Elon’s “Flying” Roadster Stunt: Was The Ramp Magnetized?!

Elon Musk (0:00)

It looks like you're breaking physics, because the car sticks to the ground so hard.

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

Musk's claim that this is the result of fan suction cannot be true.

The ramp stunt was done with magnets. Musk lied about it to make the car appear more impressive than it actually is.

John Johnston (0:14)

Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well today, a little bit more on Tesla's flying car demo, the new Roadster movie stunt, as I called it. Not really a demo, I made a video about this yesterday. I wasn't gonna make a video about this today, but some interesting information has come to light, and I'm gonna ask the question, was the ramp magnetized? And if so, that was not mentioned in the demo, and it seems like that would be faking it. I'm just asking the question.

It's not an accusation, and I do not know. I was gonna move on. Elon's moved on.

Look over here, not over here. He's offering to give away SpaceX shares, promising to do that. I mean, his promise is right. Count me sceptical about that, but we'll have to see next year, he says. But anyway, the Wall Street Millennial channel here has gone through in a critical way, and there are a lot of sceptics out there. There are a lot of fanboys not sceptical that would not look into this, would not ask questions. Maybe we should ask this question because there's something that appeared in an article that did kind of point to this as well, which I didn't know about, but Wall Street Millennial has it here. Was the ramp magnetized? Did that help it? Anyway, we'll go through that particular aspect of it.

SPEAKER_2 (1:35)

The first thing they did was have the car drive up a ramp. The ramp tilts in such a way that the car is upside down at the top. It should be noted that for all the stunts, there is no human driver in the car. It was either remote controlled or pre-programmed. So how is the car able to drive vertically up a ramp and even stick to the top upside down? Elon Musk claimed that this is possible due to the fan suction system installed in the car.

Let's have a listen.

Elon Musk (1:59)

Yeah, I mean, this car really sucks, okay? This car.

John Johnston (2:04)

Elon's lame jokes. Again, he's just not funny, but he's got, yes, people around him who just laugh at absolutely anything right.

Elon Musk (2:10)

It could suck the chrome of a trailer hitch. It could suck a tennis ball through a hose pipe.

So and it could stick upside down. Now you might say like, how often do you want to stick upside down in a car?

John Johnston (2:23)

Never.

Elon Musk (2:24)

Maybe not that often. But it actually has an actual benefit on the track or just driving, where the downforce of the car means you can corner incredibly well.

John Johnston (2:39)

As I said yesterday, this does seem like really the only practical thing out of all of the things that they showed. This suction aspect and there is another car which we'll go into that has been demonstrating this for over a year as I understand it. So I think it's probably borrowed from there, the TEC. But was it just that or was it Magnets as well to help it along for this demo that really did break the internet? But yes, Magnets weren't mentioned.

Elon Musk (3:06)

Like you can corner like it looks like you're breaking physics because the car sticks to the ground so hard. So acceleration cornering, it's going to crush every track record that has ever existed.

SPEAKER_2 (3:18)

There are a couple of things to take note of. Musk claims that this fan suction system will give the Roadster world-beating performance on a racetrack. Despite the big talk, Tesla has never shown the Roadster on an actual racetrack. I believe that this is because the prototype they showed is not actually a working sports car. But hold that thought for later. First, let's talk about the fan suction system.

In theory, this is possible. Last year, a boutique hypercar company called Big Murtry Automotive demonstrated such a system on their spare-link hypercar. We can see it here sticking to a ceiling upside down. The spare-link uses a pair of high-speed fans mounted under the car, which work with the skirt system. The fans pull air out from beneath the car while the skirts seal the gap between the floor and the ground. That lowers the pressure under the car below the surrounding atmosphere, so the air pressing on the car's body clamps it to the surface. Notice that the spare-link has almost zero ground clearance. The fans need to suck in new air as fast as it leaks out. For the car to stay suspended, the leakage needs to be near zero.