Matt Faulk

Of course the Roadster demo was a spectacle. He’s selling cars. He’s going to show the most outrageous things the tech can do. And it was pretty fucking impressive. Watching it hang upside down, defying gravity, was cool. Watching it fall from the sky and stick the landing was insane. The prototype isn’t practical in its current form -- don’t care. It’s not hard to imagine practical applications for this tech beyond jumping police barricades and retina detaching acceleration. That same tech can help a car stop on black ice, avoid a collision, or prevent a rollover. Practical stuff will inevitably make its way into regular production cars. F1 gave us safer tires, better transmissions, more efficient aerodynamics… all from engineers trying to make cars go faster around a track. The guy who invented the 3-point seatbelt previously worked on ejection seats. Useful applications aren’t always obvious until later, though I think many are obvious in this case. The next few demos will be more Evel Knievel than anything you’d actually want to do in a car. Cool. We’ll probably see some practical stuff in there too.