Tesla Roadster Event (2026)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:32Franz von HolzhausenHey everyone, welcome to McGregor. I'm Franz, this is Lars. We hope you enjoyed our little pre show Raptor. Static Fire over there.
0:42Lars MoravyWe are here at SpaceX's Rocket Test and Development center in McGregor, Texas. It's 4,000 acres. Thank you for having us. Thank you for hosting us SpaceX. Thank you for everyone here and thank you for everyone watching online.
1:03Franz von HolzhausenWe thought we'd just, you know, we're 20 years from when Elon first introduced the Roadster to the world and it was really a proof of concept that proved EVs were viable product, fun to drive, could go the distance.
1:18Franz von HolzhausenThey were real cars. And look at how far we've come in those 20 years.
1:22Lars MoravyYeah, I mean, to be honest, the Roadster is the reason I came to Tesla and I came here and we had a master plan to build an EV that proved that we could do everything that Franz just said and then make a cheaper EV that people could afford with Model S.
1:38Lars MoravyAnd then we built Model 3 and Model Y. But you know, the last time we had Roadster and SpaceX together, we put Elon's into, into orbit and you can
1:48Franz von Holzhausensee there and you know, Starman is still out there somewhere. Amazing feat,
1:58Franz von HolzhausenBut I think we should get Elon out here to talk more about that. What do you. Elon, come on out.
2:03Lars MoravyElon, come on out.
2:24Elon MuskAre you gonna see some crazy stuff tonight? Like we need an audience to prove that it's not AI or si. So you guys can tell people you saw it with your eyes, because what you see with your eyes, you will not believe.
2:46Elon MuskYeah, but you're going to see the results of what happens when you have a collaboration with the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company.
3:01Elon MuskAnd this is the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and SpaceX. Engineers working closely together to make something that you haven't seen in any movie that's better than any James Bond car.
3:21Elon MuskBetter than. Well, I don't know. I've never seen anything like this.
3:24Lars MoravySo,
3:27Elon Muskyou know, when I, when I suggested this to the team, I thought, am I, am I crazy?
3:32Lars MoravyMaybe a little bit.
3:36Elon MuskExactly. Am I crazy? Not at all. 100% sane.
3:43Lars MoravySo.
3:46Elon MuskAnd then things kind of built upon themselves and we're like, well, maybe we could do a little more of this and a little more of that. And I think what you'll see here, by the way, success is not guaranteed.
4:02Elon MuskSo I want to, you know, I mean that it'll probably work,
4:11Franz von Holzhausenbut if
4:11Elon Muskit doesn't work, we're at A safe distance. Yes. And excitement is 100% guaranteed. So, yes, let's fucking go. So let's see.
4:33Lars MoravyThe future is autonomous, Elon, right? Yes, but this is not an autonomous car. It is the last.
4:39Elon MuskWell, it is technically autonomous for this demo. To make sure we don't kill anyone.
4:44Franz von HolzhausenCorrect.
4:45Elon MuskSo just in case. But this will actually be long term, the only manually driven car that Tesla makes.
4:58Lars MoravyYou got to have some fun sometimes.
5:00Elon MuskYeah. And so if you're going to have only one manually driven car, let's take it to the limits. And way past the limits.
5:12Franz von HolzhausenElon had this crazy idea. I don't know where it came from. Be great to hear.
5:18Elon MuskBut we said, I think, an insane pivot dream.
5:22Lars MoravyWe got 10 seconds. Seven, six. Should we count it down? Four, four, three, two.
5:48Elon MuskIt's.
6:20Elon MuskThat's sam.
7:26Lars MoravyWoo.
7:41Elon MuskWell, it worked.
7:46Lars MoravyFlying cars are real.
7:49Elon MuskYeah. Well, you know, a friend of mine, Peter Thiel, once said that the future promised us flying cars, but Instead we got 140 characters. Well, not anymore.
7:58Franz von HolzhausenExactly.
8:05Elon MuskThat's not the last thing you'll see, by the way.
8:10Lars MoravyTo do that we have a suction, a fan suction system on the bottom of the car that can pull up to two GS in order to make the car go upside down.
8:20Lars MoravyAnd then we borrowed some technology from SpaceX to do the rest.
8:24Elon MuskYeah, I mean, this car really sucks. Okay. This car could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe, and it could stick upside down.
8:38Elon MuskNow, you might say, like, how often do you want to stick upside down in a car? Maybe not that often, but it actually has this, an actual benefit on the track or just driving where the downforce of the car means you can corner incredibly well.
8:57Elon MuskLike, you can corner like. It looks like you're breaking physics because the car sticks to the ground so hard. So acceleration, cornering, it's going to crush every track record that has ever existed.
9:11Elon MuskSo,
9:16Lars MoravyYeah, I think the last time we put roadster with SpaceX, we had Starman in it. And maybe we should check. Did we, did we put anyone in the car?
9:28Lars MoravyFranz.
9:28Franz von HolzhausenYeah, I think Starman's gonna make an appearance.
9:33Lars MoravyI think he went for a little
9:34Elon Muskride any minute now.
9:37Franz von HolzhausenYeah.
9:38Elon MuskSo, yeah, here he is.
9:43Lars MoravyNo, come on.
9:46Franz von HolzhausenAnticipation, me bud. He's being coy.
9:56Lars MoravyJust to be clear, that is not a real human.
9:58Franz von HolzhausenYeah.
10:00Elon MuskSo the car has obviously, attitude control thrusters and main thrusters in the rear. So it can basically fly like a rocket. And it could do roles. It could do like Crazy gymnastics.
10:19Elon MuskWhatever you want, really. Now, I should say that this is not necessarily a safety optimized car. Okay. But it takes the Fun meter to 11 out of 10.
10:35Franz von HolzhausenBut speaking of fun meter.
10:36Elon MuskYeah.
10:37Lars MoravyYou want to try one?
10:38Franz von HolzhausenLet's try something else.
10:40Elon MuskYeah, I mean, that was just a little flight. Let's do a longer flight.
10:48Lars MoravyAll right. See what we got set up.
11:28Elon MuskI mean, I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen that before.
11:33Franz von HolzhausenTony Hawk would be proud. We call that the kick flip.
11:35Elon MuskYeah.
11:38Lars MoravyI think we could have cleared more than our whole fleet.
11:41Elon MuskYeah, we can go, we go further. Like, this will be an actual car that's on the roads. You know, I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, but like, there will be such a car that a, that someone can own.
12:00Elon MuskSo it's, it's going to be pretty, pretty wild that you can have a rocket car.
12:03Lars MoravyYeah, we had the rockets we borrowed from SpaceX technology. You talked about the carbon overlay pressure vessels. I just want to tell everyone, because I'm a spec guy, there's two of them in the car.
12:14Lars MoravyThey are a total of 600 liters. There's about 250 kilos of air, and we have 10 nozzles to do all that work.
12:21Elon MuskAnd the, it's, it's using an advanced ultra high pressure air tank so the car can recharge its air tank. So it's not like you, you know, need special propellant or anything like that.
12:36Elon MuskIt literally is just going to pop itself up and, and, and be able to do these maneuvers whenever you'd like.
12:44Franz von HolzhausenWell, but why don't we show them the car?
12:47Lars MoravySo should we bring it out?
12:48Franz von HolzhausenWe, since we knew the car was going to fly, since we knew roster
12:50Elon Muskwas going to fly, we looked for
12:51Franz von Holzhausensome inspiration about flying. And we, we thought we would lean into the most badass stuff out there. SR71 cars that transform. And that led us to the new roadster.
13:45Franz von HolzhausenSo I know you get an up close look at the new roadster. Thank you, Andy and Lamar. Those guys are kicking ass on our engineering team making this all happen.
13:54Franz von HolzhausenWe can see the car, very clean. It's a nice clean aesthetic. Like I said, we leaned into a little bit of some of the aerospace aesthetics. It's a two seater.
14:06Franz von HolzhausenI'll open it up. As you can see, two guys got out of it. We leaned into lightweight as well. So the seats are molded into the chassis. It's a steer by wire system.
14:18Franz von HolzhausenSo we have a steer by wire yoke. Steer by wire brake. Steer by wire throttle. And as we get to the rear of the car, this is where a lot of the action, you can't see it, but online in the diffuser area is where the thrusters are, the fans are, and this is kind of the business end of the car.
14:39Franz von HolzhausenBut the car can transform because we wanted to make a pretty car, but also a car that could deliver amazing downforce. So we'll turn the fans on for you.
14:59Lars MoravySorry it's a little loud here. But as Elon said, this car is meant to be the best driver's car. And to do that, we wanted to break the laws of physics.
15:09Lars MoravyWe put the fan sucker system on there to give us traction to be able to corner at greater than two GS and accelerate with all the traction that goes beyond the tires, which is typically 1.26 GS.
15:24Lars MoravyYou see here we have two modes. We have a high downforce mode, and what the car is in now is a low drag mode. And the fan system also has two modes.
15:34Lars MoravyIt can suck the car down at low speed to give us traction when we need it, and at high speed will open up the front and rear parts of the suction system to create even more flow underneath the car.
15:45Elon MuskYeah. So if the rear wing has variable pitch, so it can adjust the downforce dynamically, and it will do it automatically based on what it calculates you need when you're going around the track.
15:58Lars MoravyBut, Elon, how fast did you want to go to zero to 60? I can't remember.
16:01Elon MuskWell, you got to break one second. Obviously.
16:05Lars MoravyI tested this the other day. Can we put it up, guys? Can we put the test up.
16:14Elon MuskLike this? This goes fast.
16:29Lars MoravyWe wanted.
16:46Lars MoravyAll right, one second, right? You said one second.
16:51Elon MuskWell, I said less than one second.
16:53Lars MoravyOh, hey, guys, we have a car out there, right? Don't we have a car out there? Can you put it on the max to see? Let's try and be one second.
17:35Lars MoravyDo we have time? What was the time, guys? We didn't have a whole lot of room out on the pad, so we had to cut it short. But do we have a live time?
17:47Lars MoravyI'm waiting for it.
17:54Lars MoravyWell, while we're getting the live time, you know, I will say this. Elon mentioned the rocket thrusters. You can see that the thrust is exiting the back of the four thrusters faster than speed of sound.
18:07Lars MoravySo you see the Mach diamonds. It actually creates over 80 kilonewtons of thrust.
18:13Elon MuskYeah, I mean, there are cars, and then there's one car that has mach diamonds.
18:19Lars MoravyI think we broke the system. We didn't do it in 0.17 seconds.
18:24Elon MuskYeah. Okay, that's. Yeah, 0.1 seconds. I think we'd destroy the human if we did that.
18:30Lars MoravyAh, there you go. There you go.
18:32Franz von Holzhausen0.81 seconds. There we go.
18:35Lars MoravyYeah.
18:36Elon MuskNice work.
18:42Elon MuskWe'll do. And we anticipate being able to do better than that. I mean, I like the Newton's formula. F equals MA as a equals F over m. So as you increase force and decrease mass, you get more acceleration.
19:00Elon MuskSo the production car will actually do better than that. So we'll just ride the limit of. Don't detach the retina of the human in the car.
19:15Lars MoravyWell, it is the world's quickest cars production car of 0 to 60. It'll do a half a mile in the time that other cars can do a quarter mile.
19:25Lars MoravyAnd I think that's really what we wanted to say today. What else we got?
19:28Elon MuskAnything else?
19:30Franz von HolzhausenNo, I mean top speed. Oh, yeah, yeah.
19:33Elon MuskTop speed, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Depends on your street, but it'll be a viable car.
19:44Lars MoravyAnd.
19:44Elon MuskYeah. So we're going to have actually a follow on demo that's or two or two multiples. So I don't know if this is possible or not, but some people may know about Evel Knievel's attempt to jump the Snake Rubber Canyon.
20:08Elon MuskLet's give it another shot.
20:13Franz von HolzhausenAnd we thought this was crazy.
20:16Elon MuskYeah, man, that's going to look nuts.
20:21Lars MoravyWe're going to have to go pretty fast to do that. Like, really fast. We're going to need a running start.
20:25Elon MuskYeah, yeah, we need a running start.
20:26Lars MoravyYeah. But, yeah, the car can go over 230mph. Hopefully we can get even faster.
20:34Elon MuskDefinitely much faster than that.
20:36Franz von HolzhausenYeah.
20:36Lars MoravyHow fast?
20:38Elon MuskWell, I think you got to go at least. You got to crack halfway to the speed of sound, I think.
20:46Lars MoravyOkay.
20:47Elon MuskYeah. Mach 0.5. Maybe a little higher.
20:51Franz von HolzhausenAll right, challenge on.
20:52Lars MoravyChallenge accepted, sir. Yeah.
20:55Elon MuskWhere we were going, you don't need tires.
21:01Lars MoravySo today marks the day that we build the first world's best flying car and the last best driver's car. When do you want to get it to customers?
21:12Elon MuskWe enter production in 2028. Actually.
21:17Lars MoravyActually, for real. Anything left in your bag?
21:29Elon MuskI think we might have one more little thing.
21:32Lars MoravyShould we do it?
21:32Elon MuskIt's going. Yeah, yeah, sure.
21:33Lars MoravyYeah. Okay. Let's do the last thing it.