1 hour ago · Life · hide · 0 comments

In case you missed it:Let's get the obvious out of the way. To the extent that a car is defined as a vehicle for personal transportation, what we saw demonstrated last week was a flying car-shaped object (possibly with scare quotes around "flying"). The cold-gas thrusters that kept the "car" aloft for a few seconds didn't have anyone in it, partially because the passenger seats had been replaced with compressed air tanks, but mainly because the thrusters were so loud that anyone within by some accounts hundreds yards risked permanent hearing damage.The basic tech is not new -- NASA has been using it since the sixties -- and there is effectively no chance that it will ever be used in a street-legal production model. This is not a flying car story or even a "flying" "car" story. The subject here in hype and who falls for it.Frank Landymore of Futurism digs further:Sure, the Roadster can “fly.” There’s no denying that it was an impressive stunt. But huge questions remain, such as whether…

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