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Tesla Makes Improvements To Model S
An anonymous reader writes "In a lull between product launches Tesla intends to keep making improvements to the Model S according to Elon Musk. Tesla will automatically push software to the Model S fleet that will help the car learn the driver's habits and the navigation system will offer directions to avoid traffic jams. 'This year, Tesla is offering only the single model, the Model S that is EPA rated at up to 265 miles on a single charge, the most of any electric car. The company's next model won't come until next year, when the delayed Model X crossover goes on sale. Musk says the holdup has centered on making sure its signature design element, gullwing doors to make it easier to get in the rear, works properly and is leak-proof. "Getting the door right is extremely difficult," he says.'"
In other news, Linus makes a point release!
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
And here's the giveaway...
Please tell me it's Waze. Best Nav system in the world - it's saved me from more than one ticket...
The gullwing doors are going to be his white whale.
If they wanted to do something cool with the doors, they should have gone with electric sliding doors for all four doors. Front doors slide forward, back doors slide backwards. No worries about clearance above the car, or even next to the car, they seal correctly, they don't stop you from putting a roof-rack on it and because mini-vans have been using electric sliding doors for decades all the bugs have been engineered out years ago.
OK if the doors are leak proof, but will they drip water/snow/dust inside when you open them after driving in rain/snow/dusty weather?
Because regular doors don't ever do that?
Congratulations, your post is the silliest anti-Tesla whine ever.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And that right there is the problem. Nobody drives a minivan to look cool. People drive Teslas to look cool. A Tesla that looks like a minivan would not look cool.
It's not that I actually believe your story - but you tell it well.
Regular doors don't do that because they open outwards away from the car's interior, and none of the roof moves away. It could definitely happen on the Toyota Sera.
No worries about clearance above the car
Because this is a concern for a sports car, when most parking places are designed for vans.
or even next to the car
Gull-wing doors require less side clearance than standard doors.
they seal correctly
So do gull-wing doors, if closed with a proper path. This is the hard part, because the door system can't interfere with other systems, like the roof's roll supports. It's not an intractable problem, but it makes the overall engineering more difficult.
they don't stop you from putting a roof-rack on it
Also a big problem for sports cars, I'm sure.
mini-vans have been using electric sliding doors for decades
...And gull-wing doors have been around for half a century.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
And that's somehow news?
Well, at least we got it straight from the horse's mouth.
But it's not like gullwing doors are new or anything.
Some Tesla fanboi will probably mod this -1 for saying something negative about Tesla. Go ahead, you won't hurt my anonymous coward feelings.
I don't think it'd be that much of a problem. When you're rolling no snow accumulates on top. Opening doors in a driving rain or snow will cause problems regardless of type of door although it'll be worse with a gull wing. The whole point of gull wing is coolness over practicality anyway. If people want to be practical they can get a mini-van.
Regular doors don't do that because they open outwards away from the car's interior, and none of the roof moves away. It could definitely happen on the Toyota Sera.
Where on earth do you live? I'm in the lower Northeast, and rain and especially snow and dust indeed does get in the car when you open the doors - except the rear hatch - ironically the door most resembling the gullwing door. I mean, if only gullwing doors had this issue, we wouldn't need any other type of doors at all. Only the gullwings would allow anything outside the car, inside the car.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No worries about clearance above the car
Because this is a concern for a sports car, when most parking places are designed for vans.
they don't stop you from putting a roof-rack on it
Also a big problem for sports cars, I'm sure.
Crossover SUV != sports car. They are bigger, taller and commonly used to carry bicycles, skis, and other sporting equipment on their roofs. Crossover SUV's are highly utilitarian which is very unlike sports cars.
Are you saying no one will be able to copy him?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
mistakes in the Delorean. Really bad in northern climes where the seals would freeze, locking you in the car. Notice I said "one of", the Delorean had a lot of other issues, too.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Is it me or is this a really stupid idea? Just making the doors gull wing prevents you from putting: luggage on top, ski racks, bike racks on roof, etc. You know, the kind of things people would do with an SUV or crossover...
I guess you don't live in a snowy place? Opening regular doors does indeed drop snow from the roof into the car. Sometimes I remember to sweep the door seal off with a forearm, sometimes I don't. If I don't I need to remember to brush the seat off.
If he wants to be cool *and* revolutionary, he needs something more like this: http://www.disappearing-car-door.com.
Granted, these look like they'd be a nightmare in a blizzard or freezing rain, but I'm sure there's some way to engineer a fix. Or, alternatively, they could just make the doors slide vertically. That would have a similar 'cool factor' to a gullwing, except with the advantage of no clearance space needed, and would avoid the potential issues found with the disappearing door. Only issue would be that they would block the contents of a roof rack while open, but is that really a problem? How many people need the car doors open while retrieving their roof-mounted bicycle?
"automatically push software to the Model S fleet" So, either my car does a software update while I'm doing 50mph or the home office needs to know at any given moment whether I'm driving or not. For a car I own, I'd prefer the option to do manual updates.
Maybe it's some 13 y.o. Ukrainian boy?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Not only a Slashvertisement that links to an article with practically zero content... but largely a dupe to boot.
That doesn't happen in a Delorean. In fact if there's no wind you can sit with the doors open and they act as a shelter that prevents rain coming inside. The one thing that does drip is if there's lots of condensation on the inside of the door /window it drips onto the seat when you open the door.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Have a look at how a properly designed gullwing door is designed.
When the door is open there is a huge drain to direct water etc. from the roof to the ground (around the actual doorway).
Also when the door is open, the far end of the door is hovering outside the range where water etc. could drip inside the car.
In addition (unlike traditional car doors) when the door is open, it's hovering above the gap, acting as a roof, so that the actual rain doesn't get inside the car either.
It's quick but not quicker than "any combustion engine". I don't think it's even in the top ten.
Yes they do. Chevy Tahoe owners drive that oversized minivan hoping they look "cool"
Yes Modern SUV's are all minivans. none of them are capable of real of road anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They're a bad idea until they're not - just like everything else Elon has done. The man has super powers.
If they wanted to do something cool with the doors, they should have gone with electric sliding doors for all four doors.
I would like to see doors go sliding, but so far that means a dramatic weight increase. Not worth it. Normal doors aren't that bad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In addition (unlike traditional car doors)
...they had to mount the doors on that SLS AMG on explosive bolts so that you could still get out of the car if you managed to invert it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Surprisingly, Tesla appears to be somewhat conservative with their 0-60 times. They claim 4.4s for the P85+ but Motor Trend tested it at 3.9s.
The Roadster is still slightly quicker but it won't leave the P85+ in the dust and that's an impressive time for a 5,000 lb sport sedan
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I don't understand why we keep following elon around like lost puppies when he really doesn't do anything for the average person.
Well, he's making a lot of advances in electric car technology and is dropping strong hints that he plans to share those with the rest of the industry on a fairly generous basis. Selling premium-priced cars to the rich is a good way to bankroll that - in 5-10 years time the rest of us may well be benefitting from this work. I can respect that.
What he hasn't done yet is created a compelling alternative to the gas-powered car. The Tesla has a very clear niche where it might be practical if cash were no object: private garages and long, regular commutes of 50-100 miles: long enough to make you want to travel in a luxurious car, short enough to fall comfortably within the Tesla's range, home-based so you can recharge overnight.
I'd be OK with that if the Tesla website didn't try and push things like economy (no, you're not going to save money unless you conveniently ignore the extra cost of the car - but if you have that sort of money why would you care?) and how easy it was to make a road trip (...just start driving, then have lunch at a supercharger! On the newly-localised British site this advice is followed by a map that shows no superchargers in the UK)
I think they're on the verge of getting there: make that mileage '250 miles minimum)' rather than 'up to 265 miles (unless you get stuck in slow traffic and need lights, heat or air con)' and have supercharger stations every 50 miles or so (otherwise your useful range gets reduced because you have to recharge early or detour to charge) and you might have a viable care replacement.
There's also a scaling issue with chargers: I was looking at (non-Tesla) chargers in the UK and, superficially, its not too bad. Look closer, however, and most of those stations only have 1 or 2 bays - often one slow and one fast (with different connectors). Arrive there and find the bay in use (with the owners off having lunch somewhere), or out-of-order, and you'd be stuffed. You'd have to be so cautious about how soon to recharge that it would decimate the useful range of an EV.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Or someone like myself who has driven nothing but Hondas for 17 years and has never experienced any sort of electrical problems whatsoever with them.
OTOH I hear about plenty of electrical problems in vehicles of all kinds from people that abuse the shit out of their cars.
Elon Musk has said there will be a roof rack for skiis and other things (bikes, canoe?) not sure how he's going to pull that off. He's also promised 400m batteries, self driving (entrance ramp to exit ramp), better seats, 4wd and of course the megafactory and a sub $40k car capable of 200m range. Oh and Mars missions. Got to hand it to him, he doesn't think small.
I guess you don't live in a snowy place? Opening regular doors does indeed drop snow from the roof into the car. Sometimes I remember to sweep the door seal off with a forearm, sometimes I don't. If I don't I need to remember to brush the seat off.
As long as it has regular front doors it's not that big a deal, open it the traditional way, grab snow brush/ice scrape, wipe off rest of car and then open the gull wings. If it was all gull wing, it'd be different as you could get a lot of snow blowing into the opening as it falls off the opening door or from the rest of the roof. It's not a good winter feature, but it's not a killer problem either assuming they can keep the seals closed and the doors don't freeze in the winter.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
.Yes, but (this is crucial) SUV's and crossovers do not have sliding doors. The lack of sliding doors was a conscious, functional decision, where the function in question is "Get people to actually buy it."
Manufacturers are often (usually?) conservative with their performance claims. Still, the " will beat the crap out of any combustion engine" is ignorant and easily shown to be false, even when narrowing "combustion engines" to production automobiles.
What he hasn't done yet is created a compelling alternative to the gas-powered car. The Tesla has a very clear niche where it might be practical if cash were no object: private garages and long, regular commutes of 50-100 miles: long enough to make you want to travel in a luxurious car, short enough to fall comfortably within the Tesla's range, home-based so you can recharge overnight.
Exactly. It's an executive car - but that's a good place to start. Advance the technology and make it available to the early adopters to get the ball rolling. The biggest single obstacle to making long-range electric cars available to the masses is the price of the battery pack. The reason a Nissan Leaf is relatively affordable is that it doesn't have the huge battery pack needed for long range.
Now that Tesla has taken care of building the cars, and the charger network is expanding, it's on to scaling up the battery production, and that's where the upcoming Tesla/Panasonic battery factories step in. Aside from reducing battery costs and increasing production for the cars, they should be useful as storage for charging stations as well.
I know there's a lot of impatience (I want my electric car NOW, and Superchargers on every corner!), but starting a car company from the ground up isn't easy, especially when you're taking over a century of auto industry tradition and standing it on its head. I'm glad to see the progress that's already been made, even if it's still a long time before I could afford to go electric.
America needs more businessmen like Elon Musk and fewer like Donald Trump.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
That`s a rocket engine not a combustion engine.. still he should have used most 4 wheeled combustion engine vehicules rather than a simple `combustion engine` shortcut while referring to those.
I remember hitting the rear window defrost and have the hatch open on a less than 5 years old car.. And yes that was reproductible (and fixable..) but still showed a very bad design.
Comparing motorcyles and dragsters to heavy four-door sedans seems a bit disingenuous. There are electric motorcycles and dragsters. On the motorcycle front, how would your machine compare to the Mission RS (0-60 in less than 3 seconds)? Granted that the Mission costs a wee bit more than $6800.
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That`s a rocket engine not a combustion engine.. still he should have used most 4 wheeled combustion engine vehicules rather than a simple `combustion engine` shortcut while referring to those.
Top Fuel dragsters are internal combustion, not rocket engines, though they do burn "rocket fuel" (nitromethane).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VF0JwxQqcA
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Oh, one more cool Top Fuel video. This shows the fuel pump for a single cylinder. The pumps can flow ~100 gallons per minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGTbQuhhluY
Crazy stuff.
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That`s quite an interesting read :) He still should have limited his scope though, and I don`t think we will see production road cars using nitromethane to that extent for sale anytime soon.
And on Deloreans, the windshield is designed to be kicked out. At that point though, I don't care if my doors are in poor condition, the car is totalled.
Rocket engines very typically ARE internal combustion engines.
The definition of 'internal combustion' is that the pressures from the combustion gases cause the motion. (In external combustion engines, such as steam engines, the heat from the combustion goes through a heat exchanger and the working fluid on the other side of that does the work.)
In a rocket the exhaust gases push directly on the exhaust nozzle, and the interior of the combustion chamber and causes the motion, making it an internal combustion engine.
Some rockets (such as nuclear-thermal or solar-thermal rockets) do have a heat exchanger, and are not internal combustion engines, but not the common ones.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Actually, the fastest dragster, albeit unofficial, ever was a rocket car powered by peroxide.
Rocket dragsters were basically banned for being too fast/dangerous.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"It smacks of the big three in the 60s adding more and more chrome and fins to the same damned platform year after year. Model S is great. Now get cracking and sell me a 45K family sedan. Otherwise all the goodwill you have earned will evaporate like a gasoline spilled on the road in Mohave desert.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So it's not quite as fast as an Audi S6 which sells for about the same price as the Tesla, and is just as luxuriously appointed. And weighs about the same as well.
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Actually, most rockets would lose in acceleration to 60 MPH compared to a top fuel dragster. A top fuel dragster will do 0 to 100 MPH (160 kph) in 0.8 seconds, average somewhere between 4 and 5 Gs of acceleration for the entire run (the first quarter of the run at over 8 Gs of acceleration), and will cover the quarter mile in around 3.7 to 3.8 seconds. When you have upwards of 10,000 horsepower on-tap, and suck nitromethane (4 times the energy density of kerosene) at rates equivalent to a fuelly loaded 747, you can produce some stunning results...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There are quite a few sub-3 second motorcycles on the market, and most can be had for less than $15,000. For the price of the Mission, one could purchase one of these faster motorcycles, and a nice Jetta TDI sedan as well - and still have enough left to buy a few years of gas and service.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yeah, introducing nitromethane-burning vehicles (I use the term loosely) whose fuel consumption is measured in gallons per second into a conversation about mass-produced consumer automobiles is pretty silly.
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the engineers probably meant you to drink the gasoline, not put in a non-existent tank
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'm sure you can find a much faster electric motorcycle than the Mission RS, and probably for less money. It was just the first one that came up in a Google search.
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Doing a bit more Googling, the current fastest production motorcycle in the world is the Lightning LS-128 -- an electric, and the bike, by the way that ran away with the Pike's Peak challenge last year (granted that air-breathing bikes are at a disadvantage at 14,000 feet). Top speed is 218 mph, 0-60 time is below two seconds.
However that's #1 for top speed. For raw acceleration the current champion (also electric) is the Killacycle. 0-60 in 0.97 seconds.
Cost is an issue on these bikes, obviously, but for raw performance electric is unbeatable.
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A Chevy Tahoe is one of the few modern SUVs that don't fit what you are saying. They are still made on a full size truck chassis. So unless you're going to tell me Chevy Silverado Trucks have no off road capabilities, the Tahoe doesn't fit your rant.
The majority of other SUVs don't have the same kind of truck based chassis and are basically minivans.
unless some guys says a propulsion system is faster than "any combustion" engine. That makes this side thread germane.
No wireless. Less space than a Chevy Nomad. Lame
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
When you travel as a group of several skier/snowboarder in the same car, the equippement don't necessarily all fit in the back's ski trap.
You either have to pushdown one of the back seats (and lose one place for one gang member), or you put all the skis and snowboards on the roof (at a small mileage cost but you still have enough room for the whole team).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When I buy my next car, however, I do know it will probably cost between $50K-$100K, and involve several weekends worth of Excel and making Pugh charts, because I don't drop that cash on a whim.
Strange. Although my annual income has less digits in it than yours, I've put by enough savings to easily drop ~$70k on a car without needing finance, yet I would only worry about running costs if it ran on single malt and was lubricated with white truffle oil, because it is completely bloody obvious that the running costs are trivial when you could get a pretty nice car for half the price, and insignificant c.f. the value a new car uses when it rolls of the forecourt (...actually the BMW i3 range extender sounds more suited to my needs, although I'd probably need to rent a long-range car from time to time).
I'll save you at least one Excel weekend, though: buying the $50k car rather than the $100k car will save you $50k. $50k will get you 10k gallons of gas. 10k gallons of petrol will take you 400,000 miles - or 100 miles every day for 10 years (by which time I'm pretty sure you'll have fried a Tesla battery or two). The only way you're going to save money with the Tesla is if you like it better than the $100k car (and don't end up needing a second car for long journeys). No Pugh charts (whatever the hell they are) required.
The question I'd be asking is not "how much am I going to save on fuel" but "how much is a 3 year old Tesla going to be worth". I'd put my money on depreciation making fuel cost savings look like chump change... and the more fuel costs you save, the higher the mileage and the worse the depreciation...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
So then you literally believe that most Hondas, as in more than half, have serious electrical problems?
My $8,000 Yamaha FZ-09 does 0-60 in 2.7 seconds...
but starting a car company from the ground up isn't easy, especially when you're taking over a century of auto industry tradition and standing it on its head.
I'm sure Preston Tucker would agree with that thought.
Gull-wing doors require less side clearance than standard doors.
What about height clearance? In a sports car that already has a low roof it wouldn't be a problem, but I can't imagine the same is true for a high riding SUV type vehicle.