Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Releases First Official Photos of Model S Sedan
Thelasko writes "After several pictures of the Model S were leaked onto the internet, Jalopnik has the first official pictures of the Model S. One of its most striking features is its massive touchscreen in place of the center console."
Quote from the third link:
"it has a 3G connection all the time."
"There's HD, AUX, USB and iPod input to the car"
"there's no start button. You just sit there and wait for the car to detect your RFID presence."
Keep on building kinda cool stuff that noone actually wants & they'll keep having their lunch eaten by the Japanese & Koreans.
My pics.
Call me old fashion, but the center console of a car is a place where I prefer to have physical controls that don't need to be looked at in order to use. Perhaps they plan to back it up with some other type of UI, such as voice recognition or a HUD?
The cow is dying anyways for food. Why do we need to waste it's skin just so some hippies can feel better about it. The Native Americans used to pay honor to the animals they hunted by finding a way to use every piece of the remains, letting nothing go to waste.
Besides, that's imitation leather anyways.
Alright, the /internal/ tech might be neat, but...
It looks just like EVERY OTHER CAR put out in the last 20 years.
Seriously, have car makers forgotten to make a car look like anything other than a squashed jelly bean?
Tech might be nice, but it's just as dull and unimaginatevly plain looking as just about every other soulless melted bean blob out there.
Dissapointing.
You must be under 25.
You're so enthralled by glassy shiny things like your iPhone (and everyone else's) that the idea of physical controls with physical, tactile feedback is automatically old hat.
The very fact that you had to spend time learning to type on your little Apple-branded toy proves the inappropriateness of touchscreen controls in situations where you should be focusing on something else - like, say, driving. With physical controls you can 'feel around' for something. With a touch screen, you HAVE to look.
I also call bullshit on your "eyes closed" assertion. Try it. You won't finish a single goddamned paragraph. No peeking, now.
Yet another step away from user-maintainable automobiles.
The authorized service mechanics are going to love this.
Ok, we get it. This car is almost, but ultimately, not for you. But I think it is for anyone who A) lives w/in 100mi from a repair shop, and B)
1. likes public transport every once in a while, or
2. has a 2nd vehicle, or
3. lives with someone with a vehicle they can borrow, or
4. takes long trips so seldom they don't mind the public transport
OR, anyone who has enough money to afford sending the car off for repairs and has a concern for the environment, or doesn't like sending money to the middle east, where some ends up in the hands of al queida, or believes in global warming, or likes to show off their tech, etc.
Does anybody remember how GM Volt prototype looked like. I said to myself "wow, I want that car". When they start to actually selling that car, it look like Seat Toledo of my grandpa.
The US has public transportation in some places. In many places that have it however, you will not "lean back and relax" for a length of time comparable to what it would take you to drive.
I know somebody with a medical license suspension. For something that the system is designed to do, it's OK. Downtown San Jose to Mountain View? Not bad. Suburban San Jose to Half Moon Bay? Yeah, you can do it--in, IIRC, 5 or 6 hours. That's assuming you catch the transfers. He got part way by PT, and I drove him over the hills.
Then there are some economic factors that work against it too. Caltrain from Redwood City to San Francisco? A day pass is $8 (maybe less if you ride often, but probably not astoundingly less). If two people want to take this trip, that's $16. Now, if we carpool, the car burned $8 worth of gas, and this was when gas was $4/gal. By splitting the gas, we've already dropped the round trip cost to $4 a head.
This is why a car pool wins big vs. PT. You can't really "train pool"... it's already pooled. A 4-person carpool from Redwood City to SF would cost $2/person if they split the gas. You have to multiply $4/gal gas by a factor of FOUR to beat that... $16/gal! Of course, the 2-person carpool breaks even with the train at $8/gal. Isn't gas in most EU countries about $8/gal? Maybe that's what you have to do in order to make PT economical. It won't happen in the US, because it's a political non-starter. The only way for gas to cost that much here is because oil costs that much, and then in that case the PT system has to raise prices too. The only way to make PT the better option is to tax the living daylights out of gas, and use the proceeds to build PT. I don't see that happening unless actual gas shortages arise, and by then it would have to be hardcore, emergency PT buildouts just to save towns from isolation--real, dire, WWII style gas rationing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Cars are, first and foremost, for getting from point A to point B. The ideal is to do so comfortably.
The touchscreen looks like it would do anything but. I can imagine:
1) The backlit display interfering with night vision, even at a very low brightness level
2) Being unable to do simple - trivial - things, like change the radio station or skip a CD/mp3 track without looking away from the road.
3) Being able to quickly and efficiently finding (visually) the appropriate widget to tell you the information you're looking for.
That touchscreen doesn't even have widgets of a size and type which help you quickly identify what you're looking for! They look like mock-buttons, ffs! Weather/temp in particular.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Want to know a bigger buzzkill? The realization that the touch screen sucks in a car. I realized that when I drove a 1987 Buick Riviera with touch screen controls (my first car, and it was over a decade old at the time). It's neat and all, but it is so much nicer to be able to feel the controls you are reaching for while driving down the road. Even once I was used to the controls and could change radio presets without looking, it was still a pain to do some things without looking (notably the climate controls). That is kind of important, and it pains me to see such a bad move (IMO) from a company I have been otherwise rooting for. Not a deal breaker by any means, just disappointing.
Freedom is assumed. Then they try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
The range is already short enough.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When was the last time you had to pay for tyres, licence, insurance, oil, maintenance, spares, hire vehicle, exhaust, brakes, lights, wipers, parking, speeding tickets etc ... on public transport.
You can't compare the fuel costs of a car to public transport and complain about the price of public transport. Compare the real costs, including those caused to commerce by congestion caused by too many cars.
I used to give a guy a lift to work, but he never once gave me a penny towards it, even though I asked. So I stopped doing it. Even if you pay part of the fuel bill, it doesn't mean you are covering the costs of the ride being available in the first place.
A navigation system is usually mounted in a head-up location, though. Moving your eyes down to the centre console in a moving car to find navigation info is truly wide-screen surround-sound epic fail. Tactile knobs and switches are also much better for things like AC, demisters, etc from both a useability and safety point of view. This was a bad idea when I was studying ergonomics in the early '80s. It's still a bad idea today.
Squirrel!
The hybrid Aptera still looks promising though. I think Tesla kinda blew it. The sportster is cool, I live near their HQ and see them all the time. It may end up as a very special collector car. Hmmm... the roadster might be a better investment than the company.
I am willing to bet, that their production line will be full for the first 3 years of this car. As it is, the roadster is a total sell out even at double the price. Aptera? I am guessing that they will sell OK, but will not be years our for sales UNTIL the next oil crisis. At that time, the Atera's sales will occur quickly (just like the prius). But I would still guess that Tesla S will sell more in their first month, than Aptera sells in their first year. The simple fact is, that Aptera's price will appeal to lower sells, but the body style and the company will not. OTH, Musk is selling to those WITH LOADS OF MONEY. In addition, it is to their liking.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's not a problem. Just don't sell one of these to Schroedinger.
I hate printers.