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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."
taking it home, and noticing a bad pixle, what a buzzkill.
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 only thing I really want to see is how this thing is charged.
Credit card
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.
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I wonder what it takes to damage this screen? Could a 4 year old kick it in? Or would it crack if some large cargo in the passenger seat shifted into it?
If a "squashed jelly bean" happens to be the most aerodynamically efficient shape, then so be it, I'm glad. It's convergent evolution in action.
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.
Keep in mind that although they have finally shown the world their new saloon car, it won't be available for purchase until Q3-Q4 of 2011. Which means we have almost three full years before this car will actually be rolling out onto a street at all.
Think about any concept car you've ever seen, and then think about all of the nifty conceptual bits that weren't there 2-3 years later when the car actually went to production.
All of that said, I like the look of the car, but I'd prefer something smaller and not quite so heavy. Then again, as a single male, I'm not the target demographic for a large saloon that seats seven. I wish they'd produce something like the Roadster for the price point of this car.
It sounds like parent is being snarky but he's not. The U.S. has no public transit. There are probably less than a half-dozen major urban markets where you can survive without a car. Everywhere else it's pretty much a daily necessity. And I speak as one who doesn't own a car -- I am a bigtime anomaly and my choice not to drive does force me to make sacrifices.
Breakfast served all day!
Since you're still here, I assume neither was the ace of spades?
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.
It's not a problem. Just don't sell one of these to Schroedinger.
I hate printers.
From tfa:
The Model S unveiling is Tesla's last-ditch hope at a future in the business. Although it does not have financing for the production of the Model S, or even a site for a factory to produce it, Tesla plans to take deposits for the $58,000 vehicle from customers, a move at least one Tesla executive deemed fraudulent, prompting his departure.
I don't know if this source is trustworthy, but, if it is, then shouldn't the real headline have something to do with this?
Hey look at that S Car GO!
It's amazing people still think the big oil companies killed the electric car and not the inherent difficulties of making a car run on electricity and still have an acceptable range.
The big car companies have crushed [almost all of] their electric cars. The projects ran at a loss, but not a year-to-year loss. Cancelling the programs made no sense unless the goal was to crush the technology itself. If you can't put fuel into it, the major automakers won't put it on the market. Veggie oil is not a major threat because it is already illegal to utilize it as a road fuel. All the gov't has to do is start cracking down on that sort of thing. In rural areas it is not unusual to have spot inspections of diesel vehicles to check their fuel for red dye, indicating that an off-road fuel was used in them, and that you haven't paid your road taxes. Homemade biodiesel is subject to even more issues; I suspect most home producers of biodiesel are in violation of Methanol storage restrictions. The federal government forced California to abandon emissions restrictions which would have been undesirable mostly to oil companies - automakers are more than capable of meeting the requirements.
If you don't think Big Oil is running this game (hint: practically everyone at or near the top of the Bush administration profited directly from investment in Big Oil) then you're not paying attention, plain and simple.
The S-Series Tesla is a very nice electric car, which it should be for the price of 55 grand! It still is not a car I could drive even if I could afford it.
What's the classic quote? Electric cars are only capable of serving the needs of 95% of the population, something like that? The vehicles could be vastly cheaper if they were produced on a wider scale. Tesla doesn't have the benefit of economies of scale to work with, so every car is expensive. Their business plan has always been to produce first the very expensive roadster, then the moderately expensive sedan, and later the inexpensive sedan (or was it coupe?) Your objection about the price is a stupid one. Your objection about the vehicle not serving your needs is valid, but the fact that it doesn't suit yours bears little weight. You are one person.
I don't think I'm alone in not being able to reasonably buy two cars - an electric one for most stuff and a gasoline one for when I need to go on a longer trip. The S-Series would not even be able to get me reliably to a city 2.5 hours from my home, like Boston - and it's not unusual for me to drive to a city like Boston.
Well, I do have two things to say about that. First, it's not clear that it's actually sustainable to have the majority of people driving themselves on long trips no matter what the vehicles are running on. Second, most people make those kind of trips astonishingly rarely. For people with those usage patterns, we have car rental. You can take public transportation to your destination, then rent a vehicle.
Amazing that even at this price, it still isn't there yet.
Amazing that you're so egocentric that you think that because it doesn't suit your needs, it's not a salable product.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lets get the skinny.
Is this car :
1. priced to be less than $25,000 ? If not, forget the mass market. Keep diddling your rich customers (declining market) for your kicks if you like.
2. designed with the right looks/capacity ? After looking at the pics and the trunk space, this car passes that test. Someone with real world needs can actually use this car for everyday use, instead of being a fashion statement at the Golden Globe awards.
3. designed so as to go into mass production (>60,000 cars per year in the first year, and potentially rising later) ? If not, forget it. This is related very closely to 1.
4. designed so that (battery pack cost / time to replacement) is no greater than $500 / year. If not, forget it. No one in their right mind would want even a cheap electric car that costs a few months' mortgage per year to upkeep.
See, its not so difficult to get a practical car on the road, if your priorities are straight. However, the fact that these people are teaming up with Mercedes is not a hopeful sign of any desire to go past the Hollywood set. In other words, they are setting themselves up for failure (out here in the *real* world). Had they gone with a cheap Japanese or Indian carmaker, it might have been exciting.