Elon Musk is like clockwork. On a regular basis, as bad news hits Tesla or SpaceX, the tech entrepreneur pulls a rabbit out of a hat. This usually takes the form of some carnivalesque new product that will neither make it past a prototype nor see the promised release date.

This past weekend, Elon Musk bestowed upon us a new detail about the upcoming Tesla Roadster and it was a doozy.

In other words, it was a really big rabbit.

ELON MUSK UPGRADES CHITTY-CHITTY BANG BANG

Elon Musk says the new Tesla roadster will have a SpaceX package which will allegedly – and of course that means it won’t – have rocket engine thrusters on the car that will allow it to hover.

Yes, like Doc Brown’s DeLorean in Back To The Future 2:

Then again, maybe it’s just so that Elon Musk can explain away why Teslas keep exploding.

IS THERE A PROMISE ELON MUSK HAS NEVER MADE?

This is Elon Musk at his finest. He makes this ridiculous promise of space-age technology that might work in theory but will never become a mass-market product. Nor is it likely that anyone beyond self-absorbed Hollywood celebrities would buy one.

More importantly, there’s this wee problem regarding regulation. The NHTSA would have to approve such a car. The FAA might even have to approve a car that doesn’t spend 100% of its time on the ground.

Tesla lovers are quick to point out that Elon Musk is merely using hyperbole to stoke excitement about the roadster. What Musk is really saying is that the roadster will have incredibly powerful thrust, allowing it to accelerate at an amazing rate and be able to go very fast.

IT ISN’T JUST HYPERBOLE, IT’S DUPLICITIOUS

Yet herein lies the eternal problem with Elon Musk. There’s nothing wrong with stoking excitement about an upcoming project. The problem is that he goes way beyond this with everything he does, and there is duplicitous intent with it.

Elon Musk is a rent-seeking charlatan. Everything he says and does is designed to impress the bureaucratic clowns in the government who have billions of dollars to hand out and can be easily duped into giving it to “the guy with the flying car.”

The government is not the only sucker in these deals. Elon Musk has raised tons of money from established companies who should know better.

Like the classic con man, when the final product is released, it bears no resemblance to the pie-in-the-sky promises. The slick video of a Tesla being whizzed underground by a Boring Company tunnel and accessories didn’t exactly come to pass. We’re still waiting for the promise that in 2016, 98% of the country would be covered by Tesla Supercharger stations.

Maybe the new Roadster can take us back in time and make that happen.