Elon Musk wants Tesla’s new sports car to make 007 proud.<br />The billionaire electric-car tycoon said he’s working on tricking out the forthcoming Tesla Roadster with rocket technology so it can hover above the ground.<br />“I’m trying to figure out how to make this thing hover without, you know, killing people,” Musk said on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast released Thursday.<br />Tesla has been working on an updated version of the Roadster — the company’s first mass-market electric car — for several years.<br />The Silicon Valley company expects to finish engineering the model this year and hopes to start shipping it in 2022, according to Musk.<br />The Roadster would be able to move through the air while floating above the ground if Musk’s hovering experiments are successful, he said. He claimed Tesla will offer a “SpaceX option package,” apparently named for Musk’s rocket company, that will equip the car with a highly pressurized fuel vessel and “a bunch of thrusters.”<br />If the hovering doesn’t work out, the Roadster could still have rear thrusters that would make it “move like a bat out of hell” on the road, Musk said.<br />Tesla first unveiled the new Roadster in 2017. The following year, SpaceX launched Musk’s personal Roadster into space. The car passed Mars for the first time last fall.
