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Tesla Teardown Reveals Driver-facing Electronics Built By iPhone 6 Suppliers
Lucas123 writes: The Tesla Model S gets attention because it's an EV that can go from from 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 4.2 seconds and can travel 265 miles on a single charge. But, a teardown of the vehicle by IHS Technology has also revealed that Elon Musk avoided third-party design and build routes used traditionally by auto makers and spared no expense on the instrument cluster and infotainment (head unit) system, which is powered by two 1.4Ghz, quad-core NVIDIA Tegra processors. IHS called the Tesla's head unit the most sophisticated it's ever seen, with 1,000 more components than any it has previously analyzed. A bill of materials for the virtual instrument cluster and the premium media control unit is also roughly twice the cost of the highest-end infotainment unit examined by IHS.
"powered by two 3, 1.4Ghz, quad-core NVIDIA Tegra processors"
Couldn't find those details in TFA, but from (the much more readable) article at: http://recode.net/2014/10/14/w...
seems to imply that should read:
"powered by two 1.4Ghz, quad-core NVIDIA Tegra processors"
...instead of outsourcing everything, they actually design it in-house? What an amazing concept!
So it's expensive, but at least you get what you pay for.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That's gonna look like you're driving around with an 8-track in there in ten years.
Oh, wait, people aren't supposed to keep cars that long any more.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why the iPhone mention? (yeah, I know, clicks).
It's a Tegra chip, Apple doesn't use Tegra.
But I guess mentioning Asus, Sony or even Microsoft is not trendy enough.
"Two NVIDIA Tegra processor modules are at the heart of the electronic components in the Model S, which "command a sizable price tag," according to Rassweiler. Here is a look at how they work."
Um no... Nearly all of Tegra3's design wins (including 2012 Nexus 7) were due to it being cheap...
Also, how is this news? It's been known for ages that the Tesla HU used Tegra3. http://www.theinquirer.net/inq... (March 2013) - and I've seen documentation dating back as far as 2012 that Tesla was using the T3.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
... you're driving it wrong
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The head unit has more than 5,000 discrete components...
That's characteristic of small-volume production. If Tesla were making enough units, they'd have more custom ICs made to get the parts count down.
Those are for systemd.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe it is the real reason the auto dealers are trying to block the sale of Tesla cars? People are going to start to expect to get what they pay for in their vehicles. They can not have ideas like that going around, it would cut into the profits!
Of course, the failure rate might be intentional. Your ithing (apple, Samsung or other) is supposed to be obsolete as soon as the new model comes out, so that you replace it. I'm guessing Tesla is taking the same approach; their market is the same set of people who buy throw-away electronics, not people who are driving trucks for 20 years.
will they bend? This is top comment so do your thing people.
it's an EV that can go from from 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 4.2 seconds
According to their site, it depends on the trim. For the base 60kWh RWD version, it's an EV that can go from 0 to 60 mph in about 5.9 seconds. The current RWD P85 is the one that does it in 4.2 seconds, and the upcoming AWD P85D brings that down to 3.2 seconds.
Tesla also costs 200 USD to make!
From the IHS website:
"A license is required to access this content. If you have a license, please login."
No thanks :(
It has nothing to do with nude photos of Natalie Portman either.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It seems to have only it's displays by the same companies that supplies the iPhone, not the actual electronics.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Why wouldn't they just provide a simple docking station, allow the docked device access to the car speakers and stay away from building their own navigation and music players? They still think they can hold their customers up for ransom by demanding 1800$ for an integrated navigation system or 1200$ for the music player. No, just put in good speakers and allow us to bring our own devices into the car.
The lack of imagination of the auto makers is astounding. WiFi is what 15 years old? iPod is 10 years old? Why didn't they build a car with WiFi that will connect to your home, down load daily news, weather, traffic reports into the hard disk 10 years ago? After missing the boat then, now they are coming up with walled gardens of WiFi, memory storage in the car etc.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
let me guess... the car doesn't run if you unplug the radio?
I cant stand the way they integrate radios so far into a car now that you have no option to replace it should you want to. I don't care how good this system is, many people who buy the car wont want it. I should be able to swap it out for anything I want. When I replaced my fords "Microsoft Sync" radio a while back it killed my entire dash. I had to spend $200 on a translation computer to replace the bit of the radio that controlled the dash.
Seriously, there's already an industry standard for car radios, screens, audio data, remote control, everything. Do us all a favor and follow industry standard.
Nothing says luxury like simulated wood grain accents.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Not sure if this "news" is an ad for Tesla or for iPhone.
Help, please?
A 100 year old steam car can be kept running. A 70 year old Ford can be a daily driver. What will happen to an electric Tesla when the first capacitor on the control panel CPU craps out in 10 years? Will spare motherboards be available? Will you be able to drive the car when the computer controlling the battery cooler dies? Or will it become a brick? That central panel isn't the radio, it is indispensable to the operation of the vehicle! BTW I've driven a Tesla S Supersport and it is a lot of fun to drive and a worked very well.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
My Garmin Nuvi had some cool features that depended on 2G, like using Google search instead of just built-in, and also checking movies, weather, etc. It also used that to get traffic data, instead of whatever other traffic data services are available. Now the 2G wireless is going away, since the carrier won't renew the contract, so there's no more traffic data :-( But at least it's a separate GPS, so I could replace it if I wanted to. (Instead, I use the AM radio you dislike to listen to Traffic Every 10 Minutes Radio.)
When the satellite XM radio free-with-new-car subscription on my current car ran out, no problem, that just meant there was one button on the dashboard that was no longer useful; the most likely interface to become obsolete is the Bluetooth cellphone support. There'd be a lot more risk of obsolescence if I'd gotten the hopelessly-overpriced navigation/radio/etc. console only that came with the fancy trim package (which also had the bigger engine that I didn't want, and the spare tire I really did need, and pushbutton combination door lock I'd also have liked.) While I like having a remote-control door lock, which is probably already insecure, it's built in to the keys, which means I have to carry a big clunky not-waterproof key system with me instead of a probably-waterproof slightly clunky RFID key like my wife's car has or a simple key like older cars - really annoying when I'm going surfing.
Digital speedometers might be lying; analog speedometers also might be lying, especially if there's a problem with the cable, or you've put on different sized tires.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'd expect most of them are sensors for the various battery and motor things, or components to connect the sensors safely to the other electronics (opto-isolators, etc. to keep potentially high random voltages and currents from frying the whole system.) Once you've turned the analog data into bits, even with small-volume production it'd be fairly easy to use an FPGA or programmable microcontrollers to do the rest, rather than building lots of custom discrete parts.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's an electric car. The electronics are obviously going to be both very different, and far more complex, than other cars, so they need a lot of in-house talent to design it. Is using that team all that surprising?
They also had the goal (which is it now abundantly clear they achieved) of creating a Really Nice car that Just Works without a lot of glitches that would be siezed upon by nay-sayers. And they had to do it on a start-up schedule because they were burning through their investment money.
Who has time to deal with outside vendors and finger-pointing standoffs with those constraints?
As SpaceX has shown, when trying to do something revolutionary, vertical integration really helps. You outsource commodities that have many other buyers, for which manufacturers can achieve economies of scale that you can't. Doesn't apply to custome designs.
And on top of all of *that*, if they went to the same vendors as the Big Three automakers, they'd get spied on and possibly sabotaged in an area they hoped to make a competitive advantage. So it would be actively dangerous to ask Panasonic to take on the project.
It's interesting, but not the tiniest bit surprising.
No, besides disliking competition in general, auto dealers and car makers have two big reasons to try to block Tesla sales
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
building a dash which clips a few of in the current generation of I-pad.
Few cars now have a true analogue speedometer. Even in the 90s, most cars has an electronic speedometer with an analogue readout - i.e. there's a digital sensor at the gearbox, which sends the data to the instrument cluster and it moves forwards a motor attached to the needle to the right position. Even with this setup, it is designed to overdisplay the speed a little.
I've interfaced with the car computer via OBDII a few times, and the speed readout from the OBD port is always 2-3 MPH less than the speedometer, even though the source for both is exactly the same. I also used GPS to check the speed, the GPS speed exactly matches the OBD speed (although the GPS readout lags a little). However you're right, changing the tyres can change the speed a little, both the OBD and the speedometer will be a little out.
The point of my post? *ALL* speedometers lie.
This is exciting. It's like two whole OUYAs in the dash!
Spedometers lie by design; they must read between true and 3% faster than true. Since tires change size with temperature and pressure, they're designed to read 2% over so the manufacturer doesn't get a huge fine for one being a little out of the tolerance.
No matter how pathetic it is, you just can't stop running your cocksucker on here. By association, I'd have to say that you, too, must be pathetic.
Bitches about bad solder joints? Check!
Doesn't understand why something new is wanted by others? Check!
References 74xx IC's as if that ancient junk gives him street cred? CHECK!
Has a 6 digit UID? Checkity check check!
You forgot to tell all us whippersnappers to get the fuck off your lawn, grandpa!
So let me get this straight. You were not able to change your HU to a model of your liking, until you did. But it broke everything until you bought the correct part you didn't know about because you were out of your league? I mean I know Charliemopps would be chewing some n00b ass on here if some scrub programmer was armchair quarterbacking some JAVA discussion or something. But ol' Charlie knows it all and don't need no stereo "expert" to tell him what the hell a CAN bus is! Oh hayyyyyeelll nah! You old bastards make me chuckle! I hear the Amish still build pretty fucking sweet horse carriages if you can't deal with modern cars so you might wanna check into that!
*sigh* you can replace it with an aftermarket EFI system, too, instead of carbing it. Just because the part doesn't have Ford stamped on it, doesn't mean it can't work on it! You can directly swap another Ford EFI engine in. You could do any number of things other than carbing it or scrapping it. You just aren't using your imagination or you're terribly lazy. Where did the hacker culture of Slashdot go? I thought this was supposed to be the year of the Maker?
Also those that just have to have OEM parts amuse me. You fell for the hype. It's cool though, it's your money you're wasting.
I still want to know why using your phone in a car is a bad idea while embedding a small television screen in the dash for "infotainment" purposes is acceptable. There are enough idiots on the road who can't stay between the lines. For #$&*#! sake, don't give them another distraction.
That's a nice theory, but when you start splicing electrics in a car, you're fucked. You're going to start getting all sorts of corrosion and vibration problems. OEM wiring harnesses are amazingly reliable. However, star cutting and they go to shit fast.
Oh, right, I never owned a 90s car :-) My wife's 1985 car lasted until 2001, my 1987 van lasted until 2012 (with one engine replacement), and I never played with the digital busses on either my 2012 car or my wife's 2001 car (which IIRC only had the dumber version of OBD, not the current CAN bus.) I suppose I should try that some time. Both of those cars have the electronic speedometer with analog readout you refer to.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Elon Musk is a fake and his car is a fake.