Tesla's Kickflipping Roadster Looks Like A Great Way To Lose Your Lunch

Watch a POV video of the Roadster doing what it does best.

Photo by: Tesla

By: Rob Stumpf

Nov 5, at 1:37pm ET

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Tesla released a new video of its next-gen Roadster.
The footage is a POV-perspective of the car performing all of its greatest hits.
If Tesla ever deliveries these, we're hoping that they include some branded barf bags for passengers.

Car companies have spent the last 140 years figuring out how to perfect ground travel. Tesla decided that winning that war was unimaginative at best. And as we've all seen by now, the carmaker instead took its next-gen Roadster to the sky last month to demonstrate what it might look like to own a flying car one day.

But what would it actually be like to drive (fly?) the thing? This week, Tesla released a video showing a first-person camera view of the Roadster executing its rad kick-flip maneuver and other stunts. It does not look pleasant to experience firsthand.

Photo by: Tesla

If you watched the Roadster unveiling last month, this all probably looks familiar. It's the same stunts we saw that day, including the upside-down dive off of the half-pipe and the jump-spin over the Tesla Semi. But seeing it from the car's perspective adds a whole new layer to it, and shows this dizzying experience a person would have from the cockpit.

Watching the cold gas thrusters at work up close during the kickflip gives you a sense of how much goes into ensuring that the car stays upright. The car adjusts the volume of nitrogen that it releases in order to prevent car from over-rotating and transferring from a barrel roll to an out-of-control corkscrew. Just one simple nudge and it lands back on all four wheels.

Then there's the nosedive off of the half-pipe. A bit more correcting to keep the roll and yaw in check—but the Roadster does it without a hiccup.

All of these amazing stunts happened without a driver; Tesla put a dummy in the front seat. Many actual human beings might feel dizzy or even sick from these kinds of tricks.

Tesla hasn't published what kind of g-forces the kickflip generates, but watching the onboard footage also makes me wonder what kind of fighter pilot-style harness and big bolsters are needed to keep the driver in-place versus the road-going version of the car. Heck, you might need to be a fighter pilot to endure these maneuvers.

What do you think?

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Comments

It's really hard not to appreciate how much engineering went into making the demo happen. Sure, it takes hours to fill up the 600-liter ultra-high-pressure composite-overwrapped pressure vessels with 10,000 PSI of nitrogen for just a few seconds of joy. But man, is it cool to watch from just about any perspective.

And while Tesla can't guarantee that the flying version of its car will reach a single driveway (or be road legal, for that matter), it's still a very cool, very over-engineered party trick unlike anything we'll likely see from a car manufacturer again. If you're going to buy one and put it through its paces, though, I'd recommend having a light lunch.