Tesla says it will be revealing a “flying” Roadster sports car that hover soon, but Tesla already designed something with wheels that can fly. Not the automaker, but its namesake: Nikola Tesla. The prolific inventor patented a design for a “helicopter plane” in the 1920s that could take off vertically and fly horizontally.
“The utility of the aeroplane as a means of transport is materially lessened and its commercial introduction greatly hampered owing to the inherent inability of the mechanism to readily rise and alight, which is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that the required lifting force can only be produced by a more or less rapid translatory [sp] movement of the planes or foils. This indispensable high velocity, imperilling [sp] life and
property, makes it necessary to equip the machine with special appliances and provide suitable facilities at the terminals of the route, all of which entail numerous drawbacks and difficulties of a serious nature,” one of two patents that were granted to Tesla related to the design explains.
The precursor to today’s VTOL aircraft, like the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, featured a large propeller sandwiched between two wings and wheels on tis landing gear. The pilot’s seat is inline with the propeller and has two passenger seats astride it, which are attached to trunnions that allow them to stay upright while the propeller rotates 90 degrees to transition from vertical to horizontal flight.
Tesla incorporated a turbine design he also held a patent on, which used the adhesion and viscosity of a pressurized fluid to turn bladeless discs. It’s vaguely similar to a torque converter, but meant to be a prime mover not merely a closed system transmission device. Internal or external combustion could be used to generate the required pressurized liquid or gas.
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While Tesla did build several working prototypes for his turbine with other uses in mind, the helicopter-plane never left the drawing board and the first helicopter wouldn’t fly until 1939, when Igor Sikorsky found success with the VS-300. True VTOL aircraft wouldn’t arrive until the 1950s when the U.S. Navy’s Convair XFY-1 and British Short SC.1 demonstrated the capability.
Elon Musk’s Tesla has a very different idea for the Roadster, which will reportedly use a series of cold gas thrusters designed by SpaceX to improve its acceleration and allow it to lift off the ground. It’s not yet clear how high it will be able to get, or how far it will be able to go horizontally when airborne, but Musk promises “the most epic demo ever” when it is revealed.
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As for when that will be, it’s been 10 years since the non-flying Roadster prototype was first revealed. Tesla has delayed the production version’s debut several times, most recently missing an April 1 target date for an event. During Tesla’s first quarter earnings call on April 22, Musk said the reveal would happen in “a month or so.” We are now well into the “or so” period, but there haven’t been any updates since. In any event, even if the demonstration happens soon, the car isn’t set to enter production before sometime in 2027.
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