Enzler mocks Musk’s wall-climbing Tesla and its uses

SRF columnist Simon Enzler has turned Elon Musk’s new Tesla Roadster into a vehicle for jokes about parking, military spending and testosterone. In a satirical column published by SRF, Enzler describes the car as a “martial” low-profile vehicle with cold-gas rockets that can briefly fly and use vacuum fans to climb walls and stick there.

Enzler says the flying feature does not impress him: he once caught air in an old used Golf estate car between Herisau and Abtwil, after speeding over a level crossing on the Appenzell railway. He says a mobile speed camera photographed him just after landing.

The Tesla’s ability to cling to walls, he suggests, could help in city centres short of parking spaces: drivers could park on the third floor and climb through a window into the office. He also proposes using a version with cleaning cloths on its front spoiler to clean dams. Other possible jobs, he jokes, include planting potatoes under pressure or cleaning Zurich’s streets despite its leaf-blower ban.

Enzler argues that the car should have a useful purpose beyond serving as a party trick for a select group of billionaires. He compares it to a drone and suggests the Swiss Air Force could buy an estimated 1,200 Tesla drones for the roughly 6 billion francs budgeted for new fighter jets. Soldiers sitting safely in the hinterland could steer them along roads near the border, he writes, before launching a “Swisscom-style” attack called “the last mile in flight.”

The column also calls for a testosterone limit for drivers, in addition to the alcohol limit. Enzler compares an inexperienced 20-year-old driving a 600-horsepower car at 100 kilometres per hour through a 30-kilometre-per-hour zone to someone pointing a loaded pistol at a pram. If such a driver passes a test, he jokes, the person should receive a gun permit rather than a driving licence.

Enzler closes by speculating about what Musk might develop next if SpaceX and Tesla merge, referring to a reported estimate that Musk has 14 children with at least four women.