Wait, Did Elon Musk Just Announce A Flying Car? Roads? Where the second generation Roadster is going, it doesn't need roads.
By Dan Bova
Elon Musk doesn't need 280 characters to blow the collective Twitterverse's mind. This weekend, he did it in less than 40 words:
Not saying the next gen Roadster special upgrade package *will* definitely enable it to fly short hops, but maybe …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2017
Certainly possible. Just a question of safety. Rocket tech applied to a car opens up revolutionary possibilities.
He went on to clarify that "this is the base model performance. There will be a special option package that takes it to the next level."
Related: 23 Weird Things We've Learned About Elon Musk
It comes as no surprise that this quick announcement has been retweeted over 32,000 times since he hit the tweet button a few hours ago.
Earlier in the week, Musk announced the Roadster's speed capabilities with this simple gem:
0 to 100 km/h in 1.9 sec pic.twitter.com/xTOTDGuwQj
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 17, 2017
For those of you keeping score, that would make it the fastest-accelerating production car in the world. And the universe, for all we know.
This is all super interesting because, as Mike Brown wrote on Inverse.com, a flying car, well, flies in the face of concerns that Musk expressed at a TED conference in Vancouver.
Related: A Humanoid Robot Called Sophia Mocked Elon Musk
"This is not some inherent bias against flying things but there is a challenge with flying cars in that they'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated will be very high, let's just say that if something's flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.
"You don't think to yourself, "well, I feel better about today.' You're thinking, "did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they're flying past?'"
A valid concern, but we're sure that the super genius has a trick or two up his sleeve to fix that. Metal turtlenecks maybe?
