“Turns out the future does have flying cars,” said Elon Musk on X in accompaniment to a video showing the launch of Tesla’s Roadster 2. However, the event in Texas last week seemed more theatrical stuntman show than car-manufacturer product launch. Indeed, speculation online will be for once not about whether an AI-generated video was real, but about whether a real one was AI-generated.
Months before the car’s release, Musk said he wanted the showcase to be “the most epic demo ever” — a goal that he seems to consider achieved. The resulting vehicle is said to be capable of reaching 60mph in under a second, have a fan system underneath that can exert sufficient downforce to hold in place more than twice its own weight, and host a design that has been hailed online as part aerospace, part origami. Add to that the fact that it can fly, at least over short distances, and it seems unsurprising that one engineer who worked on the project described the design process as like trying to make “a Transformer” that has “four vehicles in one body.”
We should bear in mind that this car is still only at the prototype stage. It remains to be seen how the model will work when it reaches drivers beyond the Tesla-SpaceX showcase event. Earlier models from the car manufacturer have been not without their critics, and earlier Tesla demonstrations have been not without their slip-ups. The vehicle at this launch was operated remotely rather than by a real driver because of safety concerns. It is also not yet approved for use on public routes, a fact that some were quick to point out: “Tesla’s new ‘Roadster’ can fly – but you can’t actually drive it on roads.”
The spectacle that we were treated to last week is undoubtedly a remarkable engineering feat. As one designer on the project put it, there seems to be a sense at Tesla that anything can be achieved; the only limitation it sees for itself is physics.
Do most people look for a car that “takes the fun meter to 11 out of 10”? Perhaps your answer to that is yes: if so, Elon Musk would say, then look no further than the Roadster 2. For those of us who can’t pull together a $250,000 deposit, that question is probably not worth spending too much time thinking about.
Photo by Paul Steuber on Unsplash
