When I saw the video of the Tesla Roadster, I was speechless. My brain said this had to be AI or SI generated video that was not reality, and this didn’t happen. However, just like Elon Musk’s SpaceX catching the booster rocket after use, this Tesla Roadster reveal was very real and incredibly amazing.
I’ve watched the video more than a few times and I understand the concept of using pressurized air as explained by Elon Musk and several engineers in subsequent explanations. However, it remains stunning to think about.
While the rest of the western world is seemingly stuck in a political battle about artificial intelligence, pitting advanced technology against the socialist and heavily unionized interests who will be impacted by it, the U.S. continues to lead the way on innovation and technology at a scale now visibly represented by this stunning Tesla Roadster’s capabilities.
Sure, it’s extreme, and there’s not likely to be a consumer-friendly version of it despite production scheduled for next year, but beyond the over-the-top incredible technology that makes a vehicle do these seemingly science defying stunts, my brain started thinking about how this technology could make vehicles safer.
When we think about collision warning and avoidance systems that are already present in cars, and we think about these specifically new capabilities on display, it doesn’t take long before you wonder if the commercial application of this technology might end up being incorporated into vehicle safety options.
Unintentionally driving off a cliff in a vehicle that can detect, stabilize, optimize a travel vector and land itself is no longer just an out-there mental exercise. We can easily imagine a future where the technology revealed in the Tesla Roadster will be in some form of safety features. Just a few days ago the thought was never even contemplated.
This is remarkable and the engineering teams at Tesla should be commended for pushing the envelope and creating things that go beyond our imagination. Congratulations to Elon Musk, the folks at Tesla and all of the incredible people who put their time, effort and energy into these accomplishments.
This is what unleashed American innovation can deliver. I think it is awesome.
Retired Magistrate here: How cool is that; we finally caught up with the Jetsons.
super intelligence allows humans to do things never before possible and is a win win
artificial intelligence is replacement automation and extractive and is win lose
that flying car is super intelligence at work
I suspect the air-thrusters are controlled by the same sensors-stabilizing-thrusters technology that Elon’s rockets use to stay stabilized and upright during the modern ass-first landings we’ve been witnessing
Interactive feedback between the air thrusters and attitude/distance sensors hundreds of times per second
My Father would love that – like all in his generation he was mechanically inclined – from horse & buggy to the moon in one generation. It’s been so long . . since they landed with jet-packs and the flag for the 1983 Super Bowl.
This is why we can’t have dumocrats running everything – they grind everything to a halt.
Democrats in control for long periods create Islamism and 6th century civilizations. The first stage is grinding to a halt. The second stage is traveling back in time.
ok, now I scrolled back up and see the youtube clip title “with SpaceX thrusters”
so, yeah, that technology
This has been done before. At least as far back as the 80s. Was “super intelligence” (terrible name) doing it then?
Artificial intelligence (terrible name) *IS* automation.
Yet we can’t replace the battery on your own truck or even check the fluids anymore because there is no dipstick.
Calling someone a dip stick used to be offensive.
Now the car dip stick will be smarter than a person and self check
my High School Buddy and Life Long Mechanic has been Changing Out Engines
in 130K Mile Cars Near EVERY WEEK
because the Engine Oil Level Sensors FAIL or the CAM SENSORS FAIL
CVT ( continuously variable transmission ) Transmissions also
130K Mile ” THROW AWAY ” vehicles
Chinese EVs are becoming known as “2 year cars”. In order to facilitate brain-dead manufacturing, every possible component is being integrated into a larger module. Minor hiccups, like a fried $2 voltage regulator, become $10K Repairs because the cheap component is now part of a more expensive module.
Even minor fender benders or a battery problem results in the car being “totaled.” If you can’t afford to replace the vehicle every 2 years, fuggetaboutit.
As for battery changes, first you have to find it, then become a contourtionist to get to it, while not tearing up the interior on some vehicles.
Instead, there’s an app for that. My car informed me yesterday that it needed windshield wiper fluid. 😳
I hate it when my car tells me what to do.
The dipsticks are in Congress and in mosques
Elon Musk is America’s secret weapon.
yet to hear AOC and Jasmine Crocett tell it, he’s just “dumb billionaire”, right?
Well, whatever he is, it aint what we are being told and have been told he is.
Buy TSLA
I want one.
auxilliary thruster use:
deflecting pesky tight-shorted bicyclists
https://x.com/Coins_Kid/status/2111361168908431502
https://x.com/Coins_Kid/status/2111361168908431502/video/1
Question: Why?
Answer: Because it’s cool.
Only in America.
Haha. I said the same thing when my children’s shoes could light up. But this is “way more epicker,” to use their language back then. They are in their mud thirties now
China will never ever be able to conceive of advances like this, it simply is not compatible with their culture.
.
AI is not able to dream and create, like ever!
But they are masters at “appropriating” other people’s creations.
A tip of the hat also to Jim Hall who developed the original Chaparral race car that began to define ground-effects. Also to Formula 1 who by themselves have generated so much “suck” that street circuits around the world have to temporarily tack-weld their manhole covers.
“Here’s George Jetson….” 🙂
🎯 💯 And lately these guys:
https://mcmurtry.com/
Yea that is a cool car but for an electric it is only rear wheel drive. It could do better with four wheel drive, but they did get the suction working well for a moving vehicle, I believe a first that worked well. And here is the Stig driving it around the top gear track.
…with that speed…sure hope that something is not crossing the road… not a pretty site…
( and hope is inadequate )
I got the chance to see Jim Hall’s Chaparral at Watkins Glen in the ’70s – never forgot how much faster it was in a hard right dropping corner after the long straight…I think it was banned shortly after…
LOL, yeah thru that corner and a similar one at Laguna Seca (you know the one) made everyone sit up and say WTF!?! Banned, yep. As we all know, control is the reaction to fear.
“Corkscrew” … nowhere else do you drop three stories while doing two turns at full brake and then accelerating.
The Ridge Raceway in Shelton, WA has a corkscrew on turn 13 that drops about 50 feet after a hairpin. It will get your attention!
Wish I’d seen that …was there to see ’78 GP when Andretti crashed his #5 John Player Special on practice lap broken axle…and then drove teammates #55 in race till motor blew….
The Championship was already a fait accompli for him as he couldn’t be caught on points…..
Also there a few CanAm’s ….. “those were the days”…. (to stay away from The Bog ) 🥴 😳
Yeah – the weekend I was there a brand new Porsche and a bus was burnt… “show us your tits” started too.
It was a 4 or 5 day event with all types of sports car racing (no Nascar if I remember correctly)
…..SAME….!! 😳…..And a motorhome!! 🤭🤪
Maybe same year 🤔🍻
Can-Am racing was the bomb.
I remember the orange McLarens dominating.
Mark Donahue. Bruce McLaren. Gone too soon…
Donahue drove a Javelin in Trans-Am for a bit. I had s ‘70.
Yep, also cheered on the McLarens. Sad when team mate Denny Hulme lost his life.
Saw all those cars and the Shelby and Lotus turbines. Of course the stake through the heart of Can Am was the Porsche 917. Turns out unlimited classes could not exist because every breakthrough became outlawed.
Can Am was fun while it lasted. Drag Racing as well. SoCal in the 1960’s had both.
No intentionally flying cars but there were guys with jet packs.
Musk’s advantage is that he is a big kid… full of wonder.
Guys like Musk were bolting jet engines and rocket motors onto dragsters back in the 1960’s.
It was the wild west in America in those days. Everybody had tools and tinkered and dreamed.
Hahaha….. YES….BUT ELON’S advantage IS THAT HE IS A FRICKIN LEGIT ALIEN i think……
A story about Mark Donahue with the 917: during an interview the reporter asked him about the hill everyone was complaining about and he asked in return “what hill?” With a twin turbocharged v12 in his 2200 lb car, he didn’t even notice it.
NHB- That was a flat-12 (horizontally opposed) not a 60º or 90º “V” engine.
Glorious cacophony of unbridled metal ponies running free…… THE SOUNDS ALONE….MONSTER V8’s, screaming 12’s, wailing turboed Porsches even 6 cylinder Jags….!
Doesnt get much better for a Motörhead…….
Yea, that’s the “outer loop” … and ground effects were dropped from F1 partly for sport reasons (how do you race if every corner is flat out) but also because ground effects were perfect until the suction was broken say by a bump or a rapid change in input — at which point the downforce became nothing and the car an unguided missile.
I remember that, the Chaparral 2J that had the snowmobile engine driving fans in the rear to create downforce.
Just the opposite…
Speed + inertia + Ken Miles = a flying car in 1965
Flugplatz living up to its name, also before winged cars:
That is a stunningly beautiful “as-shot” photo! no AI BS there!
Something about chopping a big hole in the “bumper” and letting tons of air flow under the car…
and flying that way slows you down big time, as you have zero propulsive traction.
“Damn, what happened to my airdam?”
What a combination if Jim Hall and Smokey Yunick had collaborated. The 2 would have created some kick butt race cars.
They both did so independently!
Jeff Childers, of Coffee & Covid fame, also has a great article out today on this. You will enjoy it!
Please check it out. The link didn’t work for some reason.
The Link:
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/why-not-saturday-october-17-2026
Jeff does a great job – his articles are hilarious and spot-on!
FILTHY LIBERALS
AMERICA!
This is SO IMPRESSIVE and so American.
Us Canadians would never and could never do this type of thinking to achieve this.
Canadians are Crabs in the WEF Bucket of Doom, Despotism and Decay.
Godless and Spiritless Marxism cannot compete with American Rugged Individualism.
God Bless America.
There are very few Canadians left. I was a member of the Peoples Party of Canada until even their leader critized President Trump and the tariffs. Now, from afar, I only have President Trump. Sundance, thank you for that. Americans are the most fortunate people in the universe.
God continues to bless us every day, although im sure His patience wears thin.
I have dear personal friends in Canada — you are not represented by your government and they are selling you out. You have my deepest sympathy and I hope you keep fighting the good fight.
agree.100%
before there is the practical, there is the experimental.
the application pointed out here is spot on,
and there will be other downstream innovations
which use this tech as the platform.
boggles the mind a bit.😁
congratulaions to Mr. Musk and his team!
Jeff Childers points out it was only 11 years between the Kitty Hawk and the first commercial passenger flight. Less than 66 before men went to the moon.
Liberals would still be fussing about Orvile & Wilber and how they endangered the public 66 years later. Man would be lucky to get to the next state if left up to them.
just finished that article, and yes, nit picking libs ALWAYS stand in the way of real progress –
ironic since they call themselves “progressives”, eh? 😉 😎 😁
but i must say his comments on the 3000 # pumpkin were delightful.
i had posted a link to the R.I. news station WPWR before i got to his substack,
and agree with his assessment – it is very cool!
this is still, after all, America, where as a rule, bigger is better.😂🇺🇸
Boggles my mind a lot 😂
Incredible.
The brain of Elon must be constantly excited and busy.
The Tesla Roadster is very James Bond and very American at the same time.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around a ground car that can get to places other ground cars can’t.
I want to buy one and build a 10ft wall around my house with no gate.
This is great, but the second most awesome thing is coming up soon. The next flight of Starship is rumoured to have both stages return to the launch site and be captured. Then the most awesome thing of the twenty first century will be the re-use of a Starship. when they start getting re-used, the economics of spaceflight will really change, and America will have a twenty year lead in technology.
Yes!!!
Sundance, if you haven’t read them (or listened to them) I highly recommend the Elon Musk biography by Ashley Vance (oddly, I guess Ashley is a guy’s name in South Africa) and Lift Off by Eric Berger, the “biography” of Space X — you’ll see the struggles Elon fought off with big space and the you can’t do that crowd.
Lift Off, goes more in-depth into some of the same general brief stories about Space X in the Elon Musk biography.
I think you’d enjoy them.
Alas, you must not have seen the great movie Gone With The Wind. Oh Ashley!!
You know, I never have watched it.
The book came first, but both are worth your time!
Clark Gable WAS and REMAINS Rhett Butler!
His performance is so natural that it overwhelms everyone else, who are all “Acting.”
Just watch his first appearance in the movie and you will sense what I mean!
I read a comment by an engineer who had worked at NASA for a long time and then went to SpaceX. He said it could take years to even get a committee to discuss an idea at NASA but at SpaceX you have an idea in the morning and you might be trying it out that night.
That’s pretty it, I listened to the Elon Musk biography first and the portions about Space X was remarkable. Then I listened to Lift Off and was amazed and the shear determination all at Space X had. Everyone Elon found to work there wanted to do something amazing.
Also, if you haven’t read time watch the Lex Fridman “interview” (he spent a week in Taiwan with him) of Jensen Huang. I don’t think it was show for the cameras but he is a genuinely down to earth man. You could tell Lex was amazed at how Jensen acted towards everyone.
Jensen also talks about how he believes AI will help re-industrialize America, as well as telling a bit of the back story of how Taiwan become the chip capital of the world.
The private sector at work, with everyone rowing in the same direction.
If you can free your mind, there is no box… I watched the footage and my first thought was that is not real followed by that is effing awesome.
What a time to be alive.
A couple thoughts. With the speed and distance detectors cars already have that apply the brakes to prevent you bumping the car behind you when you parallel park, adding this should be automatic rear-end collision and T-bone accident prevention. If it detects another vehicle coming at you at a speed and on a vector that intersects yours, it just raises you in the air and the other vehicle passes under you.
Also, never wait for a red light again. Just raise up and fly over the cars in front of you, and the intersection, touch down on the other side, and away you go. Stuck in traffic? Fly to another street.
Oh, and there is always parking available on the roof of your building.
Sing along …. his boy Elroy … daughter Judy … Jane his wife …
Sure, it’s extreme, and there’s not likely to be a consumer-friendly version of it despite production scheduled for next year, but beyond the over-the-top incredible technology that makes a vehicle do these seemingly science defying stunts, my brain started thinking about how this technology could make vehicles safer.
The best thing this did was show every wanna be entrepreneur in the world that they need to come to the US in order to make their dreams come true. Not Canada. Not Europe. Not China.
America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates
52 years ago Evil Knievel jumped the snake river canyon, and they mentioned that they might try that. It would actually be quite simple for them. The speed the car will do can easily make the jump, and the rockets will allow for a nice soft landing on the other side, the question is will they do it with no one in the car, or will there be a dare devil inside for the ride!
Gotta have the jumpsuit
… and the diamond walking stick with hidden liquor compartment. 😉
Wonder if you could put this on an airplane to use before a crash.
A jet that launches from an aircraft carrier.
Military applications could be enormous for rocketry.
Awesome stuff.
Yesterday I read somewhere, don’t remember,
that maybe some kind of different license might
be required with some kind of pilot training or
certification?
Amazing… this technology is beyond 20,000
Leagues Beneath The Sea, and even that I am sure
is continuing to advance.
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and
all that…
Eyes Right…
If you go to Tesla site the road version is available to pre-order, the track version is limited and the type in the demo is invite only.
Thank You Eric. Making more sense now.
The 0 to 60 mph in one second was amazing too.
When I first saw the video of it jumping the Tesla fleet my first thought went to Speed Racer’s jump jacks on the Mach 5. It looked just like the Mach 5 on take off.😂
My second thought was to wonder how much battery power is depleted every time the flying feature is used.
If it’s compressed air thrusters then the battery is just switching valves so, not much.
“Meet George Jetson…………”
Well, it’s a great way to jump over and give a much needed rinse to those street blocking idiots!
on the dash, there’ll be a button that says “black-lives-matter avoidance“
…. and brought to us by an African, no less
“collect one irony chit and step forward in the queue, please”
I beg your pardon
South African.
WHITE
I was born in South Africa from Danish, Australian, Afrikaner and UK stock
We are resilient
And leave them in a cloud as a cherry on top!
beautiful post. Like you , Sundance, I was blown away too, …”is this real”, … I guess if you can dream it, you can create it. Or in a GOD ALMIGHTY vision, some children of GOD tap into the MIND OF Christ/GOD … we can “play” with matter.
We all know by now, tech can be used in “good” way and “bad” way. I sure hope we have the WISDOM and LOVE to make the right choice.
I was born over 70 years ago, … the world looked differen back then, and I remember as a young adult what it would be like in the YEAR 2026 … and I thought flying cars would be real, and traveling to different planets would be possible, … but some time in the far future … which … 70 years later … the movies made in the 1950-1970’s had novels of this stuff, lots of “dreamers”. Like star trek … changed the way people dreamed the future. And star wars showed the good force and “evil empire”.
Something tells me that if you blast the paint off the cars around you when you use those compressed air thrusters there’s going to be some liability issues. 🙂
always thinking ahead, charles, that’s why we keep you on staff
A very practical side benefit of driving a Tesla Roadster Thrust.
https://x.com/coins_kid/status/2111361168908431502?s=46
😂😂😂
I like their attitude. They are having fun, making lots of money, showing off, and developing things that may well become standard in the future. The liberals hate, hate, hate, success, and the atmosphere surrounding it.
One of the benefits of this technology, watered down of course, is parking. The car lifts just an inch and the jets maneuver or float you into and out of a very tight parking space with only inches to spare. Two level parking without massive concrete structures? Collision cushioning and/or avoidance? Cars that have no wheels and float on a couple inches of air?
It is neat. I would be curious about the weight of this demonstration car. Is it a relatively light shell with the air pressure canisters placed as the only real weight? I do see what look to be seats in it. I’m just curious if it’s a fully road ready car.
What would be the interesting part is how they designed the pressure tanks for compressed air. Normally those are heavy for their size given the reinforcement required for compressed gases, if built with steel. While composites are an option saving on mass, there are other engineering challenges.
Also means the effective time of use is going to be measured in seconds. Wouldn’t be surprised that his engineering team built in a compressor to fill the tanks on the fly.
It boggles my mind.
Move over Marty Mc Fly and Doc Brown
Incredible introduction and video
I agree that this technology is not something you are really going to see on the roadway (I’m not sure I trust half of my fellow humans that much). BUT, there are a voluminous number of other applications that will evolve and bloom as it becomes fine tuned and commonplace. Just off the top of my head, here are a few….construction projects (they build from the bottom up…and as it gets higher, transfer of materials is dependent on slow moving cranes), warehouse stacking is limited by reach (forklifts), rescue vehicles still are dependent on foot traffic when in an inaccessible area, military application, search and rescue, power tower repairs, etc…
The point being is that this technology is attached to a motor vehicle. It doesn’t have to be. I suspect it was done so to create a memorable spectacle. Well, mission accomplished. The patent on this technology format is priceless to industry and fields not even thought of yet.
If Thelma and Louise had a Roadster…
Interesting comments here and I want to highlight a so-called conspiracy and debunk it.
60 or 100mpg carburetors could be put in cars but manufacturers were controlled by oil companies who shut it down for profit, or something like that.
The car technology on display by Tesla is much like the experimental 100mpg carb in that it could be done, but not practical for everyday use. Having worked in engineering 20 years I can tell you there are thousands of ideas and technologies that engineers love working on, but many of them just don’t make sense for production.
This is true……but…..the goal is to continue the work to find the few unique ideas and technologies that do become sensible for production or other applications, is it not!?!
Absolutely. R&D spending needs to ramp up if America is going to continue to dominate the world in innovation.
A kid came flying down a sidewalk on an electric scooter (like a skateboard) which was perpendicular to the road I was traveling on at a high rate of speed. I’m sure he knew this would happen, but my car brakes locked up as I was traveling down the road at 30 m.p.h. If there had been someone on my tail, they would have rear ended me as my car stopped dead in the road. The “child” merely swerved the sidewalk corner and went on his merry way. I do not think this is safe for me. Especially as I was not expecting it.
Eventually that kid will meet up with a older car without the automatic brakes system and then he will understand the pain of compound fractures
Europe burns while the US builds. You reap what you sow. Capitalism is the intersection of preparedness and good fortune; socialism/communism is the intersection of sloth and slow death.
Interesting display of technology. Extremely unlikely it becomes the technology used in a production flying car. The storage of the amount of Nitrogen gas needed requires large, heavy tanks. I don’t know how you overcome the physics practically. As designed that’s about 550 lbs of highly compressed nitrogen. The added weight of hauling that around and size of tanks makes it a one-seater at best. Room for George. But not for Jane, Judy, Elroy and Astro.
Think getting an EV charged requires route planning? Up-level that to finding Nitrogen refills requiring extremely high pressure filling equipment.
His plan is to intake air, about 75% nitrogen and have onboard distillation capability. That equipment will also be very large, heavy.
So, yes, it advances technology. And inspires more creative technological innovations in the future. Which has tremendous value. But it ain’t the tech that will launch us into wild, blue yonder.
If you’d watched the video, you would see that it was, in fact, a two seater with plenty of space up front. Back likely doesn’t even have a small bench seat, due to the tank storage. This won’t be for daily driving, clearly.
I read somewhere that a jet-free version of the car is going on sale next year. The flight-capable model will probably be available in limited quantity, but I don’t know how they’re going to license it. Is it a car? Is it an experimental aircraft? However they do it, I’m sure it’ll be a collector’s item at the very least.
It looks so much better than their other vehicles. Looks like something out of an 80s or early 90s retro sci-fi movie, and what they considered our future cars to look like. Would have been the first electric car I’d consider buying, if I could afford a second vehicle.
Yeah, that’s probably about right regarding what we saw with the “reveal” – a 50-lb “car.”
AOC Elon Mush is stupid.
Everyone else: pretty impressive for a stupid person.
As a science fiction reader of 68 years I love seeing (some) of what I read about in the 1950s onward become real.
I will say I hate a lot of the tech being applied to automobiles.
Wife bought herself a Lincoln Nautilus for Valentine’s day and shortly thereafter my blood pressure began to skyrocket.
Almost every action requires using the touch screen. Maddening!
I refuse to drive the POS!
I agree. A knob can be “felt” without look at it and taking your eyes off the road.
Zactly!
One must use the touch screen to reposition air flow on the dash vents!
To change radio channel…
Yup. My latest issue with this too-smart-by-half design hubris is the replacement of the gear shift lever by a ‘computer mouse’ shape with counter-intuitive actuation movements. Even after driving (a rented) one for a week, I still had to look at it, to get the desired result. Worse than useless.
“C’mon, Marty!
Back to the FUTURE!”
The Tesla hoverboard should be a big seller.
Concerning American-style thinking, American innovation, a.k.a. Yankee Ingenuity!
Many years ago, we lived in a major Ohio city, which was suffering the predations of factory and business closures of the 1980’s-1990’s.
City services were of course cut (it was and is a DEM town, despite the idiocy of voting for the people, have run your city into the ground).
At the time, we had a visitor from Germany staying with is for three weeks, a teacher of English and Religion back in Germany.
On the local television news was a story about how a local neighborhood – tired of watching trash cans overflow at the local park and of trash in general blowing into swing sets and slides, etc., caused by those cuts in basic city services – organized a clean-up and took care of everything themselves!
The German was fascinated by it and commented: “That could never happen in Germany! Nobody would even think of doing something like that.”
And I knew why, having experienced Germany and its Socialist thinking first-hand for a good number of years:
“The government takes care of such things!”
So I said: “But what happens if the government fails to take care of it, as happened here?”
He shrugged: “People would complain to the government.”
I: “But they would take no action themselves to solve the problem faster.”
He: “Oh no! Not without permission!”
The Socialist is passive and possesses no initiative: he feels the thumb of GOVERNMENT constantly, even a supposedly benign government of “Christian Socialists,” a phrase which the great anti-Communist and anti-Socialist Pope Leo XIII (as opposed to the current anti-pope) would have considered a noxious oxymoron.
The American, in contrast, is thinking of how to improve things and is unafraid to take action!
On Sunday, there was a report about a new high-tech company, whose CEO said that he kept employees, who found problems and solved them on their own, without bothering him about them!
They were always thinking of how to improve things, how to solve problems efficiently when they popped up, and took the initiative to realize those improvements and solutions.
THAT is America!
And those traditions need to be passed onto the younger generations, rather than passivity, the false glories of government control, fear of failure, and fear of everything.
And a nation of young people – as well as others of all ages – with their noses and eyes on their cellphones destroying their brain cells with every kind of idiocy needs a collective slap in the face!
was he from West Germany or former East Germany?
West Germany, which made the comment even worse! 🙂
thx, Ausonius
I asked in the interest of sorting out Communist behavior from basic general Germanic curmudgeonliness
Elon, a national treasure.
My first thought was, the government didn’t do this. Same with his space launches.
Private industry does so much better without government.
Good reasons to get government out of education and health care.
But Mars is not reachable, nor returnable, with humans due to radiation, weight and fuel required. It’s just physics.
Flight is impossible, Space travel is impossible, Trump will never be elected, and the Cleveland Browns will never win a Superbowl.
Bumble bees cannot fly and if you go too fast in an auto-mo-beel you won’t be able to breath!
😂
JMHO, he is going the wrong direction re technology. Many are looking for a low cost, simple, low tech truck. SLATE is trying to service that market. People are tired of the spyware, large screens that fail, expensive option packages. A modern day Ford Ranger, simple, simple, simple.
other companies can build that
Elon is interested in pushing the cutting edge of innovation … production-line considerations can be handled by others
I had a Ford Ranger in the 80s … as you said, simple, reliable
What’s Ford building these days?
Crap. I used to be a Ford guy but were I to want another pickemuptruck I would search for a low mileage 1996 Ford with the 300″ straight-six/manual and spend what I must to cherry it out.
Just takes patience. My 1984 S-15 had 39k miles when I bought it.
The Slate at first blush seems promising, but look at the cost of all the essential a la carte add-ons, and once again you have a $60K truck.
I can’t help but think about “Back To The Future”. Fascinating. I’m flabbergasted and delighted. Congratulations, Elon, you absolute genius.
https://x.com/DocBrownLloyd/status/2111059208150065500
Toyota Hilux (Champ) would fill most of my needs. Worlds best selling p/u truck.
When the earth shakes rattles and rolls, just push the button and fly over it all.
Stuck in traffic rise above it.
Hope you do not need a special license.
World’s fastest street cleaner!
Actually, from what I read, it’s important to use the suction function on clean roads or tracks.
Gotta love Elon!
It is amazing! For me though the best part is that it actually looks good. I do not care for the Tesla cars’ design, I love the truck. But this car is great looking. I deplore that Porsche and so many great looking cars of the past have gone just blah. It looks like Musk might be thinking to revive good looking cars.
This long time phrase comes to mind:
‘That’s a duesey’
Duesenberg thought outside of the box – and acted on it – regarding automobiles the 1920 – 1930’s or so.
And the phrase was subsequently coined, that’s a duesy.
Link to photos:
https://automobile-museums.com/en/it-s-a-duesy/
A 100 years later, and then there is the next generation of creative thinking – and acting on it (unconstrained by other people, wanting to control people and get paid by the people they miss control)
How much?
We’re in the Singularity – all science fiction themes happening simultaneously.
Recommend listening to the Moonshots or All-In Podcasts. We’re in for an amazing next few years (unless Democrats take power, obvi).
You got THAT right … “all science fiction themes happening simultaneously.” Still science fiction.
Microwave oven.
Waterbed.
More if I stop to think about it.
ALL in SF by Robert A. Heinlein from half a century+ ago let alone all the other “Golden Age” writers.
I’m not sure we can imagine the futer it comes so fast nowadays.
Be careful of the traps you set for yourself with others’ help.
I had the same thought. You’re forced off the road into horrible terrain. You’re facing an imminent head on collision. I live next to the Beartooth Pass … and of course the guardrails are ridiculous … unless potentially you have enough compressed air for a controlled descent.
Truly awesome.
So cool! I want one! 😁