A Tesla for the Dukes of Hazard

[gleem]

Musk finally debuted his Roadster that he has been promising for several years with an added feature.

 

[DaveC426913]

I can't believe how many people don't understand what a proof concept is.

"It's not a car! It's a prop!" "It's not flying!" "Where can I put my dog?"

 

[gleem]

For the full lowdown on how this Roadster accomplishes this maneuver and more, see

https://www.wired.com/story/how-tes...m_content=wir_nl_6685_daily_101826_u12ie4oqv0

 

[DaveC426913]

For the full lowdown on how this Roadster accomplishes this maneuver and more, see

https://www.wired.com/story/how-tes...m_content=wir_nl_6685_daily_101826_u12ie4oqv0

Alas, paywall for me.

 

[gleem]

Excerpts from the article:

Powertrain and Battery
The Roadster 2 will be rear-wheel-drive only, a departure from Tesla’s track record of all-wheel-drive EVs. Two motors will deliver over a megawatt of power (1,341 horsepower) and over 1,400 newton-meters (Nm) of torque, meaning this car will have more torque and power than a three-motor Plaid. But all of that power goes through just the rear wheels.
The car will be light, at “just under 1,700 kilos” (under 2 tons), according to Moravy, not significantly heavier than the original 1,300-kg (1.4-ton) Roadster, despite a larger size.

Sucking Fans
At a 2013 auction, Elon Musk bought the iconic "Wet Nellie" Lotus Esprit S1 submarine car from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me for just shy of $1 million. Musk is so taken with his Bond memorabilia that it apparently inspired one of the Roadster 2's key abilities.

That submarine Bond car has four propellers at its rear, so Tesla decided to ape this with four 20-kilowatt fans on the Roadster 2. Moravy says these fans break the laws of tire physics and dramatically increase the EV's traction by becoming what Tesla calls the car’s “sucker system.” Four independent replaceable skirts drop down on the sides of the car, allowing the Roadster 2 to stick (or suck) to the road at lower speeds where its aerodynamic wings aren't yet contributing to downforce. Moravy claims the system can produce over 2 g's in a corner when accelerating, even below 50 mph.

This type of aerodynamic manipulation also appears on the McMurtry Spéirling Pure, which uses two high-speed electric fans spinning at up to 23,000 revolutions per minute to actively suck air from underneath the chassis, generating up to 2,000 kg (around 4,400 pounds) of downforce.

This extreme suction lets the Roadster 2 drive up the vertical ramp at the Texas demonstration and hold onto the surface even when upside down.

Rocket-Powered Thrust
So how does the Roadster 2 hover, correct itself, and dampen its fall? That's thanks to what Tesla calls the car’s “SpaceX system,” referring to Musk’s aerospace company, which helped with this part of the car’s development.

Originally, the Roadster was meant to have a 2+2 cabin. Now it’s a two-seater because behind the seats sits a 200-liter carbon-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) that holds up to 10,000 PSI to supply the car’s cold gas thrusters, which use expansion of pressurized nitrogen gas to generate thrust, a tech predominantly used for spacecraft stabilization. Cold gas thrusters are the simplest manifestation of a rocket engine.

This combination of suction system and thrusters helps the car hit 0 to 60 mph in supposedly under a second. In this launch mode, Moravy says the rear thrusters produce more than 80 kilonewtons of thrust, which, staggeringly, matches the Dassault Falcon 10X jet. Tesla has seemingly cracked the sub-second race, while the aforementioned McMurtry Spéirling Pure can only manage this feat in a bowel-clenching 1.3 seconds. During this astonishing acceleration, the driver will endure up to 5 g's.

The Roadster 2's Performance model will feature the sucker system and no thrusters, so 0 to 60 will take a touch longer at 1.6 seconds and a top speed of 210 mph. The Thrust model gets the whole package and a top speed of 230 mph.


OnlyFans Creators Are Pissed That Meta Lets Muse Talk DirtyMoravy says the “flight system,” as he calls it in Hagerty’s walk-through, requires yet another 400-liter cold gas COPV, occupying the space where the passenger seat is, making the car a single-seater and bringing total thrust fuel up to 600 liters. This “flight system” also requires six extra thrusters: one in each corner, plus two at the front to yaw.

Bursting the Balloon
Unlike in space, where cold gas thrusters provide consistent levels of thrust until the last drop of fuel is used, on Earth the “flight system” will lose thrust as the compressed gas depletes.
The Roadster 2 requires six additional thrusters around the car to operate its “flight system.” Courtesy of Tesla
Apparently, refilling the 600-liter nitrogen tanks takes Tesla six to seven hours, but the company is supposedly working on a system to dramatically reduce this to 30 minutes.

The current Roadster 2 prototypes are being used for further development, and production won’t begin until 2028—but remember that Musk previously said Roadster deliveries would begin in 2020, so take this with a very large pinch of salt. That's without talking about how the Federal Aviation Administration will react to this "flying" car.

 

[DaveC426913]

Originally, the Roadster was meant to have a 2+2 cabin. Now it’s a two-seater

So it does have seats. Two, it seems.

A lot of uninformed chatter on the interwebs that it is just a hollowed out prop that doesn't even qualify as a car.

 

[russ_watters]

Dukes of Hazard? Looked more Knight Rider to me.

 

[A.T.]

Dukes of Hazard? Looked more Knight Rider to me.

Yes, KITT is finally here. But could you have predicted in the 80s in which order the required boxes will be checked: speech recognition, smart watches, self driving car, boosters for acceleration & flying/jumping.

I think the building penetrating sensors still need some work to reach KITT level.

 

[berkeman]

So if the undercarraige fans are strong enough to keep the roadster glued to a ceiling, would they also not be powerful enough to lift it off the ground? I guess maybe only a few inches, though...