Elon Musk wants to turn Tesla Roadster into a hover car

Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan’s podcast for the third time, and you know what that means: wacky, unfiltered ideas directly from the mind of the world’s richest man. 

Some were fairly pedestrian; for example, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO described a solar-powered electric van, saying it makes more sense to use solar panels on a van than a car because of the larger surface area on its roof. And as is mandatory, some of the stuff he shared was very typically Muskian; for example, right at the beginning of the podcast Musk said he told SpaceX engineers to make the top of the Starship spacecraft “pointier” because of a quote from Sasha Baron Cohen movie The Dictator. 

On the topic of Cybertruck and why it’s designed the way it is, Musk said they wanted to build “a tank from the future — you can see that bit, together with a probable explanation of why the Cybetruck’s window broke during the infamous steel ball demo, in the clip below. 

The most notable discussion on The Joe Rogan Experience, in terms of actual upcoming products, involved Musk’s idea about a car — precisely, Tesla’s upcoming Roadster supercar — that hovers in the air.

The important part of that for Musk (and we agree) is how to make the car hover without killing people. 

“Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground (…) If you plummet, it’ll blow out the suspension, but you’re not gonna die,” he told Rogan. “(It could be) maybe six feet high…you’re not gonna die here.” Musk said the car could actually move while hovering, and it could go pretty fast, while also repeating his idea about adding rocket engines to the Roadster. 

As for when the Roadster (the non-hovering version, we assume) could become available, Musk confirmed to Rogan that the Roadster should reach customers in 2022. 

Check out the whole, 200-minute episode over on Spotify.