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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.
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
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The RFID could be done properly. The handles pop out as you are within a meter of your door. Then the car starts while you are sitting. It isn't like a gas car starting isn't really a big problem. I don't know why if i'm sitting in the front seat I'd need the car to be off. The reasons you would shut off a car in that position aren't present in a full electric car.
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.
They (Tesla) can't make it affordable. That's why they have to make it luxury. No one will pay those prices without those extra features.
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!
Don't be an idiot. There are always ways to blunder a usability invention but saying that this idea is a usability nightmare is ignorance.
Lexus has been doing pretty much the same thing for quite a while now, and the current system works really nicely (I don't know the radio technology they use though). You just walk up to the car and pull the handle -- if you have the fob in a pocket it will open, otherwise it won't. When you sit down you push a button to start the engine (naturally the car checks your personal fob and adjusts mirrors, the seat and radio channels to your settings).
Not having to dig for keys really does improve usability.
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.
the stupid car turns on, wasting gas
In a Tesla ?
Squirrel!
"WTF? What if I stand near my car and don't want it to open or start up?"
Funny you said that. Renault, the french car manufacturer, had this kind of technology a few years back. The car would unlock if it detected you were nearby.
In later models they decided to put a big lock/unlock button on the RFID card. It happened that people were not so trusting on the technology and were never sure the car was really locked. ( in case of theft, this is a critical difference between getting your money back from the insurance or walking to work for the next few years ) So people relied on old school: go inside house - drop the RFID on the table, go back outside and check the car is unlocked. I had a colleague doing exactly that at work - drop its keys and go back in the parking lot to check the car is locked. Kind of silly.
They had all other kind of little problems linked to theft or general annoyance. At the gaz station - you are too close to lock your car, yet your are not in and some thief could steal something in it. People washing their car were annoyed to have the car contiousely locking/unlocking, ...
That's one of the most excellent summations of Tesla Motors I've ever read. Whenever they come up there's somebody who says "That's great, but why don't they make it affordable for me?" and the answer is, as you said, that right now they can't.
The problem in making an affordable, mass-marketable electric vehicles right now is the cost of batteries. At present you have three main choices: Lead/acid, Nickel-Metal Hydride and Li-Ion/LiPoly.
Lead/acid cells are cheap (relatively) and are the prime choices for hobbiest EVs, but they would be hard to sell in a consumer EV because (1) they're large and heavy compared to the power they provide, making it difficult to make a car with much more ~100 mile range, (2) they take a long time to recharge (many hours) and (3) they wear out in a couple years. You can make a pretty affordable EV with these (indeed, there are plenty DIYers who have), most auto-buyers would not be willing to make those sacrifices: Why pay for an EV when you could get a regular car for the same amount of money (or less!) that can drive 3+ times as far without stopping, can be refueled nearly instantly rather than having to be left to charge overnight and doesn't require you to replace a $1000 worth of batteries every few years? So basically lead/acid is a non-starter. Some people might be willing to deal with their difficulties, but most will not. BTW though, if they do still sound interesting to you, look into building/buying a DIY EV conversion, it can be very fun and there are tons of nerds that will help you out.
NiMH and Li-Ion/LiPoly diminish a lot of these troubles by having better energy/weight ratios (more range) recharging faster (NiMH in a few hours, Li-Ion/LiPoly even less) and lasting longer (NiMH is better in this regard, Li-Ion/LiPoly will have to be replaced much sooner). An EV built with either of these, like Tesla's cars, can't match every feature of a regular car, but they are much more acceptable to consumers because there is less of a sacrifice and you still get the advantages of an EV (cheaper energy costs, less pollution (depending on what your source for electricity is), better energy efficiency, better source of hippy smugness, etc.). The problem is that while many consumers might drive a car like this, most of them won't buy/i> one because NiMH and Li-Ion/LiPoly batteries are expensive enough that any car based on them would (at present) cost more than most people would be able or willing to spend.
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.'"
About as well as the rest of the ELECTRIC CAR.
-=Bang Bang=-