Amazing tech demo. I would have liked to see more discussion of the cold-gas thrusters in the earlier Hacker News article. Some people seemed confused and made claims that the demo was a separate "rocket" version that used a combustion technology.
I doubt it is actual air. When compressing gas to 10,000+ psi and then running it through a rocket motor, clean/dry nitrogen is the way to go. Normal air has moisture, which can form ice, and oxygen which gets extremely reactive when heated.
And many a rocket scientist would be insulted by the comparison of a nozzled rocket motor to the simple pipe of an air rifle.
A rocket engine doesn't require combustion, it just requires expelling a gas to produce thrust, and that the engine not be air breathing. Most rocket engines use combustion to produce the high speed gases, but there are plenty that don't (water rockets, steam rockets, plasma rockets, and... cold gas thrusters as demonstrated by Tesla)
Well it is a separate rocket version, it just doesn't take jet fuel. "Invite only" for the rocket version means probably less than 5 will ever be made, if that.
I strongly suspect that the invite-only version is the tech that was described in the demo, and differs from the $250K version by the size of the air tank and compression motor.
I dont see actual landing part, even drone for some reason flew away, very convenient. Unless its super smooth (which it doesnt seem to be), one can expect progressive damage on these heavy cars.
Marketing stunt is nice, I care more about consistent nazi behavior of the owner.
Why is this all so political? Why can't you meanies just maintain my priors that this man is personally engineering the coolest tech and saving humanity despite all evidence he is an idiot and hates people? I am going to find a forum where I'm not subject to this
What's wrong is all of the older models they sold do not have what you experienced. They were sold FSD but their car's hardware can't run the latest software, and the older implementations required much more babysitting (aka not FSD).
I hope not, I use "full self driving" every day! I'm sure your statement is based extensive experience, but mine is that for 2 1/2 years over 40k miles, it has worked very well. Not perfect (parking spot selection has frequent regressions), but astonishingly well.
Why do car manufacturers brag about hitting 60 mph in 1, 2 or whatever seconds? For a normal person, does this really matter - what is the big deal if a car hits 60 mph in 5 seconds instead of 1? There are more important things like safety, repairability, longevity etc right?
It's just one stat and it makes for a good headline. Obviously those other things are important but they don't exactly fit into a headline. Oh and some people like fast cars. Why is that so confusing?
It's one thing they can brag about, you know. Dumbing everything down to a single number, regardless of whether it's meaningful, feels impressive.
The vast majority of LLM users -- not the average person here on HN -- doesn't know which "model" they are using, can't tell the difference and don't care, including many software engineers. You could ask the same thing about those LLM benchmarks.
For the Roadster, it's a supercar. None of those things matter much.
For something like the performance versions of their high-volume vehicles, it's partially for the same reasons people like sports cars, or at least how some people like a sports car that is faster / quicker and gives them more excitement while driving (obviously a lot of the appeal for sports cars otherwise is the sporty look/sound of the engine, which Tesla doesn't really deliver on at all).
It’s standard measure of acceleration. If you are going to sell a car on performance (like say… a sporty roadster), it’s a great metric.
People in the market for a car like this care far more about performance than they do safety, repairability or longevity.
That’s why performance oriented cars talk about their acceleration, and minivans talk about safety, and pickup trucks talk about longevity. Their target market determines which of the various metrics are going to be the headline.
> It’s standard measure of acceleration. If you are going to sell a car on performance (like say… a sporty roadster), it’s a great metric.
It's good for marketing, but it measures traction more than anything and not really used in motorsports. Drag racers measure that with a 60 foot time (time to travel 60 feet, not 0-60mph). For raw acceleration 60-120mph is used, but there are no public roads in the US where 120mph is legal so manufacturers don't give that number.
This is a sports car with a deposit that costs more than an ordinary new car, and with a price that would probably buy you a decent house. Nothing about this is meant for a normal person.
You answered your own question in your very second sentence. “For a normal person”. The modern economy increasingly does not cater to the “normal person” and they prove this constantly. Granted “normal people” stopped existing a long time ago. You have poor people, soon to be poor people, and people who think they will soon be rich but will really soon be poor. Of course then you have the rest but they are not people.
> Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?
Sure.
I think the poster you are replying to is trying to say that the “k-shaped” economy is incentivizing the market to cater only to the high end and simply ignoring the low end.
A few businesses I own are dealing with this issue now. It’s just much more profitable and logistically easier for them to charge what seems like an absurd price, justify it with some inexpensive “white-glove” service, and just ignore the rest of the market.
On the one hand, this is a tribute to modern marketing that high value-add products and services can match with customers more efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential to create a bizarre “race to the top” such that only suckers will cater to anything other than the top 1% of their target market (in terms of wealth / willingness and capacity to pay).
Where I currently live, this is happening with frightening efficiency with health care. Almost all of the “good” PCP doctors are going concierge, and the concierge prices are increasing at a rapid clip.
Normal person as in position in economic distribution, not normal as in not quirky or strange. Lots of quirky people all across the spectrum.
But to be clear, in my example products aren’t the only thing to which the economy doesn’t cater to normal people for (lower-middle class but increasingly middle and lower class). War, corruption, and genocide are all bad for the average person. Generally things that funnel money into hurting or enriching individuals. Both of these are inefficient and the inefficient use of resources, is hurtful to normal people. E.g. enriching an oligarch to build roads could be twice as much road if he takes a 50 percent cut. And the money sitting with him does harm, oppresses people. Food for thought.
Not to mention top speed. The US should have a federal or at least NY/CA state law that modern cars be electronically limited to 112 mph, as it is in Japan. There is no valid reason for a street legal passenger car to be travelling faster than that.
That makes sense for Germany, but the US does not have universally good roads or reasonably trained drivers. Many states have no regular vehicle safety inspection. On top of all that, culturally, the US is just very different when it comes to respecting regulation. I have seen germans completely befuddled when they realize that Americans will intentionally ignore laws and regulations. To many Germans it seems like it is almost inconceivable that otherwise respectable people will just not follow rules sometimes.
Its not an issue and it still is not necessary at all.
The faster you drive the more stress you produce in other drivers. The faster you drive, the higher the risk.
And i have seen plenty of ' trained drivers' thinking its reasonable to start taking over on the right side because 2 cars are ahead of him. swiffling into your lane without proper safetydistance, starting to take over everyone from the 3th or 5 position...
If you don't drive faster than 180 at night on an empty autobahn, you just might be a dick and ignorant to everyone else you share the autobahn with. And yes when i do this, it might be a short sectionwere it is very clear that its for fun and thats it.
Speaking for myself I love the quick acceleration of electric cars because it enables you to safely pass other cars quickly on two-lane roads without needing to linger in the oncoming lane.
Even assuming it’s real and they genuinely are working on selling these to consumers (they aren’t), why on earth would you think this is built for the average person? At the absolute cheapest this car would be $5M off the lot. It’s for the ultra rich (assuming they ship, which they won’t) who want to drive it one day a year on the track
> just endless anti-tech hate, downstream from idiotic TikTok politics.
The hate and politics obsession of the people you're complaining about on here pales in comparison to the guy doing this presentation. He is doing it 24/7 I'm not even sure he sleeps he is so engaged in it.
Really disappointing to see such low quality discussion here. Feasibility aside, we would not be seeing such reactions even 5 years ago. Polarization ruins everything.
Using awe and inspiration to cement themselves as a leading tech company, especially in the minds of up-and-coming engineers, seems like a good goal for recruiting the best and brightest.
Nobody needs that kind of acceleration on a car designed for use on public roads, and anyone who uses that capability in the vicinity of other people or vehicles deserves to be arrested. Its just criminally dangerous.
Like the Cybertruck, this is just the Musk "fuck you, get out of my way" worldview realised as metal and plastic.
So this is a really neat technical demo, using spacecraft cold-gas thrusters and guidance hardware/software to do crazy stunt stuff in a car, but what's the relevance to an actual product that can be sold, even as a small-volume exotic? These are pressurized gas thrusters, so either the tanks, valves, and piping take up most of the interior of the car, or it has a low-single-digit number of seconds of thrust before recharge, probably both. Also the tanks for these things tend to use incredibly high pressures and are apt to explode spectacularly in any sort of accident.
This is sort of like demonstrating a car that softens the asphalt in front of it with lasers to get a better grip; difficult, technically impressive, and zero chance that it will ever be allowed on a public road.
Different forces: expansive (Roadster) vs compressive (OceanGate). This makes some logical sense since fibers/strands/ropes are good for tensile strength vs. compressive forces.
CF can make a fine pressure vessel it's just difficult to build and they require constant inspection that OceanGate didn't perform (and ignored evidence from their own monitoring system that the PV was responding differently to pressure after a hard bang it suffered when docking in one of the last few dives). SpaceX already has experience building the COPVs that Tesla is probably using and knows their limits pretty well though I don't want to be standing near one in a major crash either.
Some off piste skiers carry a carbon fiber canister with pressurized nitrogen gas, to inflate airbags from backpack in case of an avalanche. Carbon fiber is not that good with point pressure, but strong for evenly distributed loads.
At this point I look at wikipedia what happened to the submarine bamboozled mentioned. Ooops. Heh, the pressure of water is as evenly distributed as can be. Seems my background in watersports is not enough to moonlight in material engineering.
There is almost zero practical use for this technology. No one is going to drive around and pop a flip. The only possible use would be when some shit box car loses control and is about to head on crash a billionaire and the billionaire's car kickflips over the shit box and continues to drive while the shit box crashes behind him into flames.
The combination of a 250kg 5500psi pressure vessel, with a huge battery that generates a self fueling fire..... this thing will make for spectacular crashes
105 comments
[ 13.7 ms ] story [ 41.8 ms ] threadTesla has never really shown they can design anything compelling that doesn’t look like a lumpy shoe.
And many a rocket scientist would be insulted by the comparison of a nozzled rocket motor to the simple pipe of an air rifle.
This one is a hard-top super-coupe and I recommend calling it the "Cyberwedge"
Marketing stunt is nice, I care more about consistent nazi behavior of the owner.
Tesla should be sued into oblivion over "full self driving", but after that, if you believe this nonsense and buy one that's on you.
I hope.
I think of F-150s that have quickly climbed over 400hp and can pull a giant trailer... but I don't think the brakes and suspension match.
(f-250 or f-350 might be more balanced when pulling those 30'+ trailers)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Trumps
The vast majority of LLM users -- not the average person here on HN -- doesn't know which "model" they are using, can't tell the difference and don't care, including many software engineers. You could ask the same thing about those LLM benchmarks.
For something like the performance versions of their high-volume vehicles, it's partially for the same reasons people like sports cars, or at least how some people like a sports car that is faster / quicker and gives them more excitement while driving (obviously a lot of the appeal for sports cars otherwise is the sporty look/sound of the engine, which Tesla doesn't really deliver on at all).
People in the market for a car like this care far more about performance than they do safety, repairability or longevity.
That’s why performance oriented cars talk about their acceleration, and minivans talk about safety, and pickup trucks talk about longevity. Their target market determines which of the various metrics are going to be the headline.
It's good for marketing, but it measures traction more than anything and not really used in motorsports. Drag racers measure that with a 60 foot time (time to travel 60 feet, not 0-60mph). For raw acceleration 60-120mph is used, but there are no public roads in the US where 120mph is legal so manufacturers don't give that number.
Is that a bad thing? Aren't there always a range of products that cater to different levels of interest?
If you're a "normal person" you don't need a 8000dpi mouse with RGB, or a Louis Vuitton purse, or a large big mac meal.
This is not poverty it is prosperity.
Sure.
I think the poster you are replying to is trying to say that the “k-shaped” economy is incentivizing the market to cater only to the high end and simply ignoring the low end.
A few businesses I own are dealing with this issue now. It’s just much more profitable and logistically easier for them to charge what seems like an absurd price, justify it with some inexpensive “white-glove” service, and just ignore the rest of the market.
On the one hand, this is a tribute to modern marketing that high value-add products and services can match with customers more efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential to create a bizarre “race to the top” such that only suckers will cater to anything other than the top 1% of their target market (in terms of wealth / willingness and capacity to pay).
Where I currently live, this is happening with frightening efficiency with health care. Almost all of the “good” PCP doctors are going concierge, and the concierge prices are increasing at a rapid clip.
But to be clear, in my example products aren’t the only thing to which the economy doesn’t cater to normal people for (lower-middle class but increasingly middle and lower class). War, corruption, and genocide are all bad for the average person. Generally things that funnel money into hurting or enriching individuals. Both of these are inefficient and the inefficient use of resources, is hurtful to normal people. E.g. enriching an oligarch to build roads could be twice as much road if he takes a 50 percent cut. And the money sitting with him does harm, oppresses people. Food for thought.
I think Nissan had a workaround I could live with: GPS fencing around known tracks would activate/deactivate the speed governor.
The faster you drive the more stress you produce in other drivers. The faster you drive, the higher the risk.
And i have seen plenty of ' trained drivers' thinking its reasonable to start taking over on the right side because 2 cars are ahead of him. swiffling into your lane without proper safetydistance, starting to take over everyone from the 3th or 5 position...
If you don't drive faster than 180 at night on an empty autobahn, you just might be a dick and ignorant to everyone else you share the autobahn with. And yes when i do this, it might be a short sectionwere it is very clear that its for fun and thats it.
Not all products have to be aimed at you.
What has HN become - just endless anti-tech hate, downstream from idiotic TikTok politics.
Is it the moderation system that amplifies this nonsense here?
If those cold-air thrusters are getting commoditized, the real discussion here should be around what could be built around them. How to HACK them.
Reddit exists for this other nonsense pile on.
The hate and politics obsession of the people you're complaining about on here pales in comparison to the guy doing this presentation. He is doing it 24/7 I'm not even sure he sleeps he is so engaged in it.
Like the Cybertruck, this is just the Musk "fuck you, get out of my way" worldview realised as metal and plastic.
This is sort of like demonstrating a car that softens the asphalt in front of it with lasers to get a better grip; difficult, technically impressive, and zero chance that it will ever be allowed on a public road.
Other cars have these tanks, but full of flammable fuel, not just air.
Off the top of my head, the honda civic CNG (3600 psi)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_GX#Specifications
the toyota marai (10,000 psi hydrogen)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai#High-pressure_hyd...
and probably the other cng or hydrogen cars.
Fry: "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"
Professor Farnsworth: "Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one."
At this point I look at wikipedia what happened to the submarine bamboozled mentioned. Ooops. Heh, the pressure of water is as evenly distributed as can be. Seems my background in watersports is not enough to moonlight in material engineering.
carbon fiber is great in tension, i.e. a compressed air tank, or COPV
carbon fiber is much less great in compression, i.e. OceanGate
Also the OceanGate construction process was bad, even for carbon fiber, because the CEO didn't listen to actual engineers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdkIOhFmbKI&t=1239
Doesn't look too big, tbh. They also explain some of the mechanics used to make it happen.