Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, declared earlier this week that the business wants to achieve a 0–100 kph pace of less than a second for the future Roadster supercar. He does have an ally in Mate Rimac, the CEO of Bugatt-Rimac—sort of—even if many have subsequently rejected the allegation.

Rimac gave an unexpected yes response when questioned on his Facebook page if he believed the claim that it takes less than a second to complete. "Using thrusters, it is feasible," he states in the Facebook post. "We did the simulation."
However, that confirmation comes with a very important caveat.

"Problem is, you release the air in two to three seconds and then you have a lot of dead weight that you are carrying around (tanks, compressor, valves, nozzles etc.)," Rimac says. "Same with fans—they just give you more grip but you need something like 30,000 newton-meters on the wheels to accelerate below one sec 0-100 km/h, which means you need massive motors, inverters, gearboxes, driveshafts, etc.

Additionally, according to Rimac, the vehicle must be "super light," which isn't usually the case for battery-powered vehicles. Even his hypercar, the Rimac Nevera, weighs more over 5,000 pounds and can reach 100 kph in less than two seconds.

"So thrusters are really the only way to go," he explains. "But they bring a lot of downsides as well." The Roadster, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 2018 suggestion, would contain "ten small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around the car." Theoretically, the Roadster would require that kind of force to reach its sub-one-second 0–100 time. It is unclear, though, how that would go down with the NHTSA.

We will have to wait and see if Elon's assertions are validated. Later this year, the new Tesla Roadster is expected to make its premiere.