YHK - yet another hacker news clone

AI Elon pressure selling "act decisively, double your money" by transferring crypto to some wallet and getting 2x back - yeah, right

(PS Google shut it down)

Patently absurd, of course, but amazing too.

Square-cube scaling being what it is, I think it'd be much more reasonable to use propellers (like quadcopters) than try to scale down COPV's to a Vroomba! size. That's actually an interesting product idea. A small flying vacuum cleaner could clean a variety of surfaces; not only floors.

(And you could even mount the charging station on the ceiling, so it doesn't take up floor space).

https://www.amazon.com/window-cleaning-robot/s?k=window+clea...

Fan cars are pretty old. From that perspective, the driving upside down part is "less impressive" but screw it, still cool.

I want to see it on a track going all out, but something about what they decided to focus on tells me nobody gives a damn about this actually doing anything performance car related.

To me it looks like a mashup of a Ferrari and a Cybertruck. That's not a good thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray_Automotive_T.50

Watch the video - the car jumps into the air. Not exactly flight or what we’d consider a flying car, but it’s careering through the air off the ground.

I mean, this isn't crazy. In fact, it's already been done. Ever heard of McMurtry? (https://mcmurtry.com/). They're notorious for exactly this - using fans to provide extreme downforce (urr... upforce if you're hanging upside down?).

> In flight?

Did you see the stunt where it literally flew over vehicles? I mean, maybe it's a bit closer to a controlled super-leap like the original Superman, but... yeah, my personal reaction to that was more "holy shit" than "well, that's not flying".

> Bullshit, no it can't.

A proof of concept already exists:

https://mcmurtry.com/upside-down-driving/

Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.

The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.

This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.

Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).

9 years since the announcement of Roadster v2, people who paid 50k deposits are still waiting.

Time to up the promises, and ask for more $50k deposits for v3!

Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.

I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NextGenT...

(just personal preference)

https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Lamborgh...

Sound advice for people looking for a practical car. But if you have Lambo money who cares? I have never seen a supercar described as reliable.

Even if they make this work, what exactly is it revolutionizing?

Every generation of high-dollar sports cars has had something you could point to and say "that was way ahead of its time" or "they pioneered that." A few examples: fuel injection in the 1950s, variable valves and CFD the 1980s-1990s, dual-clutch transmissions in the 2000s, hybridization and electrification more recently.

You cannot tell me with a straight face that 20 years from now, my commuter will be outfitted with cold-gas thrusters and fans sucking it into the pavement.

Supercars have always been gaudy playthings for the wealthy. I think the difference is that Tesla doesn't even pretend the Roadster represents anything else.

I'd argue it's not the Cybertruck that is evidence of lack of care, but the fact that this car was promised 10 years ago and Elon took people's money to fund it. And now it's going to "fly" somehow and it's still years away.

Long-term investors would lose about 40% of their investment to subsidize the inflated valuation of X (bought by xAI), the inflated valuation of xAI (bought by SpaceX), and SpaceX (whose valuation is based on the assumption that demand for inference is effectively unlimited, and that everyone will prefer hardware in space over Earth).

The valuation of both companies was inflated prior to acquisition, and Tesla shareholders will be asked to dilute their investment by absorbing that cumulative inflation.

Not even to mention that Musk would have exclusive control over the entire conglomerate, with not even the pretense of a Board to check his power.

When even Steven Mark Ryan is like "let's pump the breaks a little bit," you know it's bad.

“Other shareholder meetings are snoozefests but ours are bangers. Look at this. This is sick.”

Elon’s pay package: he gets 400 million Tesla shares if he raises the market cap of tesla(xspacextwitterxAIx) to $8.5 trillion (nominal). He spent a cool 250 mil on making friends with the republicans, so as to ensure that his incoming epic awesome merger is not blocked.

A merger, plus the amount of inflation this government has already produced over the next decade, will probably see X co hitting Elon’s salary goals.

Also, assuming the delivery vehicle is destroyed at the end of each "delivery", what will it cost?

Watch Ford v Ferrari for an idea of what auto companies are willing to invest for bragging rights.

The site states it's cold-gas thrusters for both models: "Features a multi-mode suction system paired with cold-gas thrusters positioned around the perimeter of the vehicle that support forward and upward acceleration as well as lateral rotational movement."

Can't help but think of the not-a-flamethrower

(friend bought one for $500, now they seem to be worth $1500-$2000)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Merchandise

Example RC toy car that drives on the ceiling: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uR_mNcRlNsA

Just like economically infeasible Twitter, it has tremendous PR value. There is a huge economy revolving around people annoying other people just for a glimpse of their attention. This captures the attention and pleases people. Other car companies should start getting creative too.

Hopefully there will also be a warning siren while it is pressurized. "Dangerous enough to need a warning siren" seems like a plus for the target market, honestly.

If that is what they have done. That may just be a large drone looking like a car.

I don't think they'll sell these, at all in the future. No way they'll hound out actual rocket engines to en users. Too much IP in there.

Teslas evaluation is based on hype. This is as hype as it gets for a car. To me it looks like they were in need for "the coolest thing". To me, this has the smell of desperation implying the beginning of the end of their high evaluation.

Guess it is for advertising mainly.

You could say the same thing about the Cybertruck.

It's staggering to consider how many resources we've diverted from people who could use them into building this novelty.

If ever there was a sign of a society of decadence in decline, it's that the most powerful person on earth is free to create toys like this exclusively for others in the ruling class.

If this ships, it will deliver a fraction of what's promised here. My money is on the "flying" version being delayed repeatedly until it's quietly cancelled. Anyone remember the fast battery change stations[1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj6LaYFall4

It's only wild if you ignore Musk's role in this. Not even trying to bash him or anything, but he's a trillionaire. This is the kind of shit you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly waste.

I mean, if this is how he wants to spend his money, then I guess that's his prerogative. But I think it's a bit misleading to suggest this is a decision made by "Tesla" when this is clearly an irrational decision for a company to make. This is a decision made by Musk based on satisfying his own personal goals.

This is explained in the deep dive video with Lars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22rvpUecLts

And supercars are typically not submitted for NCAP testing, so It'll likely be less safe than a Model Y for example (to be determined, no reports out yet)

https://www.euroncap.com/assessments/tesla/model+y/0961/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhVLgTsoMhQ

  > Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways.

I'm going to quote Buzz Lightyear: this is falling... with style.

On a serious note, this was unexpected. You can't deny, he has style

For a few seconds. It's a parlor trick. And the flying configuration will not be street-legal.

"Integrating SpaceX thruster tech is absolutely essential to Tesla in the future!"

Impressive engineering but utterly impractical. There are semi-practical flying car designs around folding wings or quad rotors (basically a big car sized drone) and the reason we don’t see them has more to do with safety, traffic control, and energy cost. Aircraft, like rockets, tend to get more energy efficient with size, so tiny flying machines are power wasters.

This is just going to make it even more desirable to a certain market segment.

No, both versions use cold gas thrusters. There are no combustion rocket engines involved here.

The difference between the “thrust” and “rocket” versions is the number of thrusters: “rocket” has additional thrusters that enable it to fly. The “thrust” version just has them at the back for acceleration.

https://youtu.be/eqOfmtTJD1A?si=f4fvuFvupgg_YMtP&t=108

Of what, being the safest production car on the road that you can buy?

It's not a high performance car. It's a shell of a car.

It’s an Apple Vision Pro.

They’ll do fine over the decade.

Ferrari sells a few of each models in a production run and it does exceptionally well financially.

It made for a great marketing stunt, it is absolutely useless for a production car. And you can tell the designers realize it but were at the whims of Elon in their interview.

https://youtu.be/JdkIOhFmbKI

We were promised an awd, 620 mile range monster almost a decade ago, and then again 6 years ago. We were delivered a “maybe 310 mile” range, rwd doorstop.

I’m not sure who this car is for, but it’s definitely not car guys. It is the cybertruck of sports cars, and that’s not a good thing…

Curiosity, on the other hand, is a car that actually hovered, and that was on Mars, in 2012. https://youtu.be/Ki_Af_o9Q9s?is=uepnp2XLG81tHacn

It glides in a carefully controlled demo. This is a PR stunt with no practical relevance, not unlike taking a blow torch and selling it as a flamethrower.

That was actually not unexpected. Joe Rogan 2404 [1]. He warned Rogan that the demonstration would be completely "unforgettable, whether it’s good or bad"

References:

[1] https://youtu.be/O4wBUysNe2k?t=2312

I'm not a Musk fanboy by any stretch of the imagination but this was clearly done as a marketing stunt to drum up hype about the street legal roadster. I didn't even watch the announcement but now everyone in my friend circle is talking about it because of the rocket engines. That's just called effective marketing.

This isn’t a flying car, which could conceivably have some use (like a personal aircraft). It’s a stunt to distract the gullible from Tesla financials, which do not justify the valuation. As you say, it’s not practical in production and never will be.

Musk clearly wants to merge all his companies, so that it’s too big to fail, and this probably came out of the questions that arise from that - how can we use Spacex tech at Tesla?

it fills its tanks with air from the atmosphere.

It's probably going to be like the titan submersible of cars.

I guess Tesla has officially entered its The Boring Company stage? Ambition does come in unexpected form, occasionally.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-079-introduction-to-convex-opt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpQZSBTi7k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2c-B3y7yGQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU5viDOjWLw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjXf7IUSDw

The existing tech fab plus this car maybe makes it harder to sue once the merger happens - but he will still be sued. “Look we’re making it rocket cars with AI of course we should be one company”

Was it a an amazing demo? yes.

Also yes you can legally sell it. Whether you can legally operate it is a different question.

- The cold-gas only version will shotgun debris into onlookers, and possibly yeet anyone behind it.

- Active suction is very cool until a rock punches through your intakes.

- Lithium batteries and pressurised tanks in the same package, yippee!

Thank god it'll take them years to manufacture this thing.

The base model has the suction fans which will make huge gains.

Next model up has rear thrusters for the acceleration, which will be more insane. It’s limited production.

Final model that can fly is invite only and will be a joke on the track, using those thrusters to go around corners way, way faster than normal.

I wish they had shown track laps and 1/4 mile times instead of the gimmick of flying.

This would even be a sensible choice for Tesla, because it will put that car in a garage far away from public scrutiny...

(thinking just about all the debris damage-potential of those thrusters here, not even any potential quality issues)

The cybertruck is for sale and FSD is active in the US. The US lets automakers "self-certify" that they are safe. So although I don't think this thing should ever be sold, it may end of on US roads.

Flying / rocket acceleration are special versions they can sell one offs capable of doing the stunt once per canister change.

They have to sell one to say that it exists. It’s marketing.

Absolutely nobody who owns that vehicle will be “flying” it.

Hahah, the failure modes are going to be exciting.

Like any of this will materialise. Where’s the original Roadster people actually put down payments on?

Fan cars are old. Nothing about them is new or special or unique. Trying to build infrastructure dependent on such a feature would be the dumbest thing since monorails.

Just build subways for heaven's sake.

It’s not like this is the first time that Elon has overpromised and underdelivered.

As an engineer who dislikes polished presentations of unimpressive things, it encourages me that it’s still possible to do a bad presentation about an amazing thing and (most) people don’t grumble too much.

No way?! Elon Musk? Unnatural and cringey?!

That's the bit where we diverge.

How fast the gas expands through an opening depends on the pressure ratio between entrance and exit, and for ordinary air the flow reaches the speed of sound at the narrowest part when the pressure ratio exceeds about a factor of two. The flow never becomes supersonic in the constriction itself, but after the constriction the flow can continue to accelerate to supersonic speeds, especially if the constriction is followed by an expanding nozzle (converging-diverging, or de Laval nozzle), although this is not strictly necessary. For example, one can observe shock diamonds in the air coming out of an ordinary plastic bottle filled with slightly compressed gas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61tsXGUc6nU

I'm more worried about the COPVs exploding in a crash, for the thruster version. Hopefully it will keep the tanks empty unless a special launch mode is enabled with a warning siren sounding as long as they're pressurized.