Elon Musk has spoken about how he wants the new Tesla supercar to be fitted with jets so it can hover three feet off the ground in a podcast on Thursday.
Tesla first announced the next-generation Roadster in 2017, claiming a list of impressive specifications including 0-60 MPH in 1.9 seconds, and a battery range of 620 miles, which is notable for an electric car.
But one specification was not mentioned during the initial launch – rocket jets.
Elon Musk surprised everyone at the Tesla Semi unveiling in 2017 with his ‘one more thing’ being a prototype of the next generation Roadster (pictured). Speaking on Thursday to Joe Rogan, he said the car could come with a surprise of its own – jets
Musk, Tesla’s CEO as well as founder of SpaceX, previously said that the supercar would offer a ‘SpaceX package’ that would include cold air thrusters to increase the car’s performance even more.
This package would include ’10 small rocket thrusters’, Musk said in 2018, as reported by Electric, a news website that covers electric vehicles.
But in an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast released on Thursday, Musk said that Tesla is looking at implementing technology to make the car hover.
‘We are going to throw some rocket technology in that car,’ he said. ‘I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.’
However, Musk – who is currently the world’s richest man – acknowledged there would be a few challenges to overcome and some restrictions required in order to make his aspiration a reality.
‘I thought maybe we could make it hover but not too high. You make it hover like a meter above the ground or something like that,’ he said.
‘Something where if you plummet, you blow the suspension, but you are not going to die. Maybe 6 feet. You probably just put a height limit on.’
However, Musk – who is currently the world’s richest man – acknowledged on the podcast (pictured) there would be a few challenges to overcome and some restrictions required in order to make his aspiration of putting jets on the roadster a reality
Musk appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast (pictured), which was released on Thursday
Rogan then asked whether Musk envisaged the car being able to move while it was hovering above the ground.
‘You’d go pretty fast, but you are going to be time-limited. It’s going to use a super high-pressure air bottle,’ he said.
‘The standard version will have a back row with two small seats, like child seats in a Porsche or something, or if you get the SpaceX option package then in that place where those two seats is a high-pressure carbon overwrapped pressure vessel, something at around 10,000 psi, and a bunch of thrusters.’
Musk then reiterated a recent announcement that the electric car company is finishing its engineering on the new Tesla Roadster for production in 2022.
The entrepreneur has a reputation for being somewhat of a trend setter.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Musk launched a pair of potential game-changing shifts for bitcoin after Tesla announced it had invested $1.5 billion and said it will start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for its cars in the near future.
Tesla has invested around $1.5 billion in bitcoin and says it will start accepting payment for its cars and other products with it in the near future
Bitcoin’s price surged 10 percent to a record-high of $44,000 soon after Tesla’s disclosure on Monday morning. Shares of Tesla were up 1.8 percent in early morning trading off the back of the announcement.
The announcement, which was buried deep in a SEC filing, follows several social media posts by Musk that have sent the currency and other assets, including meme-based digital currency dogecoin, higher in recent weeks.
It came just days after Musk, who is a well-known supporter of bitcoin, briefly changed the bio of his Twitter account, which has 46 million followers, to say ‘#bitcoin’.
The Tesla CEO’s recent activity has sparked concern over his ability to move markets.
Bitcoin’s price surged 10 percent to a record-high of $44,000 soon after Tesla’s disclosure on Monday
A well-known supporter of cryptocurrencies, Musk has weighed in regularly to the past month’s frenzy in retail investment, also driving up prices of the meme-based digital currency dogecoin and shares of video game chain GameStop.
Musk said a week ago that bitcoin was ‘on the verge’ of being more widely accepted among investors and in December asked if it was possible to do large transactions in the currency.
‘He’s now putting his money (shareholders’) where his mouth is,’ Markets.com analyst Neil Wilson said.
‘But given his recent comments – and adding #Bitcoin to his Twitter bio on January 29th – it also raises a real question about possible market manipulation.’
Tesla said the decision was part of its broad investment policy as a company and was aimed at diversifying and maximizing its returns on cash.
It said it had invested an aggregate $1.5 billion in bitcoin under the changed policy and could ‘acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term’.
‘In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash,’ Tesla said in announcing the $1.5 billion investment.
As a result ‘we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future.’
Tesla will also ‘begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future,’ the company added.
Tesla’s announcement, which was made in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, came just days after Musk briefly changed his Twitter bio to simply read ‘#bitcoin’
Musk said a week ago that bitcoin was ‘on the verge’ of being more widely accepted among investors and in December asked if it was possible to do large transactions in the currency
Analysts said it could help accelerate a move for bitcoin move towards the mainstream that has seen both Paypal, also co-founded by Musk, and huge global money manager BlackRock move to accept the currency.
Eric Turner, vice president of market intelligence at cryptocurrency research and data firm Messari, said: ‘I think we will see an acceleration of companies looking to allocate to Bitcoin now that Tesla has made the first move.
‘One of the largest companies in the world now owns Bitcoin and by extension, every investor that owns Tesla (or even just an S&P 500 fund) has exposure to it as well.’
Bitcoin, which has set new record highs in recent months after a rollercoaster ride over the past decade, has also drawn support from major financial institutions this year. The world’s biggest money manager Blackrock recently changed a handful of investment mandates to allow some of its funds to invest in the currency.
Central banks remain skeptical of digital currencies, but analysts say the more real world uses appear for bitcoin, the more attractive it will prove as a long term store of value.