With the upcoming Tesla Roadster promising to provide the option of 10 booster rockets, someone thought he would give the world a teaser of what this could look like.
This is something the automotive industry hasn't really seen before, and the idea of an electric vehicle gaining extra oomph, not through more torque sent to the wheels, is very interesting.
Yes, we have seen racing cars with fans around the vehicle, but those were there for aero reasons, not providing extra forward motivation.
So, what's the story with strapping jet engines to the back of an EV? Do they actually give it a significant performance boost, or are they a pointless novalty? YouTube's, Warped Perception set out to answer this, by creating a very well made custom array featuring three small jet engines.
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Initially, he tried running the vehicle using the engines alone, and with two of them working, his Tesla Model S P85 could maintain about 96 km/h on the highway.
Then he tested how much effect they have on the EV’s straight line acceleration - he did runs just on electric power alone, as well as with all three engines at maximum thrust.
What he found out... interesting, but not surprising.
With the engines running, the vehicle was around 1 second quicker in its sprint to 100, but there were some variables that could have affected the result.
But, the conclusion still seems to be that they do improve acceleration, and shaving one second off the benchmark sprint time is still pretty impressive.