Had to watch on 2x to be bearable, but the content is very predictable.
- Tesla did not say the jet powered variant would be road legal
- There is absolutely no reason you'd use this in a normal bumpy road "picking up debris", or do a 0.8s launch while stopped at a traffic light. Pointless arguments.
Regardless of the feelings this announcement evokes, no "lie" was uncovered and this is pure clickbait - as bad or worse as the thing itself.
The flying version is a concept car that was announced as "invitation only". There was no claim that it is street legal. It does in fact leave the ground under its own power and land safely. Where is the lie?
The lie is that a) it will never actually be produced for sale; and b) there seems to be evidence that it didn't have a full battery - which makes sense given, well, physics.
That people defend these antics is wild. It takes a special kind of sycophant to be lied to and to appreciate it; or I don't know, maybe it's just the regular kind.
I think people are missing the interesting part of the story by arguing about whether this is a scam or not.
Obviously, the flying car demo was nonsense that will never ship as a retail product. But then you have to ask, 'Why did they do it?' If they are never going to sell flying cars, why build and demo one? Even if the demo was a one-off mock-up with a SpaceX rocket strapped to a Tesla chassis or something, it will still have been really expensive and hard to build.
The wider context is that Tesla has a real risk of getting crushed by the Chinese EV industry. China is now delivering huge numbers of cars at lower prices and higher quality than Tesla. Markets like Australia have transformed seemingly overnight into mostly buying Chinese EVs. Tesla is seeing its market leader position quickly evaporate.
Until now, Tesla has at least been able to lean on being the 'Apple' with better tech and design, but China is starting to win there, too. Chinese companies are releasing constant videos of their cars jumping, dancing, playing football, spinning in place in 360, etc. Chinese self-driving tech is being deployed much faster than Tesla's. In some parts of the world, the perception is starting to shift toward seeing Chinese brands as the tech and design leaders, not the followers. Meanwhile, the Cybertruck has become a punchline that they can't sell.
Tesla has to see this China threat looming daily, even if most of the US market hasn't been exposed to it yet because of protectionism. They know they need to re-establish themselves as the 'king of engineering and design' in the minds of the public. So they went all-in on a crazy demo to do that.
So arguing about whether it'll ship misses the point. It's do-or-die for Tesla. It's an attempt to reclaim the engineering crown. It had to be totally ridiculous to get attention.
I don't think anybody above 10 years old is seriously expecting to be able to buy the flying version of the car or be able to do thrust-assisted 0-60 on a public road.
This whole video was just 9 minutes of "duh" for me.
I personally don't think we'll ever see this tech in action again. Maybe there will be a couple of billionaire collectors who receive their invite-only thruster cars only to put them in a garage and never touch it again. Maybe there'll be some "Jay Leno's garage" walk-around style youtube video. But I don't think anybody would ever actually seriously let this thing fly in the wild.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 5.8 ms ] thread- Tesla did not say the jet powered variant would be road legal
- There is absolutely no reason you'd use this in a normal bumpy road "picking up debris", or do a 0.8s launch while stopped at a traffic light. Pointless arguments.
Regardless of the feelings this announcement evokes, no "lie" was uncovered and this is pure clickbait - as bad or worse as the thing itself.
It performed a controlled fall.
It then jumped and performed another controlled fall.
For the finale, it farted at the finish line.
They did debunk the myth of the circus being dead.
Give us something new Elon, in terms of engineering breakthrus, not just gluing off the shelf lego parts together.
You can do it :|
That people defend these antics is wild. It takes a special kind of sycophant to be lied to and to appreciate it; or I don't know, maybe it's just the regular kind.
Obviously, the flying car demo was nonsense that will never ship as a retail product. But then you have to ask, 'Why did they do it?' If they are never going to sell flying cars, why build and demo one? Even if the demo was a one-off mock-up with a SpaceX rocket strapped to a Tesla chassis or something, it will still have been really expensive and hard to build.
The wider context is that Tesla has a real risk of getting crushed by the Chinese EV industry. China is now delivering huge numbers of cars at lower prices and higher quality than Tesla. Markets like Australia have transformed seemingly overnight into mostly buying Chinese EVs. Tesla is seeing its market leader position quickly evaporate.
Until now, Tesla has at least been able to lean on being the 'Apple' with better tech and design, but China is starting to win there, too. Chinese companies are releasing constant videos of their cars jumping, dancing, playing football, spinning in place in 360, etc. Chinese self-driving tech is being deployed much faster than Tesla's. In some parts of the world, the perception is starting to shift toward seeing Chinese brands as the tech and design leaders, not the followers. Meanwhile, the Cybertruck has become a punchline that they can't sell.
Tesla has to see this China threat looming daily, even if most of the US market hasn't been exposed to it yet because of protectionism. They know they need to re-establish themselves as the 'king of engineering and design' in the minds of the public. So they went all-in on a crazy demo to do that.
So arguing about whether it'll ship misses the point. It's do-or-die for Tesla. It's an attempt to reclaim the engineering crown. It had to be totally ridiculous to get attention.
This whole video was just 9 minutes of "duh" for me.
I personally don't think we'll ever see this tech in action again. Maybe there will be a couple of billionaire collectors who receive their invite-only thruster cars only to put them in a garage and never touch it again. Maybe there'll be some "Jay Leno's garage" walk-around style youtube video. But I don't think anybody would ever actually seriously let this thing fly in the wild.