More details about the upcoming Tesla Roadster have arrived.
Now that Tesla has the Cybertruck out of the way, Elon Musk unveiled some more details about the Roadster. The 2nd generation Tesla Roadster was first revealed back in 2017 and now the controversial CEO says his company is finally getting ready to put it into production.
Elon Musk said on Twitter/X that “there will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car.” He also indicated that it would have a 0-100km/h acceleration time of under 1 second, which is half of what he initially announced. So how will the Tesla Roadster reach such speeds? Well, I think the clue is in the statement he made – “if you could even call it a car”.
Will It Float?
Back in June 2018, Musk may have let slip the Roadster’s party trick. While the rest of the industry is experimenting with flying cars to combat traffic, Tesla might be working on making the Roadster fly just to get it to go faster in a straight line. He mentioned installing small rocket thrusters around the car to help the car’s maneuverability, braking, acceleration and maybe even enable it to fly.
Given how heavy electric vehicles are, we don’t think Musk means the Roadster will actually take off the ground and glide vast distances to get to its destination. Instead, it will probably be engineered to hover above the ground to over come the car’s weight and friction before getting a 1 second rocket blast forward to 100km/h.
Does that sound insane? Well, three years ago Engineering Explain ran the numbers and it’s actually a plausible solution.
The battery could power a compressor that stores at least 30kg of air in a tank and when it’s full, rear thrusters should be able to get it from 0-100km/h in about 1 second before running out of air.
To be clear, Elon Musk has not claimed any of this officially, it’s speculation based on hints that he has dropped.
Solid Info On The Tesla Roadster
Well, the design looks pretty close to what was shown in 2017 and then blasted into space. More official specifications and details will be shared later in 2024 with a full reveal expected by the end of the year and deliveries expected in 2025. In the USA, reservations for the Roadster are US$50,000 per unit. How expensive the 2nd generation Roadster ends up being is still a big question mark, with rivals like the Rimac Nevera coming in at US$2 million, even charging half as much might make it look like a bargain to the target demographic.
