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Tesla Updates Model S With New Front-End, Air Filtration System, Faster Charging (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Model S has received several new features and improvements to help it stay relevant with the newer Model X crossover and recently released Model 3 electric vehicles from Tesla. It has a new-look fascia and adaptive LED headlights that hew closely to the design found on the Model X crossover which debuted late last year. In addition to a couple new interior finish choices, the Model S is receiving a version of the Model X's cabin air filtration system as an option, which promises to filter out "99.7 percent of particulate exhaust pollution and effectively all allergens, bacteria and other contaminants from cabin air." The Model S now has a 48-amp charger standard -- up from 40 amps -- which Tesla says will enable faster charging when connected to higher-amp outlets. Tesla's design language is trending toward a grille-less front end, possibly in an effort to squeeze as much aerodynamic efficiency out of the car as possible. What's missing in the update is the rumored 100kWh battery, which would improve the vehicle's range.
Notice how Tesla is a car manufacturer, not a media outlet?
So no, the thing about Toyota is apples and oranges. Toyota was pushing back over coverage of themselves. They're not going to call up and ask the media to stop giving coverage to others, that opens a giant can of worms that you didn't consider, and isn't like your example. Even attempting to interfere with the relationship between two third parties is not going to happen. There is no way that Ford, who has lawyers and PR people in their employment, is going to attempt to interfere with whatever relationships or contracts there are between a media outlet and a competing brand. That sort of speculation is suitable for television sitcoms or AM-radio, it is not serious thought or analysis.
Media outlets do not engage in exclusive contracts where they agree to only talk about one brand of an item, and that is the only type of situation where you can lock others out. So a computer company can make a deal with a store, for example, to only sell their brand of computer. But they can't go to companies that sell their competitor's brand and try to interfere with that, other than by making offers for an exclusive contract.
If Elon is looking for a low coefficient of drag, why don't we drop the side mirrors in favor of high resolution wide angle cameras? I've always thought we could replace the center mirror with a long full car width LED display monitor showing a 180 degree view behind and sides fed by 2 wide angle cameras on the back or sides.
Decent starting point, but you stopped thinking far too quickly.
Centralizing power generation (moving from millions of small gasoline engines to hundreds of big oil/coal turbine generators) allows for greater efficiency. Most things work better at scale - you get more power extracted per unit fuel. And it allows you to cost-effectively install better pollution-reducing devices - big scrubbers on the exhaust, to keep particulates and such down. So even if the power grid were 100% fossil fuels, it would still be a gain.
But the grid isn't 100% fossil fuels. In some places those are a minority already - where hydro or geothermal or nuclear dominate. And it decouples the generators from the infrastructure - if all cars ran off batteries, we could switch over to whatever new power method works best, as we invent it. If we had cheap, efficient, clean nuclear fusion, switching to it would be easy if we were on electric cars. Switching from gasoline/diesel engines to fusion engines would require a lot more change to the infrastructure - new fueling stations built, new pipelines for deuterium run, new mechanics trained on new engine types.