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Tesla Reveals Its Model X Gullwing SUV
thecarchik writes "The new, all-electric Tesla Model X crossover, which was introduced on stage by Tesla CEO Elon Musk (also the man behind SpaceX), isn't exactly a step toward the mass market. But it does take on premium utility vehicles with three rows of seating for up to seven, better maneuverability than a Mini Cooper, and a 0-60 mph time of just 4.4 seconds—that's faster than a Porsche 911, Musk jeered. But the real oohs and ahs of the evening came when Musk showed the Model X's much-anticipated 'falcon doors' — essentially gullwing rear doors, behind normal hinged front doors." The expected price before tax-credit shenanigans? $60,000-$90,000.
At first I read X Wing.
FFS. I suppose it gets spoken about, but a massively impractical non-solution.
I thought Tesla was going under or something. If they aren't, then why haven't they?
What is "bettb |rer maneuverability"?
It's unusual to see /. mention a company that has a lick of design sense unless it's either Apple or someone on the defending end of a patent infringement claim from Apple. So when can we expect to see a lawsuit over the rear doors having too clean of a profile?
(To the humor-impaired: the second sentence is a joke.)
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
$100K+ for an SUV with a 30 mile driving range. yeah that will sell in huge numbers. and no fuel generator unlike the volt. sooo practical.
I can't wait for Jeremy Clarkson to review this Electric Sports Car/SUV with Gull Wing Doors. I am for sure he will have some great superlatives for how amazingly stupid this thing is. This SUV is the answer for the question no one asked.
mnewberg.com
I'm going to pistol whip the next guy that says "shenanigans".
How exactly am I going to open gullwing doors in my garage? SUVs are already taller that a regular car.
Gone!
Or is that just marketing-speak?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
From the Slashdot summary.
But it does take on premium utility vehicles with three rows of seating for up to seven, bettb |rer[sic] maneuverability than a Mini Cooper, and a 0-60 mph time of just 4.4 seconds - that's faster than a Porsche 911, Musk jeered.
I know that "bettb |rer maneuverability" is just what I'm looking for in my next vehicle.
(kinda like "bettb |rer proofreading" in my next SlashDot article)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Never underestimate the failure of consumers to do math, or "cool factor". That said, A less expensive new car saves you 30-45k. That opportunity cost can be used to buy gas, or to invest in something like a telecom that yields 5-6% and will pay all your gas for the year. What's more, 30-45k invested wisely will maintain or increase in value, whereas the additional 30-45k for this car depreciates right out the door.
As a thrifty consumer who does math, I thank all the early adapters and cool kids.
Elon Musk just doesn't seem to add up.
He is only in his 30s, is on his second marriage, has 5 kids is the CEO/venture capitalist for 2 companies, both doing innovating engineering.
I'm guessing it is just a matter of winning the lottery by being born rich, born intelligent, born with a innovative/push forward temperament, born to parents who will bring those gifts out ( or at least not fuck up the kid enough to shut those things down ) and lots and LOTs of caffeine.
Am I missing something?
How does any person, let alone one his 30s end up with all of those situations?
Really? They spend millions of dollars designing this thing and they never thought of the obvious problem that occurred to you 5 second after reading the description. Look at the pictures in the article. It's not a tall vehicle to begin with, and the wing doors are hinged so they don't actually project much above the top of the car.
Have you ever been somewhere where the parking spaces are pretty narrow. Then someone parks real close to you so that they have enough room to get out of their car - their passenger side is on your driverside I'd like to point out. Now, normally, you can get your door open a little bit and squeeze in. With a gullwing, you'd have to get on your hands and knees to crawl under the door to get in.
There's a reason why gullwing doors aren't on today's vehicles is because they are not very practical.
You young'ns don't remember all those failed cars that had them - except the very high end sports cars which are really for bragging rights than for useful transportation.
at work! enjoy!
he busted his ass getting to where he is. Instead of bemoaning a setback it probably caused him to try again, if not harder and smarter. You won't find the likes of him posting to some website bitching about how things aren't fair, how he don't get his fair share, how others should be giving he stuff, and so on and so on.
The biggest barrier to success in this country is yourself. The second biggest barrier is the government at all levels, the third is your competition. Money comes in somewhere on this list, not much further down.
You end up there by doing. This means that you put in many weeks if not years of ridiculous hours. You do it with a clear goal in mind. You compare your current position to your goal at all times and you make decisions on what to do next based on that.
See my tag, if you live comparing yourself to others you will never be happy.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You know, while the all-wheel electric drive may do nice things for the handling, I really have trouble imagining a car that can easily seat 7 having better maneuverability than a Mini Cooper (and only the less sporty versions, at that). I won't say it's impossible, but I'd definitely need to see some numbers before giving this claim any credence.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Its ugly enough and almost big enough that the wealthy Americans might buy it.
Or did the proofreader miss a comma ?
Putting gullwings on such an ugly vehicle is as the Amerians say "polishing a turd".
THESE EARLY about who can ran7 series of debates However I don't
Literally, not one story about Tesla going out of business has come true, not one story about how the Model S would cost a Billion dollars to build, not one story about the lack of sales between the end of the Roadster (no more Lotus bodies) and the beginning of the Model S eating through their cash too quickly.
Try reading the stories about their technology, how even if their car sales tanked they'd have a profitable business on the battery pack and drivetrain alone. The runaway battery pack fire risk on the Chevy Volt, can't happen with a Tesla battery pack. Tesla fixed that problem on the Roadster back when GM was still saying it couldn't be done.
Tesla does have a $450 million loan from the DoE to build the manufacturing and come out with the Model S, that's probably kept them defying gravity longer than some folks would like. That and Musk running himself ragged, living with friends and putting all his cash into the business for a while.
Faster that which porsche 911?
http://www.zeroto60times.com/Porsche-0-60-mph-Times.html
Faster than any Pre1990 Porsche? Yes, I guess so. That would be pretty impressive if it were 1990. Really, 4.4s is still very impressive, for any car. But...
1993 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6 0-60 mph 4.3 Quarter mile 12.5
1995 Porsche 911 Turbo 0-60 mph 3.8 Quarter mile 12.3
1997 Porsche 911 Turbo 0-60 mph 3.6 Quarter mile 12.1
1997 Porsche RUF CTR-2 0-60 mph 3.4 Quarter mile11.2
2011 Porsche 911 Turbo S 0-60 mph 2.9 Quarter Mile 10.6
There are a lot of Porsche 911 variants out there. A large fraction of the modern ones list sub 4.4s times.
(0-60 times often have largeish error bars)
-- "Oh. This guy again."
They're garage cars that rich people can buy and tell their friends about over dinner.
They're expensive conversation pieces. If I owned five cars and was looking for a sixth, I might get a Tesla.
I don't blame the company. The engineering of the situation is impossible. But I feel like they're not even trying to make an affordable car. There are little companies all over making stripped down electric cars at a reasonable price. And Tesla apparently is catering to the "price is no object" market. That's fine... people simply need to realize these cars are about as practical as personal submarines.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Do all of your cars need that type of range? Most people only need one of their family vehicles to have it.
An "SUV" is just a safety equipment class, invented by Reagan because station wagons had too many required safety features for Detroit to make ten billion percent profits on them.
It's about time someone created a car with plenty of room to get in and out. Now I don't need to have my mom help me tuck in my fat rolls just to fit through the tiny doors of our Hummer.
So I guess the Model X will only be marketed to people in non snow getting areas of world? Any amount of snow or ice that builds up on the car during driving or while sitting in a parking lot are going to end up INSIDE the car once I open those gull wings. My back seat passengers are going to be pissed if they have to sit in a snow drift for the drive home. Looks like a "neat" car, but for the majority of car users who experience some sort of Winter weather it is quite impractical.
Obviously, with a name with Elon Musk , they guy's destined to be a Bond villain.
Why else would he be building ICBMs ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It Better-B!
What's its towing capacity? It takes more than a third row of seats to make an SUV, you know.
Also, did anyone else have trouble getting through the first link? I swear, with all that unbridled fawning I half expected the 'article' to be punctuated with an image of Nelson Ireson giving Elon Musk a B.J. in the back seat.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
to have made so much money by sheer luck that he can now indulge all his hobbies!
Dumb question from fly over country. Can you actually buy a Tesla automobile? Do they sell well? The company gets a lot of media coverage considering I've never seen one of their cars on the road.
- How do I move my whole family, and pick up grandma from the hospital.
- How do I fit all these packages, or cakes for delivery.
- How do I shuttle people around town?
The answer to those questions is "buy a station wagon or a minivan".
The SUV only answers one question "is there a less efficient, structurally compromised (high COG) alternative that car companies can sell to me at a higher profit in exchange for allowing me to do all those mundane things while maintaining a pretense of ruggedness?"
The cards you get dealt in life are always luck (i.e. money/brains/temperament/drive/health/family). Then it's what you make of your luck.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
The thing has quite a lot of storage space - even with the third row up. All of the seats were designed to go flat. This has a ton of storage space.
It just looks flat compared to other SUV's, but calling it "a hatchback" seems wrong.
Now Wagon on the other hand...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am not a fan of Wing doors, but I love the dual motor AWD.
This gives you:
Total power control at both ends with no center differential issues (binding, too much slip, too slow reaction).
4 wheel regen. I read one study that showed a significant increase in regen capture moving to AWD.
The doors have issues such as you have to duck to get in and they are hard to close.
If you watched the video you'd know these doors have no such issues. If there is enough space for you to stand between your car and an object next to the car, you can open the doors. The doors also open high enough thanks to the folding that you can actually step into the car fully upright!
From the looks of it the Model-X won't even fit in most garages with the doors open.
If you had actually "looked" you would have seen the video where they showed the car parked in a garage with the doors up. They specifically said that if you can open an SUV hatchback in your garage the doors will fit as well. Basically, they took the incredibly simple step of saying "how high are most garages with the door open" and made it no higher.
I wonder how many of those SUV mall mommies would want s to plugin there SUV all the time just to be able to drive 100 miles.
Range is the real question to ask about...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
* My car has a bigger lifetime carbon footprint than yours!
The initial production of an electric vehicle produces more carbon, but the lifetime carbon footprint for any electric vehicle is lower than a gasoline or diesel vehicles.
Do. Not. Want.
Luck in being the right age for the Dot Com boom, to get his initial fortune.
As for SpaceX, he is lucky Lockheed and Boeing had poor management. They could have made flyback boosters a few decades ago. They could have had leaner rocket manufacturing, but shareholders demand profits, and fooling the DoD is generally a good way to do that.
Lucky that the state of California coerced major car companies into building electric cars. Lucky that GM got rid of some EV1 engineers afterwards, that Elon could hire, and use their experience. Lucky in that the price of oil tripled from its 100+ year avg price of $30/barrel several years later. Lucky that Obama and the dems got control in 2008, and gave Tesla a $400 million loan. Elon was near bankruptcy at one time.
So, in addition to being talented, Musk has had a lot of luck.
Actually I think you are right that "Bus" is really a better term than "wagon". Like you say it's pretty tall but also very long, after watching it for a while it seems like the vehicle must be rather huge...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Gullwing doors are just bad. Scissor doors can be good but usually aren't. The best are sliding doors, and I wish someone would give us four of THOSE on sedans, SUVs, et cetera.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I live in the Canadian prairies. The nearest city with over half a million people is 435mi away. Electric isn't going to cut it for that with current tech. My Matrix will do it without refueling if there is no headwind.
The sliding doors on my vans that I've had in the past have been a major PITA. They are efficient and necessary in some cases, but when they break down they break down horribly. I'm not suggesting that the gull-wing doors on the Model X would be any better, but the KISS principle applies especially to doors: Keep them as simple as possible.
The sliding doors on my vans that I've had in the past have been a major PITA. They are efficient and necessary in some cases, but when they break down they break down horribly.
How is this different from a hinged door? Either way you get lots of warning. A sliding door offers something a gullwing doesn't, the door actually gets out of your way. With a gullwing it's still there overhead lurking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Looks boring, even with those gullwings.
Just give me a simple two door with Gull-wing doors.
Also what is price of a hover conversion and a Mr. Fusion to power the battery? I am in the need of a replacement vehicle since my customized DeLorean was...um..hit by a train.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
As someone that was seriously considering the X6 in a few years, this is a welcome entry to the field.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
I'm sorry, but what's next, calling a mini cooper a SUV? this tesla is no SUV, it's just a regular car..
A hinged door, at least an ordinary hinged door, doesn't have nearly so many moving parts and therefore is much less likely to break down. For new vehicles, I realize that isn't nearly so big of a deal, but in time sliding doors can be a real pain to work with, particular with older vehicles. They just need a whole lot more attention.
One problem that you've glossed over here on the sliding door, however, is that the door can only be as long as the side of the vehicle, or you have to invent a really exotic system to physically carry the sliding door. Generally there is a track on the bottom of the vehicle that the door slides upon, and that must be at least as long as the door itself. That track BTW is also one of the sources of problems, if it gets gummed up with "stuff". That is something you don't find with any other door system.
One nice thing about the gull-wing doors (or more like the Model X) is that there isn't any real limit on the length of the door. They can be as large or as small as they need to be with the design of the vehicle being used. There is a support mechanism that must be put into place to hold the door up while it is open (so it doesn't go slamming onto your hand or fingers), and that is also where you are most likely to see some sort of mechanical failure as well.
An ordinary hinged door doesn't have those problems.
Have you looked closely at the hinge system on the typical car? Each hinge is usually made out of two main pieces held together with pins which go through sleeves. Each hinge is held on with one to four bolts, each of which has a bolt hopefully with a washer. And then you either have some springs and maybe some mounting hardware for them on the hinge, or a separate device with its own pins, sleeves, and bolts to hold the door in position. This device eventually wears out and has to be replaced; likewise the pins and/or sleeves.
Sliding door systems have similar levels of complexity, and while the track needs to be as long as the travel, you don't need as much travel out of a sliding door to get it out of the way as for a swinging door, especially on vehicles with upright seating arrangements like minivans, pickups, SUVs, crossovers, or even most estates. The sliding mechanism can descend from the track, which is pretty much enough on its own to prevent anything exciting collecting in the track and interfering with its workings. The door latch doesn't even change much, it just gets installed at another angle. And as a final major advantage, it's much much easier to motorize, which can be a big help to the elderly or handicapped.
So in summary, all types of doors have similar problems, but they are generally solvable in each case, except for gullwing doors, which are the most retarded, but sliding doors offer the most benefit to the motorist.
It's good they only used gullwing doors here, but it's still unfortunate that in a rollover the back seat passengers are going to have to get into the front of the vehicle before they can exit via a doorway, that the doors can't be opened where there is little overhead clearance, and so on. I thought Mercedes and DeLorean proved this and that we could all move on. You could solve some of the problems with a folding gullwing, but not all of them, and that just adds complexity. They're a gimmick searching for a purpose beyond gimmickry.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since it was obviously compromised, I mean designed, by one.
I come here for the love
You sound boring, even with that sig.
What about sliding vertical doors?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.