Flying cars are so hot right now. Even Elon Musk wants in on the fun, with his plans to fill the second-generation Roadster with rocket boosters so it can jump like the Mach 5. But, it appears one owner in China has has beaten Elon to the punch, figured out a way to fly a Tesla without any of that fancy SpaceX tech — provided you don’t need to do it twice.
A video posted to YouTube by CnEVPost, a Shanghai-based electric car news outlet, appears to show the aftermath of a James Bond-style river jump conducted by a Model 3. The video seems to have bounced around over the past day, between various news sources and TikTok and Weibo users, before making its way on to YouTube and the global stage.
According to CnEVPost and a translation of MyDrivers.com, the Tesla was travelling over 100 km per hour when it left the ground, and travelled more than 19.81 m before touching down. No one was seriously injured, but the car’s occupants left their landing zone in an ambulance.
Few consumer vehicles are actually built to withstand the force of a jump, and the Tesla appears no different. The front end is destroyed, with at least one headlight neatly missing, and the entire side of the car appears to have collapsed. The rear bumper, similarly, is in pieces, and the trunk appears to have opened during the landing.
While flying cars may be one of Silicon Valley’s favourite genres of vaporware, they certainly aren’t here yet. Most cars, trucks, and bomb-laden city busses piloted by Sandra Bullock require the help of a ramp to get any real hangtime. Still, it seems that some passenger vehicles really can carry enough momentum to clear obstacles — provided you don’t ask them to do it again.
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