How to make a jet-engine-powered Tesla

A transcript of the video can be found here.

Narrator: In December of last year, Musk said that the upcoming car would be available with a package that would give it a boost in performance. The Cybertruck is one of the vehicles that has been focused on by the company. In late 2021, Matt Mikka created his own boostedTesla. He added three jet engines to his Model S, built an electronically controlled engine system from scratch, and created a car that can burn two gallons of fuel in one minute.

The project was inspired by the fact thatTesla was going to do high pressure compressed air. The problem with the cold thrusters is that they require a lot of energy to get the air into a pressure that is useful. A lot of people don't know that cold thrusters don't have much thrust. One of the engines that I used on theTesla project was about 350 newtons.

A setup for the driver that connected to the rear controls was one of the things Matt had to build. A lot of wires, electrical outlets for the wires to run through and plug into, and individual circuit boards for each engine to connect to were required. Most of the engines were connected to the internet.

I built that system from the ground up, so I don't want to give away any secrets here. Digital signals are used by most of the jet engines. One or zero is digital. I had to convert that human input and movement into a digital signal. Write some code. It did work.

A lot of metal fabrication was involved in Matt's project. He used his water-jet cutter.

The water jet I have uses high-pressure water with an abrasive to cut most materials except for diamond and glass.

Matt never skimps on presentation even though his work is complex.

I wanted to do the lettering and the switches like a fighter jet. If there's any pilots watching, they'll be like, "Oh, wow, that looks like the same thing I have in the jet that I fly, where I can feel the raised letters."

It was one of the hardest parts of the build. I had to make the panel, spray it, bake it, throw it on the 3D printer, clearance it, and then clear-coat it to make it stick, so I had to do a lot of things.

It is difficult to mount the jet engines when it comes to theTeslas.

They are all aluminum. The car is made of metal. It's difficult to attach it to the car because it's not made to hold any weight. There's a good thing about the modular nature of theTeslas. The body of the car, the high-voltage battery, the rear drive unit, and the front drive unit all come together as one piece. I just added a sub frame.

After mounting the engines, Matt needed to give them a fuel supply, so he filled the trunk of the car with a fuel tank that could hold up to 100 pounds of fuel. The engines can run on hydro diesel. He spent $15,000 on the whole project.

The thrust of Matt's car was put to the test. He achieved a 0-to-60 time of 4.38 seconds with EV power only, but his second run was over a full second quicker. Matt says he was able to get 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds.

It was also cold, but I was really impressed with how much it reduced my 0 to 60. It was impressive.

He took the car on the highway, threw it into neutral, and reached a top speed of 61 miles per hour.

I would find a better way to attach it to the car if I did this again. It wasn't enough for me to change anything. It was cool to show that thrust can reduce the time. That was fascinating.