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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

Unbelievable useless for the actual use of the car.

Well, think you're only seeing the most splashy uses. For instance, at high speeds, could use the thrusters to first, increase acceleration and speed, and second, have them also able to do a bit of thrust vectoring to help push the car's tires on to the pavement for better traction. And then on turns, have thrusters firing to help push the car into the turn.

Also, maybe the car is able to hover for short to medium distances, which for a military and offroad vehicles, could be very useful to cover all types of terrain

Literal "Neck Breaking" speeds.

No human could survive this rocket-jump without a neck-brace.

Yeah, as mentioned in my comment, there are uses other than for this rocket-jump maneuver they did that thrusters would be useful for.

May come in handy if someone blocked your car on a parking and you don't have time for the tow truck to arrive. Or when you're stuck on I-95 during a major snowstorm.

It can only fly for a few seconds, no? Where are you going to land in a snow storm if the literal Interstate is impassable? Everywhere else would be worse.

Have you ever slid into a ditch? I have a couple times. It's a fair amount of work to get the car out of the ditch. With thrusters, you only need a couple seconds to get out of the ditch and back on the road.

Is that where we are on the technology curve, putting rockets in cars to get out of a ditch? I can think of about a dozen simpler and safer solutions if getting out of ditches is the main use case. Anyway isn’t FSD supposed to keep us out of ditches to begin with? If we have to reach this hard to find a justification for a rocket car, then maybe it’s not really justifiable.

Crossing a creek of unknown depth and current is another use. Or hopping a curb rather than having it snap off your wheels.

I'm not claiming any of these are worth the complexity and cost of rocket boosters, but there are uses!

Since the “rockets” only have about a second of propellant, hopping bodies of water with unknown depth seems like a bad idea. Or is this car also supposed to be a boat just like the cybertruck?

I guess as long as we’re thinking up increasingly outlandish use cases, how about being able to park at the top of buildings when there are no parking spots available. Or being able to hop over the parking gates at theme parks. What about bypassing the speed limit at school zones or hopping over stopped school buses. Oh and no more waiting for draw bridges or railroad crossings. The uses really are endless!

The videos I saw show sufficient capability to hop a swollen stream.

As long as said stream is next to a conveniently placed ramp and a cheering audience who are equally swollen.

"The Kickflip" was done without a ramp, wasn't it?

IIRC during the 2022 snowstorm, it was only impassable one way. Jumping over to the opposite side should be doable.

Yeah, I mean how are you even going to get a family of seven and a dog in there

https://www.alamy.com/jim-varney-diedrich-bader-erika-elenia...

Let's get real, the entire point of a roadster is to look cool and have good sensations. Try to beat that!

If you want a sensible car, get a Toyota Corolla, or a Model Y if you want to stay with Tesla. They will get you to your destination just as well for cheaper and with more space for your stuff.

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