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.
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.