The Reality Behind Tesla's Roadster Thruster System

Tesla's Roadster has some insane performance specs—including 1,500 horsepower, a sub-one-second zero-to-sixty sprint, and airborne acrobatics. Aside from the high-voltage dual motors pushing 1,500 horsepower through the rear wheels, the rest of the car's headline dynamics rely on high-pressure cold-gas thrusters.

However, filling those pressurized gas tanks could be a bit of a problem.

Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy revealed in a Top Gear walkaround video that refilling the Thrust variant's 200-liter gas vessel currently takes between two and six hours when hooked up to an external high-pressure nitrogen supply. Tesla hopes to eventually engineer that refill window down to roughly 30 minutes.

The lineup will feature three distinct trims. The standard Performance model keeps its trunk space and relies solely on fan-assisted ground-effect downforce without thrusters. Stepping up to the Thrust variant adds four rear-facing boosters supplied by a 200-liter tank that replaces all the luggage space in the rear trunk.

The invitation-only Rocket version goes all-in with 10 directional thrusters and triple the tank capacity from an additional 400-liter pressure vessel mounted in place of the front passenger seat, creating a single-seat car with 600 liters of total compressed gas storage.

Using simple multiplication, if the 200-liter version requires between two and six hours to refill, the 600-liter version would require between six and eighteen hours to refill. Oh, and that fill time gets you one use, then you have to refill the tanks again.

Now maybe if you're important enough to be invited to own one of the Rocket-equipped Roadsters, the infrastructure required and the time spent to refill the thrusters might not matter all that much. Just ask your Alfred, Jeeves, or Parker to hook up the hose from your industrial-spec nitrogen generator when you park up in the underground garage.

Requiring an external nitro source does conflict with claims from Elon Musk, who hinted the Roadster would feature an onboard ultra-high-pressure air compressor capable of automatically refilling its own tanks. Maybe that's what the automaker means when it says it's working to reduce the refill time. To fill the tanks with nitrogen using an onboard solution, the Roadster would require an air compressor, and then a way to extract the nitrogen from the clean compressed air, which is roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.

Naturally, it's unclear if an onboard compressor system will make it to final production.

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