Elon Musk Claims He Wants Tesla’s New Roadster To Hover

File this one in the “bullshit” folder, alongside cold air thrusters, “full self driving” and “a million robotaxis”. 

We can’t really tell what’s worse: Elon Musk claiming that the new Tesla Roadster will “hover” with rocket technology, or the lemmings at electrek taking him on his word and publishing that as a lede, as if it’s actually going to happen.

The Roadster, which does have some impressive specs in being able to go from 0 to 60 in less than 2 seconds and a claimed range of over 600 miles, is called the “quickest car in the world, with record-setting acceleration, range and performance” on Tesla’s website. (Keep in mind that Edmunds found just last week that precisely zero of Tesla’s vehicles that it tested met their EPA range estimates.)

Electrek takes the time in their new article to gush over Tesla’s Model S Plaid and Plaid+ Tesla and point out the absolutely idiotic promise Musk once made to offer a “SpaceX package” that would include cold air thrusters. Scientist Phil “Thunderf00t” Mason had previously debunked this idea as “really, really stupid” in an article we published back in February 2019. 

“It’s a really, really stupid idea,” Mason said of rocket technology being applied to conventional vehicles. Cold gas thrusters, he argued, are one of the most low performing and inefficient ways to try and make a car fly, he said. “It’s one of the oldest ideas out there,” Mason said. It’s inefficiency has been known about “for over a century.”

Regardless, that didn’t stop electrek from drooling over the idea and taking Musk seriously when he claimed on the Joe Rogan podcast last week that he was seeking to make the new Roadster hover. “We are going to throw some rocket technology in that car. I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people,” Musk said. “I thought maybe we could make it hover but not too high. You make it hover like a meter above the ground or something like that. Something where if you plummet, you blow the suspension, but you are not going to die. Maybe 6 feet. You probably just put a height limit on it.”

Then, to top it off, Musk claimed you’d be able to move while hovering:

“You’d go pretty fast, but you are going to be time-limited. It’s going to use a super high-pressure air bottle. The standard version will have a back row with two small seats, like child seats in a Porsche or something, or if you get the SpaceX option package then in that place where those two seats is a high-pressure carbon overwrapped pressure vessel, something at around 10,000 psi, and a bunch of thrusters.”

To these comments, electrek decided to run with a headline that states: “Elon Musk is serious about making Tesla Roadster ‘hover’ with rocket technology”.

Our thoughts? Given that Musk’s vehicles that stay on the ground appear to us to have a track record of killing people, maybe Musk should just stick to that before working on flying the friendly skies. Just our two cents.