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Tesla Unveils 500-Mile Range Semi Truck, 620-Mile Range Roadster 2.0
Rei writes: During a live reveal on Thursday, Tesla unveiled its new electric Class 8 Heavy Duty vehicle. As most people familiar with Tesla products would expect, the day cab truck features staggeringly fast acceleration for a vehicle of its size. It can accelerate 0-60 in 5 seconds without a trailer and 20 seconds with a 40-ton gross weight while being able to pull its maximum payload up a 5-degree grade at 65mph (versus a typical maximum of 45mph). The 500-mile range is for the vehicle at full load and highway speeds (80% of U.S. freight routes are 250 miles or less). Tesla also boasts a million mile no-breakdown guarantee; even losing two of its four motors it can out-accelerate a typical diesel truck. The total cost per mile is pegged at 83% of operating a diesel, but when convoying is utilized -- where multiple trucks mirror the action of a lead truck -- the costs drop to 57%, a price cheaper than rail. Tesla went a step further and stole the show from their own event by having the first prototype of the new Tesla Roadster drive out of the back of the truck. With the base model alone boasting a 620 mile range on a 200kWh battery pack with 10kN torque, providing a 1.9 second 0-60, 4.2 second 0-100, and 8.9 second quarter mile, the 2+2-seating convertible will easily be the fastest-accelerating production car in the world. Top speed is not disclosed, but said to be "at least 250mph." The vehicle's release date, however, is not scheduled until 2020.
...3 ... 2 ... 1
You're driving along the highway going "I'm just a truck, I'm just a truck, I'm just a..." but when the bad guys appear, the artificially intelligent car you have hidden away in the back of the truck comes out, with this music playing: https://youtu.be/mhxRBa7zaOI?t... Thanks to Elon Musk, YOU can be David Hasselhoff. =)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I hope that I'm not the only one worried about Tesla overextending themselves by launching too many new products in too short of a timeframe considering the company's size/resources?
Not saying that they shouldn't try to venture into new markets, but considering they've still got heavily negative cash flow and have still not been able to introduce a new car without significant technical and production-related teething issues they probably should down a bit. All in all the whole thing is starting to remind me of what happened to Escom*.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Asking for a friend.
How many have they made, and how many can they make now? The only funding left for them is stock as they have billions in currently unpaid bank loans with payments due this quarter and no revenue stream to meet them.
The Bugatti Chiron can do 250 now, and they claim that after eventual fettling and tuning they will get it to do 300.
It might be the quickest production car, though, which is not the same as fastest.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With a market cap of over $50B, Tesla basically can't "run out of money", unless investors suddenly change their minds and decide it has no future. Obviously, they don't want to dilute stock, but they can whenever they need to.
As for timing: first deliveries are scheduled for 2019.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
I seriously doubt that strictly on a milage basis this is cheaper than rail. Rail is incredibly efficient. And for that matter you could electrify rail the same way.
Where rail breaks down is the last mile. Rail works out of depots. SO you need to offload these onto trucks in the end.
plus then there is the crew size. it take a couple people to drive an entire train. But it would take one driver per semi.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There is a difference between making a profit and investing it (what Amazon actually did) and not generating adequate revenue to cover costs even before research (what Tesla is doing now), especially while existing loans enter repayment and $2 billion more will as well by the end of the quarter. Glossing over the behavioral basis of TSLA stock prices just shows that you don't understand investments in any real sense.
Tesla can dilute the stock, but that has a direct impact on the price, and given its existing price is based on enthusiasm more than financial merits there is a HUGE question of how stock holders would react to that. Would it prompt a large sell-off? Would it reduce future markets?
They can software limit the top speed if necessary. The computer's already controlling the power flow, tapering off the power as it approaches the speed limit is fairly trivial.
It's really hideous. Couldn't they come up with something watchable?
I have my Class A CDL and would love to get a chance to drive one of those. I'll bet the visibility is phenomenal when you're sitting centered in the cab. Furthermore, I'll bet the ride is much smoother due to the lower center of gravity when compared to conventional tractors. This thing would be a driver's dream because you don't have to worry so much about emission system failures and other breakdowns well-known to diesel. The only thing that the driver would still need to be concerned with would be the air brake system. Air brake systems these days are very reliable with the automatic slack adjusters and redundant air supplies. Hell, you could put a solar panel somewhere and make some serious mileage in the desert southwest. You might be able to run the entire truck off of the solar panel and just use the batteries for the night time. As it is right now, re-fueling takes about 15-30 minutes of time off of a driver's clock. By the time the tanks are filled, mirrors and windshields cleaned, and other miscellaneous activities, an appreciable amount of time gets burned. Truck drivers constantly race against their 14 hour drive window.
In Texas trucks can go up to 85mph on freeways. In Nevada, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming it's up to 80mph. Only about a third of US states have separate speed limits for trucks vs. cars on interstates. 55mph is the slowest of these speed limits, and only in California and Puerto Rico. See here.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
How many have they made, and how many can they make now? The only funding left for them is stock as they have billions in currently unpaid bank loans with payments due this quarter and no revenue stream to meet them.
Snapchat had losses of $500+ million in 2016 and $300+ million in 2015. They may never operate in the black, and yet went public this year with a valuation of over $20 billion.
Pfft, who needs that old-fashioned revenue to run a company when you can fuel it with fashionable hype and Millennials.
CAPTCHA: profits
You must not be from the U.S. There are no "governor" laws in the US currently, although the Department of Transportation is currently working on trying to get one passed. Even if they do, it will have to phase in over time, due to the lack of governors in most trucks in the U.S.
Whenever there has been too much bad news for a while, they announce some pie-in-the-sky plan or they 'launch' a product that probably won't ever exist, just to get some positive buzz and to deflect attention from their major problems.
Give me a fucking break. I've lost count of the number of "concept" vehicles that have been paraded around by every other auto manufacturer for the last half-century that never made it to an assembly line, and often served as nothing more than marketing hype.
This concept is hardly new or unique to Tesla.
so the Tesla auto pilot does not mistake it for the sky.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
I hear they sell cars, that sounds like a revenue stream.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not according to this.
At top speed, a Bugatti Veyron would drain its 26 gallon fuel tank in 12 minutes, having covered only 51 miles.
It appears that the electric motors have been done right, as they announced a whopping ONE MILLION MILE drivetrain warranty during the launch.
As for the driving from the left seat, it's to give you better perspective of the whole road in a vehicle that is low to the ground - it's the same effect you get in right-hand drive cars while driving on the left side of the road. Center-seat in a commercial vehicle probably works nice because you are up high, and it would give you a perspective for guiding that large vehicle right down the center of a lane, giving less danger of clipping parked vehicles.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
How about taking the exit when one of tesla highway trains goes on and on making it impossible to get out on time?
The white one in profile looks little like a stormtrooper mask, especially with the blacked out windows.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
It's fueled by millennials? Do they have a big furnace in the basement or something?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's not so much that the motors can't fail, as it is the fact that you have four of them, so it's okay if one or two fail.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
That wasn't "more than a couple years ago". And you'll see it in a couple months.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
So the two trucks, and the car that they actually drove into, and out of the event, don't exist.
They must have some next-level hologram technology they aren't launching then. Or you don't know what you are talking about.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Seems to limited in that part
The more cars it sells, the more cash it burns. That's not a problem you can make up with volume. Then there's the racial discrimination lawsuits, the drive to unionize, and a host of other economic problems.
Maybe Musk should have concentrated on making one business profitable, not start a half a dozen more.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
How is it legal? Because it is, in many jurisdictions.
Or are you asking about the actual legislative process by which speed limit laws are passed?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I can't drive 55/65!
They can software limit the top speed if necessary. The computer's already controlling the power flow, tapering off the power as it approaches the speed limit is fairly trivial.
Trucking companies could also have speed limiters installed if they wanted to manage how their vehicles are driven and vary the limit based on local laws.. The could even have the system programmed to automatically limit the hours driven to comply with various laws as well. For example, combining GPS with driving time could determine if the driver can make the final destination, based on road conditions, traffic, etc., and require a stop at a rest area or truck stop to avid exceeding driving time limits. The ability to control the trucks power via software opens up a lot more ways to control how it is driven.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
With a market cap of over $50B, Tesla basically can't "run out of money",
What are you talking about? Of course they can run out of money - their market cap is not income. Hell, it's not even what a company is worth.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
500k a year (not counting Model Y, not counting the 700k that Tesla thinks they can get if they actually start advertising), with an average sale price of $45k, and a 25% margin. $5,6B profit on sales per year. Explain to me again why Tesla "can never pay off" its debt?
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
Funny, could you boldface for me where he promises in that statement a $35k Model 3 in 2017?
So to you, "a couple months" means "under 1 1/2 months". Interesting.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
I can think of two extra features you'd like your trailer to have with one of these: cameras which talk to the tractor, and regenerative breaking. Some sort of trailer camera standard would be great whether the tractor is electric or ICE. If you're towing a standard trailer, do you need extra airbrake hardware, or does the trailer contain all of that?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
.... which was unveiled on 19 october 2016. And delivered in its basic form, although the updates for the "upcoming" expanded capabilities certainly have been well behind schedule. But most certainly not something from "more than a couple years ago".
That said: I'm actually very much a doubter about full self driving, and if there's anything I think Tesla will fail on, it will be this.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
I wouldn't say it's "ok" but it definitely is better than if your diesel takes a shit on you in the middle of the desert. Only idiots argue against reasonable redundancy.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I remember back when the Tesla Roadster had just been released, and certain parts of the Slashdot crowd were boldly predicting that Tesla would be bankrupt in months. And then Musk borrowed a bunch of money from the US government, and they boldly predicted Tesla would be bankrupt before it paid back a penny. Then Tesla paid it all back and released the S model, and the same crew (with additions) predicted Tesla would be bankrupt in months, and Elon Musk would be begging on street corners with a cup. Then the SUV, and Space X safely landed a bunch of first stage boosters, and the Model 3. Then Tesla open-sourced quite a lot of its patents, and the shrieks of rage could be heard for miles. How DARE they!
And at every stage, growing ever larger as the alt right decided Slashdot would be a worthwhile acquisition, the same group confidently predicted the ruin of Space X, Tesla, and anything else Elon Musk did. And every time they've been proved wrong. It appears they now have been moved to redefine "success" as "anything Elon Musk does not do".
So now Tesla proposes to produce and sell a full-on long-range tractor, and once again, a significant percentage of the comments here are all about how it will fail, and it's ugly and people will die and the world will end when electric trucks take over...and they will, though not for a few years yet.
So I'll just head off to the office now, expecting to get modded down because it's 8:30 EST, and that usually means people without jobs (cough...alt right...cough) will be hanging around. And I'll smile because I know I'll be seeing a fair number of electric trucks on the road before I retire.
Life is good.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Still it strikes me as odd that we all drive from the left seat in America and on the right side of the road. It would seem to increase the chances of the drivers being killed
While in a partial head-on accident (the most dangerous sort for a given speed) driver survivability is probably reduced by being on that side of the vehicle, the greater visibility afford to the driver by being nearer to the centre of the road greatly reduces the likelihood of an accident at all.
It nets out at fewer deaths per mile, even if individual outcomes per crash suffer slightly.
There is a difference between making a profit and investing it (what Amazon actually did) and not generating adequate revenue to cover costs even before research (what Tesla is doing now),
The key term here is cash flow. Profit is a choice a business can make, cash flow keeps them in business.
Be an interesting vehicle choice in ATS - where 500 mile journeys are well under the average distance I try to deliver.
Whenever there has been too much bad news for a while, they announce some pie-in-the-sky plan or they 'launch' a product that probably won't ever exist, just to get some positive buzz and to deflect attention from their major problems.
Give me a fucking break. I've lost count of the number of "concept" vehicles that have been paraded around by every other auto manufacturer for the last half-century that never made it to an assembly line, and often served as nothing more than marketing hype.
This concept is hardly new or unique to Tesla.
Please name one car they (tesla) haven't delivered?
I'd love to see just a simple all-electric pickup truck.
So is that a UK long ton or a USA short ton?
Or perhaps I will just take a metric tonne which is somewhere in the middle and easy to visualize at being almost exactly one cubic metre of water. Any errors will be due to temperature and purity fluctuations :-)
The joys of a consistent set of units. Unlike the Imperial system the USA seems wedded to, though oddly they call them English, which is really odd because their wacko take on the Imperial system has not been used in England since well, before the revolutionary wars, which in itself is long after England ceased to exist as a political entity anyway.
In Canada in provinces where legislation in place is 105km/hr, Australia is 100 km/hr (where legislated). So definately not most or all counties
Arguably, the real limit for responsible drivers is the speed rating of the tires. With some ad-hoc Google research I find no tires for heavy trucks that are rated more than speed class "M", which is 81 mph or 130 km/h.
This said, if you look on old forum threads like http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=97985, you can find statements like this:
No, it's not a myth. A company I worked for had trucks that would go that fast. We had several tractors with Caterpillar 3406B engines set at 425 horsepower. One was always getting worse fuel mileage then the others. We had the local Cat dealer check out the tractor. They went into the computerized fuel system on the engine and were able to show how fast the driver had been running with it. He had been hitting 118 out on I-10 through Arizona pretty regularly. With a few keystrokes they cut his top end back to 85 MPH and the fuel mileage improved a lot. A lot of the tractors on the road have Detoit Diesel 60 series engines set at 500 horsepower and they will also easily run over a hundered if they are geared right and haven't had the top speed set down. Is it smart to run that fast? No way. It takes a lot more distance to stop as you get rolling faster. Trucks running close together to "draft" are just an accident waiting to happen.
But I guess in 2001, speed limiters were not as widespread as today...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Snapchat had losses of $500+ million in 2016 and $300+ million in 2015. They may never operate in the black, and yet went public this year with a valuation of over $20 billion.
Perhaps this is a too extreme case, but similar situations where people having nothing, giving nothing and, basically, doing nothing, get a lot pretty out of someone's else stupidity kind of motivates me to do things properly. Just depicting myself in a situation where all what I have/know/accomplish is just an unfair, partial and empty result mostly conditioned by others' easily-changing/manipulated random actions is so unappealing to me that I cannot believe that I will ever be in a situation like that.
I cannot even think about what-if scenarios where I could enjoy the associated benefits without most of the drawbacks because I know the entry price (losing your dignity or being hypocritical or tolerating dishonesty, unfairness and arbitrariness, etc. since the first second) which is already too high for me, much higher than any benefit/amount of money.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Not the truck, but I guess the Roadster won't be a manual transmission.
I've never owned an automatic transmission in my life, I"ll miss it I guess on the electric sports cars.
And part of the fun of a nice performance car, has always been the engine/exhaust note.
That will be lost too...I guess I could put an external speaker out to play mp3's of engine noises...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Trucks have had mandatory tachographs to keep track of driving hours for many decades.
This is why Tesla did not use the term "tons" during the presentation. They consistently said a gross weight of 80,000 pounds. I did not see "40 tons" until reading slashdot today.
Maybe I'm just old, but a car that accelerates from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds is almost too much for everyday use. I would be constantly trying keep it more like my sedate Subaru in everyday traffic.
Model 3 has been launched since July. They're about 3 months behind schedule, with about 1k produced so far. A large chunk of those just in the past couple weeks.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
>> but when convoying is utilized -- where multiple trucks mirror the action of a lead truck -- the costs drop to 57%
So basically they include technology and the desire to form solid lines of trucks that will completely lock out a whole lane from other road users. How is this gonna work when there is an impenetrable wall of Tesla trucks blocking freeway exits and entries?
All improve the amount of electricity left in the battery packs
A functional vehicle is not a "mockup". It's called a prototype in the earlier stages, a release candidate in the later stages.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
In Europe, yes.
America is still in the dark ages.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
small to medium-range can use 2+ people in cab if just for unloading / loading help.
then there is this company here, that does not get a mention in the article, but it leading the way towards electrification of long haul trucking (disclosure, yes I work here) https://www.hyliion.com/
Their margin on each S and X is approximately 25%, but don't let that stop you from making things up.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
1) "by January" = "If it's January, then that timeframe has passed"
2) From dictionary.com:
Idioms
14.
a couple of, more than two, but not many, of; a small number of; a few: It will take a couple of days for the package to get there.
A dinner party, whether for a couple of old friends or eight new acquaintances, takes nearly the same amount of effort.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
I mean, obviously it's cool and impressive, but does it have any real life benefit?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Screens in passengers vehicle does not make a dent in electricity. Likewise, HVAC in passengers vehicles, excluding use of cabin heating in early part of trip, makes only small dent . In truck, NEITHER will register on usage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Itâ(TM)s not ok if one seezes and locks up a wheel. Or short circuits and drains the batteries in an instant.
Seizing up is possible, but unlikely. Short circuiting is a detectable fault and the motor would be shut off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Mod parent up. This is exactly right. In fact, if QC remains an issue, then Tesla costs will skyrocket( post delivery fixes ARE expensive ) and kill their profits or possibly, ability to break even.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My concern about the truck is that most Semi's have that huge front bumper, where as this lacks one...
The reason being is that many trucks create lots of road kill.... the front end of this truck is going to explode when it it hits it's first deer... at about day 2.
That is ONLY if Tesla retains their reputation. QC could destroy it. Production slowdown is not a big deal. That is simply used for cannon fodder.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Arguably, the real limit for responsible drivers is the speed rating of the tires.
I'll take that argument. The limit is based on a whole bunch of factors, including how likely a failure of multiple tires is. The slower you're going when such a fault occurs, the more likely you are to be able to recover.
Except in the case of medical transplant shipment, there's no need for anyone to go that fast while making deliveries. If stuff takes a few more hours to get where it's going, whoop dee shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I watched the 'reveal party' stream from some a-hole on YouTube. It was a really crappy video shot by some a-hole with their smart phone with the quality settings real low, so it was hard to really hear what Muck was saying. But one thing I did see was that this hunk of shit takes about 7.2 MegaWatt hours per-charge. That's an INSANE amount of power just to keep one of these rigs running. By comparison your average US house hold uses about 897 kilowatt hours a month for all of their electrify needs.
Also as a second real serious complaint... who the FUCK said that ANYONE wants a semi truck that can accelerate that fast? You in no way want a semi truck that accelerates like that, you want something that can have an enormous amount of TORQUE, so you can pull heavy loads. Not get there faster with a light load. I spent the last decade driving semi loads of bulk milk in and around the Memphis area, so I have some level of a clue about the trans deportation industry as a whole. No one needs faster trucks, we need more efficient trucks. And one final thought is that this idea that you're going to get ANY truck to last a million miles without a break down is just a flat ludicrous. Even with out the problems with a combustion engine there are still an enormous amount of accessory systems that will eventually have a break down. Suspension air bags, air compresses, for their braking systems, and just over all wear and tear from having to run on crappy highways and through bad conditions of all types. When your dealing with moving that much mass you run into all new kinds of engineering problems that I don't think anyone at Tesla has a clue about so far.
And that's before we get into the real serious issue that the Trump admin is killing a lot of solar power subsidies, and that the Chinese have began to enforce tougher environmental regulations on solar panel production, increasing their cost by about 35%.
Yep, the USA failed to get some "updates" to England's Weights and Measures Act due to US Independence resulting in US Gallons not being the same as Imperial Gallons (British).
That is because people outside of the US don't know what a "pound" is.
So what products has Tesla announced more than a couple years ago that haven't since come to exist?
Off the top of my head? I'm sure this is only a small sample of the many missed targets:
- Hands free on-ramp to off-ramp driving (announced as coming through software within the next few months in 2014)
- The car picking you up anywhere you happen to be on private property (announced as coming through software within the next few months in 2014)
- Car meeting you at your front door on private property based on reading your calendar (announced as coming through software within the next few months in 2014)
- Car automatically parking itself in your garage after dropping you off at your front door (announced as coming through software within the next few months in 2014)
- Ultrasonic sensors that work at all speeds (announced in 2014, but the sensors actually have a lower top speed than the car)
- Automatic Emergency Braking that brings the vehicle to a complete stop (Announced in 2014 as coming through software within the next few months, current version only reduces the impact of an already unavoidable collision, and actually releases the brake pedal once shedding a certain amount of speed)
- 85kwh battery packs (they never released one, despite claiming to in 2012 and continuing to sell it until 2015, it was always only 81kwh and then software limited to 77kwh)
- retractable sunshades in the Model S (announced approximately 2010)
- Lighted vanity mirrors in the model S (announced approximately 2010)
- Model S centre console retrofits in all interior colours
- Charge cable that automatically connects to the car without human intervention (Announced in 2014)
- "full self driving" capable hardware (they claim they're already shipping this, but mark my words, this hardware will NEVER be full self driving, it's simply incapable of it)
- A vehicle with lower maintenance than internal combustion vehicles (announced repeatedly since 2012, but they continue to have among the highest shop rates and parts prices in the industry, coupled with extreme delays on getting any parts, and only mediocre reliability)
- Seamless service experience where a valet picks up your car, replaces it with a loaner car that is a fully loaded top of the line car, and you don't have to go anywhere or do anything. If you prefer the loaner car to your own you can keep it and pay the difference.
- $50,000 Model S
- $35,000 Model 3
- Free unlimited supercharging for life (unlimited now has limits, even for people who bought the car when it was marketed as unlimited)
- A car that gets better over time through over the air software updates (the vast majority of updates actually remove functionality, not add new functionality)
Tesla has a reputation for always delivering, though late. But the truth is that they only ever deliver a small fraction of the things they promise. They always over promise and under deliver.
I don't want to belittle what they have accomplished, it's nothing short of amazing, and almost 10 years after they first announced the Model S, there still isn't a single other competing vehicle on the market, that says something right there. That said, I won't give them a free pass on their continual blatant lies and revisionist history. Tesla is an EXTREMELY scummy company, and the absolute slimiest I've ever had the misfortune of buying anything from (which says a LOT!)
I will be the first person in line when a competitor to Tesla finally emerges, and I only hope that I can keep my S from losing too much more functionality than it already has in the interim.
...You in no way want a semi truck that accelerates like that, you want something that can have an enormous amount of TORQUE...
F=ma. Acceleration is directly proportional to torque.
If a business never makes a profit, their cash flow is negative. More cash flowing in than flowing out means profit, more cash flowing out than flowing in means loss. Not sure how you figure a negative cash flow can keep a company in business...
Model 3 actually broke this trend by launching on time (on a schedule that they had accelerated, at that)
Wow... that's some pretty revisionist history there! the Model 3 launched on their REVISED time. Not on the original time. The "gen 3" as it was originally named was supposed to launch in 2015 to people who reserved in 2014.
https://www.slideshare.net/dpa... page 2.
If it's like every other car so far, it will launch several years late and with fewer features and lower specs than originally announced, and at a higher price. Even then, the features they claim it does in fact have at launch will turn out to not in fact exist in the vehicle.
One seat in the truck. No hitch-hikers or co-drivers need apply.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
3 months behind the revised schedule... Gen 3 as it was originally called was supposed to launch in 2015....
https://www.slideshare.net/dpa... (page 2)
Yes, that's true. But even them, if they have a truck that can accelerate that fast then they should be able to build the driver train to make more use of able torque than horse power. Commercial vehicles need to pull heaver loads, not get there faster.
Nice try in try to deflect away from this shit design with a snappy line instead of a deeper examination of the actual needs of the transportation industry.
"who the FUCK said that ANYONE wants a semi truck that can accelerate that fast"
Pretty much anyone who is stuck behind the semi which is blocking the left lane while passing the slightly slower semi that's blocking the right lane?
How about the rig that needs to cross a large intersection that will already have the light turning red by the time he's 75% of the way through...
With combined torque and acceleration, there are actually quite a number of situations where this can be a major benefit.
That is in fact why this truck exists. See, the U.S. is weird in that it measures fuel efficiency in MPG. That's actually the inverse of fuel efficiency (which would be GPM, or how many gallons does it take to drive 100 miles). Because MPG is the inverse, it leads to a numerical inversion which tricks a lot of people into thinking what's small is big. (The rest of the world uses liters per 100 km to avoid this problem.) Say you needed to drive 100 miles. How many gallons of gas do you need?
Notice how every time MPG doubles, the amount of fuel saved is only half that of the previous doubling? In other words, the majority of the fuel savings comes at smaller MPG. The +25 MPG jump from a sedan to a Prius only saves you 2 gallons. While the +12.5 MPG jump from a SUV to a sedan saves you 4 gallons. Even though the 12.5 MPG delta seems smaller than the 25 MPG delta, it saves twice as much fuel. How? Because MPG is the inverse of fuel efficiency. Bigger is smaller, smaller is bigger.
So econoboxes like the Prius are actually the worst possible place to put a hybrid or electric motor. The car is already very fuel efficient. You're adding a lot of complexity and cost for very little fuel savings. The best place to put these technologies is in the gas guzzlers - SUVs and tractor trailers. Raising that 6.125 MPG tractor trailer's MPG to 6.67 MPG (a 9% increase in MPG) yields just as much fuel savings per mile as doubling a Prius' MPG to 100 MPG (a 100% increase in MPG).
This whole obsession with high MPG vehicles like the Prius is misguided at best, a terrible waste of money and resources at worst. Musk has done the math and knows this, and knows that the best way to really cut the country's fuel consumption is by improving the efficiency of gas guzzling vehicles like tractor trailers. Which is why he made this electric truck.
HP = constant * Torque * RPM. That's right, the HP and torque curves for an engine are one and the same, just both axes are scaled differently. (The value of the constant depends on what units you're using.)
Also, an electric motor deals much better with the huge range of power output that a truck needs. From low power at cruise speed, to high power during acceleration. Electric motors are so much better at this than transmissions that pretty much every modern train locomotive is electric. Even if the train still uses fossil fuels, it's energy isn't sent directly to the wheels via a mechanical linkage. It's converted into electricity, which then powers an electric motor which drives the wheels. AKA the diesel-electric locomotive.
Looks an excellent step forward
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
My state and I'm sure many others, charges trucks for weight and tonnage carried on freeways. Ostensibly for the extraordinary wear and tear trucks make on the public roads. The Tesla Semi is probably going to weigh in at much higher weight than a traditional diesel tractor. Will states cut these trucks a break?
I know trucks rely heavily on engine breaking while going down interstate mountain passes. Without engine breaking, their breaks will overheat and fail. The Tesla can engine break fine, until the battery is full, but then what?
The Prius charges its batteries in "B" (engine break) mode. But when the batteries are full, it actually starts to spin the ICE. You can tell because it gets louder. The Tesla has no ICE to spin. Could they dump the power into giant external heaters? Maybe defrost the road on the way down?
More cash flowing in than flowing out means profit
Far from necessarily true.
As a basic example, depreciation: Acquire company X for $Y in shares, zero cash out but $Z in assets in. Depreciate 25% of Z over four years and that's additional cash you can bring into the business for zero profit.
Now you have $Z in cash, and you still haven't made a profit.
But one thing I did see was that this hunk of shit takes about 7.2 MegaWatt hours per-charge. That's an INSANE amount of power just to keep one of these rigs running. By comparison your average US house hold uses about 897 kilowatt hours a month for all of their electrify needs.
A typical diesel truck has two 100-gallon fuel tanks. Diesel is about 40.7 kWh/gallon. That's over 8 mWh to fuel up a diesel truck.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
They've been working more on the truck and the unattainable-for-most supercar.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Instead of pawning off a bland 3, I'd be fine if they had a large (think 70's-90's land-yacht) car that wasn't stratospheric in price.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
The only thing that’s made up is the fictional 25% margin.
(80% of U.S. freight routes are 250 miles or less)
100% of US freight haulers don't have 8-12 hours to wait for their truck to "refuel"
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nope updates to British weights and measures came around *before* the revolutionary war. But keep kidding yourself why not.
When your dealing with moving that much mass you run into all new kinds of engineering problems that I don't think anyone at Tesla has a clue about so far.
You guess wrong. Jerome Guillen is Tesla's VP of Truck and Programs. He was the Director and General Manager of the Cascadia program at Daimler AG. He knows more about trucks than you could dream.
That's not how this works. There exists a definition in the usage that I utilized. You don't get to redefine my words to mean a different definition.
What you're doing is akin to someone saying "Does this tie go with this suit?" and you responding "The act of having an equal score in a sporting game cannot possibly go with a suit."
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
Right. And I'm sure all of the institutional investors' due diligence investigations decided not to check into that.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
Tesla's third vehicle did come out in 2015: the Model X. So they inserted an extra model into the lineup during the concept phase - so what?
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
We do know what a pound, is :D In Germany a pound is 500g, half a kilo. And the foreigners have smaller pounds than we have, around 420g ... I guess they are not as strong build as we are ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
From a professional driver view, the truck has excellent potential, but getting a large or even medium sized fleet to give them a try will be difficult. This has several causes, but the one I see right off the bat is the lack of infrastructure in the truck stop business right now. With diesel, I can usually fill the tanks, use the restroom, get something to eat and go in about 18 minutes or so, and I'm a slow poke. 30 minutes on a charger would cover the mandatory 8 hour break US drivers have to take, which would be fine, Getting major chain truck stops like TA, Pilot, etc. would be essential to those fleets, but there is also a need to have those charging stations in areas not served by the big chain stops. All Elon would have to do is open up Trucker Path to see the scale of that problem. Canada too, would need additional facilities, owing to their longer 13 hour running day versus the 11 hour one stateside. Trains would not be suitable for cross border work in any sort of automated or semi-automated environment because of traffic flows and the needs of inspectors at border crossings. Animal collisions are a concern, even for conventionally powered trucks, as they do a lot of damage, but is survivable in conventionally powered setups. I'm not so certain about batterry packs, but Tesla cars haven't got much data about wildlife collisions, as EV charging areas in Minnesota don't go far outside the exurbs of the twin cities. Overall, I give it a 5 of 5 for concept, but 2 of 5 for practicality with the lack of charging facilities right now.
Idiot. More ability to pull loads, more ability to accelerate when unloaded. The acceleration comes for free from the fact that the Tesla is specified to pull a full load up hill faster than a diesel. And because EVs naturally out acclerate internal combustion engines.
Acceleration will not have been a major design goal. Just a happy side effect.
I think this hole post is a troll. The launch didn't say anything about 7.2 Mwh per charge.
The best guess is 1 Mwh per charge.
Once again facts to the rescue.
The tonne (/tn/ (About this sound listen)) (non-preferred SI derived unit; SI symbol: t), commonly referred to as the metric ton in the United States, is a non-SI metric unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms;[1][2][3][4] or one megagram (Mg); it is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds,[5] 1.102 short tons (US) or 0.984 long tons (imperial). Although not part of the SI per se, the tonne is "accepted for use with" SI units and prefixes by the International Committee for Weights and Measures, along with several other units like the bar, litre and day.[6]
Backlights of two 20" monitors at full brightness, space heaters, and AC compressors, do not run at zero watts. You seem concerned only with my 2nd and 3rd bullet items, so the 1st and 4th are substantial enough to be beneficial economically? Excellent!
So in other words we can ignore any delay if they have an excuse...
By that logic it would be basically impossible for them to be behind schedule at all on anything.
Isn't it great when you can move the goalposts at will?
according to https://xtronics.com/wiki/Ener... diesel fuel is about 11k watt-hours per liter. The driver of a tractor I happened to be fueling next to once told me it held 300 gallons, so a fillup on that comes out to about 4.5e10 joules (sayeth google's calculator), where 7.2 MWh is 2.6e10 joules. Now, I don't have figures on the range for either, but realize that the power you're talking about isn't anything unusual for big trucks.
It's a choice they can make it they want. But they can't then claim that the other vehicle is on schedule when it's more than 2 years late. Yes, they have a reason it's late, but that doesn't suddenly change it from being late to being in time.
Claiming it is on time is just revisionist history.