Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk Predicts 1,000km EV Range In Two Years, Autonomous Cars In Three
An anonymous reader writes: Speaking with a Danish TV show, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made a couple of interesting statements about Tesla's future. The company's Model S sedan advertises a range of 200-300 miles (322-483 km) depending on variant, average speed, and tires. Musk says the company will produce an electric vehicle capable of breaking the 1,000km (621 mi) mark by "2017 for sure." Later, Musk went even further, saying he expected "full autonomy" for Tesla vehicles to arrive in "approximately three years." He doesn't expect them to be legal at that point, as regulations will take time to catch up.
where do i sign up?
If the price is right 1,000 km range electric cars will signal the beginning of the end for IC engined cars.
If I was Elon Musk, I'm not sure that I would be gloating that the Model S cars that my car company is producing will be completely obsolete just three years from now.
I would like to see what the range is in non ideal conditions. With the radio on/ phone charging/ GPS running + heating/cooling the car
That 1,000 km range isn't an impressive once you understand he's manipulating the numbers. The current range on a model S is about 700km - if you drive on level ground at 22mph.
I understand that people need to be visionaries (and shills), however, with respect to autonomous vehicles, all these press releases, CEOs, VPs, and shills are either lying through their teeth or mean a very specific meaning of the word "autonomous" (e.g., drive only on specific streets, be able to take over within 2-5 seconds, don't drive at dusk/dawn due to lighting messing up camera thresholds, drive only in clear weather 'cause water and snow messes up a lot of other sensors, drive for at most 3 years [because they won't maintain the software longer unless you pay them a lot of subscription money], etc.). To date there exists no autonomous vehicle technology that is tested and dependable enough to be put on an arbitrary section of a road in North America under arbitrary driving conditions and that would meet Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) A as required. Period.
Yet, let the public dream of their autonomous vehicles that zip around. It gives you eyeballs and people drooling over it. The fact that they talk about autonomous "cars" and not autonomous freight trucks (for which the safety is much simpler) already shows you that they are just shilling for their company and eyeballs.
To his defense, he said "they *should* have fully autonomy". Yes, they *should* have that already today, but they don't.
This from the guy who said the Model X would be rolling off the line in 2013. He probably will deliver, just not that soon.
The Model S Model year 2015 cars actually already have this functionality. I imagine the 2017 model he's talking about is something more akin to "solving" the lack of GPS/Traffic data while outside of a major city.
When you can drive a Tesla from Seattle to NYC on a single charge, I'll be really impressed. That said, I'd also be impressed if it could be driven without your hands on the wheel for that entire distance as well. The reason I mention this route is because it has the most dead zones in wireless coverage.
Give us a 300km electric car with 4 seats that has a base model retail of $19,995 and you will freaking change the world overnight.
80% of the american population does not have the income to afford a car that costs more than that. 70% cant afford a car that costs more than $14,995. and with rent at criminal levels along with wages being doubly criminally low..... you need to offer a very low cost economy version for the poor people in the bottom 80%.
Make it charge from 120V 15A outlet only and these same poor people will be able to afford to charge it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's because the media is a piece of fucking garbage and take practically every goddamn thing that's said by anyone out of context. Oh, and the folks who run Slashdot do effectively zero checking on anything they post. /rant
Now the explanation: Prior to the answer Musk gave indicating that Teslas would do 1000km on a charge, he was talking about a recently set record where a dude (Casey Spencer) did 500 miles (~800km) in a Tesla Model S, driving at something like 24mph for like 24 hours. In that context, Musk said that similarly, a 1000km could be achieved in a Tesla by 2017, given battery density improvements of 5-10% annually. All that would be necessary would be a 20% improvement on the record by 2017. I might add that the dude who did this was in a 85kWh car going downhill for a decent portion of the drive and took into account weather effects, temps and whatnot to achieve his 500 miles. I wouldn't be surprised if the latest 90kWh Model S as is could do another 100 miles if tightly controlled in the right conditions (high altitude, ideal temp/wind), so really a 5% improvement in both 2016 and 2017 is all that's really being predicted here.
The full context of the interview is that Elon was making reference to people hyper-miling. ie. Driving about 40 km/h. Unfortunately, news outlets (including Slashdot) having taken this out of context. *** It is not true that Elon is predicting 1000 km range under normal driving conditions in two years ***
LOL. If that was so, his fans would be joining your side to continue with spewing CO2/GHG.
Make sure that you wipe your mouth when you move from one brother to the other.
Just attach a trailer full of batteries to a model S and you get your 1000km.
The range increase he has predicted is 5-10% per year. The 1000km number is for hypermilers who figure out the optimal speed and ideal conditions, then drive all day at 22mph or whatever for the bragging rights.
The real maximum range right now is around 300 miles, and in 3 years, it could easily be 350 miles. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bump when the Gigafactory comes online, as they may be able to build more tightly-packed custom batteries to increase density or otherwise incorporate new technology.
Anyone following Tesla knows full well that they are making engineering improvements every week, so every car is somewhat obsolete by the time you get it. But the cars are also so far ahead of anything else out there that there's no comparison.
I'm perfectly OK with a car being able to take over if I want it to -- so long as I can flip a switch and turn that off, and drive myself as I'm accustomed to. Besides which for a long time to come it'll just be an expensive option on luxury cars, not standard equipment on sub-compact economy cars.
In the meantime I propose there be reforms to driver education, driver training, and driver license testing procedures. We can start with doing away with this silly notion that attempting to enter a highway at 45mph when the traffic is going 70mph is 'OK, they'll slow down for you' just so you can save a teaspoon of fuel, we need to teach drivers to match velocities with the traffic. We also need to teach drivers to 'see' motorcycles and bicycles 100% of the time.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
...Who's sick of this guy's brainfarts being endlessly repeated & tweeted & written about like they were.... not brainfarts?
Uphill in the snow? About 0.01 (sitting there with the wheels spinning...)
I love driving, but I can't wait for the efficiency of only autonomous cars on the road. Regular cars can be confined to "race tracks" ;)
If all cars are autonomous and they communicate with each other all the time and the roads provide additional navigational help, then the cars could drive at nearly full speed all the time since they could know exactly what the other cars are doing, even that there's a problem 100 cars ahead. They could plan how they move at high speed during rush hour. If they need to brake suddenly they can apply the brakes in the split of a second, with the automated car behind it not rear-ending it. Merging into highways at full speed right between two cars with only inches to spare.
Of course, the bugs need to be worked out and the corner situations taking into account. It's going to take some time. But maybe in 20 years that's how it's going to be. When the highways are packed during rush hour, why should cars drive at less than 150mph if the cars make collective decisions and the road bottlenecks are worked out!?
Removing the human factor from transportation is going to be a revolution...
Also, imagine how Uber might operate! Empty cars, owned by individuals sitting at home or at work, driving around waiting for orders!
I would like to see what the range is in non ideal conditions. With the radio on/ phone charging/ GPS running + heating/cooling the car
The radio, phone, and GPS use a negligible amount of electricity.
The heater and AC use far more power, but still don't affect the range as much as you might think, because they do very little heating/cooling. My wife has a Tesla, and you can barely tell that the AC is even turned on. This isn't a big deal for us, because we live in San Jose, where the weather is perfect 90% of the time.
My wife also has a Tesla S85. On the freeway at 65 mph the range is about as advertised, 265+ miles. AC on a very hot day reduces that about 5%.
Around town, stop and go 0-40 mph actually has better range, approaching 350 miles.
I think that ten years from now, not a single wealthy person under 21 or over 70 will be driving a car. In 20 years, replace "not a single wealthy" with "only very wealthy American", as we flee the dangerous practice of allowing humans to drive on public roads.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I need more than 300 miles, I live in a very rural, isolated area. Nearest city worthy of the name is 280 miles away (and it's not the one I'd pick as my first choice to visit, either. The air is seriously polluted there. Outright stank.) 600 miles -- more or less what he's talking about -- would be awesome. I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat if it was under $60k.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A research team from Kentucky has released their findings from a government-funded study.They have found that the software in Tesla Z vehicles effectively cheats on tests and that performance figures quoted are grossly exaggerated.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Found a conspiracy theorist.
I know money is fungible and all, but not paying taxes because society is trying to achieve some policy goal is not the same as taking money that you did not earn at all. All of Tesla's competitors are subject to the exact same tax incentives.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The legality of automated driving will be sussed out the second someone gets pulled over asleep at the wheel while the car drives them home from the bar. If its a movie star, billionaire, or senator it will be quickly legalized, if its joe six pack it will be deemed illegal for several years.
The AC in my leaf does have any trouble with Texas heat. Better than my last gas car.
I'd love these California dwelling CEOs to come up to Canada (or even, *gasp* Buffalo) in the middle of February and see how their "self-driving" cars do. Winter is a 6 month reality here and I'm not very interested in a "self-driving" car that works or less than half the year.
I've found with our C-Max Energi the AC will hit about 2.5KW of power usage for maybe the first 10 minutes of running, so it's usually good to pre-condition the car before unplugging it. After it's been running for awhile it tends to maintain a draw of maybe about 500 watts from what I can tell from the dash gauge. This is in 90 degree weather.
The heater electrical usage is ridiculous though. It doesn't use a heat pump so it relies on resistance heating. At that point, I'm probably better off just enabling the engine.
I have about 7k miles on a tesla, and commute just over 100 miles a day.
With my IC car, I bought gas every 4 days, which was a 10-15 minute exercise: get off freeway, go in gas station right at the exit, find an empty pump (hopefully.. occasionally, there was a 5-10 minute wait, or I had to get back on the road and go to the next gas station).
So, in a month (4 1/3 weeks, 22 work days) I'd stop for gas 5 times. That's about an hour/month spent pumping gas.
With the tesla it's pull in driveway, plug in charging hose, walk in house. In the morning, it's unhook cable, get in car, go to work. Maybe 1 minute/day extra time. Call it 2 minutes, which you have to do every day, so it's about 40 minutes spent "dealing with the car".
Pretty much a wash time wise.
Now, being able to drive in the carpool lane is a HUGE time saver.
Typical electric car consumes 35 kWh per 100km. (62 miles)
Say it can drive 400km (250 miles). That's 140 kWh of energy.
A typical home socket (well, in EU, 220-240V, will be less in USA) has 16A limit, so that's around 3.6 kW, but oh well. Let's say we equip our houses with special supercharger.
Now, to pump 140 kWh in 15 mins, one needs electircity source of 560 kW.
Typical "big" power plants with several blocks are normally in 1-1.5GW area.
With about 2500 such vehicles you'd consume 100% of power generated by such power plant.
Yikes.
Only speed primarily matters. IIRC Musk said that driving 250km/h (allowed on German autobahns) Tesla will make only 80km for a charge.
It is amazing, because back in the early 20th century everybody thought that was a load of bull. Similar like you do today - people were ridiculing the concept of flying machines then. [rant]It takes a visionary to start from the other direction: possibility first, then obstacle. You start by looking at the obstacle - what would you possibly want to do at a site like slashdot where people generally want to read about possibilities ?[/rant]
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
The amount of power necessary to overcome drag roughly increases with the cube of the velocity.
Yes, but power is energy per second, and since you're doing more distance per second at higher speed, energy usage per km only increases with the square of the velocity.
So when exactly is Musk going to start making cars for people other than the rich? It's great he's improving batteries and such, but the only life he's actually enriched with technology so far is his own.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Teslas actually do very well in the snow, better than most other cars. Even the RWD version is excellent already, but definitely the AWD has incredible traction.
Can it do 100kph for 10 hours straight? In -10 degC?
And to stay with the 10e3 theme:
Will it charge in 1000 seconds?
Will it hold sufficient charge for driving 1000 km at 100kph, starting 1000 hours after charging?
Will battery performance hold up after 1000 charge cycles?
Can it be sold, built and delivered to 1000 individual customers?
#ev1k
Dag B
Elon Musk is a clever guy.
But he cannot predict for shit.
For obvious reasons - they'll act unpredictably, cause delays / accidents, ignore diversions / roadworks / cops, fail in adverse conditions, and quite possibly kill people due to hardware / software faults.
I have an F-150 with a 6.5' bed and crew cab. The thing is enormous. It's like driving to work in my living room. I still park it where I want. Cars next to me open their doors and hit my running boards. My doors hits their side panels. Given that gas is cheap and will remain cheap, how much is too much gas? The truck fits in my 3 car garage with 3' to spare. Livin' the American Dream...
It's 90-100 miles... (according to some guy on Youtube, who tested it)
To be fair, gasoline cars get terrible mileages at those speeds as well, although maybe not as terrible. On the other hand, I imagine electrics will have a massive advantage in city driving thanks to not needing gears and the perk of regenerative braking.
That is correct, linear acceleration does provide for very good mileage at lower speeds and in stop-and-go traffic. This is something that kills non-hybrid mileage, but does nothing to electric.
I guess the 1000 miles will be the same as VW diesel fuel efficiency. 1000 miles will only show up in test mode.
http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-real-world-range.html
that Musk has had to lower sales expectations and issue more stock due to depleting cash. 2nd quarter losses for 2015 nearly tripled YOY. This is all while being underwritten by the American taxpayer to the tune of $5B.
Electricity continues to be primarily a hydrocarbon product, with somewhere around 65-70% of it being derived from coal and natural gas.
His most important comment ignored: "I hope civilization is still around in 20 years.". It's too offensive; it's too unreal...only thin is: it's not.
This guy sees the perilous position we are in and how close we are to tipping it over completely. It's likely we've already passed this tipping point and the shit is gonna hit the fan much faster than the conservative scientists have clearly predicted, which is very bad anyway, and the climate deniers have successfully FUDed us for the past 20 years after 1/2 BiLLON spent mostly through proxies by BIg Oil to generate this FUD. Where do I get a ticket to Mars?
this guy cannot go 15s w/o being in the new.
1000 km? Wouldn't 1 Mm be a more canonical representation?
Huh. Who would have thought that the amount of energy needed to move around thousands of pounds of metal would dwarf the energy needed to run a little pump.
Simply haul a trailer with another ton or two of charged batteries.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.