Porsche could not possibly have picked a more humiliating day to unveil this, and calling their decidedly non-flying car “A glimpse into the future” only makes the embarrassment more spectacular. Also the most merciless comment section in X history, and every bit of it deserved.
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) October 16, 2026
OK, as a recovering aerospace engineer, I’m wondering what kind of rocket-propulsion system that Tesla has. What’s the propellant, and how long can it do that kind of thing before it needs refueling? If he wanted to continue to claim that it was an electric car, they should be electric thrusters, like Hall effect, but those wouldn’t have sufficient thrust to do that stunt. Is he using nitrous for the oxidizer?
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) October 16, 2026
[Monday-afternoon update]
New "Back to the Future" sequel. 🤣🎃👻 https://t.co/qS7u305NSD
— 🎼 Lurdes (@sedrul08) October 19, 2026
[Bumped]
The propellant is compressed air. Recharged by an onboard compressor. How it develops such thrust is puzzling.
As far as I know, that’s not true. An electric car is a battery sled with wheels; the rest is just a funny-shaped box that’s mostly open space. The cold gas thrusters are fed from COPVs filled with high pressure liquid nitrogen. There’s a high-powered electric fan system that holds the car to the road and allows it to drive upside down using suction. My understanding is all available interiors space on the stunt car is filled with COPVs. This technology has been flying on Falcon 9 for 16 years.
You are partly correct. Apparently it isn’t air, even though I am certain I heard Musk say it was “air” (which is 80% nitrogen.. maybe Musk was being facetious?) and that the car self replenished. But it isn’t liquid nitrogen either, just highly compressed (10,000 PSI I think I heard) gaseous nitrogen.
Apparently it now takes hours to replenish from empty, but they expect to get that down to 30 minutes.
With a standard industrial unit, the fill time would be around an hour and a half. But SpaceX cold gas thrusters use LN2. It’s a fast fill system and each COPV holds a lot more molecules and take up way less space. LN2 is a standard industrial product available from, for example, Air Liquide in the US. However, this is a one-off stunt car so standard GN2 bottles is possible. I just don’t think so. The world is a font of fantasy.
Per Grok Dragon also uses GN2.
Let me address this is order. I found two in-depth interviews on Motor Trend Channel (YouTube) that answers a few questions. The one with the tech VP for Tesla states the COPV for the car is GN2 at 10,000 psi, as you originally thought (but not “air” per se). But I think that’s 680 bar, and what’s in the tank may be a critical fluid, similar to the helium in the Falcon 9 COPVs. Makes me think the Falcon 9 nitrogen is the same.
As far as Dragon goes, the GN2 is for cabin makeup gas (US uses separate N2 and O2 tanks, not compressed air like the Russians). Dragon attitude control is Draco thrusters with NTO + MMH. By contrast, Starship uses hot gas thrusters supplied by ullage gas bleed, and the ullage gas is tapped off the engine pre-burners.
My thought that the nitrogen COPVs was LN2 is probably from some earlier misinformation (lots of that!) or maybe a misunderstanding on my part of what a critical fluid is. I’m more used to looking at phase diagrams for industrial metals.
And, btw, I wouldn’t relie on Grok (or any other asinine intelligence) for anything. I asked it about me and it came up with some whoppers!
The demo video clearly shows vapor rather than smoke. A system to generate high pressure N2 from low pressure LN2 would be complicated. Compressed gas is a very inefficient way to store energy, the output is a small fraction of the input and it gets worse the higher the pressure. The demo showed, at most, a few seconds of sustained thrust.
A toy for someone that has more money than is good for him. Interesting engineering but no real value. If it materializes, it will be interesting to see how many people will pony up the dosh for something so useless. There will be some.
“A toy for someone that has more money than is good for him.”
And who decides how much that is?
Not who, what. Other people don’t have the right to decide how much. The real world does and has a way of reducing the wealth of idiots, or (ignorants?). Lottery winners and pro sports are rich fields of the former wealthy. People that waste more money than they can afford will have the question answered.
I’ve seen speculation that the vapor/smoke is nitrogen snow, based on the fact that it exists in a vacuum on Falcon 9. See above about GN2, but I said earlier (evidently wrong) that it was very high-pressure LN2. That’s less complicated to change to high pressure gas, but on Ariane 5 did that, carrying a large tank of liquid helium that was turned to gas to spin up the engine for restarts (a hydrogen engine).
Here’s the vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWHXrLzUKJc
$50K deposit. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it. Bet the fans and compressor really cut into the range but whoever buys one can afford a truck with a generator to follow them around.
Correction: 250K down.
My friend Gary and I suspect most models of this roadster, for “reasonable” dollars will maybe offer just the vacuum system for road downforce and not all the cold gas “flip” thrusters. Plus there’s the regulatory environment TBD.
It’s unclear to me how well this would work on wet or snowy conditions.
I like to speculate when Tesla’s “auto-pilot”actually becomes that!!
It’s a high-powered snowblower!
No doubt an awesome carnival ride.
But does it fold up into a briefcase?
You know, if they really wanted a flying car a bigger battery sled (semi) with a big box on it, not car-shaped, with a small cockpit, with a couple of suction fans and the rest LN2 COPVs would work. There’s a lot of energy in a full COPV (see rocket explosions).