Flying Tesla Roadster

[Cyclotron]

To counter your apologia for Musk, one only need ask: what, exactly, does this demo show us about the suitability of Tesla's vehicles to their function (transportation in the real world), their reliability or anything else relevant? I would say nothing.

It's just a stunt, and your defense of Musk and his shenanigans only shows your bias, not that of his critics.

Your response rather neatly demonstrates the very point I was making. You seem to have been so stung by my criticism of the reflexive anti-Musk sentiment that you've completely lost the plot.

I was discussing the engineering demonstration and the tendency to dismiss anything associated with Musk regardless of its technical merits. You've responded by calling it "apologia," invoking Musk's "shenanigans," and accusing me of bias.

The irony is difficult to miss.

Nobody claimed this demonstration established the Roadster's reliability, production readiness, or suitability as everyday transportation. Those are entirely separate questions, and perfectly legitimate ones.

But a technical demonstration doesn't have to prove every aspect of a finished product to be interesting or meaningful. It demonstrates what the engineers have achieved under the conditions presented. That's what I was discussing.

You've managed to turn a discussion about engineering into another referendum on Elon Musk, while accusing me of being the one who can't separate the two.

I couldn't have illustrated my original criticism much better myself.

[Cyclotron]

.....
It reminds me of fine tuning marble runs and toy car jumps as a kid.

This!!~

I have found memories of such academic endeavors. Will more air in my bicycle tires make me jump higher, go faster?

Of course this is grown up girls and boys doing the same thing. Demonstrations of engineering prowess is, as they say, as American as apple pie. Deeply rooted in the European heritage. 

I'd rather see this sort of gaming than a sports ball event. If you have the opportunity, volunteer to mentor a FIRST robotics team and enjoy it. Teaching kids to compete in engineering, with their minds is very very fulfilling.

[tom66]

To pull off a real world car chase in a 007 or a Reacher-futuristic movie, to be thrusted up and over the evil enemy at 100kmh to elude capture, vs some CGI generated crap, would be neat to see in a movie. Doesnt Tom Cruise like to do all his own stunts? So I guess there is possible application for the Tesla "f-lying" car.

Plenty of real world crashes in Bond films and Hollywood, in fact CG is usually only to touch up the crash or remove cameras, supports, crew etc.

https://youtu.be/watch?v=Fikyvgc-fOM&t=2m25s
https://youtu.be/watch?v=o5OJqCIMEcY

Cruise is famous for doing many of his own stunts, but it's mostly a PR exercise.  He doesn't have to do that, and in many cases the shots that are used for the film were filmed by stunt actors or are CG - the doing-your-own-stunts bit is for the behind the scenes and marketing material.

[EEVblog]

You miss the most important thing, because they can, and it's cool.

Yes!
When you have a company that's made up of predominantly engineers with much less sales/HR/marketing/non-technical-managers you end up doing crazy stuff like this from time to time.

All the engineering time spent creating this rocket car is important because you need these sort of really cool project to keep top level engineering employees motivated. You can't just do boring day-to-day jobs 24/7 forever. There has to be a switch to some exciting stuff after years of hard work to refresh motivation for the next project.

Keeping your bleeding-edge technical workforce motivated is extremely important if you want to get the most out of them and/or stop them leaving.
It's something most companies fail at.

I guarantee all the engineers who made this happen will be so happy to have been involved in this project, and that happiness has zero to do with how many of them get sold.
It's the sort of thing where, for the rest of their life, it will always make them laugh to think "heh, I made a car fly/jump/corkscrew/flip" and it will always cheer them up to think about it when they're having a bad day.

That's the thing.
Absolutely nobody thinks this is going to be a practical flying car sold to the mass market. Elon doesn't, Tesla doesn't, the engineers working on it don't, and any sensible public or Tesla investor doesn't.
They know they aren't going to sell more than a handful or them or whatever, that's why it's literally "invite only" on the order page.
There is absolutely no sensible business decision to spend 7 years working on this, they know it's going to be a negative return on investment. Heck, if they do get sold there is high likelihood it's going to get someone killed, and that's really bad for business.
But they do it anyway for the reasons you said. No wonder engineers fall overthemselves to work for an Elon company.

[Cyclotron]

I have to say that the Roadster flying got me in the gut. That kid inside me that wants to be in that thing and in wonder of its marvels.

When Spacex first said it would land rockets I scoffed. When I watched the first simultaneous landing of the boosters from Falcon heavy the hair on the back of my neck stood up. That moment is seared into my brain as a epic moment simply because I don't even know how difficult that was, I lack the knowledge to even know but I know I felt it was impossible for one much less two doing it in tandem.

The roadster feels like some engineers sitting there and someone says "Do you have anything cool to show?"  to which they respond "Hold our beer and watch this".

I am really interested to see it on a track with the live view of the telemetry flowing in as a some obviously professional driver exercises it.

Someone get The Stig on the phone.....

[nctnico]

With enough money and some patience you can solve any problem. It is really as simple as that. In that regard you should watch the 'blue LED' story on Veritasium.

[Cyclotron]

With enough money and some patience you can solve any problem. It is really as simple as that. In that regard you should watch the 'blue LED' story on Veritasium.

I watched that. Good channel. I was worried it would go to hell after it was sold but its doing ok I think.

[Randy222]

To pull off a real world car chase in a 007 or a Reacher-futuristic movie, to be thrusted up and over the evil enemy at 100kmh to elude capture, vs some CGI generated crap, would be neat to see in a movie. Doesnt Tom Cruise like to do all his own stunts? So I guess there is possible application for the Tesla "f-lying" car.

Plenty of real world crashes in Bond films and Hollywood, in fact CG is usually only to touch up the crash or remove cameras, supports, crew etc.

I meant current day is movies made in the lab, vs actual filming.
There is no current day movie set that has a chase scene where the vehicle can hop over the enemy from a 4wheels on pavement starting point. This Tesla could do it, and then just keep driving whie the cameras keep rolling, etc.

[Randy222]

With enough money and some patience you can solve any problem. It is really as simple as that. In that regard you should watch the 'blue LED' story on Veritasium.

More like, with unlimited money and perhaps 200yrs, maybe a big problem gets solved.
Since having both the money for 200yrs is very low probability, problems wont get solved.
Take cancer as example, pharma pockets $B every year, yet no real breakthrough of any kind.

[Andy Chee]

It's remarkable to see people's inability to objectively look at this engineering marvel without including a refrain and personal attack on the CEO.

One of the more profound things that I noticed in the video and event for this Roadster is how unscripted it was.

Unscripted?  Strictly speaking, I believe the computer code that executed all the maneuvers is a script.

I stand to be corrected, but I understood it was NOT piloted by a human via remote control.

edit: sorry, by script, do you mean the presentation or the engineering?

[Cyclotron]

 

It's remarkable to see people's inability to objectively look at this engineering marvel without including a refrain and personal attack on the CEO.

One of the more profound things that I noticed in the video and event for this Roadster is how unscripted it was.

Unscripted?  Strictly speaking, I believe the computer code that executed all the maneuvers is a script.

I stand to be corrected, but I understood it was NOT piloted by a human via remote control.

edit: sorry, by script, do you mean the presentation or the engineering?

I thought it was pretty obvious what i meant by unscripted.

...
One of the more profound things that I noticed in the video and event for this Roadster is how unscripted it was. Look at the pomp and polish of companies like Apple for instance and juxtaposition that with Tesla's presentation. Apple's people that present are sales people and often have to be taught how to do the scripted demos and such on that stage. These were giddy nerds that hadn't practiced and didn't care. They just wanted to show off what these engineers had accomplished. It's rare to see straight up celebration of engineering and I was pleased to see it.
...

I'm unsure how I might have communicated that more clearly.

[Andy Chee]

I thought it was pretty obvious what i meant by unscripted.

I'm unsure how I might have communicated that more clearly.

Well at the beginning you said people should be admiring the engineering marvel, rather than admiring the marketing presentation.

This is a technical and engineering forum after all.

Rather than respond to posts criticising Musk the person, what about responding to the technical and engineering stuff?

Of course, if you have nothing to contribute on the technical side, you could say so (you may have done so already).

[hans]

I guarantee all the engineers who made this happen will be so happy to have been involved in this project, and that happiness has zero to do with how many of them get sold.

It's the sort of thing where, for the rest of their life, it will always make them laugh to think "heh, I made a car fly/jump/corkscrew/flip" and it will always cheer them up to think about it when they're having a bad day.

I've similar fond memories of working at some places, small or big.

Sometimes it fun to rock the boat and see what responsive it gives. Companies can get tied up into the daily grind, carefully picked KPIs, balancing price and feature set exactly against the market. "Gross margin" "Time to market"

I like projects with basically a half scribbled idea on a piece of paper. "Just figure it out" "Make it work". Wilco.
Many years ago, when I was working on RTK GPS systems for tractors, we found that John Deere had locked down their steering actuation themselves (as they do).
Competitors could buy a license to steer via CAN bus, but it was prohibitively expensive (because it competes with their own system) and had important features locked (speed restrictions)
So what do you do.. you pull the machine apart and look for other ways to hijack the machine. We picked the steering encoder in the cabin.
Proof of concept: make an Arduino Uno do more work than it should, by software PWM'ing that rotary encoder at 4x200Hz and 7 bits of resolution. We borrowed a machine and it worked. Moving a 12.5ton 250bhp machine around with a 3$ microcontroller..   It was extremely crude, but it was hacked together in a few days.

Later we engineered a proper ECU that implement the redundancy correctly and was robust for automotive environments. That process took months. It also never paid off because when JD sells a tractor, they also have a sales person right there selling that customer extra junk (like their GPS). I think we only sold a handful of these units in the end. But oh well, we had fun along the way. And had the company developed otherwise, we had the IP to apply it for other machines.
Now 15 years later we have autonomic farming bots, so this whole conceptual market is going to die off. Just like Tesla says this will be their final hurrah before everything becomes centered around autonomous driving.

[Psi]

a technical demonstration doesn't have to prove every aspect of a finished product to be interesting or meaningful.

Yes.
There's no requirement that the flying rocket-powered Roadster version needs to make financial or practical sense.  That's management degree brainwashing.

Sometimes it's enough just to show what's possible. It can lead to others being inspired. In this case thinking about cold-gas thrusters. Then they may go on to make new 'actually useful' products that would never have existed otherwise.

[mtwieg]

I don't understand how anybody can take this guy seriously



Crazier even than hotwheels!!

[SteveThackery]

Going back to the original video where the car climbs that steeply curved track, it obviously needs the blasters to provide "down"-force during most of the climb. I wonder why we don't see the condensation mist, like we do when it falls. Less thrust required, maybe?

EDIT: Ah, it seems to use suction fans under the car, not thrusters on the top pushing it down.

[Cyclotron]

I thought it was pretty obvious what i meant by unscripted.

I'm unsure how I might have communicated that more clearly.

Well at the beginning you said people should be admiring the engineering marvel, rather than admiring the marketing presentation.

This is a technical and engineering forum after all.

Rather than respond to posts criticising Musk the person, what about responding to the technical and engineering stuff?

Of course, if you have nothing to contribute on the technical side, you could say so (you may have done so already).

Andy, you're rather neatly illustrating my original observation: responding to what you *think* I've written instead of what I actually said.

First, you somehow interpreted my comments about an unscripted presentation as referring to the vehicle's software, despite the context being perfectly clear.

Now you're questioning my engineering contributions while apparently overlooking my observations about the demonstration, engineering culture, compressed-air energy recovery, and interest in track telemetry.

For someone emphasizing that this is an engineering forum, I'd suggest applying a little more rigor to examining the available data before drawing conclusions.

Garbage in, garbage out.

[Stray Electron]

I don't understand how anybody can take this guy seriously

(Attachment Link)

Crazier even than hotwheels!!

   Go watch one of the Falcon Heavy launches and then watch the booster rockets safely land by themselves and then ask yourself again "How can we take this guy seriously?"

   Elon's flying car make not be practical today but the guidance and control technology that it clearly demonstrates could be directly useful for emergency escape systems for manned aircraft and manned rockets and all sorts of other applications that no one has even imagined yet.  Any creditable engineer should be able to look at this demo and see the tremendous numbers of ways that this this technology could be employed in hundreds of applications. But some of you can't see any practical use because all you can see is your hatred of Elon Musk.

[Cyclotron]

Going back to the original video where the car climbs that steeply curved track, it obviously needs the blasters to provide "down"-force during most of the climb. I wonder why we don't see the condensation mist, like we do when it falls. Less thrust required, maybe?

EDIT: Ah, it seems to use suction fans under the car, not thrusters on the top pushing it down.

I keep wondering how those fans will work at speed. I mean, I guess I get it, they have to pull the air from the lower area causing low pressure and push it out somewhere causing an opposite force. But the air rushing under the car at speed keeps making me wonder how effective it will be.

Fluid dynamics has never been a specialty of mine.  I suppose the cars design may cause low pressure under the car already? Then the suction fans just increase that providing more down force.

[tom66]

Going back to the original video where the car climbs that steeply curved track, it obviously needs the blasters to provide "down"-force during most of the climb. I wonder why we don't see the condensation mist, like we do when it falls. Less thrust required, maybe?

EDIT: Ah, it seems to use suction fans under the car, not thrusters on the top pushing it down.

I keep wondering how those fans will work at speed. I mean, I guess I get it, they have to pull the air from the lower area causing low pressure and push it out somewhere causing an opposite force. But the air rushing under the car at speed keeps making me wonder how effective it will be.

Fluid dynamics has never been a specialty of mine.  I suppose the cars design may cause low pressure under the car already? Then the suction fans just increase that providing more down force.

There are existing production cars that use fans for downforce, including the British made McMurtry Spéirling and to a lesser extent the McLaren F1 though the downforce is not as significant as other vehicles.  The McMurtry Spéirling has enough force to drive upside down.

The technology is banned in Formula 1 because it gives too much of an advantage to the driver.

[jonovid]

Jetsuns flying car maybe impractical for non pilots, average normie however
the military implications are profound
a military jeep / hovercraft / robot tank that can jump /leap any fortification  hover over minefields or water & keep going
a real life transformers robot army maybe now upon us. 
it will not take long for China & Russia to figure this one out!

[Randy222]

Sometimes it's enough just to show what's possible. It can lead to others being inspired. In this case thinking about cold-gas thrusters. Then they may go on to make new 'actually useful' products that would never have existed otherwise.

It's on=par with the CES convention, or a clothing fashion show that happens annually.
Being cool and neat and interesting is indeed something to showcase. Dodge Tomahawk as example.

From my view of it, it was cool & neat for the 15sec I watched it go up and land, then I pondered over what I was having for lunch and what TV channel I was gonna tune in to next.

For the young crowd, it's perhaps impressive, and even perhaps inspiring. Nothing wrong with that.

[Analog Kid]

From my view of it, it was cool & neat for the 15sec I watched it go up and land, then I pondered over what I was having for lunch and what TV channel I was gonna tune in to next.

In other words, meh.

Gotta have that sci-fi fanboi Jetsons gee-whiz mindset to appreciate stuff like this, I guess.
I don't.

[Cyclotron]

Look at Analog Kid and Randy222 coming here to spend their time discussing something they're apparently so uninterested in.

It's almost like watching a couple of old-timers shaking their fists at those darn gee-whiz kids playing with their newfangled vacuum tubes, transistors, and film capacitors, dismissing them as sci-fi fanbois.

Is it the engineering that bothers you, Musk, or simply the fact that others find it fascinating?

For two people so thoroughly unimpressed, you certainly seem remarkably invested in telling everyone just how unimpressed you are.

[Randy222]

Look at Analog Kid and Randy222 coming here to spend their time discussing something they're apparently so uninterested in.

It's almost like watching a couple of old-timers shaking their fists at those darn gee-whiz kids playing with their newfangled vacuum tubes, transistors, and film capacitors, dismissing them as sci-fi fanbois.

Is it the engineering that bothers you, Musk, or simply the fact that others find it fascinating?

For two people so thoroughly unimpressed, you certainly seem remarkably invested in telling everyone just how unimpressed you are.

So, Musk has always been in my eye just a crafty scam artist. A lot of the money used by Musk was from taxpayer money. Legal is legal though.
Another example, crapple just ripping people off on handheld limited-use computer. Yeah, their new fold phone, which has been done for years now by another company, will cost near $3000 for the "high end" model. But hey, if people buy it, so be it.

Thruster systems have been around since,.................. 1950? (check my math). So from that angle it's rather dull in 2026. To see the system applied to a falling car, like they have done on the rockets for years now, is not that impressive at this point.