Nothing beats being able to lift your fancy electric car 3-6 feet up in the air just for bragging rights… Right?
This is what Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems to believe, at least. If his engineering department succeeds, the feature will become standard in the upcoming Roadster’s SpaceX Package. The option pack initially aims to improve acceleration dynamics through the use of CNG jet engines arranged at all sides, but someone found that putting a couple of them under the bottom may be fun.
Musk believes that making a passenger car capable of raising itself between 3 and 6 feet (1 – 1.8 meters) in the air should be safe in most scenarios: at worst, it will simply plummet to the ground and end up with broken suspension, but the driver and passengers will be fine. As for the other people and vehicles that may happen to be in the jets’ firing range, well, this issue seems not a valid point of concern at the moment.
The upcoming Roadster model will accommodate up to four people, but opting for the SpaceX Package will replace the second seat row with a high-pressure carbon-fiber tank containing condensed gas for the jet engines.
The company plans to finish working on the car later this year, taking the final pre-production copy out for driving tests this summer. No release estimations are provided for the jet upgrade.
Specification-wise, the Roadster will pack three motors (one front and two rear), a 200-kWh battery, 998 km (620 miles) of range, and enough power to zap 0-60 mph (0-97 km/h) in 1.9 seconds. The original car debuted in 2017 and had been set for launch in 2020, but later postponed to 2022.