In 2013, design chief Franz von Holzhausen said that the Model 3 will "be an Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class type of vehicle that will offer everything: range, affordability, and performance" that is targeted toward the mass market.
Funny, could you boldface for me where he promises in that statement a $35k Model 3 in 2017?
No you will not see a single $35,000 model manufactured by January.
So to you, "a couple months" means "under 1 1/2 months". Interesting.
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?
It could be. Or it could just be that they had a chasis surplus but were missing parts to fit them out.
There's no single problem that's hit them; it's been a number of different problems. They had a supplier which fell behind on supply. They had a couple mechanical and electrical problems in vehicles which they had to go back and repair. Automated battery manufacture took them a long time to get right because the tooling they'd been given didn't work properly. There were some paint shop delays, although they don't appear to have been serious. They've had overheating problems when they try to ramp up the speed on the automated welding (they use ultra high strength steel (in addition to high strength and mild steel) for part of the frame, and UHS steel can be very finicky about welding). Etc. Just all around growing pains. But either way, it's good to see that production rate finally starting to angle up.
Not 40x50kW. 20x145kW max. Each Tesla Supercharger (excluding the new urban superchargers) delivers a max of 145kW to up to two stalls, with a maximum of 120kW per stall.
Most supercharger stations aren't battery buffered, but the new ones (and particularly large ones) increasingly are. This isn't designed so much as to provide backup power when the grid is down (although it will do so at low demand times) as it is to buffer out the surges between vehicles, reducing the peak draw and thus getting lower demand charges on their power bill. It also lets them incorporate the solar awnings (not the majority of the power delivered, but still useful).
Electric wins *more* in hilly terrain because it can climb grades faster, and regens on the downslopes.
Salt isn't going to attack electric vehicle tractors any more than ICE tractors. And the vehicle uses a smooth belly pan anyway, it's not like the underside is a bunch of exposed wiring.
Batteries that are discharged over the course of 7 hours are not "stressed". And Tesla batteries have superb longevity (check the charts/graphs tab).
I didn't have room in the summary to cover charging (tried to fit in as many specs as I could!), but I probably should have made room: 30 minutes to 80% when empty. And you can install those chargers (quite compact, and don't need underground tanks) at depots; they trickle charge to fill a battery buffer, when then surge charges a vehicle when it connects, so it doesn't even mean stops "on the road". Tesla is however planning to expand their current supercharger network to include these new "megachargers", starting on the busiest trucking routes. And since 500 miles range is like 7 hours driving, you're going to want a break either way. In the EU they make you take 45 minutes of breaks every 4 1/2 hours driving.
I think it'll be really neat once they make a sleeper cab. No more awkward hacked-on solutions to avoid idling; the climate control is electric to begin with, and the cab has all the power you could dream of.
Also, contrary to most peoples' expectations, modern EVs tend to deal with cold extremely well. They lose range, of course (not as much as most people expect** when you use a well thermally-managed powertrain like Tesla does, but still some), but you never have any issues with "difficulty starting" or the like. You get in and it just goes - even if the vehicle has been idling for days not plugged in and the pack is completely cold (the only "symptom" with that is you can't use regen until it heats up, and peak acceleration is reduced). Packs are generally rated for storage at -50 to -30 and usage at -30 to -20, depending on the chemistry, and utilize heaters (or in Tesla's case, deliberately-created waste heat in the motor re-routed by heat exchangers) to protect against out-of-spec conditions when necessary.
** - The instantaneous power consumption upon starting is much higher as the vehicle uses power to heat up; however, once it's reached its temperature and heating is only needed for maintaining temperature, power consumption is greatly reduced. And it should be all the easier for Semi, with its very high power demands creating a lot of waste heat (even electric drivetrains have some waste heat, which a good system like Tesla's recaptures; Semi should kick off about 10kW of waste heat when cruising at highway speeds), and its high volume to surface area ratio means that it should be extremely easy to outpace heat loss.
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.
So what products has Tesla announced more than a couple years ago that haven't since come to exist?
Tesla always delivers. Almost always somewhat late**, but they do deliver.
** - Model 3 actually broke this trend by launching on time (on a schedule that they had accelerated, at that) - but their scaleup hit a number of snags and ended up 3 months behind, so, Tesla is still clearly Tesla;)
Energy consumption is stated at "under 2kWh/mile", which is reasonable. So a 500 mile range would be a 1MWh battery pack. The larger the battery pack, the more you approach individual cell energy densities, so they're probably getting around 200Wh/kg. Hence the battery pack (the heaviest portion of the tractor) probably weighs around 5 tonnes. Given that a typical semi tractor weighs about 8 tonnes, the two should be comparable.
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.
if you're asking how production is going: spyshots and VIN tracking currently suggests that they're up to about 100 per week. It got a bit weird because the VIN count stalled out for like a month in the lower 500s, but then suddenly leaped to nearly 1100, and then has been counting backward, filling in the gap. But there's been a real flurry of activity in the past week, week and a half. Multiple parking lots filling and emptying on a near-daily basis with Model 3s of differing VINs. So while it's not clear what exactly got uncorked, something clearly did.
At the same time, they're dependent on scale. It's estimated that a doubling of battery production rates equals a 17% reduction in battery costs. Hence it's in Tesla's interest to sell as many batteries as possible - whether in Model 3s, stationary energy storage, or Semis. It's also notable that Tesla is doing the exact same thing with drive units: Semi uses the exact same drive units as the Model 3 - just 4 of them.
Roadster 2.0, by contrast, is more of a halo car. Pricing hasn't been announced, but it's clearly the sort of vehicle where "if you have to ask, you can't afford it". Hence Tesla's target of 2020 (ages by Tesla's normally overly-aggressive timelines) seems to be "pushing capital expenses down the road".
My favorite part of the article (which also mentions Teller) is this one:
When his parents split up two years before, he and his younger siblings – Kimbal and Tosca – stayed with their mom. But, Musk recounts, "I felt sorry for my father, because my mother had all three kids. He seemed very sad and lonely by himself. So I thought, 'I can be company.'" He pauses while a movie's worth of images seem to flicker through his mind.
He lets out a long, sad sigh, then says flatly about moving in with Dad, "It was not a good idea."
According to Elon, Errol has an extremely high IQ – "brilliant at engineering, brilliant" – and was supposedly the youngest person to get a professional engineer's qualification in South Africa. When Elon came to live with him in Lone Hill, a suburb of Johannesburg, Errol was, by his own account, making money in the often dangerous worlds of construction and emerald mining –at times so much that he claims he couldn't close his safe.
___
But there was another side to Musk's father that was just as important to making Elon who he is. "He was such a terrible human being," Musk shares. "You have no idea." His voice trembles, and he discusses a few of those things, but doesn't go into specifics. "My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil," he says. "He will plan evil."
Besides emotional abuse, did that include physical abuse?
"My dad was not physically violent with me. He was only physically violent when I was very young." (Errol countered via email that he only "smacked" Elon once, "on the bottom.")
Elon's eyes turn red as he continues discussing his dad. "You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. Um..."
There is clearly something Musk wants to share, but he can't bring himself to utter the words, at least not on the record. "It's so terrible, you can't believe it."
The tears run silently down his face. "I can't remember the last time I cried." He turns to Teller to confirm this. "You've never seen me cry."
"No," Teller says. "I've never seen you cry."
The flow of tears stops as quickly as it began. And once more, Musk has the cold, impassive, but gentle stone face that is more familiar to the outside world.
Seriously, that's like the backstory of a supervillain.
I think one can safely write that one out of the canon;)
I'm thinking something that covers the timeperiod starting most of the way through Metroid 2, ending at the end of Super Metroid. Because then you start with someone who's a stone-cold killer and loner, somewhere between a warrior monk and a special forces sniper. But then you humanize her as she bonds with the metroid hatchling - only to have it die in the end.
You'd still have to incorporate other characters, mind you - I don't think "A girl and her metroid, plus two hours of killing baddies" stands up as a plotline. But unlike Other M's having her as a submissive person reliant on others, her character is to reject what others are doing - even if they're working toward the same goal - and go off on her own. You might have two teams raiding Zebes at the same time, but it's the *other* team that's going to need to randomly saved by her showing up and pulling some River Tam-style stuff, then ditching them again once the "situation" is resolved.
My mental image of Zebes is a world crawling with life, all of it hostile down to the plants and smallest creatures (even things that pose no threat to Samus's suit). I picture her meditating when not on the move - and willing to remain still for hours while things crawl across her suit, plant tendrils slowly wrap their way around her, etc, just to line up the perfect shot. But then when things heat up, pulling the aforementioned "River Tam" style action (but heavier on advanced ranged weaponry involved, of course!).
There's a question of how to do the metroids right. Because they're sort of ethereal, sort of not - and you don't want any cheesiness like the spirits in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Maybe something that sort of floats (lofted as if from plasma propulsion? or more buoyant?), with a skin resembling a cold streaming plasma moving around an inner core, which can stream into and out of other beings to feed, spreading like a fungus's tendrils (almost slime mold-like). Still tangible, tactile, but not... "normal". Maybe almost feeding sort of like a gorgon worm. And I can picture Samus as the sort of person who would quietly let the baby feed on her (say, an arm) with a sort of "cold but motherly" attitude about it.
What bizarre set of questions, axioms and probabilities of truths would lead someone to conclude that anyone was talking about "drilling" tunnels without government permission?
Oh, and as for the atmosphere, I picture something sort of like "Avatar meets Alien". Aka, really inventive with the alien landscapes and creatures in a way that feels like a natural, integrated whole - but instead of Avatar's "Ferngully"-style motif on top of it, having that a grimy cyberpunk feel. Less "in harmony with the mother goddess", more "nature red in tooth and claw", integrated in with advanced but decrepit spacecraft, weaponry and facilities. Hmm... you know, the feel of "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex" would work really well... take out the teeming megacities and replace them with a lonely, "alien outpost on a hostile world" setting, and I think you've got the atmosphere right.
Yeah, she would be good as Samus. I have trouble with the "pick an actor/actress for a role" things because my mind immediately jumps to "who would be the worst person to cast for the role. Rosie O'Donnell! Dame Judy Dench! Paris Hilton! Snooki! Once I start thinking down that route, all serious possibilities disappear;)
Metroid was really groundbreaking in the fact that not only was the main character female (extremely rare at that time), but that they let you get through the entire game before revealing this fact. The series also had a rather quiet, solemn atmosphere for what was otherwise a scrolling platformer - something that would probably translate well to the screen. The problem with turning video games to movies is flushing out the characters. We know what Samus *does* in the game, who the antagonists are, etc. But who is she as a person? Without filling that in, you just get a one-dimensional action movie.
Regarding yesterday’s lawsuit, several months ago we had already investigated disappointing behavior involving a group of individuals who worked on or near Marcus Vaughn’s team. At the time, our investigation identified a number of conflicting accusations and counter-accusations between several African-American and Hispanic individuals, alleging use of racial language, including the "n-word" and "w-word," towards each other and a threat of violence. After a thorough investigation, immediate action was taken, which included terminating the employment of three of the individuals.
Aka, according to Tesla, there absolutely was racial language used - but the plaintiff was part of it, and his contract was ended as a consequence. Also, Tesla makes some pretty damning-if-true counterallegations - among them:
- There is only one actual plaintiff (Marcus Vaughn), not 100. The reference to 100 is a complete fabrication with no basis in fact at all.
- The plaintiff was employed by a temp agency, not by Tesla as claimed in the lawsuit.
- Marcus was not fired, he was on a six month temp contract that simply ended as contracted.
- His email to Elon was about his commute and Tesla’s shuttles, which was addressed as he requested. There was no mention of racial discrimination whatsoever.
They also allege that the attorney hired has a long track record of taking on meritless lawsuits and using the threat of damage to a company's reputation in the media to get them to settle out of court.
I would say, "We'll see where this goes", except, well, we all know that while allegations get big headlines, unless there's a surprise ending and a court rules against Tesla, we'll never actually see an article covering the court dismissing the case. Just like each and every other time that something like this has happened.
The reality is that we live in a world that every last lawsuit against Tesla (something that happens against all companies) will be extensively covered by the media, without any coverage of the outcome of the suits - which so far have all been in Tesla's favour.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
It could be. Or it could just be that they had a chasis surplus but were missing parts to fit them out.
There's no single problem that's hit them; it's been a number of different problems. They had a supplier which fell behind on supply. They had a couple mechanical and electrical problems in vehicles which they had to go back and repair. Automated battery manufacture took them a long time to get right because the tooling they'd been given didn't work properly. There were some paint shop delays, although they don't appear to have been serious. They've had overheating problems when they try to ramp up the speed on the automated welding (they use ultra high strength steel (in addition to high strength and mild steel) for part of the frame, and UHS steel can be very finicky about welding). Etc. Just all around growing pains. But either way, it's good to see that production rate finally starting to angle up.
Not 40x50kW. 20x145kW max. Each Tesla Supercharger (excluding the new urban superchargers) delivers a max of 145kW to up to two stalls, with a maximum of 120kW per stall.
Most supercharger stations aren't battery buffered, but the new ones (and particularly large ones) increasingly are. This isn't designed so much as to provide backup power when the grid is down (although it will do so at low demand times) as it is to buffer out the surges between vehicles, reducing the peak draw and thus getting lower demand charges on their power bill. It also lets them incorporate the solar awnings (not the majority of the power delivered, but still useful).
That wasn't "more than a couple years ago". And you'll see it in a couple months.
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.
They're not that close together; you can cut in-between them, and they're designed to deal with that.
Electric wins *more* in hilly terrain because it can climb grades faster, and regens on the downslopes.
Salt isn't going to attack electric vehicle tractors any more than ICE tractors. And the vehicle uses a smooth belly pan anyway, it's not like the underside is a bunch of exposed wiring.
Batteries that are discharged over the course of 7 hours are not "stressed". And Tesla batteries have superb longevity (check the charts/graphs tab).
I didn't have room in the summary to cover charging (tried to fit in as many specs as I could!), but I probably should have made room: 30 minutes to 80% when empty. And you can install those chargers (quite compact, and don't need underground tanks) at depots; they trickle charge to fill a battery buffer, when then surge charges a vehicle when it connects, so it doesn't even mean stops "on the road". Tesla is however planning to expand their current supercharger network to include these new "megachargers", starting on the busiest trucking routes. And since 500 miles range is like 7 hours driving, you're going to want a break either way. In the EU they make you take 45 minutes of breaks every 4 1/2 hours driving.
I think it'll be really neat once they make a sleeper cab. No more awkward hacked-on solutions to avoid idling; the climate control is electric to begin with, and the cab has all the power you could dream of.
Also, contrary to most peoples' expectations, modern EVs tend to deal with cold extremely well. They lose range, of course (not as much as most people expect** when you use a well thermally-managed powertrain like Tesla does, but still some), but you never have any issues with "difficulty starting" or the like. You get in and it just goes - even if the vehicle has been idling for days not plugged in and the pack is completely cold (the only "symptom" with that is you can't use regen until it heats up, and peak acceleration is reduced). Packs are generally rated for storage at -50 to -30 and usage at -30 to -20, depending on the chemistry, and utilize heaters (or in Tesla's case, deliberately-created waste heat in the motor re-routed by heat exchangers) to protect against out-of-spec conditions when necessary.
** - The instantaneous power consumption upon starting is much higher as the vehicle uses power to heat up; however, once it's reached its temperature and heating is only needed for maintaining temperature, power consumption is greatly reduced. And it should be all the easier for Semi, with its very high power demands creating a lot of waste heat (even electric drivetrains have some waste heat, which a good system like Tesla's recaptures; Semi should kick off about 10kW of waste heat when cruising at highway speeds), and its high volume to surface area ratio means that it should be extremely easy to outpace heat loss.
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.
So what products has Tesla announced more than a couple years ago that haven't since come to exist?
Tesla always delivers. Almost always somewhat late**, but they do deliver.
** - Model 3 actually broke this trend by launching on time (on a schedule that they had accelerated, at that) - but their scaleup hit a number of snags and ended up 3 months behind, so, Tesla is still clearly Tesla ;)
Energy consumption is stated at "under 2kWh/mile", which is reasonable. So a 500 mile range would be a 1MWh battery pack. The larger the battery pack, the more you approach individual cell energy densities, so they're probably getting around 200Wh/kg. Hence the battery pack (the heaviest portion of the tractor) probably weighs around 5 tonnes. Given that a typical semi tractor weighs about 8 tonnes, the two should be comparable.
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.
Is "Model 3?" a question?
if you're asking how production is going: spyshots and VIN tracking currently suggests that they're up to about 100 per week. It got a bit weird because the VIN count stalled out for like a month in the lower 500s, but then suddenly leaped to nearly 1100, and then has been counting backward, filling in the gap. But there's been a real flurry of activity in the past week, week and a half. Multiple parking lots filling and emptying on a near-daily basis with Model 3s of differing VINs. So while it's not clear what exactly got uncorked, something clearly did.
At the same time, they're dependent on scale. It's estimated that a doubling of battery production rates equals a 17% reduction in battery costs. Hence it's in Tesla's interest to sell as many batteries as possible - whether in Model 3s, stationary energy storage, or Semis. It's also notable that Tesla is doing the exact same thing with drive units: Semi uses the exact same drive units as the Model 3 - just 4 of them.
Roadster 2.0, by contrast, is more of a halo car. Pricing hasn't been announced, but it's clearly the sort of vehicle where "if you have to ask, you can't afford it". Hence Tesla's target of 2020 (ages by Tesla's normally overly-aggressive timelines) seems to be "pushing capital expenses down the road".
My favorite part of the article (which also mentions Teller) is this one:
Seriously, that's like the backstory of a supervillain.
I think one can safely write that one out of the canon ;)
I'm thinking something that covers the timeperiod starting most of the way through Metroid 2, ending at the end of Super Metroid. Because then you start with someone who's a stone-cold killer and loner, somewhere between a warrior monk and a special forces sniper. But then you humanize her as she bonds with the metroid hatchling - only to have it die in the end.
You'd still have to incorporate other characters, mind you - I don't think "A girl and her metroid, plus two hours of killing baddies" stands up as a plotline. But unlike Other M's having her as a submissive person reliant on others, her character is to reject what others are doing - even if they're working toward the same goal - and go off on her own. You might have two teams raiding Zebes at the same time, but it's the *other* team that's going to need to randomly saved by her showing up and pulling some River Tam-style stuff, then ditching them again once the "situation" is resolved.
My mental image of Zebes is a world crawling with life, all of it hostile down to the plants and smallest creatures (even things that pose no threat to Samus's suit). I picture her meditating when not on the move - and willing to remain still for hours while things crawl across her suit, plant tendrils slowly wrap their way around her, etc, just to line up the perfect shot. But then when things heat up, pulling the aforementioned "River Tam" style action (but heavier on advanced ranged weaponry involved, of course!).
There's a question of how to do the metroids right. Because they're sort of ethereal, sort of not - and you don't want any cheesiness like the spirits in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Maybe something that sort of floats (lofted as if from plasma propulsion? or more buoyant?), with a skin resembling a cold streaming plasma moving around an inner core, which can stream into and out of other beings to feed, spreading like a fungus's tendrils (almost slime mold-like). Still tangible, tactile, but not... "normal". Maybe almost feeding sort of like a gorgon worm. And I can picture Samus as the sort of person who would quietly let the baby feed on her (say, an arm) with a sort of "cold but motherly" attitude about it.
What bizarre set of questions, axioms and probabilities of truths would lead someone to conclude that anyone was talking about "drilling" tunnels without government permission?
Oh, and as for the atmosphere, I picture something sort of like "Avatar meets Alien". Aka, really inventive with the alien landscapes and creatures in a way that feels like a natural, integrated whole - but instead of Avatar's "Ferngully"-style motif on top of it, having that a grimy cyberpunk feel. Less "in harmony with the mother goddess", more "nature red in tooth and claw", integrated in with advanced but decrepit spacecraft, weaponry and facilities. Hmm... you know, the feel of "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex" would work really well... take out the teeming megacities and replace them with a lonely, "alien outpost on a hostile world" setting, and I think you've got the atmosphere right.
Yeah, she would be good as Samus. I have trouble with the "pick an actor/actress for a role" things because my mind immediately jumps to "who would be the worst person to cast for the role. Rosie O'Donnell! Dame Judy Dench! Paris Hilton! Snooki! Once I start thinking down that route, all serious possibilities disappear ;)
Metroid was really groundbreaking in the fact that not only was the main character female (extremely rare at that time), but that they let you get through the entire game before revealing this fact. The series also had a rather quiet, solemn atmosphere for what was otherwise a scrolling platformer - something that would probably translate well to the screen. The problem with turning video games to movies is flushing out the characters. We know what Samus *does* in the game, who the antagonists are, etc. But who is she as a person? Without filling that in, you just get a one-dimensional action movie.
I can see the plot now....
Sounds like it might be much simpler:
Aka, according to Tesla, there absolutely was racial language used - but the plaintiff was part of it, and his contract was ended as a consequence. Also, Tesla makes some pretty damning-if-true counterallegations - among them:
They also allege that the attorney hired has a long track record of taking on meritless lawsuits and using the threat of damage to a company's reputation in the media to get them to settle out of court.
I would say, "We'll see where this goes", except, well, we all know that while allegations get big headlines, unless there's a surprise ending and a court rules against Tesla, we'll never actually see an article covering the court dismissing the case. Just like each and every other time that something like this has happened.
The reality is that we live in a world that every last lawsuit against Tesla (something that happens against all companies) will be extensively covered by the media, without any coverage of the outcome of the suits - which so far have all been in Tesla's favour.
Obama didn't want SLS either. SLS is a congressional creation.