Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has made the audacious claim that the next-generation Tesla Roadster will be capable of hovering. No, your eyes are not deceiving you.
In mid-2018, the entrepreneur claimed that when the Roadster goes on sale, it will be available with an optional ‘Space X package‘ that comes complete with rocket thrusters. Initially, Musk said these would aid in the vehicle’s acceleration, top speed, braking, and cornering and now he says they will also allow the all-electric hypercar to fly, or hover.
Responding to a tweet depicting the DeLorean from Back to the Future hovering, Musk said that the new Roadster could have a similar feature. Asked to clarify whether he was joking or not by popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee, he indicated that he is very serious about making a hovering hypercar.
I’m not. Will use SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultra high pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2019
“Will use SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultra high pressure air in a composite over-wrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats,” Musk added.
As crazy as this sounds, we have no doubt that Musk is very serious about making it happen. However, whether or not this is actually something that can be achieved and offered to the public is another question entirely. Such a system would also be exorbitantly expensive and probably not sold in very large numbers.
Excluding the rocket thrusters, the new Tesla Roadster is already promising to be something remarkable. Tesla claims that thanks to its powerful electric motors and 200 kWh battery pack, the Roadster will reportedly travel over 620 miles (1000 km) on a single charge, be able to reach 60 mph (96 km/h) from a standstill in 1.9 seconds, and top out at over 250 mph (402 km/h).