This is literally what everyone who saw it immediately thought.

Had to watch on 2x to be bearable, but the content is very predictable.

- Tesla did not say the jet powered variant would be road legal

- There is absolutely no reason you'd use this in a normal bumpy road "picking up debris", or do a 0.8s launch while stopped at a traffic light. Pointless arguments.

Regardless of the feelings this announcement evokes, no "lie" was uncovered and this is pure clickbait - as bad or worse as the thing itself.

The flying version is a concept car that was announced as "invitation only", meaning not planned to be for sale to the general public. There was no claim that it will be street legal to fly. It can in fact leave the ground under its own power, stay airborne for seconds, and land safely. Where is the lie?

I think people are missing the interesting part of the story by arguing about whether this is a scam or not.

Obviously, the flying car demo was nonsense that will never ship as a retail product. But then you have to ask, 'Why did they do it?' If they are never going to sell flying cars, why build and demo one? Even if the demo was a one-off mock-up with a SpaceX rocket strapped to a Tesla chassis or something, it will still have been really expensive and hard to build.

The wider context is that Tesla has a real risk of getting crushed by the Chinese EV industry. China is now delivering huge numbers of cars at lower prices and higher quality than Tesla. Markets like Australia have transformed seemingly overnight into mostly buying Chinese EVs. Tesla is seeing its market leader position quickly evaporate.

Until now, Tesla has at least been able to lean on being the 'Apple' with better tech and design, but China is starting to win there, too. Chinese companies are releasing constant videos of their cars jumping, dancing, playing football, spinning in place in 360, etc. Chinese self-driving tech is being deployed much faster than Tesla's. In some parts of the world, the perception is starting to shift toward seeing Chinese brands as the tech and design leaders, not the followers. Meanwhile, the Cybertruck has become a punchline that they can't sell.

Tesla has to see this China threat looming daily, even if most of the US market hasn't been exposed to it yet because of protectionism. They know they need to re-establish themselves as the 'king of engineering and design' in the minds of the public. So they went all-in on a crazy demo to do that.

So arguing about whether it'll ship misses the point. It's do-or-die for Tesla. It's an attempt to reclaim the engineering crown. It had to be totally ridiculous to get attention.