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Tesla Announces Dual Motors, 'Autopilot' For the Model S
SchrodingerZ writes: Nine days after Elon Musk hinted about a new project, Tesla Motors has unveiled the P85D Sedan. This is Tesla's latest car design, capable of feats not yet seen in electric vehicles. The four door luxury car is able to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in a mere 3.2 seconds, an acceleration similar to the McLaren F1 super car. While the exterior remains the same build as the standard Model S, the interior will have a second motor in the front of the car to complement the rear motor. The D models will also have a slightly greater range of 275 miles on a single charge, 10 miles more than the 85 and P85 cars. Safety features have also been enhanced, adding "adaptive cruise control and the ability to read speed limit signs, stop itself if a crash is imminent, stay in its lane, and even park itself in a street spot or in your garage." Musk explains at the inaugural event, "this car is nuts. It's like taking off from a carrier deck. It's just bananas." The "D" version is available for the 60kWh, 80kWh, and P85 cars, and are expected to start shipping in December of this year.
So, 0 to 60 miles in 3.2 seconds... a range of 275 miles... So, it has less than 15 seconds of autonomy.
Let's hope it doesn't take much longer than that to recharge.
Another cool car for the 1%ers. Sounds like a lot of fun to drive.
Like getting usable range out of the thing? A Honda Civic hybrid gets close to 500 miles. Sounds like someone at Tesla forgot what they were doing.
It wasn't my fault officer, the car say the highway sign and thought that I-95 meant 95mph
shoot I get close to 500 mines in my Jeep Grand Chrokee, however lets talk about fuel costs. I think a trade off can be made.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
This is how electric will win. Performance.
When I was in High-school I raced RC cars for fun, and I remembered by gear head friends giving me crap about working on "Toy cars" until I challenged one of them to a drag race, against his real, full sized muscle car, and won hands down. The torque from an electric motor is just monstrous. So much so, that I suspect if they continue to build electric sports cars, the gforce alone will become a safety issue. My drag car would pull 100amps off the starting line and could melt battery cables, and the thing only weighed 2lbs. It'd be doing the scale equivalent of over 1000mph when I got to the end of the track. Yes, yes, I know at full scale wind resistance is different and such, but still. I had a hunk of carbon fiber doing 100mph in a few feet for Christs sake.
The sorts of people that hate electric because it's a "hippie thing" will embrace it because the fact of the matter is that, in the end, it just performs better. Can't have hippies beating your Cudda with a Prius.
Random video I found on youtube as a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Wouldn't say I'm an early adopter. I got mine in March. Still love it as much today as I did last week. Still an awesome car.
Did I wish I waited a year? Well, maybe just a little. But I'm sure a year from now the Model S will have even more features.
Perhaps the autopilot can be retrofitted into the currently on-the-road Model S. After all, the other upgrade over the last year have been available at a mild markup.
As for the dual motors, pretty much the same thing.
As an aside, I wonder how this is going to effect sales. I know a few people who have been hesitating as it wasn't an all wheel drive car. As it is, as of last week the wait list was still over two months.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Each of the three versions of the Model S will come as a D model. The price of the 60kWh battery model will go from $71,070 to $75,070 for the dual motor system. The 85 kWh car goes from $81,070 to $85,070, and the P85 jumps from $105,570 to $120,170.
No indication in this article if you can get the adaptive cruise control and other fun high-tech add-ons that come with the "D" (dual motor) version without paying for the D upgrade.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And because it is an electric car, we get 73% of the purchase price back here (Netherlands), because of tax related stuff. So this car effectively costs a quarter of the listed price. Not bad.
If there is a charging station, you drive for about 4-5 hours, pull in for a 30 minute lunch and let the car charge, drive another couple hours, have supper and charge, drive some more to your final destination and charge over night so you are ready to repeat the next day. 275+200+200 = 675 miles if you have a reasonable number of charging stations along your route.
It's not a disposable car. It recharges.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
That's crazy. I would have expected a cap on how much of a rebate you can get.
It does make the sports car driver feel really stupid when he gets passed by a mom driving 3 screaming kids to school.
where can I watch the hole event and not just some clips?
I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they made a model that wasn't so damn big.
I don't respond to AC's.
My dad had this idea years ago. Why hitch up a trailer with a generator in it? I mean, I know the car would have to be made to accept a charge while it's turning the wheels, but that's the crux of the Volt which is an in-series hybrid.
Your around-town jumper then becomes a long-haul vehicle. Probably not as efficient or cheap as a purpose built tool, but it'll get you there.
So there has to be something more to this idea because it hasn't happened yet. What am I missing here?
Elon Musk solves the ubiquity problem!
Give us model E, the 40 K sedan. The rich people have paid enough money and you have built the credibility. Continuing to make play things too expensive for the masses is not how you are going to have long term impact or create disruptive technologies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So there has to be something more to this idea because it hasn't happened yet. What am I missing here?
It's not a bad idea, and the TZero had a trailer like that as an option.
I think it's not done more often because it's not that practical: in particular, dragging a heavy trailer around is awkward and reduces your car's range, and a generator powerful enough to recharge your car sufficiently while it drives is going to be fairly large/heavy. Factor in the additional cost, and most manufacturers figure the cheaper and simpler approach is just to keep the car light and maximize its range that way.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Okay, let's say you drive it hard so range is reduced to 200 miles. To cover your 400 mile trip you would need to charge once, possibly twice. At a Supercharger it takes 50 minutes, although they are boosting them up to 150kW so it will come down to 40 minutes in the next year.
You are making a day of it, so are you really saying you drive 400 miles without any kind of break? Many ICE cars can't drive that far on a single tank, especially if you drive them hard, so presumably you at least stop to fill up once or twice. I'm really struggling to see how supercharging isn't a solution.
Also, I hope I never meet you on the road. After 400 miles with no stopping your ability is going to be compromised.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Supercharger gives you 170 miles in 30 min.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
“Safety features have also been enhanced, adding "adaptive cruise control and the ability to read speed limit signs, stop itself if a crash is imminent, stay in its lane, and even park itself in a street spot or in your garage."”
I need that right now in a two ton all-wheel drive SUV so I can drive sanely while yelling at my kids in the back seat. Please Elon, hurry up and take my money!
60 mph is 26.8224 meters per second. At 3.2 seconds, that's 8.382 mps2 / gravity (9.8 mps2) = 0.85G. I'll bet it's even higher off the line.
When Tesla recently announced their certified used program, people were asking, "What would someone trading in a Model S buy? Another Model S?" Now we have an answer to that question.
reduces your car's range
I don't think you understand what this generator is doing. It extends the range of the car. The exact opposite of your complaint. You know how you have to worry about the range of your electric car? A generator removes that worry, because it turns the electric car into an in-series hybrid. You just have to plug it in. You have as much range as you want as long as you can find a gas station and have a few minutes to gas up.
heavy trailer
a generator powerful enough to recharge your car sufficiently while it drives is going to be fairly large/heavy.
Uh... a heavy trailer is the sort of thing you get from UHAUL. This thing would be about of small as you could make a trailer. Any smaller and you'd want it on a roof-rack, or like one of those bike-racks they have on the back of cars.
A generator "powerful enough" would probably be along the lines of... you know... a car engine. Like that little thing in a Prius. Because it's moving your car.
just to keep the car light and maximize its range that way.
And that maximum is not going to satisfy the conspiracy of eric. A generator on a trailer appeases a swath of users that occasionally want to travel interstate distances.
Beside the point. It CAN be charged in 30 minutes.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
D is for diesel?! What? Oh...
My BMW 330xi can get 475-500 highway miles out of tank when driven conservatively. By 'conservatively' I mean that I try to keep my speed as even as possible, minimal burst acceleration, coasting down hills, etc. I can get that 475+ mile range while maintaining 80mph. I drive from Seattle to San Francisco once or twice per year to visit family. I try to arrange things so I don't have to fuel up in Oregon (I'd rather pump the gas myself), and generally can make the entire 840 mile trip with one stop in under 12 hours.
With that said, I would trade my car for a Tesla with no hesitation. I would be willing to deal with the charging stations on long trips, or even just not visit my family. They are in-laws after all.
My dad had this idea years ago. Why hitch up a trailer with a generator in it? I mean, I know the car would have to be made to accept a charge while it's turning the wheels, but that's the crux of the Volt which is an in-series hybrid.
I was thinking of car trains. An engine in the front (large-van-sized?), a power bus connecting the vehicles in the train. Preferably fully automatic driving of the whole thing. After all, larger power generators are more efficient, and you get better aerodynamics out of it. All you'd need would be two standardized retractable arms back and front.
Ezekiel 23:20
250 miles is completely reasonable for an electric car. With most of them getting 100 miles or less, that is astounding. And most gas cars get 350-400, so it's well over half of that but there is the rare gas guzzler which only gets 250 miles in range.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I had the impression the Model S has two motors between the rear wheels, one for each wheel.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
A good EV like the Tesla with a >500 mile range requires a Li-Unobtainium battery.
I'll take a >200 mile range EV over a gasoline powered car no matter the range and not complain one bit.
I don't think you understand what this generator is doing. It extends the range of the car. The exact opposite of your complaint.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. Of course it extends the range when you're running the generator. The rest of the time, however, it reduces the range, because you're pulling additional weight and adding additional drag.
So yes, overall the range is extended, just not by as much as you might think -- and not, in most automaker's opinions, enough to make it worth the hassle.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You are assuming there are conveniently placed superchargers. The general rule is that there are not. Two of the routes I take most frequently only have superchargers near the destinations. Completely impractical.
For example there is only ONE supercharger in all of Canada.
Then there is the additional fact that even using a supercharger takes a significant amount of time.
The Tesla is great for commutes, but for road trips forget it.
It wasn't supposed to be funny. It was a troll in funny clothing. It is an obvious stab at the fact electric cars supposedly have a shitty range. This guy evidently hates electric vehicles or is just tired of /. Tesla stories. Don't feel bad at all. You had it right the first time!
I've always saved until I could pay cash. My first car cost $75, lasted 3 years, sold for $75. My last was $12K, 1 year old Caliber, wife loves it.
Elon, get back to me when your cars are reasonably priced.
. . . It's a trailer. The rest of the time you unhitch it and leave it somewhere. That's kind of the point.