Watch: Tesla Roadster With Rocket Thrusters Rips the Pavement
We thought that Tesla founder Elon Musk was kidding when he tweeted about “rocket thrusters” on the new Tesla Roadster. But he isn’t. The car really does have thrusters as an option. Now we get a chance to see them in action against a non-rocket thrust Roadster.
Musk claims with the rocket thrusters the Tesla Roadster can accelerate from zero to sixty in 1.1 seconds
When Rimac claimed that the Nevera was the world’s quickest accelerating road car, Musk was quick to reveal the whole rocket thruster deal. Rimac claims the Nevera can go from zero to sixty in 1.85 seconds. Musk claims that with the rocket thrusters the Tesla Roadster can accelerate from zero to sixty in 1.1 seconds and 1.9 seconds without.
Now Slav Popovski has provided a simulation showing the difference between the two vehicles upon acceleration. The animation is based on the math if the thrusters are only engaged for 1.1 seconds according to insideevs. What becomes immediately evident is that the sinister gray Roadster is so much quicker than the red one.
This is only a visualization
The cones indicate a quarter-mile to give some comparison of where each vehicle would be at were they accelerating that quickly. You know, if this was an actual videotaped race rather than a visualization. Popovski used 3D StudioMax to create the simulation.
There was chatter over the Twitterverse that street tires could not withstand these numbers. The Nevera has at least substantiated that they can stand up to a sub-2 second blast. Those same naysayers now say that street tires can’t stand up to zero to sixty mph times at 1.1 seconds.
There was a time when physicists were able to show that cars would never be able to go faster than 125 mph. The current record stands at 763.035 mph by Andy Green in 1997. We include this because there will always be those who calculate this or that. But in reality, things can go much differently than numbers on paper.
The Tesla Roadster is a bargain compared to the Nevera
If these zero to sixty mph times are your thing, the Tesla Roadster is a bargain compared to the Nevera. The Nevera costs $2.5 million and Rimac will only build 150. A Tesla Roadster is estimated to sell for $250,000.
That price is for the “Founders Series” and will be limited to 1,000 copies. But Tesla plans on making many more than that. We don’t know how much the rocket thruster option will cost. But if we could pop for $250,000 then we’d go the extra cost and get those thrusters. There has never been anything like it, and the experience will be worth whatever it costs.
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