Quote of the Day
Analysts describe the Tesla Roadster as a halo car intended to highlight the company’s engineering capabilities. The vehicle is not primarily designed to generate immediate profits but to serve as a flagship model demonstrating technological ambition.
Curated by AI
October 17, 2026
Tesla unveils flying Roadster with SpaceX thrusters in Texas
Very cool.
Also, it does 0 -> 60 in well under one second.
When I was in high school, I expected flying cars in my future. While this is not what I was thinking of, nor do I expect will ever own one of these, seeing this is awesome.
The second one below is set to James Bond music:
See also Elon Musk’s flying Tesla is gloriously absurd and Tesla unveils what it says is a flying car.
I like living in the future.
The McMurtry Speirling beat them by a few months on the suction trick. And I imagine the thruster trick was the upper limit of what is possible… but it IS possible.
In short: holy ——! What a party trick. The real point of something like this is the dynamic control system for the thrusters. The engineers who pulled this off no doubt had a ton of fun and learned loads. And they’re now better engineers for having pulled it off. That’s the payoff.
McMurtry Speirling? That was 2021.
How about Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2J CanAm race car in 1970? 1970.
The 2J featured a pair of fans driven by a snow mobile engine to produce downforce by suction that reached an estimated 1.5 G and produced lap time 2 seconds faster then its competitors (which SCCA quickly banned because Hall’s competitors couldn’t keep up). Brabham did the same thing on its F1 car in 1978.
Fans for downforce ain’t nuttin’ new. Welcome aboard, Elon.
Ford: You can drive our truck really fast on a dirt road.
GM and Toyota: You can put a diverse group of humans in our hatchback and feel smug about it.
Mercedes and BMW: You can drive our sedan down the street and people will stare at you.
Tesla: Our vehicles can do flips and fly!
So tell me who has the best marketing department?