Creator credit: https://tiktok.com/@twonkcomics

pretty sure it's propelled by compressed air.

still very wasteful, but at least not burning dangerous chemicals for funsies.

That's the worst idea for a car ever, the cibertruck can't survive a carwash and you are telling me you are going to do Car kickflicks?

I heard it's nitrogen, which I think releases co² during the production process. You're right though, could be worse; they could've used hypergolic thrusters.

Do you mean nitrous (N~2~O)? Straight up N~2~ shouldn’t be changing to CO~2~ unless some very interesting chemistry is happening, haha.

They said during the production process, not on release.

Ooh I misread that as being on activation, good catch

I think what they mean is that when making liquid CO2 you use a cryo-cooler. That cooler condenses the gas out of the air. Air contains CO2 and nitrogen (plus some other stuff). The gases aren't created but rather just a state change. Cryo coolers also take energy to run.

It might be impractical, but I saw this and thought of the safety features. If you're in an accident and the car is uncontrollably rolling then these thrusters could bring it to an upright stop.

The extremely dangerous high pressure vessel right behind the driver's head seems like it's not worth the trade off there... Better carry a bomb around just in case the car rolls over. /s

I'm pretty sure the "production" process is just compressing atmospheric air and separating out the other gases. The atmosphere is 78% nitrogen.

Do bottle caps have any significant impact on carbon emissions?
I’m pretty sure it’s more about plastic waste littering the environment. Carbon emissions are not the only environmental issue.

Elon is an idiot that barely thinks about any functionality. For him if something looks cool and scifi, it is a good enough reason to implement it (like the self hiding door handles).

Sure it's dangerous, but so is that giant tank of fuel that's in the car. I think we figured out pressure vessels pretty well

Yeah, fuck everything beneath it, right?

He’s a 10 year old child with keys to the castle.

A thing can be two things.

A fuel tank is not a pressure vessel (apart from being sealed to keep fumes in). If you get a puncture in your gas tank, it doesn't immediately and violently explode, it just leaks fuel out. Even if it does catch fire, it would not be as violent an explosion as a pressure vessel failure. In most scenarios it would burn, but not explode.

I know the gas tank is not a pressure vessel, I made two separate statements.

My point is that we already do dangerous things. I don't think it's a huge jump to put a pressurized nitrogen tank in a car. Car manufacturers even tried putting hydrogen tanks in cars. It's possible to make it safe.

Everything underneath a rolling car is fucked anyway. If thrusters could make it stop faster that would be way safer than letting it roll however far it wants.

Yeah, but not really in this case.

Nascar manages to do that without thrusters.

I've seen those and would advocate for flaps being added to regular cars. Could they do it better with thrusters though?

Absolutely not. Insanely stupid. A pressure vessel, jetwash, the added complexity of an additional direction of travel, competency of the operator, and that’s before we come to Tesla being shit at making things that work properly.

Killjoy

It's a stunt to impress your average Tesla investor.

Musk made his fortune manipulating stock prices.

Sure, but Tesla is the last company I’d trust to do it

I'm just happy someone is trying something new. Let someone else do it better

Yeah just compressed nitrogen, but still very wasteful and excessive and stupid. That’s enough. No one said it was putting out toxins.

Yes you can scare up some possible safety applications for this but you have to take it on the whole and balance the safety risks and benefits. They haven’t even answered how rhey are going to make the underbelly fan street legal when we know it shoots a lot of gravel out backwards at high speed. And understanding from MKBHD is that the model with all directional thrusters is only a high end demo which will never actually be sold. The one that might actually get sold only has thrusters in the back. Does that scream “safety” to you or “excessive speed?”

We already do dangerous things therefore all dangerous things are A-OK come on bro we’ll figure it out.

Oh my god just stop talking.

It takes a lot of energy to compress a gas, and more energy to cool it so you can separate the nitrogen. Energy production typically (not always) releases co2.

Yes, but that takes energy, and when you're on a renewables are the devils work campaign, you're releasing CO2

It’s to protect wildlife, prevent marine litter and it also fixes a problem when processed in recycling plants. Loose caps often fall through the cracks (literally) and end up in landfills.

Sorry, but as someone who has seen at LEAST 3 movies in his lifetime, I can say with absolute certainty that just about anything will cause a car to explode.

Not to detract from the overall impact its probably had, because im sure they wouldnt bother if it didnt work on the whole, but I've lost 2 bottle caps since they implemented this, compared to my zero beforehand. I've become careless and no longer try to hold the lid.

I think even investors are more clever than him mainly because they likely have an army of advisors that are more analytical than, "wow this is so cool"

Fuel is necessary to the function of the engine. If cars didn't need it, they wouldn't have it. We've figured out C4 pretty well, but we don't stuff the doors full of it.

These thrusters could maybe help you if you fell down a particularly short cliff. Otherwise, if you get in an accident severe enough to send you rolling, you do not want high pressure nitrogen tanks right next to your head.

Bumpers are there for if maybe you get in an accident. We don't build safety systems for maybe

Bumpers also don't explode in exactly the type of situation where they would ostensibly be useful

I guess there are more caps recycled now, so there are less carbon emissions then producing new ones from petrolium?

You know you can still just break the cap away if you have some imperative for it.

Airbags do

Yep, and that explosion is core to the functionality of the device. Do you think these nitrogen tanks exploding would make anyone safer?

Most meme stock investors are not institutional, other than index funds which don't really buy or sell on a whim anyway

The new ones would probably still get made from petroleum, most plastics suck to recycle

Dude, shut up. elon has data centers with diesel generator covered roofs, etc, etc.

Your "uhh technically..." doesn't help anyone here?

Even if that was the case, it would be really marginal and not even worth considering.

Preventing unnecessary littering and microplastics was probably the goal, even if there it's rather marginal. Personally, I just like the fact that the cap is not lost, however.

People haven't mentioned that you use it up in one go and then it takes 8 hours to refill.

Or these thrusters could do the complete opposite and kill you. Since the US has no working regulatory agency this car is going to be dangerous as hell. If it will event exist.