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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.
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.
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.
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.
Go on to truecar.com, look up car prices! You can print out a sheet, take it to the dealer, and get it for that price.
Keep in mind that you should take the car price and subtract $7500 for the Federal subsidy (which is given at time of purchase.) Additionally, different states have different subsidy levels - California will subsidize it $2500, it takes na few weeks though).
So after $10,000, truecar.com currently lists:
A Nissan Leaf for $15,000 (that is a seriously fucking good deal)
A Fiat 500e $19,000
An e-Golf for $21,000 (A little over, but it's Motor-trends car of the year.)
They're all 4 seat and will get about 150km.
I have an e-golf, I drive more than an hour a day, and I just charge is on a 120v overnight.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Charging at home (plugged into a 240V 50A dryer outlet) adds about 30 miles of range for each hour of charging. So, drive 200 miles, come home, plug in and the car is topped back up in under 7 hours. ....
On trips, the supercharger stations (free to use and spaced within range on many interstates) add about 150 miles of range during a 30 minute stop. Superchargers are located next to places to eat and shop.
Driving from SF Bay area to Reno, we stop somewhere in the middle (there are a several choices at various distances) and have lunch. Can't quite make it all the way on one charge