(The Gas Station is where American Cars And Racing Executive Editor Gary Gastelu vents his opinions. Feel free to let us know if you think they stink.)
Enjoying the new Tesla Roadster’s acrobatic abilities sounds like it’s going to be a lot of work. If you want to use the car’s suction system to climb up a wall, you need to find a wall designed for it, and its flying capabilities will likely require some type of FAA certification and a pilot’s license, not to mention a place to try it out.
Elon Musk said that Tesla will build a Hot Wheels-style track at its Texas HQ for Roadster owners to use, so you might be able to take a road trip there to try it out, but it’s just an idea at this point with no timetable or public designs.
Even the simple 60-foot curving ramp that the company built for the Roadster’s reveal took a lot of work and plenty of testing before it was ready for the event, where the car drove up and off it without anyone on board out of safety concerns. If anything went wrong near the top with a driver or passenger, the results would’ve been devastating, as seen in testing footage that was shown at the event. Even a 10-foot or 20-foot drop could be extremely dangerous.
Then there’s the matter of the flying. The Roadster Rocket model is being designed to carry 250 kg of compressed air for its SpaceX-designed cold gas thrusters, which is probably good for less than 10 seconds of airborne antics. Its two tanks currently need to be refilled by an external pump, which takes more than half an hour and costs hundreds of dollars. Tesla is working on an onboard compressor, but the technology available today would require hours to fill the tanks between bursts. I’m sure doing a “kickflip” in the car would be exciting, but how many times is anyone going to go to the trouble?
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The thing about the Roadster is that its wedge-shaped design was inspired by the Lotus Esprit from “The Spy Who Loved Me,” which famously transformed into a submarine. Several cars were used during filming, and Musk owns the one called “Wet Nellie,” a fully functional submarine that couldn’t actually transform into a drivable car.
After Musk paid $967,120 for it at an RM Auctions event in 2013, he said he was going to have Tesla modify it to make it work as depicted in the film. It turned out the project wasn’t feasible, so the car, which was displayed at the Roadster event, remains in its original form.
It’s too bad Elon wasn’t more into this and had the new Roadster made into a submersible instead. It would still be an engineering challenge, but the result would be far more practical. The regulations governing the manufacture and operation of recreational submarines are less rigorous than they are for aircraft, and you could just drive it off a boat launch and have some fun at shallow, low-pressure depths, like in the James Bond film. A couple of standard AL80 tanks could provide 30 minutes of submersion and are easier and quicker to refill than the Roadster’s thruster tanks. The new Roadster even has four fans in the rear for its suction system, which mirrors Wet Nellie’s propellers.
Compromises would have to be made to its roadworthiness, of course, but that’s also the case for the Roadster Rocket, so it’s at worst a wash. Musk once claimed that the Cybertruck would be able to be used as a boat and said Tesla was developing a “mod package” that would allow it to traverse at least 100 meters of water, but it never came to fruition, and the Cybertruck can’t even float.
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However, Swiss concept vehicle builder Rinspeed debuted a car called the sQuba at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show that could be used as a submarine. It was a converted Lotus Elise, which uncannily ties back to Tesla because the 2008 Roadster was built on the same platform. The main difference between the sQuba and Wet Nellie is that it operated with an open cockpit and required the driver and passenger to wear diving gear.
Perhaps if Musk owned a submarine company instead of SpaceX, things would’ve been different. Then again, he has The Boring Co., so the Roadster could technically drive under water through one of its tunnels.
