Tesla Revives Roadster Effort, Using Decades-Old Stunt Technology
Nine years after its first attempt to bring back the Roadster, Tesla has tried again, using decades-old stunt technology to make a show car perform tricks in the air at a California event, Ars Technica reports.
The event unfolded in California. Ars Technica noted that although CEO Elon Musk has moved the company's headquarters to Texas, he has once more turned to California's showbiz industry to promote his wares. The last such occasion was a Hollywood back lot, used for a remote-controlled Cybercab demonstration; this time, according to the outlet, the company relied on stunt technology that has been around for decades.
Ars Technica reported that the new Roadster will be unlike anything else, though its angular, wedge-shaped styling owes more than a little to Giorgetto Giugiaro's original Lotus Esprit, as well as to the more recent Lamborghini Gallardo. Musk is known to own a James Bond prop car.
At the rear of the car sit four giant exhaust pipes. According to Ars Technica, these do not signal Tesla's sudden embrace of hydrocarbons beyond those emitted by private aviation. Rather, they are where 100,000 psi jets of compressed nitrogen shoot out.
The outlet's reporter wrote that, early in the morning with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Statutes making for dense reading, they had yet to find the section explaining how and when it is legal to use such a thing on the road.