SECTION VIEWUpside down, over a semi, and back on its wheels. Here's the physics behind each trick.
Try itHang it upside down, then launch it
Left: the car upside down under the ramp. Raise the fan's pressure drop until the air push beats the weight. Right: add thruster push and watch the 0–60 time drop below what tyres alone can do.
HowEach trick, step by step
- The ramp: suction, not glue
Fans under the car pull air out from underneath. The air pressure on top is now bigger than the pressure below, and that difference pins the car to the curved wall even when it hangs upside down.
- The launch: air back, car forward
Ten thrusters blast compressed air backwards. Pushing air back pushes the car forward, so the launch does not depend on how hard the tyres can grip.
- The jump: thrust in the air
Off the ramp, the same thrusters keep pushing while the wheels touch nothing. That carries the car over a row of Tesla cars, including a Semi.
- The catch: the tank empties fast
All of it runs on about 600 litres of stored air, gone in roughly a second at full push. A hop, not a flight.
NumbersHow big is it?
Tesla's claims from the reveal, plus rough numbers we worked out ourselves (the sim uses the same maths).
Pressure drop under the car needed to hold a 2-tonne car on the ramp, assuming about 4 m² of underbody: 2000 kg × 9.81 ÷ 4 m² ≈ 4.9 kPa, about 5% of air pressure. Rough estimate, our own maths.
Cold gas thrusters fed by 600 L of compressed air (Tesla engineering VP, at the reveal).
Source ↗Claimed 0–60 mph for the thruster model. Shown as 0.81 s in a recorded test, not independently verified.
Source ↗