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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> Ok, so it actually flies.

For a few seconds. It's a parlor trick. And the flying configuration will not be street-legal.

I’m guessing the price will be at least 8 figures. If you can afford it you can also afford the 20 acre property with the private test track where you can flip your car in front of your friends.

>And the flying configuration will not be street-legal.

It may not be US legal anyway. The FAA will almost certainly have something to say about something that can go up in the air and propel itself.

"that's not flying, it's falling with style"

i would have been more impressed if they drove it off a cliff and landed it softly

i mean they kind of did, just upside down (half-loop)

In business terms they did the first part and will fail on the second.

It's not flying, it's brief hops that probably will be geofenced not to be operable on any public roads. I struggle to understand when the operator of the vehicle will ever find a way to use it for any end that isn't "gross negligence followed by totaling the car". It's not even clear it can calculate trajectories in real time to be used at the operator's discretion.

Could be seen as a technology demonstrator for interesting military technology. It could offer something akin to turn based warfare where units charge up and make synchronised moves.

Sure, but that's not the messaging around this. The "flying car" narrative is simply incorrect.

It doesn’t fly. It jumps. Like the Mark V.

Apparently Pops Racer works for Tesla.

The Mach Five uses pneumatic jumping jacks though. This thing is more like a Gundam. Pretty rad to watch it maneuver mid air with RCS thrusters.

The Mach Five was way cooler than anything Elon's minions have come up with. Haha

What if the purpose is not flying but accident prevention when falling off a bridge or cliff?

I used to wonder about the possibility of using thrusters to decelerate for impending crashes. I think for a substantial fraction of accidents that would be enough to massively reduce the risk.. but hopping over is an option I hadn’t considered practical.

Not even hopping. Just tilt/lift the car through the tight spot.

The demo car hopped over the full line of Tesla vehicles including the truck.

Hopping over a line of cars is only useful if you know there's nothing in front. In an accident this just means a rear end impact becomes an entirely more dangerous accident where one car is falling from the sky onto several more

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how being able to jump and hover for 2-3 seconds could be used to avoid otherwise fatal impacts, provided the software was perfect.

Given that we don't have such software, and that this currently requires trading all three seats for compressed gas storage, there are obviously some hurdles to this becoming a practical emergency feature.

All three seats??? I didn't know that

Yes, I understand 2 seats for the one with the rear thrusters while the one with all the thrusters has only a single driver's seat.

> I used to wonder about the possibility of using thrusters to decelerate for impending crashes

We could just put oversizes brakes on cars to achieve this. Have you seen the stopping distance of a Formula 1 car with its giant brakes?

Formula 1 cars also have massive amounts of heavily engineered downforce and negative camber to give them insane amounts of grip. Pretty much every street car has enough braking power to lock its brakes in almost every condition but doesn’t have nearly the grip to utilize it.

Bigger brakes != more stopping power.

Not so good on slick roads. Besides, I don’t know of any passenger car or light truck that has insufficient braking performance to the point of the tire grip not being the weak point.

As opposed to just exploding from the high pressure tanks of gas onboard due to an otherwise survivable fender bender?

What does it prevent? At most it makes you fall in the water in the correct orientation.

At the price of your passenger seats being occupied by gas tanks, that surely are safe in a collision that's far more likely occurrence.

It's PR stunt, nothing more.

> At most it makes you fall in the water in the correct orientation.

They showed a still of the submarine car from James Bond as inspiration for this.

That's the roadster they should have built. This compressed air jumping thing is impractical and dangerous and will never be road legal. But a submersible car would have actual practical uses, increase survivability in several accident situations and not face the same regulatory hurdles.

If they were actually trying to build something cool I think that would be the play, but everything Elon does now is to bump stock price

What's the supposed practical use of the submersible?

I imagine that if you were to crash your car into a body of water, the damage could allow water to enter the normally sealed vehicle anyway.

That does not really sound cooler than a car that can drive up walls and jump.

Well, maybe not submersible, but if it could even float and move in water it essentially becomes a boat which I don't need to explain is a practical mode of transport.

How many times have you been in traffic waiting to cross a bridge or driving around a body of water wishing you could just go over it?

I’d rather have an eject seat if I was so worried of falling off bridges lol

the purpose is: look at me everyone look at me

“Yeah my dog plays piano, but only one chord at a time.”

I'm not saying it's not cool. Parlor tricks can be very cool, and this one is. But it's still a parlor trick because it's not good for anything other than being cool. When people think of flying cars what they generally have in mind is not a car that can do a flip, it's car that can take them somewhere without needing a road so that it doesn't get stuck in traffic. This car can't do that. All it can do is backflips in a parking lot. That's not nothing, but the novelty will wear off very quickly.

Bo and Luke Duke would disagree.

Never heard of either. Are they some sort of ”kingfluencers”?

Just some good old boys, never meaning no harm.

> When people think of flying cars what they generally have in mind is not a car that can do a flip, it's car that can take them somewhere without needing a road so that it doesn't get stuck in traffic. This car can't do that. All it can do is backflips in a parking lot. That's not nothing, but the novelty will wear off very quickly.

Aye.

That said, on previous stories about flying cars I tend to bring up how the helicopter meets such a standard.

It does't tend to go down well.

This was done at night like all large scale David Copperfield magic tricks, so it's more like someone else played a chord and said the dog did.

Exactly. How did the roadster stick to the curved ramp with no obvious jets firing before going airborne? It wasn't going fast enough for centrifugal force to keep it from falling so how did that part of the magic show work?

Suction as I understand it, it had a ground curtain and the blurb talked about the ability to create downforce to keep the roadster version on the road at high speeds.

The same fans that blew downwards to create lift were likely first run to suck it in to the ramp, then reversed.

These demos were not performed by "daily driver" cars - they were multiple look alike props in a magic show, each optimised for the trick shot and not driver comfort or experience (if any driver(s) even took part).

> The same fans that blew downwards to create lift were likely first run to suck it in to the ramp, then reversed.

That's a nice theory, but it is wrong.

The fans that are used to create suction do not create lift. The amount of air moved by those fans is way too small to create lift, the lift is entirely due to compressed air used as reaction mass.

Fair point, I was thinking the same when I wrote the comment <shrug> .. I still side with the reverse hovercraft sucking force .. and thinking they likely reversed those fans after the need for suction passed (every little bit counts).

On a tangent, I prefer this two year old locally garage built "flying boat" to Musks "maybe one day" car prop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILbQHnHPnY

( FYI - there's a couple of Dutch boats down there ... )

Didn't F1 cars briefly have downforce fans (basically suction fans underneath the car) until it was ruled out of spec? Basically a "reverse hovercraft" trick, normally used for handling, but "turned up to 11" here.

There was the Brabham BT46 that got quickly banned.

On the front of cars you can actually buy and drive there is the McMurty Spierling an electric single seater with a fan generating more downforce then it weighs (can go upside down)

A standard F1 car (without fan) could in theory drive upside down, since at high speed it generates multiple times it's own weight in downforce.

However neither the engine, nor anything else, is designed to operate upside down, so it wouldn't be able to do it for very long.

The Spierling can do that without moving.

https://youtu.be/g6LYcgaQ46c?t=50

That's impressive!

I imagine it must be able to do some comical cornering.

Yeah it now holds a bunch of lap records on tracks without very long straights (where it looses due to not that high top speed). It also took the Goodwood hillclimb in 2022 and held it for a couple years.

I guess nobody clicks on the links anymore? From the OP: "Our multi-mode fan and ground sealing system acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the vehicle. This provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary. Powered fans and active wings maximize traction and cornering speeds in all conditions, achieving massive downforce at zero speed. A next-gen steer-by-wire system offers incredible feedback in various road conditions. Activate Track Mode to lower the car and transform the suspension. High downforce or low drag modes can then be used as needed on the track."

Very cool. Too bad the demo was achieved with wires and special effects.

Edit: citation? Common sense. If it was real they'd have done everything they could to prove it. It's as real as Tesla's self driving taxis were a decade ago. How many more times will people get duped by this conman?

I want a citation this was real before I believe literal smoke and mirrors at night.

Do you have a citation for that?

because an insufferable man put raspberry pi controlled rapid tire inflation gas canisters on his paws

Smashing the piano with a paw is technically a chord.

“Parlor trick” - it’s a flying car ffs. It’s an incredible engineering accomplishment, even if just for a few seconds

It’s falling with style

It's a joke. A clever trick. To what end? ... absolute joke.

Do you know what gets me excited? Have you seen the new Porsche Mission S?

Form, function and beauty ...

> Do you know what gets me excited? Have you seen the new Porsche Mission S?

It's a glorified Beetle.

It is an actual car, though.

Yep, and Koenigsegg Agera is just a glorified Ford T.

Agreed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrqcHKIPRWg

They needed a test harness for lunar/mars landers!

It's barely a shell of a proper car, complete gimmick for "car people" who think car industry came to be with Tesla two decades ago

If this is the metric of a flying car then we had working prototypes in the 60s.

> It’s an incredible engineering accomplishment

Yeah just like the Tesla screen in the car. Quite a problem since it lacks physical buttons.

Rockets have been around for a hundred years.

More like 700 years.

He probably meant liquid fueled rockets.

"Just a good ol' boys, Never meanin' no harm". Cars have been flying for a few seconds on a regular basis since the 70s.

Controlled flight. Not ballistic.

I don't recall the General going vertically upwards. Bo and Luke's motor seemed to lack an engine when "flying" over rivers etc because if it had one, it would have gone vertical quite rapidly (down).

They actually did, but they filled the trunks with concrete to level them out in flight.

Here's a jump the Duke boys would've been proud of, in what appears to be an unmodified Buick LeSabre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMTHwjy6Z8

I’m curious about the condition they’re usually in when they land.

I remember reading that there were actually about 25 General Lees. Pretty much every jump totaled one, and they'd swap in another, and haul off the first one to get fixed (or junked).

They also re-used a lot of "stock" footage.

If you're counting brief hops, the 1917 Curtiss Autoplane, "It was able to hop, but not fly."

The show averaged slightly over one car destroyed per episode - over 300 during the production run.

It's not a flying car in the way that anyone ever imagined growing up. When people think flying cars they think blade runner or fifth element. Not a car that can jump, interesting as a jumping car may be.

And frankly I'm not sure the engineering is all that impressive. I'm sure someone could've done similar a long time ago, there's just no point to it beyond, well, the parlor trick. Even millionaires have no use for a single seat, road-illegal vehicle with no storage that happens to be able to jump

No, but people will definitely buy the thrust version for the track, if it's ever built. (And assuming most tracks and drag strips even allow using the thrusters, which I doubt.)

Will that be allowed in any multi-person-near-each-other track day? Exhaust that pushes must be very dangerous to be behind if you’re drafting and waiting for the next passing lane.

Yeah, very unlikely at most tracks. Perhaps at drag strips, but I doubt that too. If it ever exists it'll be a trick for rented tracks or runways.

I recall attending a top fuel drag racing event. One was pop-popping up to the start line. Then the tree turned green, and the driver hit it.

Unfortunately, he had the silly thing in reverse. It launched backwards maybe a hundred feet. The drivers reflexes to shut off the engine were outstanding. If it had gone much further, it would have climbed up one of the full grandstands.

I never stand behind a drag car with the engine running, or in front, or in the plane of rotation of the engine. (I've seen a few engine blowups, and parts often go out sideways.)

It's a limited edition collectible. Some people will buy it.

Any car can be made to fly if "just for a few seconds" is as stringent as your requirements get.

Any car can fly. Once.

The old pilot adage: a good landing is one you can walk away from. A very good landing is when you can re-use the plane.

We don't see the landing in this one, but I've got a feeling it would not qualify as good, even if the flight itself is excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFiXReaYEj8

> It’s an incredible engineering accomplishment

Many of the best parlor tricks are.

my honda civic can fly too if I floor it on the hill nearby.

It is certainly an engineering accomplishment, but calling it a 'car' is a stretch. Do you believe that this vehicle has a 100kWh battery pack in it? When Tesla demonstrates this vehicle driving two hundred miles on city streets and recharging to repeat the test, I'll gladly change my mind.

Until then, this is simply a purpose built drone, powered by compressed air to perform specific tricks in order to grift and hype up interest in the company.

I can buy a drone from DJI that performs more impressive flying maneuvers than what Tesla showed.

This is the correct take

Here’s a 30 minute interview with Tesla VP of engineering looking up close at the battery pack, motor, cooling system. Definitely seems like a real EV to me. They also look up close at the thruster pressure vessel and exhaust system.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts

That’s not the same vehicle that did the tricks — the “Rocket” version has many downward-facing vents, and presumably a larger tank for pressurised gas and a much smaller battery capable of sustaining the suction but not much more.

The emphasis on using optimus leg parts for actuators is interesting, given that they're also still under development...

is it real if you can't drive it on any public streets legally

Its a hollow shell RC car with air canisters.

Tesla making a hollow shell full of hot air would seem appropriate somehow.

The page talks about a bunch of weight reduction tech, but I didn't see an actual final weight for the Rocket model? Given that it can support itself with "downforce" (and no thrusters, and apparently not much momentum?) at the top of the loop it's got to be pretty light...

(Ah, the youtube "designer interview" says around 1700kg (the first-gen was 1300kg; formula one has a minimum weight of 800kg.)

I dunno. We have all kinds of flying machines. What exactly makes this a car? The shape?

It drives on everyday streets.

Does it?

Not the one that was demonstrated yesterday.

They couldn’t get a permit from Hot Wheels in time for a better demonstration.

If you want that, Terrafugia has been around for a while - but you still need to drive it to an airport to deply the wings and take off. (Flies for rather more than 3.5 seconds, too :-)

Very impressive. You might even call it Full Self Flying

That’s a very generous interpretation of “flying” tbh.

I think I've seen some undergrad capstones also make flying cars that would never actually be produced or sold...

But they lacked a lot of the showmanship here.

You can basically engineer almost anything with enough money for a demo. It's a lot different to engineer something that'll actually get commercialized.

Sometimes I think this sub, being software heavy, downplays the achievements of their own field and overplays the achievements of other fields they lack experience in.

Right? People here cant enjoy the show. I don't see anyone else having soo much fun engineering a car. Too be on that team would be legit fun.

I'm not even an EV guy, and this is the coolest thing to come out of the automotive space in years. This is almost a throwback to the homologation days of rallying, when automotive companies sold unchained racing cars to the general public because the FIA and WRC deemed it so. Impractical cars in every sense of the word, but phenomenal engineering.

It's a car with rocket thrusters attached. Mythbusters did it 20 years ago.

Mythbusters - JATO 3 Rocket Car Results https://youtu.be/cHUsGFGhfmk

Ron Patrick's beetle is more interesting. https://www.ronpatrickstuff.com (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37778531 - 139 comments) ... He was trying to sell it a couple of years ago ( https://www.motortrend.com/news/jet-powered-vw-new-beetle-fo... and it has some photos that no longer load on his original site)

What's the accomplishment here? It's 50 years old tech.

Show me a video from 50 years ago of a car doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p5LxFdc-Qg

It's just plain impressive, even if it's not practical.

It's a thruster and a fan, in a car made specifically for this stunt, that won't be produced and has all passenger seats occupied by high pressure gas tanks that can do this like once.

Which of these is impressive or novel?

Basically, KITT from Knight Rider turned real.

Yeah just the same way the rides at amusement parks are that go faster and higher. The end result won't change anything for the rest of us. It's entertainment.

Flying car… That was Aerocar back in what, 2011?

In what way is this an engineering achievement? Presumably two thousand years ago people understood that flight requires lift. It's not like anything novel is occurring here.

It is a few notches beyond sitting in a wagon and emptying a fire extinguisher to go for a little ride, and about as practical, but I do not see what makes it some incredible feat of engineering.

No it’s actually not. Expect police cars to have this tech

Police cars? For what?

The car was empty because it was to dangerious to drive it. It was for sure also striped of everything it not needed.

This tech needs a LOT of space and an Air Tank which needs a lot of space.

What type of bot are you that you think there is any realistic way this 'tech' will land in any normal car ever?

Again, it’s going to be in police cars. Absolutely. Less than 5 years.

Man.. IT CANT.

The air tank is too big, the police cars are to heavy. Its not possible from an engineering poitn of view.

And from a usability one it doesn't even make sense. You can't fly you can jump ONCE for a few seconds every 6 hours.

Use case imagined: Jumping off cliffs onto side roads. That makes it more than a parlor trick.

That makes it a disaster waiting to happen.

And not just for the person driving it, too.

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