done or said.
Not only is it reality, it's an epidemic as seen in the anti-Elon comments. People would love the flying car if Elon endorsed Kamala (and would have ignored his autistic on stage spasm). And if you are honest, you know I'm 100% correct here. People spend entirely too much time on Reddit and are projecting their political stance on anything Elon does. Grow up is what I am saying.
> Not true. It's clearly a stunt. Not practical. Nobody wants this on our roads by our houses.
You people really don't get it, do it? It's not about the car being practical. Cleary this is not going to make it to the roads, but it will on a powered by Grok robotic space craft. Think potentially unlimited resources from asteroid mining. Get over your political leanings and these personalities involved and think bigger picture.
How about you get over your political leanings. Stop accusing people who have legitimate doubts of things they don't deserve. In the context of astronautics, this tech is not earthshattering.
That is literally the point I'm making regarding political leaning. Gracias. Flying cars are cool, who cares about the politics. I want those space rocks and so do you.
Wait until you see how the Apollo lunar modules and such maneuvered in the 60s. This is pretty much all 60s and 70s tech we've seen before. Except it was much more impressive in the 60s on the moon. And I guess if you want cold-gas propulsion not chemical NASA Skylab is the way cooler actually practical example.
This would be a step backwards for jet packs, which can currently do minutes of flight, using a tank of high pressure air would reduce that back to seconds
It's compressed air from what I can read and it contains a compressor to refill the tank.
A concept car, primarily a track car I think. I would think less than 10000 will be sold but some of the tech will make it into other models over time and the tech could be interesting for military application. Jumping Humvees like cars anyone?
I think its thrusters would be useful for ocean-going vessel insertions.
So in the straight of Hormuz, you'd have a "Tesla boat" hover off a destroyer and into the water, reach the target as a boat, then hover up to its deck. People would exit and meet the vessel's crew for however long. No hook ladders, anchor lines or helicopter rappels. Seems like a good balance between projecting soft and hard power to make a ship turn around, arrest or replace crew, run security checks or extract payment. The Tesla boat should make this type of rendezvous less costly, easier and safer - legality/ethics considerations aside.
Would be interesting if the boat rose up on a variable foil and keel as well where the forward thrusters could be used for super speed, maneuverability and fuel efficiency. I am just dreaming.
There is absolutely no way that a compressor that will fill those tanks in 6 hours is in that vehicle. There is a good chance that the compressor and cooling stage weigh more than the car and are larger than the car.
They imply a heavy weight with the suction downforce numbers but I think those numbers are not real. I’m reminded of neural link where the pig food detector was unimpressive, then shortly later a monkey demo was very impressive, they have since had human trials and humans don’t appear to get anywhere close to that same level.
No, it’s invitation only, i don’t think they intend to sell it. It’s probably also for weight reduction to not use a real driver. I guess it’s stripped down to the minimum, because why would you put a 300 mile battery in a car that isn’t even road legal? The main purpose is marketing and they are masters in that
It's compressed air RCS. The compressor, regulators and a ton of hardware take up the entire space from the seats back to literally the very last inch of the car. Hard pipes run along the door frame for the forward RCS, meaning only one person (driver) can sit in it and enter from the drivers side. Huge carbon RCS tanks fill every other space.
No idea how long it would take to recharge the tanks after venting them.
There's no room for 'car' stuff in it.
Interestingly there is a big... sleeve of wizard... that extends down under the car to assist the ground effect fan. Packaging that and the RCS stuff into it is a real engineering feat.
But it didn't look to have crash structures, or any other production ready hardware.
> "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).
That tank is pressurized to over 700 bar, if a pressure vessel ruptures under that amount of pressure, it doesn’t matter what gas is inside of it, it’s not going to be pretty.
I think everyone is getting too caught up in the Thrust and Rocket variants. There aren’t going to be very many of those. But the base model will just be a regular Tesla.
> But the base model will just be a regular Tesla.
A regular Tesla that sucks, you mean?
Even the base model has “active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system that maximizes downforce for next-level performance on and off the track.”
I am pretty skeptical that that’s actually what was used in the demo. It would be so much simpler to just use whatever they use for the rockets for the demo, which certainly isn’t rechargeable
Both trims have only cold gas thrusters. The differences are whether they're just for forward acceleration or also stabilization (4 in the back, or 4 in the back, 4 down, and one on each side). The "Rocket" trim also only has one seat.
A number of luxury brands (cars, watches) will build one-off editions for anyone willing to foot the cost. I guess it serves as marketing subsidized by the customer.
Would Musk actually build a hover car if someone was willing to pay for it? Maybe, but it's hard to see the market/target demographic - it'd be a geeky toy rather than something to impress others of your wealth with.
Maybe Musk should do a ghetto rocket car - a gas thruster 30-sec hover add on for the Cybertruck. If he could do it for a few hundred K there might be some takers.
> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
I'm not a Musk fanboy by any stretch of the imagination but this was clearly done as a marketing stunt to drum up hype about the street legal roadster. I didn't even watch the announcement but now everyone in my friend circle is talking about it because of the rocket engines. That's just called effective marketing.
> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.
If this ships, it will deliver a fraction of what's promised here. My money is on the "flying" version being delayed repeatedly until it's quietly cancelled. Anyone remember the fast battery change stations[1]?
That cool. "Flying" aside, I was more curious how it didn't fall down when upside down with no thruster smoke. Turns out its got suction [1]. 2G's is rollercoaster zone.
To be precise, it's not being sold (although you gan gift Elon a deposit) in any form, it might be in some future.
I confidently predict this demo model with all the jet gimmicks will never exist on the road. A basic version with just the electric motor will ship someday.
That was actually not unexpected. Joe Rogan 2404 [1]. He warned Rogan that the demonstration would be completely "unforgettable, whether it’s good or bad"
> It's an incredible engineering achievement to build in massive fans and rocket engines into a high performance car. It's truly wild.
How confident are you that the flying object in that video is a car?
Some cursory estimates suggest that one really could get several seconds of operation with enough thrust to lift a real car with a big motor and battery and seats and such, but the margins are not great. If I were designing this thing and I cared more about showmanship than about demonstrating an actual credible car, I might use the tiniest battery I could find with adequate power output (lithium titanate? small LFP?), as little motor as I could get away with, and no interior amenities whatsoever.
More cynically, I would also contemplate whether I really really needed the fancy downforce fan for this demo. After all, that’s a very controlled track and I can imagine other ways of getting a car up it.
>Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model.
It's only wild if you ignore Musk's role in this. Not even trying to bash him or anything, but he's a trillionaire. This is the kind of shit you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly waste.
I mean, if this is how he wants to spend his money, then I guess that's his prerogative. But I think it's a bit misleading to suggest this is a decision made by "Tesla" when this is clearly an irrational decision for a company to make. This is a decision made by Musk based on satisfying his own personal goals.
In his pocket or what? When SpaceX IPO'd he was valued at over a trillion USD. Currently somewhere over 900MM, and worth more than the 2nd, 3rd and 4th on the rich list combined.
In terms of net worth, you are closer to Jeff Bezos than Bezos is to Musk.
Big difference between getting people to buy 0.0000001% at that valuation, and getting them to buy 5%. Even if you assume SpaceX is worth zero, he's still worth $200B
You know that before EVs were a thing, it was also not economic, and was seen as crazy. So was landing a rocket. And have tons of little satellites in LEO. Don't confuse the first prototype version with it being impossible to succeed.
Question is when this would be applicable? It can't be approved for the road, right? And even if there was a use over novelty, the tanks must be depleted immediately. Also curious how well it does with extra weight from passengers
Yes, and it would go well on a James Bond movie or something. I'm a bit surprised they didn't go with hydrogen peroxide propellant as that can be refueled fairly quickly. The Bell Jetpack used hydrogen peroxide for example.
> and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting
It's not like they care about lives. After all Musk throttled Starlink in Ukraine and that resulted in many civilian deaths. Anyone buying this is supporting this behaviour.
Teslas are some of the safest cars on the road. Even if you dislike musk (he’s not a good human), the record stands pretty solidly on their side.
When the NTHSA did the rollover test on the Tesla Model S, it broke the machine they use. It was estimated that it would take the weight of nine model S vehicles ontop of a model S for the roof to collapse. Tesla patented millimeter wave radars in the seats and got approval to install them. They now know if a large adult, small adult, child, animal, or groceries are in a seat. The airbags are reconfigured on the fly depending on what is in the seat. Consumer reports did a test and found Tesla wasn’t great in slam the brakes stopping distance, and did a report about it. Tesla confirmed and did some testing. They had a software update in less than a month to dramatically improve it to generally best in class. They have so many safety features many of which are now mandated in new vehicles that were not required when Tesla started producing vehicles.
Just look at some of the utterly insane Tesla crashes where in most cars all would he dead and folks walk away from them in the teslas. Some of the Teslas use a very special composite metal named Inconel in the frames. Look it up. Inconel is most commonly used in high performance aerospace applications like space rockets, and Tesla is the sole automotive manufacturer in the world with access to a large supply of it and know how. The Tesla model S plaid seats were designed to withstand 9Gs of lateral force, a thing no other street legal car in the world can do. Tesla asked the seat manufacturer that makes most all of the seats in the world to support this and they laughed at them. So Tesla made their own, and it’s safer than any of the other ones due to its design. Don’t trust me, verify this with google. It isn’t hard.
The website lists three modes, which all have the fan but differ in thrusters. The variants are: no thrusters (thus no COPV), acceleration-only thrusters, and flying thrusters. The flying one has the disclaimer "Note: Not approved for public road use." OTOH the acceleration-only thrusters may be street legal. However, I expect that the COPV will be kept empty (thus not dangerous) unless you select a special "launch mode".
Hopefully there will also be a warning siren while it is pressurized. "Dangerous enough to need a warning siren" seems like a plus for the target market, honestly.
It will probably take hours to fill the COPV even on the Thruster model if the onboard compressor works so you will drive around with it pressurized if you want to use it.
Feel like a rich people toy slash marketing stunt for Tesla.
Impressive engineering but utterly impractical. There are semi-practical flying car designs around folding wings or quad rotors (basically a big car sized drone) and the reason we don’t see them has more to do with safety, traffic control, and energy cost. Aircraft, like rockets, tend to get more energy efficient with size, so tiny flying machines are power wasters.
I think to many, and equally as many will argue the counter to this point, and I am not speaking to the validity either way, but I think Elon felt even if not available to the public, his reputation was on the line. He has done amazing things thus far, but also made lying and exageration the norm. He had to come through with 'a flying car'. Credit to him, he essentially did, available or not.
This is so absurd, and reproduces the idea of flying cars from sci-fi and comic books of 1960s and 1970s so directly! And can attach to a wall or ceiling, for bonus points! I think it will be met with a huge demand from well-off people who dreamed about such cars in their childhood. (If it delivers on all these promises, of course.)
> Wild that they devoted so much effort to an economically completely infeasible model. I wonder if the combustion version will even break 3 figures sales.
It's staggering to consider how many resources we've diverted from people who could use them into building this novelty.
If ever there was a sign of a society of decadence in decline, it's that the most powerful person on earth is free to create toys like this exclusively for others in the ruling class.
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Technologies: Python, Linux, embedded C, SQL, React, ML (PyTorch, LLMs), electrical
Hi! Generalist here looking to work on hard and meaningful problems with cool people.
2 YoE, coming off a year building the entire tech stack for a YC alum deeptech + biotech startup, from scratch, as the sole SWE or EE. (product: https://andsonbiotech.com/platform/)
I've also built/worked on rockets, drones, a lunar lander, a Mars helicopter at NASA, a LLM-driven car, AI benchmarks, and new type of 3D printer. Read about these: https://synapsomorphy.com/
Prefer early-mid stage, say seed to C, and core products that have 1 or more of [ML, biology, hardware], in order of preference.
Location: US (GA)
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Only to PNW or Bay Area
Technologies: Python, Linux, embedded C, SQL, React, ML (PyTorch, LLMs), electrical
Hi! Generalist here looking to work on hard and meaningful problems with cool people.
2 YoE, coming off a year building the entire tech stack for a YC alum deeptech + biotech startup, from scratch, as the sole SWE or EE. (product: https://andsonbiotech.com/platform/)
I've also built/worked on rockets, drones, a lunar lander, a Mars helicopter at NASA, a LLM-driven car, AI benchmarks, and new type of 3D printer. Read about these: https://synapsomorphy.com/
Prefer early-mid stage, say seed to C, and core products that have 1 or more of [ML, biology, hardware], in order of preference.
Location: US (GA)
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Only to PNW or Bay Area
Technologies: Python, Linux, embedded C, SQL, React, ML (PyTorch, LLMs), electrical
Hi! Generalist here looking to work on hard and meaningful problems with cool people.
2 YoE, coming off a year building the entire tech stack for a YC alum deeptech + biotech startup, from scratch, as the sole SWE or EE. (product: https://andsonbiotech.com/platform/)
I've also built/worked on rockets, drones, a lunar lander, a Mars helicopter at NASA, a LLM-driven car, AI benchmarks, and new type of 3D printer. Read about these: https://synapsomorphy.com/
Prefer early-mid stage, say seed to C, and core products that have 1 or more of [ML, biology, hardware], in order of preference.
I'm a Linux and Windows user thinking of getting a Macbook, mostly for the hardware.
All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?
Maybe it's worse now compared to the golden years, I don't know, never owned a Mac. And it's fair to criticize it from that perspective. But I am completely at a loss for how any of these issues could be bad enough to make you switch platforms. Windows and Linux are not exactly usability all-stars! I had to write my own app for decent speech-to-text on Linux which is built in at a system level on Macs.
This feels to me like just the age-old tale of people wanting to (love | hate) brands, when really, things are nuanced. I switched from Android to iOS recently and the experience did not change much. iOS is absolutely not "borderline unusable" like I've seen many claim. If anything it's maybe a 10% nicer experience overall.
Lack of nuance in people's takes makes for less signal in the noise and makes it annoying to figure out the actual pros and cons of different platforms.
Maybe the quality is reduced, sure. But if you "do some searches" you can find all of those things for any major software release.
Seems to me like people in Apple's walls are forgetting that the outside world is not some Garden of Eden. But yeah, I'd have to use it to say for sure.
> you can find all of those things for any major software release
Maybe it is because you were using Windows all the time and you can't judge outside (no judging), but the quality and the (legendary) reliability of macOS was true. Everything was well engineered, well designed, and had a purpose.
This is not the case anymore, and this is why people are so upset too. People are also upset because all those annoying things have been reported since betas and Apple did not really listened to them (except most absolute valid points).
> All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?
The example in Photos is absolutely egregious, and as a user of Linux for the past 25 years and recent user of a Mac for work I can’t remember something that bad in a mainstream desktop environment on Linux.
In fact from a usability perspective a modern Gnome desktop seems for more usable and consistent than modern Mac OS and that’s saying something. Font scaling seems to work better in Linux, UI wisgers in Gtk seem to be more consistent. Dark themes have been around on Linux far longer and it shows.
I don’t use the latest Mac OS version; it’s _okay_ from a usability perspective. But this new version seems like a clear downgrade for something where the purpose of paying large sums of money is for higher productivity and comfort.
It's an arms race between human writers and AI. Writers want to sound less like AI and AI wants to sound more like writers, so no indicator is reliable for long. Today typos indicate a real writer, so tomorrow LLMs will inject them where appropriate. Yesterday em dashes indicated LLM, so now LLMs use them less.
Beyond these surface level tells though, anyone who's read a lot of both AI-unassisted human writing as well as AI output should be able to pick up on the large amount of subtler cues that are present partly because they're harder to describe (so it's harder to RLHF LLMs in the human direction).
But even today when it's not too hard to sniff out AI writing, it's quite scary to me how bad many (most?) people's chatbot detection senses are, as indicated by this article. Thinking that human writing is LLM is a false positive which is bad but not catastrophic, but the opposite seems much worse. The long term social impact, being "post-truth", seems poised to be what people have been raving / warning about for years w.r.t other tech like the internet.
Today feels like the equivalent of WW1 for information warfare, society has been caught with its pants down by the speed of innovation.
> society has been caught with its pants down by the speed of innovation.
Or rather by the slowness of regulation and enforcement in the face of blatant copyright violation.
We've seen this before, for example with YouTube, which became the go-to place for videos by allowing copyrighted material to be uploaded and hosted en masse, and then a company that was already a search engine monopoly was somehow allowed to acquire YouTube, thereby extending and reinforcing Google's monopolization of the web.
Innovation has always been faster when copyright is lax. The US was copying British and other European inventions during the industrial age left and right, and their economy took off because of it.
Assuming Eric / Core doesn't come out with some scathing "real story":
Well, it's better to figure this out today (that Eric / Core are not so great) rather than a year or two down the line when I'd have already bought a new Pebble. Still sucks, I was excited. Never had one but I want something in the same niche.
Does anyone have suggestions for other good low-capability, long battery, hackable eink watches?
Former Rebble dev here, I've been very happy with the BangleJS. It doesn't meet all of your criteria but the battery lasts me a week and it's more hackable than Pebble ever was.
Chinese builders are not equal to Chinese hackers (even if the hackers are state sponsored). I doubt most companies would be interested in developing hacking tools. Hackers use the best tools available at their disposal, Claude is better than Deepseek. Hacking-tuned LLMs seems like a thing that might pop up in the future, but it takes a lot of resources. Why bother if you can just tell Claude it's doing legitimate work?
> I doubt most companies would be interested in developing hacking tools.
welcome to 2025. Chinese companies build open weight models, those models can be used / tuned by hackers, companies that built and released those models don't need to get involved at all.
That is a very different dev model compared to the closed Anthropic way.
> Claude is better than Deepseek
No one is claiming DeepSeek to be better, in fact all benchmark results show that Chinese KIMI, MiniMax and GLM to be on par or very close to the closed weight Claude Code.
Mine lets me run Claude and Codex (and pi but then you have to pay API rates) from the same localhosted webserver, and also schedule feature implementations to always hit the weekly usage cap. chats logs in jsonl (used by both) are saved per project in a never-pushed git branch. All agents run in Podman containers.
I am just starting to play with a higher-level agent that just pushes the repo in a direction based on the human answering a thorough list of clarification questions.
These have been really useful
- Encourage short, commit-linked chats, to avoid the expensive cache writes.
- Plot of LOC over time. Use better models until this starts not spiking a ton with every new feature.
- Terminals kinda suck for agentic stuff IMO and we should stop cramming agent loops into them. Minimalism doesn't really help here, it's really nice to have built-in STT, real buttons, easy scrolling, etc etc etc.
- The minimal delta is a commit. Every implementation turn must end with one or multiple, and a clean worktree.
- Crystal clear, extremely granular usage data. This is something Claude Code and Codex will never give you, instead you get dark patterns nudging you to forget about the spend, while changing plan quotas every couple weeks.
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