100% torque at 0 RPM is all you need to hear to know it's suitability for towing. There's a reason why trains use electric motors instead of gearboxes.
As for the batteries, I'd put them under the bed. The trailer itself I'd generally look more into putting a generator into than more batteries.
They used to use a "call it in if there's over $5000 damage" standard, but people can't estimate damage worth a damn, so they went to the "does it need a tow truck?" standard.
A much better standard I think. For one there's probably quite a few cars which it would otherwise be NEVER to call because their total value is under $5k.
Not to mention at the price and locations of probable storage they'll probably have 24/7 armed guards who are all distantly related to the purchaser...
Because I'm the child of mountain folk? I need an editor(that I don't have when making slashdot posts)? I'm of the opinion that if I ever make a post/document with perfect grammer throughout that I'd piss off a god somewhere and end up with a nasty curse?
It's also a safety thing like how diesel and gasoline nozzles are of different sizes, and within my memory even 'standard' gasoline had a different size nozzle. Unleaded is the smallest, then 'standard', then diesel. So you can feed gasoline into your diesel vehicle, but not vice versa. Diesel owners were considered 'smarter' or at least more educated in their vehicle, so it was considered the smarter choice.
The same comes to ball size - have a small hitch on your car that's barely capable of 500 pounds, 1 ball size. Light truck 3500? Another. 5k+? A third. The last is good up until you're looking more at the semi-tractor style hitches that hook up over the rear axle(s).
Holy heck.... If the dude drove into one of those I'd be surprised if the tesla made it another 100 yards. Talk about substantial.
Still, on the other multiballs - the way I'd do it would be to have a bolt go completely through the bar, with the balls set on then welded into place, if not screwed on then welded. Same deal with the last ball, just shorter, preferably with some sort of threaded bolt adding reinforcement.
Sure, you'll pull loads slightly off center with such a hitch if you use the balls to either side, but not enough to make a big difference, apparently.
I've read that farmers will do this deliberately sometimes to bias their trailer to one side or another - keeping clear of traffic, for example.
Good opportunity to get around legacy hardware designed under circumstances that are often no longer relevant.
What's the saying? 'Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it'? What legacy hardware are you afraid they'll bolt onto an EV that's 'no longer relevant'?
While breaking from the past is a good idea, especially considering that the optimizations for a BEV are certainly different than for a GFV, I'd argue that there's still an awful lot to learn from the history of GFVs for operability, safety, security, and such. Take everything with a grain of salt, of course, but have traditional experts in the process of you designing the vehicle to point out stuff that was solved generations ago. Or perhaps problems that they have trouble with even today that an EV might be able to solve.
The joys of owning the first model year... I'd say that there's probably not enough evidence yet, especially given that it seems that some people don't bother to eaven report when their conventionally fueled vehicle catches.
The garage thing would be that, to my knowledge, Tesla vehicles have yet to catch fire without being invovled in a serious event and proceeding to give warning before catching. If this guy had lived within minutes of home, I suppose he could have caught the garage. Perhaps a warning 'If you've recently been in an accident don't park your car inside until it's been checked for damage'.
The question here is whether this is because of CAFE standards or the price of gasoline? When when oil(and therefore gasoline) was cheap 'everybody' was buying SUVs and Trucks because of the greater feature sets at lower upfront cost. As the prices headed up people started switching back to cars and a lot of work even went into trucks and such to improve their performance. F-250 class trucks are now getting F-150 mileage.
I'd argue that price of gasoline had more to do with realworld increases in efficincy and reduced consumption rates than CAFE ever did.
A pet peeve with cars is the stupid engine light that gives no clue what the problem is. I have no idea if it's some lower-priority thing like a polution sensor slightly out of spec or something where I need to stop immediately to avoid engine damage. (I know you can buy the code readers, but I don't carry one around in my car typically.)
Given the years and number of manufacturers you should expect there to be variances in terms and functionality, from 'service engine' which means 'change your oil!', but in general a 'check engine' light is something minor that varies between 'won't pass a pollution test' to 'you're not getting the mileage you should'. It's when it starts flashing that you should pull over and call a tow truck.
You are correct that Tesla needs to analyze why the batteries are being compromised from what should be survivable incidents, a car's batteries should be protected better to keep them from being damaged by even the most severe road debris.
Actually, the described scenario of striking a multi-headed trailer hitch is probably WORSE than all that you described. It must of acted like a huge caltrop. You can't design for 'everything' and keep the car light enough to be functional.
Concrete curb - Odds are at least one of the wheels are going to hit the curb as well, raising the vehicle and lowering the strike area, and standard ones probably don't stick up as high as the hitch did. Even if not, you likely have a deflecting implact, not a puncturing one.
Road sign - These are generally constructed of mild steel and aluminum, as the worst the post has to withstand is the weather on the sign. In an impact it's going to be forced down of course, but then the rest of the sign will act as a lifting/distributing force on the car.
Trailer hitch - Designed to be able to haul trailers weighing 5k pounds and up, the balls are solid hardened steel and the post is generally at least 1/2 inch thick, again of hardened steel. Given the described hitch was a multi-ball type, it's entirely possible/probable that the thing weighed more than the average stop sign/post(excepting concrete), much less a mile marker. It probably impacted the car in a armor-piercing fashion much like a pike against a calvary charge.
I guess I figured the trailer hitch in question was attached to a vehicle of some kind. I guess we should take it to mean debris?
Pretty much. While you might need to eventually get a police report, for a non-disabled car(remember it initially said it'd need repair, but worked) without any damage to anything of importance you can usually 'phone in' your police report. Heck, I remember one state you could do it on the web.
As for the hitch he hit, I can't help but picture it as a giant caltrop.
Doesn't say so in the article, making me think they'd have to be more or less permanent.
Besides, you can't really debug 'safe around people/crowds' unless your vehicle actually encounters them. One would have a better shot at 'until technology allowing them to coexist with pedestrians is developed', but that's likely long enough that at that point you'd deploy a new solution entirely.
Indeed, however when I went to school if you were told to average something they meant the mean. If they wanted the median they'd say so. It's how I was trained. So sorry, but in my upbringing in the language, 'average' does indeed stand for the 'mean'. It might of changed or been only a local thing, but change takes a bit, you know?
To me it sounds a lot like an implementation of 'Personal Rapid Transit', and it's hardly 'mixing with pedestrians' if they're getting their own dedicated pathways.
until no-one in their right minds would countenance a human driver behind the wheel.
This reminded me of a schlock mercenary comic strip(and explanation). It's not quite XKCD, I know. It's also interesting to see how much better Tayler is at drawing now....
You said "self evacuate from cyclones" would reduce premiums by more than 80%. Cyclones aren't the cause of all crashes and they aren't the only natural disaster.
I took it to mean that the car's smart enough to avoid cyclones, and by extension smart enough to avoid a whole bunch of other things.
Don't forget that even if the financial cost($) is cheaper, there are other expenses. People have listed 'having to be around others' but I personally really don't care. What I do care about in my situation is the time. In order to take the bus to work I'd have to leave an hour earlier and get home ~1.5 hours later. The price of which is about equal to my marginal cost for just driving there.
Given that I value personal time between home and work at around $10/hour, it becomes a fool's bargain. As expensive as my vehicle is, I value the time and freedom it gives me much higher.
My valuations, roughly speaking: Personal time, allowed to do what I want, away from home: $10/hour. Personal time, at home: $20/hour Time spent driving: $0-5/hour Time spent outside during winter, not playing: $-10/hour.
Solution: Auto-drive cars don't give control back to you. They'd be programed to bring the car to a safe halt, not hand over control to a human, especially with little to no notice.
In the scenario you're giving, the car should have already cut speed due to the the rain, and should be plotting a route to get off the road while avoiding collisions due to it's safety margins being exceeded.
If it's calculated that it can't prevent collision entirely it should be using a decision tree that guides it to the hopefully least damaging collision.
*snerk* - But, more seriously, I figure that self-driving cars will get into different accidents than human drivers; of which 'distraction' is up there. I figre they'll get into accidents few humans would get into, but be excellent at preventing accidents via 'fast twich' reactions that are far faster than any human.
Back on the survey - I think that it ends up asking two different questions. 'Would you do/let X happen with an autodrive car' allows the respondant to make their own assessment as to the capabilities of the system. 'Would you buy an autodrive car if it drops your insurance premiums 80%' implies that the system is 5X less likely to be in an accident, and engages different parts of the brain - the math side, not the animal 'keep yourself safe' side.
By the way - the 'watch the scenery go by' crowd would be 'less than 1 out of 5' by my figuring, since 'more than 1/4' implies >25%. Personally I'd be voting for 'all of the above'.
It was my understanding that the Federally mandated US 55 mph speed limit had very little to do with safety margins, and was more to do with the national consumption of Oil, and the dependence on foreign sources.
You are correct on this. However, note that I mention speed limits above 55 - The 55 speed limit went away in the '80s after the relaxation of the oil embargo, eventually leading to the median speed limit on interstate highways rising to 75. There are lower ones where states haven't raised the max to it(one state is 70 max), some where it's higher(85 in Texas?), not to mention the substantial areas where the limit is lower for legitimate safety reasons ranging from construction to terrain issues, but the average is 75.
One of the quirks is that due to enhanced streamlining speeds above 55 don't impose quite the penalty it used to in gas mileage.
Slashdot Mirror
100% torque at 0 RPM is all you need to hear to know it's suitability for towing. There's a reason why trains use electric motors instead of gearboxes.
As for the batteries, I'd put them under the bed. The trailer itself I'd generally look more into putting a generator into than more batteries.
The problem I have with the current 'truck' hybrids is that they're at the bottom of the towing capacity, which is what I do need from a truck.
They used to use a "call it in if there's over $5000 damage" standard, but people can't estimate damage worth a damn, so they went to the "does it need a tow truck?" standard.
A much better standard I think. For one there's probably quite a few cars which it would otherwise be NEVER to call because their total value is under $5k.
Not to mention at the price and locations of probable storage they'll probably have 24/7 armed guards who are all distantly related to the purchaser...
Linux gets it why don't you?
Because I'm the child of mountain folk? I need an editor(that I don't have when making slashdot posts)? I'm of the opinion that if I ever make a post/document with perfect grammer throughout that I'd piss off a god somewhere and end up with a nasty curse?
Take your pick.
It's also a safety thing like how diesel and gasoline nozzles are of different sizes, and within my memory even 'standard' gasoline had a different size nozzle. Unleaded is the smallest, then 'standard', then diesel. So you can feed gasoline into your diesel vehicle, but not vice versa. Diesel owners were considered 'smarter' or at least more educated in their vehicle, so it was considered the smarter choice.
The same comes to ball size - have a small hitch on your car that's barely capable of 500 pounds, 1 ball size. Light truck 3500? Another. 5k+? A third. The last is good up until you're looking more at the semi-tractor style hitches that hook up over the rear axle(s).
Holy heck.... If the dude drove into one of those I'd be surprised if the tesla made it another 100 yards. Talk about substantial.
Still, on the other multiballs - the way I'd do it would be to have a bolt go completely through the bar, with the balls set on then welded into place, if not screwed on then welded. Same deal with the last ball, just shorter, preferably with some sort of threaded bolt adding reinforcement.
Sure, you'll pull loads slightly off center with such a hitch if you use the balls to either side, but not enough to make a big difference, apparently.
I've read that farmers will do this deliberately sometimes to bias their trailer to one side or another - keeping clear of traffic, for example.
Good opportunity to get around legacy hardware designed under circumstances that are often no longer relevant.
What's the saying? 'Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it'? What legacy hardware are you afraid they'll bolt onto an EV that's 'no longer relevant'?
While breaking from the past is a good idea, especially considering that the optimizations for a BEV are certainly different than for a GFV, I'd argue that there's still an awful lot to learn from the history of GFVs for operability, safety, security, and such. Take everything with a grain of salt, of course, but have traditional experts in the process of you designing the vehicle to point out stuff that was solved generations ago. Or perhaps problems that they have trouble with even today that an EV might be able to solve.
The joys of owning the first model year... I'd say that there's probably not enough evidence yet, especially given that it seems that some people don't bother to eaven report when their conventionally fueled vehicle catches.
The garage thing would be that, to my knowledge, Tesla vehicles have yet to catch fire without being invovled in a serious event and proceeding to give warning before catching. If this guy had lived within minutes of home, I suppose he could have caught the garage. Perhaps a warning 'If you've recently been in an accident don't park your car inside until it's been checked for damage'.
The question here is whether this is because of CAFE standards or the price of gasoline? When when oil(and therefore gasoline) was cheap 'everybody' was buying SUVs and Trucks because of the greater feature sets at lower upfront cost. As the prices headed up people started switching back to cars and a lot of work even went into trucks and such to improve their performance. F-250 class trucks are now getting F-150 mileage.
I'd argue that price of gasoline had more to do with realworld increases in efficincy and reduced consumption rates than CAFE ever did.
A pet peeve with cars is the stupid engine light that gives no clue what the problem is. I have no idea if it's some lower-priority thing like a polution sensor slightly out of spec or something where I need to stop immediately to avoid engine damage. (I know you can buy the code readers, but I don't carry one around in my car typically.)
Given the years and number of manufacturers you should expect there to be variances in terms and functionality, from 'service engine' which means 'change your oil!', but in general a 'check engine' light is something minor that varies between 'won't pass a pollution test' to 'you're not getting the mileage you should'. It's when it starts flashing that you should pull over and call a tow truck.
You are correct that Tesla needs to analyze why the batteries are being compromised from what should be survivable incidents, a car's batteries should be protected better to keep them from being damaged by even the most severe road debris.
Actually, the described scenario of striking a multi-headed trailer hitch is probably WORSE than all that you described. It must of acted like a huge caltrop. You can't design for 'everything' and keep the car light enough to be functional.
Concrete curb - Odds are at least one of the wheels are going to hit the curb as well, raising the vehicle and lowering the strike area, and standard ones probably don't stick up as high as the hitch did. Even if not, you likely have a deflecting implact, not a puncturing one.
Road sign - These are generally constructed of mild steel and aluminum, as the worst the post has to withstand is the weather on the sign. In an impact it's going to be forced down of course, but then the rest of the sign will act as a lifting/distributing force on the car.
Trailer hitch - Designed to be able to haul trailers weighing 5k pounds and up, the balls are solid hardened steel and the post is generally at least 1/2 inch thick, again of hardened steel. Given the described hitch was a multi-ball type, it's entirely possible/probable that the thing weighed more than the average stop sign/post(excepting concrete), much less a mile marker. It probably impacted the car in a armor-piercing fashion much like a pike against a calvary charge.
I guess I figured the trailer hitch in question was attached to a vehicle of some kind. I guess we should take it to mean debris?
Pretty much. While you might need to eventually get a police report, for a non-disabled car(remember it initially said it'd need repair, but worked) without any damage to anything of importance you can usually 'phone in' your police report. Heck, I remember one state you could do it on the web.
As for the hitch he hit, I can't help but picture it as a giant caltrop.
Doesn't say so in the article, making me think they'd have to be more or less permanent.
Besides, you can't really debug 'safe around people/crowds' unless your vehicle actually encounters them. One would have a better shot at 'until technology allowing them to coexist with pedestrians is developed', but that's likely long enough that at that point you'd deploy a new solution entirely.
What I meant is that most people, when presented with a 'top x% of drivers' are going to be thinking in terms of median, not average.
Most people when they say 'I'm better than the average driver' probably mean they think they're better than 50% of the drivers out there.
English is fuzzy - get used to it.
Indeed, however when I went to school if you were told to average something they meant the mean. If they wanted the median they'd say so. It's how I was trained. So sorry, but in my upbringing in the language, 'average' does indeed stand for the 'mean'. It might of changed or been only a local thing, but change takes a bit, you know?
To me it sounds a lot like an implementation of 'Personal Rapid Transit', and it's hardly 'mixing with pedestrians' if they're getting their own dedicated pathways.
until no-one in their right minds would countenance a human driver behind the wheel.
This reminded me of a schlock mercenary comic strip(and explanation). It's not quite XKCD, I know. It's also interesting to see how much better Tayler is at drawing now....
You said "self evacuate from cyclones" would reduce premiums by more than 80%. Cyclones aren't the cause of all crashes and they aren't the only natural disaster.
I took it to mean that the car's smart enough to avoid cyclones, and by extension smart enough to avoid a whole bunch of other things.
Don't forget that even if the financial cost($) is cheaper, there are other expenses. People have listed 'having to be around others' but I personally really don't care. What I do care about in my situation is the time. In order to take the bus to work I'd have to leave an hour earlier and get home ~1.5 hours later. The price of which is about equal to my marginal cost for just driving there.
Given that I value personal time between home and work at around $10/hour, it becomes a fool's bargain. As expensive as my vehicle is, I value the time and freedom it gives me much higher.
My valuations, roughly speaking:
Personal time, allowed to do what I want, away from home: $10/hour.
Personal time, at home: $20/hour
Time spent driving: $0-5/hour
Time spent outside during winter, not playing: $-10/hour.
Solution: Auto-drive cars don't give control back to you. They'd be programed to bring the car to a safe halt, not hand over control to a human, especially with little to no notice.
In the scenario you're giving, the car should have already cut speed due to the the rain, and should be plotting a route to get off the road while avoiding collisions due to it's safety margins being exceeded.
If it's calculated that it can't prevent collision entirely it should be using a decision tree that guides it to the hopefully least damaging collision.
That's only true if you don't assume that they're messing up and saying 'average' when they really mean 'median'.
It's all how you figure out the metrics.
*snerk* - But, more seriously, I figure that self-driving cars will get into different accidents than human drivers; of which 'distraction' is up there. I figre they'll get into accidents few humans would get into, but be excellent at preventing accidents via 'fast twich' reactions that are far faster than any human.
Back on the survey - I think that it ends up asking two different questions. 'Would you do/let X happen with an autodrive car' allows the respondant to make their own assessment as to the capabilities of the system. 'Would you buy an autodrive car if it drops your insurance premiums 80%' implies that the system is 5X less likely to be in an accident, and engages different parts of the brain - the math side, not the animal 'keep yourself safe' side.
By the way - the 'watch the scenery go by' crowd would be 'less than 1 out of 5' by my figuring, since 'more than 1/4' implies >25%. Personally I'd be voting for 'all of the above'.
It was my understanding that the Federally mandated US 55 mph speed limit had very little to do with safety margins, and was more to do with the national consumption of Oil, and the dependence on foreign sources.
You are correct on this. However, note that I mention speed limits above 55 - The 55 speed limit went away in the '80s after the relaxation of the oil embargo, eventually leading to the median speed limit on interstate highways rising to 75. There are lower ones where states haven't raised the max to it(one state is 70 max), some where it's higher(85 in Texas?), not to mention the substantial areas where the limit is lower for legitimate safety reasons ranging from construction to terrain issues, but the average is 75.
One of the quirks is that due to enhanced streamlining speeds above 55 don't impose quite the penalty it used to in gas mileage.