The New Tesla Roadster's Party Trick: 100,000-psi Nitrogen, Fired Out of Four Fake Exhaust Pipes
Nine years after Tesla first tried to resurrect the Roadster, the company is apparently trying again, Ars Technica reports. At the rear of the new car sit four giant exhaust pipes — which, no, do not signal a sudden embrace of hydrocarbons. They are where jets of compressed nitrogen at 100,000 psi shoot out. That is the spec sheet's most memorable line, and it tells you what kind of object this is. A car whose defining feature is a compressed-gas launcher is not really being sold as transportation; it is stage equipment, and the pipes are the costume.
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Silly, but effective: the pipes exist to make the gas jets look like something a combustion car would do. The whole gesture is an admission that the interesting part of a car show is the noise and the fire, and that you can fake both with nitrogen.
The mundane questions are left dangling. Ars Technica's writer notes that he has yet to locate the section of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Statutes explaining how and when such a device would be legal to use on the road.