Engineering Explained Says the Tesla Roadster Can Get to 60 MPH in 1.1 Seconds With SpaceX Thrusters

What Is The Roadster SpaceX Package?

Speaking about the SpaceX package first, Elon Musk announced back in 2017 about it without mentioning what it will be called. He said that the Roadster will be offered with a special upgrade package and it will “definitely enable it to fly short hops.” In 2018, he called it the ‘SpaceX Option Package’ and that it will include “ 10 new small rocket thrusters arranged around the car”.

However, there wasn’t anything known about its performance specs. So, Jason Fenske decided to decode this and here’s what he found.

Jason used Newton’s basic principles of physics to decipher this dilemma with the little available information at hand. He determined that the next-gen Roadster will weigh around 4,400 pounds without the rocker thrusters, which results in acceleration g-forces of 1.44 Gs, approximately.

The optional package would include cold-gas thrusters that would enable the vehicle to hover.

After a whole lot of calculations, he concluded that the Roadster will put out 2.5 Gs from the standstill. This is close to Musk’s prediction of 3 Gs.

How Does It Compare With The Other Quick Cars?

This is big because even the fastest cars in the world at one point, the Bugatti Veyron, pulls ‘merely’ 1.55 Gs. The other car which grabbed everyone’s attention in aspect was the Dodge Demon, which can pull 1.8 Gs. The Demon, by the way, takes 2.3 seconds to hit the 60 mph mark.

Coming back to the video, Fenske applied the law of physics where velocity is equivalent to acceleration multiplied by time and came down to the conclusion that the next-gen Roadster with the SpaceX package will do the 0-60 mph run in 1.1 seconds. Shall we call this the Roadster blink-and-miss edition?

According to Autocar, the Ultima Evolution Coupé and the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon are currently the fastest vehicles; taking 2.3 seconds to sprint to 60 mph. There are a few concepts and upcoming cars like the Rimac C_Two and the Japanese Aspark Owl which take 1.9 seconds and 1.7 seconds respectively to do the sprint. The Roadster will be out of their league if this calculation is true.

Final Thoughts

It seems a little unlikely, but the math (and physics) is out there. Tesla is known to create revolutionary products, and we see no reason why this won’t be possible. The fact that it can even hover certainly has limitations in the real world, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. The Roadster with the thrusters won’t look too radical or aftermarket-ish because Musk has clarified that the “SpaceX thruster package will be subtle. Hidden behind license plate”. We’ll have to wait and watch how this turns out to be.

What do you think of this ridiculous 1.1-second figure? Check out the video and let us know in the comments section below.