I think I have a huge advantage over the market in using first principles thinking to decide what tech advances are or aren’t possible. Elon should hire me but I don’t come cheap. $1M/year full time

@JonathanRay I think the main argument against that's been discussed in the thread below is that that thrusters don't require additional wheel friction.

They'd have to be available in the end product, as mentioned in the description, and I don't really have an opinion/informed take on whether that's feasible, but it at least is a complication to the "acceleration is limited by friction" argument.

@JonathanRay I don't understand your argument here?

I have no prediction the roadster and am sceptical of <1 at best, but I don't think your counterargument works. It's not friction limited. They've been pretty clear about using more than the wheels.

Aerodynamic downforce is also not neglibile under 60! You can simply have a fan. Not even thrusters needed. And if you do both, more than 2.6g are easily possible, there are already (experimental) cars that do this, today.

(And ofc one could also use thrusters to add wheel friction!)

@DanMan314 Rockets are not going to be worth the expense, and probably not going to be street legal. At least 2000lbs of thrust is a big rocket

@JonathanMannhart It will weigh like 2000lbs and have a cross sectional area of like 2m^2, so back of the envelope the drag at 60mph is under 1000N and the downforce is even less than that.

@JonathanRay Outside view even if the shape was totally optimized for downforce like a F1 car you only get 800lbs downforce at 60mph and that’s not enough to get the job done with normal ish tires. Rockets could be angled to provide some combination of downforce and thrust but again that’s not worth the expense and probably never street legal

That’s 2.6g. Without aerodynamic downforce which is negligible under 60mph you need a coefficient of friction of 2.6. Typical consumer tires are 1. Racing slick tires are 2.

Now this question has close date "Dec 8, 2025, 7:59:00 AM"

Is intentional that it is "Dec 8" and not "Dec 31"?

@bessarabov Changed, thanks

Would a test unit that seems modified or otherwise unlikely to be generally available to consumers be enough to resolve this market?

@Weepinbell no modifications that make it not the Tesla Roadster, but I don’t want to rule out small tweaks that are in the demo but not the final consumer product.

Would a prepped sticky drag strip count as fair?

Would it count if it's <1s with rollout subtracted? Or only from a dead stop?

What if they put rockets on the car?

@cowgoesmoo Good questions

No on the prepped sticky drag strip.

I understand that subtracting rollout is standard in drag racing so I’ll go with yes?

No on rockets.

@DanMan314 So if it only achieves <1s by having the rumoured cold gas thrusters, this market would resolve as “no“?

(I.e. what do you count as “rocket“?)

@JonathanMannhart Hmm. I'm realizing there are a lot of ways this market could be reasonably structured. Thanks for the question.

If the product is sold to consumers with cold gas thrusters on it, I'm tempted to say that should count. I'd like the spirit of the market to be a Tesla Roadster buyer being able to go 0-60 themselves on a regular flat road.

@cowgoesmoo I'm going to update the description a little bit, in a way that could potentially include the thrusters. I'm happy to reimburse your bet if you feel like that's fair.