Elon Musk, Tesla CTO Talk Model X Details, Model S Upgrades

joe5 writes "Tesla Motors tries to keep product details quiet for the most part, but in a recent Q & A session in Norway (Teslas sell extremely well there) Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the company's CTO JB Straubel discussed some interesting nuggets about the Model S, the upcoming Model X SUV, and the company's planned Model E sedan."

Comments

First he has to fight the main stream FUD

[bazmail]

And good luck to him!!!



Hooray for Beta. I love it. Fuck off whining babies. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Best new feature:

[schneidafunk]

Since the summary is unsurprisingly lacking any details, I found this feature the most important:

"Tesla is shooting for a battery cost for the Model E of 30 to 40 percent less per kilowatt-hour than the Model S. This will help Tesla hit its price target of $30,000 to $40,000, competitive with the BMW 3-Series. Part of the cost reduction will presumably come from the huge "giga-factory" Tesla envisions to build Model E batteries."

Re:Best new feature:

[Kjella]

Reading comprehension fail. Model X is their upcoming SUV, bigger and probably as expensive or costlier than the Model S. Model E is their planned economy model, presumably a smaller car, weaker engine, smaller batteries. They're going to be very different beasts.

Re:Best new feature:

[BasilBrush]

The gullwing doors, however, really look like a stupid idea. Sure, they look great, but I would be surprised if they are anything but inconvenient unless you have lots of parking space.

On the contrary, it looks like they need less space than convention doors. They are not like the ones on McFly's DeLorean. They are double hinged. If you can drive into a parking space, you can open the doors.

Tesla naming like mercedes

[slew]

Seems like Tesla is attempting to follow Mercedes...

S-class - top of the line expensive (100K)
X-class - baby SUV (to come out real soon now)
E-class - something for people that envy those that own a S-class but don't have enough money
C-class - crap that ruins the company's reputation

I wonder when Tesla will announce the C-class...
Mercedes seem to think there will be success with an A-class below the C-class, we'll see how many people they can get to part with their money for that badge...

Re:Tesla naming like mercedes

[phobos512]

And since I forgot to mention it, only in North America (and maybe China - but heck, they think Buick is prestigious over there) is Mercedes seen only as a prestige brand. In Europe, there are plenty of Mercedes rental cars and taxis. Inexpensive cars don't ruin a company's reputation - they provide capital to develop things like the next S-Class.

Re:Tesla naming like mercedes

[WindBourne]

nope. Mercedes invested very little. They own less than 5% currently. OTOH, Toyota did a lot. There was a lot from Mercedes that was on the roadster, but very little on the Model S (and I think that most of it is gone).

Confusing TFA

[CanHasDIY]

So, the article* talks about 3 different models, the S, the X, and the E, in a very mercurial way, that leaves me asking more questions than I got answers to...

- What's the projected price point for the Model X?

- What are the features/specs of the Model E, other than the (currently vaporware-based) price point?

- What will be the price difference between a current Model S and one of the new ones with all the fancy new additions, like AWD and hill assist?

Really, TFA reads more like a press release written by a schizophrenic, than the results of a "town hall" Q&A sesssion.

Which doesn't surprise me, considering the source is greencarreports.com.

* No, I don't watch the videos on articles. If you can't be bothered to type out the transcript, I can't be bothered to care.

Re:Best new feature: cost

[WillAffleckUW]

I should point out that Toyota, Ford, Fiat, Honda, and even Chevy are all rolling out $26,000 to $30,000 all-electric cars.

One assumes this is not for the US markets where electricity primarily comes from coal, but for the 90 percent of the US GDP-creating middle class that lives in places where electricity comes from solar, wind, nuclear fission, and hydroelectric sources (mostly the West and NorthEast).

For us in these areas, solar is cheaper than coal, and wind is cheaper than oil. Which makes a full tank of electricity cost about 1/10th to 1/20th the cost of gasoline.

Re:Allow me to be the first

[Soulskill]

We're not banning people for anti-beta comments.

The amount of people complaining about the beta across multiple stories and multiple days should be enough to verify that. If not, it's easy enough to test for yourself. What's been surprising to me is how many comments and emails we've seen asking for us to ban people/delete comments about the beta protest.

Side note: we do ban (and have always banned) commercial spammers and bots that try to flood us with traffic. The folks that do that like using proxies, so if you use a proxy, it's possible you'll end up on one that got banned for that reason. If that happens, you can switch proxies or email us at banned@slashdot.org.

Re:Model X is the Wrong Model

[CaptSlaq]

Have you looked at the pictures that have been released? Some would say that the X *is* a hatchback. Bigger than a golf, granted, but still the design is firmly in the hatch territory. They call it an SUV because the nomenclature of "station wagon" has huge negative implications, and hatchback is codespeak for "cheap car that's almost a station wagon" in the US. [url]http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx[/url]. The third row will be unusable of you're of normal adult height due to the roofline.

He just understands nature of income distribution

[swb]

He just understands the nature of income distribution.

Until he can achieve significant improvements across the board in batteries in terms of capacity, cost and manufacturing efficiency, a Tesla car will be on the wrong side of affordability for the middle class. His cars will not sell and he will lose money.

However, if he targets the upper end of the spectrum, people who are able to spend $50-80,000, he has to offer them an SUV choice in order to not lose sales to people who don't want a sedan.

It's like that with anything anymore. Marginally expensive durable goods that used to be targeted at the middle class no longer find a strong market there because there's not enough income.

Re:2012 Lincoln MKS, 2013 Cadillac CTS

[businessnerd]

Car and Driver seems to disagree with your Lincoln claims, but your Cadillac statement seems to be accurate
2012 Lincoln MKS: http://buyersguide.caranddrive...
2013 Cadillac CTS: http://buyersguide.caranddrive...
Both cars get around 1 MPG less with AWD compared to their 2WD counterparts with same engine. And for the Lincoln, SAME ENGINE is the key word. The AWD Lincoln is able to achieve the same MPG as the FWD one assuming you upgrade to the EcoBoost engine, which, while yes is more powerful, is a completely different engine, so not a proper comparison of MPG from FWD to AWD. Even for the Cadillac it is hard to draw any hard conclusions without more information. There can be a lot of variability between the trims, deeper even than what is presented on the surface. I would not be surprised if the transmissions are geared slightly differently or if there was any weight saving measures taken for the AWD version. You could be correct, though.

Re:2012 Lincoln MKS, 2013 Cadillac CTS

[Anonymous Coward]

He talks about no loss of efficiency with the SAME ENGINE. Check your examples, one does not have the same engine, the other doesn't really maintain efficiency if you check around for tests.

Model S #1 in Overall Sales in Norway in December

[Sepodati]

Quick search found this: http://insideevs.com/tesla-mod...

Perseverance: 1st rule of an organized strike.

[rmdingler]

Wow. You couldn't make it one day.