Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe package
No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.
Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe package
No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.
Thursday's launch arrived after years of delays and anticipation around the new Roadster — and Tesla shares climbed about 2% in morning trading on Friday after its unveiling.
Elon Musk may have been years late on his Roadster deadline, but the tech Tesla showed off was just as described eight years ago.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Musk described his plans for the Tesla Roadster during a 2019 exchange with YouTuber MKBHD.
On Thursday, the Roadster did exactly as Musk promised nearly eight years ago, leaping into the air.
While Musk missed his own deadline by years, the technology on display was just as he described it.
It's been a long time coming.
Almost eight years ago, in January 2019, Elon Musk shared plans on Twitter for Tesla's Roadster to lift off using cold-gas thrusters and ultra-high-pressure air. On Thursday, the much-anticipated Roadster did exactly that.
Musk's 2019 assertion came in response to a user sharing a GIF of the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" hovering in midair.
"The new Roadster will actually do something like this," he wrote. Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee responded: "The thing is I feel like you’re not joking."
"I'm not," Musk said.
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.
He then described a SpaceX-made cold-gas thruster system that uses high-pressure air stored in a composite pressure vessel.
At a SpaceX test site in Texas on Thursday, almost 8 years later, a Roadster climbed a curved ramp, dropped, rolled through the air and landed on its wheels. It used the same basic technology: cold-gas thrusters fed by high-pressure air stored in composite pressure vessels.
The 2019 exchange was not Musk’s first mention of thrusters. In June 2018, he said the Roadster would include roughly 10 of them and suggested they might allow the car to fly.
Using the config you describe, plus an electric pump to replenish air in COPV, when car power draw drops below max pack power output, makes sense. But we are going to go a lot further.
When another user proposed compressed-air cold-gas thrusters, Musk said that configuration made sense and described a pump to replenish the air.
Musk's account of the technology has proved more consistent than his production timetable. Tesla unveiled plans for the second-generation Roadster in 2017 and originally targeted production for 2020. After repeated delays, Musk said in the reveal that production will begin in 2028.
The Roadster is not Tesla’s only vehicle to miss an ambitious release target. When Musk unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019, he said Tesla expected production to begin in late 2021. The first customer deliveries took place two years later, in November 2023.
While Musk has missed plenty of deadlines, many of his more improbable technology plans have made it beyond the drawing board. In December 2020, he said SpaceX would try to catch a returning Super Heavy booster with its launch tower.
We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load
Tesla's second-generation Roadster is here. Did the automaker build it for shoppers or for its talent pipeline?
Tesla
Elon Musk stood onstage while the new Tesla Roadster (literally, and figuratively) flew by.
Is it fully legal? Musk doesn't know.
But is it a secret weapon in the ongoing talent wars? Very, very likely yes.
Tesla's Roadster is back. Now, it kinda flies, and I'm not just being hyperbolic about its speed.
(Although, I guess, that would be a fair read, too.)
On Thursday, CEO Elon Musk unveiled the second-generation Roadster. It's capable of doing "crazy gymnastics," Musk said, like hopping off the ground and spinning in the air. The prototype also sprints from standing to 60 mph in 0.8 seconds, Tesla claims — and the automaker said the production model will be even quicker.
Will the two-door electric sports car be street legal? Who knows.
Instead, the car is accomplishing something more tangible — and more obviously Musk-like: make Tesla look like the kind of company that can build things other companies cannot. That's a useful message for Wall Street and for the engineers Tesla wants to hire.
Tesla is already valued far more like a tech company than a traditional automaker.
For years, investors have bet heavily on its ambitions in autonomy, artificial intelligence, robotics, and robotaxis. A flying (or, at least, hopping) Roadster does not prove those businesses will work, but it makes Tesla's technological ambitions more legible.
Musk also has long treated product spectacles as recruiting events, too.
At a 2019 Neuralink presentation, where he announced that the company had successfully implanted sensors in rats' brains, he said the "main reason for doing this presentation is recruiting." Ahead of Tesla's 2021 AI Day, Musk posted on X that "convincing the best AI talent to join Tesla is the sole goal."
The Roadster reveal follows a very similar playbook. What better way to excite more techies than a flying car?
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, also agrees that Thursday's Roadster reveal was an exciting technical feat for up-and-coming tech talent:
Two takeaways from tonight’s Roadster event.
1. It was an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional car makers.
2. Elon can’t wait to bring $TSLA and $SPCX together.
Who knows if Tesla will even be able to bring this car to American roads. Musk said he doesn't even know.
"I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions," he said during the Thursday launch. When asked if the car was street legal, Musk responded: "Yeah, depends on your street."
Either way, this car may not need to be a volume sales winner to be a hit for Tesla. It might just need to be the tech belle of the ball.
Login
