Elon Musk’s latest idea for electric transportation: a supersonic jet

Categories: Mobility

 The busiest man on the planet might be taking on yet another project. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently made a casual comment during an interview that has the green transportation world all abuzz. Musk has an idea for a supersonic electric airplane with some amazing capabilities. Will the rocket/battery/electric luxury car man soon also become the electric jet guy?

Musk isn’t shy about his belief that the future of transportation should be electric-based. Tesla’s electric cars are just the beginning, as far as he’s concerned, and the serial entrepreneur has a vision for a world full of electric transportation options, from cars to airplanes to ships. Musk toldMarketplace that he wants to build a “pretty cool supersonic, vertical take-off and landing electric jet” that would be “really fun.”

This isn’t the first time Musk has mentioned this idea, either. Last fall at an MIT symposium, he broached the topic briefly only to dismiss it, saying that his “mind would explode.” Granted, that was while Tesla was in the midst of ironing out engineering problems with the long-awaited Model X (those rad falcon wing doors caused a lot of delays) and now that the all-electric SUV has been released, Musk might be willing to re-evaluate his priorities. Maybe. The question is: would a supersonic electric jet be another Tesla product, or would it fall under the umbrella of SpaceX?

from Discovery / by Cat DIStasio / via Inhabitat


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