Price is going to be slightly higher than the Model S, which probably puts it around $65k after the Federal tax incentive. If you live in certain states (like CA) where there are separate tax incentives for buying an EV, that price will come down a bit more.
The Model X seats 7 adults. Just how many kids do you have? Are you currently driving a school bus or something?
It doesn't cost 80K. You're either purposely lying or are simply ignorant. Model S base price is $62,400 after the Federal tax credit that everyone in the US gets (and some states offer additional financial incentives that bring that down even further).
As for what it compares to, that'd be Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 series, and Audi A8. It compared quite favorably against them as its sales figures have shown (it's crushing its direct competitors). It's also Motor Trend's Car of the Year and Consumer Reports gave it 99/100; its highest rating ever for a car.
210 mile range for about the same you paid for the Yukon. Seats 7 adults, 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. Deliveries begin in 2014.
Not sure why you need this urban assault vehicle, but I completely understand not wanting anything to do with the typical goofy looking EV micro-cars that are the Leaf, etc. Personally, I see a lot of reasonable stuff in between. If a full size sedan works for you, the Model S (http://www.teslamotors.com/models) seats 5 adults and 2 children very comfortably and sells for about the same as your Yukon.
If I bought a Nissan Leaf, I'd have to get it towed home from work every day.
EVs don't work in the real world until you start operating on Tesla's level. Nissan better up their game since Tesla's next model (Model E) is scheduled to do 200 miles for $35k. Combined with the ongoing rollout of the Tesla-only Supercharge network, I just don't see anyone going elsewhere for an EV without some major changes to what's available.
The salt? Maybe. If you can even prove it's happening and can prove who's responsible for it. Everything else? If people are entering your property without your permission and destroying your property, I'd say you have every reason to install legitimate security equipment to stop that.
(I know one person that ended up moving over the harassment he got when he shot a neighbors cat. Also, every potted plant and his entire lawn died. It's assumed that one or more persons put herbicide on all of them.)
Sounds like your friend decided to back down. Another option would have been to simply take the necessary steps to ensure that the sanctity and security of his home were no longer violated by either neighbors or their unwelcome animals.
A few weeks or months of being sleep deprived, blind, and deaf, losing their trees, watching every other form of plant life in their yard slowly die, smelling the shit-smell gently wafting over from your new plants, and being completely unable to maintain a functional wireless device, they'll either surrender or move (i.e. surrender). That or they'll be driven to do something terribly illegal which will land them in jail.
That won't do it. What you need to do is put some teeth in the Constitution. Simply define any violation of the Constitution by an agent or employee of the government as treason and put every non-unanimous SCOTUS decision to a popular vote. If 4/5 of voters agree that one side or the other obviously violated the Constitution with their opinion (be it the winning or losing side), they also go on trial for treason.
Kiss that rubber stamp from the courts goodbye. No more Citizens United or Kelo decisions. And good luck getting any sizable number of people on board with blatantly illegal activities that violate the Constitution when everyone who participates in any way in anything questionable is risking their lives. Today, anyone can willfully disregard the highest law of the land with no consequence. The higher up they are, the larger and more grand their golden parachute is should they ever be required to take a dive for the folks upstairs. Watch in utter amazement how few government lawyers will jump to write position papers defending secret surveillance, detainment, and torture of US citizens when doing so is automatic treason.
And who handles the prosecution and holds the trial? A semi-random group of citizens selected automatically for the task. No more inside group who would never go after one another. No more buddy-buddy side deals that make everything go away because they're from the right family or have the right connections. Just regular people applying common sense and decency to keep everyone in government in line. You walk the straight and narrow or the citizens come calling.
Anything less, you can forget it working. These idiots responded to "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" by banning guns and they responded to "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" by launching secret surveillance programs to watch us every minute of every day to the greatest extend currently possible.
If you think this is all coming from a lack of clarity, then you haven't been paying attention. It's coming from a lack of consequences.
Develop Linux like Intel develops CPUs: first you make a new shiny, then you do an entire release on improving that shiny. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Even better if you have two competing teams working on it. Whichever team comes up with the better product by launch time gets the nod.
It's been happening with everyone since Eisenhower. Accounting tricks aside, total debt has increased every since year since 1956. Clinton never had a surplus; he had a single year with only $56 Billion in deficits.
I think you may be misunderstanding what "less educated, less well off people" means. A certain level of context comes into play there when we're talking about most of the rest of the world versus the Western countries. For the purposes of that comment, "less educated" would refer to individuals who've had little (less than 5 years) to no formal, useful education (centers for extremist religious indoctrination where no math, science, or arts are taught don't count). When you have someone who lacks the benefits of formal education, they have very little knowledge of themselves or the world around them and are vastly easier to manipulate.
As for my stance sickening you, I find it odd that you feel the need to call out self-defense as sickening, but apparently feel no such need to call out the brainwashing of uneducated, poor masses of people to die in futile attempts to advance the agendas of sick and twisted cowards by convincing them to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in the name of a god who wants to reward them for doing so. Perhaps you should reconsider what's actually sickening.
Ultimately, the best reason to not talk to police (in particular, once they've begun accusing you) is confirmation bias. Once an officer begin to form a belief around your guilt, human psychology takes over and anything you tell him will be molded into the pre-conceived belief without the officer even realizing it. This will happen to officers with the purest of intentions. They're human; they can't help it. Once they have an inkling that you're their guy, everything you say will get warped - on the fly, subconsciously - into either an admission of guilt or a hiding of the truth about your guilt.
There are certainly instances where talking to police is fine, but the instant you have any suspicion any of the officers involved has any doubts about your total lack of involvement in any criminal activity, you need to shut up whether you're guilty or not. Filter all communications through an intelligent lawyer. It'd be nice if we all lived in some Leave it to Beaver fantasy land where every cop is your pal and you can talk it out man to man, but we have a society that's too large and too impersonal for that. The cop doesn't know you and even if he does somewhat, he's got too much experience dealing with scumbags to believe you're one of the few perfect angels he'll have contact with.
I'm fine with that. You don't get to blow up civilians of the world's only superpower and get to sit in a failed state or other little junker country laughing at us. To allow that to happen is to invite a never-ending stream of would-be bin Ladens.
You notice you never see the leadership of one of these groups strapping bombs to themselves to die for their beliefs. Rather, they expect other, less educated, less well off people to die for their agenda. The world is full of less educated, less well off people who will fall for promises of riches in the hereafter and it always will be, so killing all of them means a never-ending fight where the poor and ignorant are slaughtered. If that's the plan - to just continually fight the masses of deluded poor people - we may as well move to nuclear weapons now. They'll get all the terrorists and potential terrorists in one fell swoop and we'll rather quickly exhaust the supply of willing participants.
I think the smarter alternative would be to only involve ourselves (politically, militarily, and otherwise) where all parties openly welcome us and where we know exactly who all those parties are and how stable (mentally and politically) they are, and then find and kill anyone who screws with us without regard for where they are (paying particular attention to the puppeteers). Honestly, if we knew this guy was at his beach house in Somalia, I don't understand sending US personnel there. Just level the place with a half dozen cruise missiles. Same thing with the guy in Libya. If he's got a nice house there, wait for him to come home (drone surveillance) and then level the place.
Make the message loud and clear: "We won't mess with you, but if you mess with us we will end you. We will not stop, we will not rest, and the second you do, your life will end." Dancing around with getting involved here and there and hitting this guy with a missile and that guy with SEAL ops is sending a mixed signal. Stop messing around where we aren't openly welcomed by stable, sane people and when someone decides to mess with us, obliterate them with absolutely overwhelmingly massive force. I think we'd quickly find a dwindling number of people willing to come after us.
"Earlier this week, a Model S traveling at highway speed struck a large metal object, causing significant damage to the vehicle. A curved section that fell off a semi-trailer was recovered from the roadway near where the accident occurred and, according to the road crew that was on the scene, appears to be the culprit. The geometry of the object caused a powerful lever action as it went under the car, punching upward and impaling the Model S with a peak force on the order of 25 tons. Only a force of this magnitude would be strong enough to punch a 3 inch diameter hole through the quarter inch armor plate protecting the base of the vehicle.
The Model S owner was nonetheless able to exit the highway as instructed by the onboard alert system, bring the car to a stop and depart the vehicle without injury. A fire caused by the impact began in the front battery module – the battery pack has a total of 16 modules – but was contained to the front section of the car by internal firewalls within the pack. Vents built into the battery pack directed the flames down towards the road and away from the vehicle."
"Is this Tesla's version of 2010's high profile Prius recall issue where pundits and critics took the opportunity to stir fears of the cars new technology?"
One fire where no one was injured? Any pundits or critics claiming this is an indication of anything is, quite frankly, retarded. There have already been terrible crashes with both the Tesla Roadster and the Model S. No one has ever died in a Tesla vehicle. Others have died in collisions with Tesla vehicles where the Tesla driver got out with little to no injury.
That people will feign (or worse, actually experience) fear of a potential battery fire in a car is truly absurd in light of the fact that the typical car is utilizing explosions to provide power and hauling a large container of explosive fuel. They're driving a rolling bomb and talking about how dangerous batteries are.
Tyson is a brilliant theoretical physicist and he should probably continue studying theoretical physics rather than pontificating on whether a billionaire who owns and designs products for multiple successful companies understands the risks and rewards of space exploration. When Neil deGrasse Tyson launches his own successful businesses and starts designing rocket ships that successfully deliver supplies to the international space station, he'll be slightly more qualified to hold an opinion on the subject.
Elon Musk is an educated, trained physicist. He's started multiple successful businesses. He's designed and built electric cars that actually work for real people and that are built like tanks. He's designed and built rockets and capsules that carry out successful missions in space at a fraction of the cost of NASA and everyone else. He's doing what virtually nobody else is doing: taking risks. He's the next Steve Jobs and he doesn't want to make your music player pretty; he wants to go to Mars.
If I were a betting man, I most certainly wouldn't be betting against Elon Musk. That's a stupid bet.
You can be wary all you like and speculate all you like, but we have real-world collisions to look at already including ones with fatalities (not the Model S' passengers - they're all fine).
Scroll down just a bit and you'll see a Honda and BMW that were obliterated and a couple Teslas looking a bit banged up. The drivers have posted on various forums about their experiences. Honda generally makes some pretty safe cars, but you won't be able to find out about the experience of the people in the accident with the Model S because the Honda failed to save their lives. The Model S driver walked away with minor injuries and that was a 1/4 head-on.
Got any other theories about how the Model S will perform?
I think it's perfectly fair to look at the map for Winter 2013 since we're talking a very short time from now. They're ramping up so fast it's crazy. This Christmas, you'll be able to make it North to South on either coast and East to West all within range of Superchargers. Is it perfect? No, but it covers nearly all the driving that the vast majority of Americans do on any kind of regular basis.
You can pack on all the upgrades, options, and features you want to try and claim it costs tens of thousands more than it does, but that doesn't change the fact that you're spewing bullshit because you don't have a logical leg to stand on. The base price is what the base price is. You don't compare upgraded version to base price competition; you compare base price to base price. It's a $60,000 car, not an $80,000 car or a $100,000 car or a $500,000 car. The fact that you can get a Honda Accord gold plated and bullet-proofed for $1.3 Million doesn't suddenly make Honda Accords cost the same as a Bugatti Veyron.
The Honda Accord base price is $21,680 The BMW 528i base price is $47,500 The Tesla Model S base price is $62,400 The Audi A8 base price is $72,200 The Jaguar XK base price is $79,000 The Porsche 911 Carrera base prise is $84,300
So stop lying to try and prove your point. All it does is prove you have no point to prove.
$30,000 is the average cost of a new car in 2013. Both Forbes and the FTC confirm this fact. As such, a $30,000 car is an "every-man's car". That's not to say every single person can afford it (plenty of people can't afford a car at $3k); rather it's to say that it's a car your average car buyer can afford.
It's coming in 2016. Musk has been committed to getting the pricing into that range since before the first Roadster rolled off the line years ago and he's committed to doing so now. He's also committed to seeing Tesla's breakthrough technology in all manner of other manufacturers' vehicles, so I fully expect the 2016 Tesla car to have plenty of competition from other cars powered by Tesla technology. Between that and the massively expanding supercharging network, it's easy to see why investors have pushed Tesla's stock so high so fast.
As for it being a playtoy for people with money, I supposed that'd be just like Audi, BMW, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Porsche, Shelby, and everyone else who aims for that higher end of the market.
Per Forbes, the average price of a new car is over $30,000 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/05/10/average-price-of-a-new-car/). Considering the number of cars selling for $12,000 - $15,000 new, that average is factoring in a lot of cars well over $30,000.
This isn't a toy for the rich and it isn't a car for everyone. It's something affordable for the upper middle class and it's nothing for the "rich". Tesla began this with a $110,000 sports car. Now they have a $60,000 sedan. In three years, they're coming out with a $30,000 every-man's car. The Roadster was a toy. The Model S is a real car for real people. It doesn't have to be a $30k Volvo to not be a "playtoy for people with money". There's a huge, huge area between the two.
They're working toward that. Iteration 1 was a $110,000 sports car. Iteration 2 is a $60,000 sedan. Iteration 3 is an SUV. Iteration 4 is aiming for a $30,000 every-man's car.
Tell me, Slashdot, how difficult would it be to rewrite an insurance billing system to aggregate a policyholder's out-of-pocket costs?
Tell me, Slashdot, how much would insurance companies have to charge all their even remotely healthy people to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown away in a futile attempt to save every life using every possible means regardless of cost?
Do you really want to know why the delay was put in place? Basic mathematics. The insurance companies have actuarial tables which tell them down to 1-3% mark just how much it'll cost them to cover all their millions of customers. The new legislation skewed the numbers by forcing insurance companies to add tons and tons of very sick people who'll never pay into the pool what the pool will pay out on their behalf. As such, they have to adjust their rates to match, but that big a change wasn't politically feasible; the backlash would have sunk the politicians and the insurance companies. So the extra time was built in to ensure a feasible boiling frog effect.
Boil, froggy. Boil and believe the lie that at least we've all got our own pot of water now.
Slashdot Mirror
Price is going to be slightly higher than the Model S, which probably puts it around $65k after the Federal tax incentive. If you live in certain states (like CA) where there are separate tax incentives for buying an EV, that price will come down a bit more.
The Model X seats 7 adults. Just how many kids do you have? Are you currently driving a school bus or something?
It doesn't cost 80K. You're either purposely lying or are simply ignorant. Model S base price is $62,400 after the Federal tax credit that everyone in the US gets (and some states offer additional financial incentives that bring that down even further).
As for what it compares to, that'd be Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 series, and Audi A8. It compared quite favorably against them as its sales figures have shown (it's crushing its direct competitors). It's also Motor Trend's Car of the Year and Consumer Reports gave it 99/100; its highest rating ever for a car.
Here's the closest you'll find so far: http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx
210 mile range for about the same you paid for the Yukon. Seats 7 adults, 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. Deliveries begin in 2014.
Not sure why you need this urban assault vehicle, but I completely understand not wanting anything to do with the typical goofy looking EV micro-cars that are the Leaf, etc. Personally, I see a lot of reasonable stuff in between. If a full size sedan works for you, the Model S (http://www.teslamotors.com/models) seats 5 adults and 2 children very comfortably and sells for about the same as your Yukon.
If I bought a Nissan Leaf, I'd have to get it towed home from work every day.
EVs don't work in the real world until you start operating on Tesla's level. Nissan better up their game since Tesla's next model (Model E) is scheduled to do 200 miles for $35k. Combined with the ongoing rollout of the Tesla-only Supercharge network, I just don't see anyone going elsewhere for an EV without some major changes to what's available.
The salt? Maybe. If you can even prove it's happening and can prove who's responsible for it. Everything else? If people are entering your property without your permission and destroying your property, I'd say you have every reason to install legitimate security equipment to stop that.
(I know one person that ended up moving over the harassment he got when he shot a neighbors cat. Also, every potted plant and his entire lawn died. It's assumed that one or more persons put herbicide on all of them.)
Sounds like your friend decided to back down. Another option would have been to simply take the necessary steps to ensure that the sanctity and security of his home were no longer violated by either neighbors or their unwelcome animals.
Step 1: Surround the house with 5,000-lumen security lights - http://www.amazon.com/Whelen-Super-LED-Floodlight-5000-Lumens/dp/B004HL5W7Y
Step 2: Install motion sensors near the house connected to 105dB sirens - http://simplisafe.com/105-decibel-alarm-siren
Step 3: Utilize ArduCopter HEXA at high altitude to deliver daily 3.3lb payload of salt to enemy neighbors' yards - http://www.canadadrones.com/ArduCopter-Hexa-KIT-HEAVY-LIFT-Full-Electronics-p/ac-hexa-kit-full-hl1.htm
Step 4: Sue to tear out all boundary trees in enemy neighbors' yards
Step 5: Replace your potted plants with well fertilized plants all along the property line (ensuring to-the-letter compliance with local/HOA requirements)
Step 6: Operate multiple wireless routers (properly secured of course) at all frequencies and channels as close to enemy neighbors' houses as possible
A few weeks or months of being sleep deprived, blind, and deaf, losing their trees, watching every other form of plant life in their yard slowly die, smelling the shit-smell gently wafting over from your new plants, and being completely unable to maintain a functional wireless device, they'll either surrender or move (i.e. surrender). That or they'll be driven to do something terribly illegal which will land them in jail.
That won't do it. What you need to do is put some teeth in the Constitution. Simply define any violation of the Constitution by an agent or employee of the government as treason and put every non-unanimous SCOTUS decision to a popular vote. If 4/5 of voters agree that one side or the other obviously violated the Constitution with their opinion (be it the winning or losing side), they also go on trial for treason.
Kiss that rubber stamp from the courts goodbye. No more Citizens United or Kelo decisions. And good luck getting any sizable number of people on board with blatantly illegal activities that violate the Constitution when everyone who participates in any way in anything questionable is risking their lives. Today, anyone can willfully disregard the highest law of the land with no consequence. The higher up they are, the larger and more grand their golden parachute is should they ever be required to take a dive for the folks upstairs. Watch in utter amazement how few government lawyers will jump to write position papers defending secret surveillance, detainment, and torture of US citizens when doing so is automatic treason.
And who handles the prosecution and holds the trial? A semi-random group of citizens selected automatically for the task. No more inside group who would never go after one another. No more buddy-buddy side deals that make everything go away because they're from the right family or have the right connections. Just regular people applying common sense and decency to keep everyone in government in line. You walk the straight and narrow or the citizens come calling.
Anything less, you can forget it working. These idiots responded to "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" by banning guns and they responded to "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" by launching secret surveillance programs to watch us every minute of every day to the greatest extend currently possible.
If you think this is all coming from a lack of clarity, then you haven't been paying attention. It's coming from a lack of consequences.
SEALs don't work in 24-man teams; that'd be too noisy. A SEAL team is typically made up of 6-8 individuals, each with a specific specialty.
Develop Linux like Intel develops CPUs: first you make a new shiny, then you do an entire release on improving that shiny. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Even better if you have two competing teams working on it. Whichever team comes up with the better product by launch time gets the nod.
It's been happening with everyone since Eisenhower. Accounting tricks aside, total debt has increased every since year since 1956. Clinton never had a surplus; he had a single year with only $56 Billion in deficits.
China 2007:
Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant
$3.3 Billion for 2,120 MW
$1.56 Million/MW
US 2013:
Solana Solar Power Plant
$2 Billion for 280 MW
$7.1 Million/MW
And we wonder why we keep having to borrow money from them?!
I think you may be misunderstanding what "less educated, less well off people" means. A certain level of context comes into play there when we're talking about most of the rest of the world versus the Western countries. For the purposes of that comment, "less educated" would refer to individuals who've had little (less than 5 years) to no formal, useful education (centers for extremist religious indoctrination where no math, science, or arts are taught don't count). When you have someone who lacks the benefits of formal education, they have very little knowledge of themselves or the world around them and are vastly easier to manipulate.
When I say "less well off", I'm referring to people living in poverty. Not the US "I-can-barely-afford-my-apartment-and-2000-calorie-a-day-diet-for-me-and-my-three-kids" poverty, but rather the "I-have-no-money-and-live-in-a-shoddy-handmade-structure-and-three-of-my-kids-have-starved-to-death" poverty. US military members aren't poor and they at least complete high school. While not rich and not all walking around with doctorate degrees, they're vastly better off and better educated than the masses of people being recruited to die for Islamic extremists. we're talking this http://0.tqn.com/d/usmilitary/1/0/4/V/4/housing.jpg versus this http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/81518477-palestinian-refugees-live-in-a-shantytown-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QUZstEgSEzISlVU9i%2Bk2NM7I4BN20ZTyd4sqKm4demhVCrzgOzt9RaiIcVVEh90eoFKxaxDWC0%2BLBeZUYpfF0vk%3D and this http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/files/2013/06/Classroom.jpg versus this http://micconference.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/madrasa.jpg. Let's be honest about the differences.
As for my stance sickening you, I find it odd that you feel the need to call out self-defense as sickening, but apparently feel no such need to call out the brainwashing of uneducated, poor masses of people to die in futile attempts to advance the agendas of sick and twisted cowards by convincing them to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in the name of a god who wants to reward them for doing so. Perhaps you should reconsider what's actually sickening.
Ultimately, the best reason to not talk to police (in particular, once they've begun accusing you) is confirmation bias. Once an officer begin to form a belief around your guilt, human psychology takes over and anything you tell him will be molded into the pre-conceived belief without the officer even realizing it. This will happen to officers with the purest of intentions. They're human; they can't help it. Once they have an inkling that you're their guy, everything you say will get warped - on the fly, subconsciously - into either an admission of guilt or a hiding of the truth about your guilt.
There are certainly instances where talking to police is fine, but the instant you have any suspicion any of the officers involved has any doubts about your total lack of involvement in any criminal activity, you need to shut up whether you're guilty or not. Filter all communications through an intelligent lawyer. It'd be nice if we all lived in some Leave it to Beaver fantasy land where every cop is your pal and you can talk it out man to man, but we have a society that's too large and too impersonal for that. The cop doesn't know you and even if he does somewhat, he's got too much experience dealing with scumbags to believe you're one of the few perfect angels he'll have contact with.
I'm fine with that. You don't get to blow up civilians of the world's only superpower and get to sit in a failed state or other little junker country laughing at us. To allow that to happen is to invite a never-ending stream of would-be bin Ladens.
You notice you never see the leadership of one of these groups strapping bombs to themselves to die for their beliefs. Rather, they expect other, less educated, less well off people to die for their agenda. The world is full of less educated, less well off people who will fall for promises of riches in the hereafter and it always will be, so killing all of them means a never-ending fight where the poor and ignorant are slaughtered. If that's the plan - to just continually fight the masses of deluded poor people - we may as well move to nuclear weapons now. They'll get all the terrorists and potential terrorists in one fell swoop and we'll rather quickly exhaust the supply of willing participants.
I think the smarter alternative would be to only involve ourselves (politically, militarily, and otherwise) where all parties openly welcome us and where we know exactly who all those parties are and how stable (mentally and politically) they are, and then find and kill anyone who screws with us without regard for where they are (paying particular attention to the puppeteers). Honestly, if we knew this guy was at his beach house in Somalia, I don't understand sending US personnel there. Just level the place with a half dozen cruise missiles. Same thing with the guy in Libya. If he's got a nice house there, wait for him to come home (drone surveillance) and then level the place.
Make the message loud and clear: "We won't mess with you, but if you mess with us we will end you. We will not stop, we will not rest, and the second you do, your life will end." Dancing around with getting involved here and there and hitting this guy with a missile and that guy with SEAL ops is sending a mixed signal. Stop messing around where we aren't openly welcomed by stable, sane people and when someone decides to mess with us, obliterate them with absolutely overwhelmingly massive force. I think we'd quickly find a dwindling number of people willing to come after us.
From the blog:
"Earlier this week, a Model S traveling at highway speed struck a large metal object, causing significant damage to the vehicle. A curved section that fell off a semi-trailer was recovered from the roadway near where the accident occurred and, according to the road crew that was on the scene, appears to be the culprit. The geometry of the object caused a powerful lever action as it went under the car, punching upward and impaling the Model S with a peak force on the order of 25 tons. Only a force of this magnitude would be strong enough to punch a 3 inch diameter hole through the quarter inch armor plate protecting the base of the vehicle.
The Model S owner was nonetheless able to exit the highway as instructed by the onboard alert system, bring the car to a stop and depart the vehicle without injury. A fire caused by the impact began in the front battery module – the battery pack has a total of 16 modules – but was contained to the front section of the car by internal firewalls within the pack. Vents built into the battery pack directed the flames down towards the road and away from the vehicle."
"Is this Tesla's version of 2010's high profile Prius recall issue where pundits and critics took the opportunity to stir fears of the cars new technology?"
One fire where no one was injured? Any pundits or critics claiming this is an indication of anything is, quite frankly, retarded. There have already been terrible crashes with both the Tesla Roadster and the Model S. No one has ever died in a Tesla vehicle. Others have died in collisions with Tesla vehicles where the Tesla driver got out with little to no injury.
That people will feign (or worse, actually experience) fear of a potential battery fire in a car is truly absurd in light of the fact that the typical car is utilizing explosions to provide power and hauling a large container of explosive fuel. They're driving a rolling bomb and talking about how dangerous batteries are.
There's just so much dumb.
Tyson is a brilliant theoretical physicist and he should probably continue studying theoretical physics rather than pontificating on whether a billionaire who owns and designs products for multiple successful companies understands the risks and rewards of space exploration. When Neil deGrasse Tyson launches his own successful businesses and starts designing rocket ships that successfully deliver supplies to the international space station, he'll be slightly more qualified to hold an opinion on the subject.
Elon Musk is an educated, trained physicist. He's started multiple successful businesses. He's designed and built electric cars that actually work for real people and that are built like tanks. He's designed and built rockets and capsules that carry out successful missions in space at a fraction of the cost of NASA and everyone else. He's doing what virtually nobody else is doing: taking risks. He's the next Steve Jobs and he doesn't want to make your music player pretty; he wants to go to Mars.
If I were a betting man, I most certainly wouldn't be betting against Elon Musk. That's a stupid bet.
You can be wary all you like and speculate all you like, but we have real-world collisions to look at already including ones with fatalities (not the Model S' passengers - they're all fine).
http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-safe
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-BoVsb74ZVTU/Ueo211zIQ0I/AAAAAAAAAHA/57Td1d4rr0I/w927-h522-no/TeslaHeadOnCollision-k-bigpic.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-rlB359m59V8/Ueo2xioWUBI/AAAAAAAAAGw/ETAizn3DfnQ/w465-h586-no/TeslaHeadOnCollision-Front.png
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--CoWlEVV2ro/Ueo2FZEw-nI/AAAAAAAAAEo/hqraTBRsqog/w854-h475-no/HeadOnCollisionCabinIntact.jpg
Scroll down just a bit and you'll see a Honda and BMW that were obliterated and a couple Teslas looking a bit banged up. The drivers have posted on various forums about their experiences. Honda generally makes some pretty safe cars, but you won't be able to find out about the experience of the people in the accident with the Model S because the Honda failed to save their lives. The Model S driver walked away with minor injuries and that was a 1/4 head-on.
Got any other theories about how the Model S will perform?
I think it's perfectly fair to look at the map for Winter 2013 since we're talking a very short time from now. They're ramping up so fast it's crazy. This Christmas, you'll be able to make it North to South on either coast and East to West all within range of Superchargers. Is it perfect? No, but it covers nearly all the driving that the vast majority of Americans do on any kind of regular basis.
No, it really isn't more like $80,000. Please at least do the most basic of research prior to spewing bullshit.
At the base price of $62,400, including the $7,500 Federal Tax Credit, Model S comes equipped with a 60 kWh battery, 19” wheels, black textile and synthetic leather interior, 17” touchscreen, seven speaker sound system with AM/FM/HD radio, mobile connector, and a J1772 charging adapter.
You can pack on all the upgrades, options, and features you want to try and claim it costs tens of thousands more than it does, but that doesn't change the fact that you're spewing bullshit because you don't have a logical leg to stand on. The base price is what the base price is. You don't compare upgraded version to base price competition; you compare base price to base price. It's a $60,000 car, not an $80,000 car or a $100,000 car or a $500,000 car. The fact that you can get a Honda Accord gold plated and bullet-proofed for $1.3 Million doesn't suddenly make Honda Accords cost the same as a Bugatti Veyron.
The Honda Accord base price is $21,680
The BMW 528i base price is $47,500
The Tesla Model S base price is $62,400
The Audi A8 base price is $72,200
The Jaguar XK base price is $79,000
The Porsche 911 Carrera base prise is $84,300
So stop lying to try and prove your point. All it does is prove you have no point to prove.
$30,000 is the average cost of a new car in 2013. Both Forbes and the FTC confirm this fact. As such, a $30,000 car is an "every-man's car". That's not to say every single person can afford it (plenty of people can't afford a car at $3k); rather it's to say that it's a car your average car buyer can afford.
It's coming in 2016. Musk has been committed to getting the pricing into that range since before the first Roadster rolled off the line years ago and he's committed to doing so now. He's also committed to seeing Tesla's breakthrough technology in all manner of other manufacturers' vehicles, so I fully expect the 2016 Tesla car to have plenty of competition from other cars powered by Tesla technology. Between that and the massively expanding supercharging network, it's easy to see why investors have pushed Tesla's stock so high so fast.
If you can't find one, you're probably not trying very hard. Pull up this map on the huge ass touchscreen in every Model S:
http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2013/05/tesla-supercharger-map-for-2015.jpg
$60,000.
As for it being a playtoy for people with money, I supposed that'd be just like Audi, BMW, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Porsche, Shelby, and everyone else who aims for that higher end of the market.
Per Forbes, the average price of a new car is over $30,000 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/05/10/average-price-of-a-new-car/). Considering the number of cars selling for $12,000 - $15,000 new, that average is factoring in a lot of cars well over $30,000.
This isn't a toy for the rich and it isn't a car for everyone. It's something affordable for the upper middle class and it's nothing for the "rich". Tesla began this with a $110,000 sports car. Now they have a $60,000 sedan. In three years, they're coming out with a $30,000 every-man's car. The Roadster was a toy. The Model S is a real car for real people. It doesn't have to be a $30k Volvo to not be a "playtoy for people with money". There's a huge, huge area between the two.
They're working toward that. Iteration 1 was a $110,000 sports car. Iteration 2 is a $60,000 sedan. Iteration 3 is an SUV. Iteration 4 is aiming for a $30,000 every-man's car.
Tell me, Slashdot, how difficult would it be to rewrite an insurance billing system to aggregate a policyholder's out-of-pocket costs?
Tell me, Slashdot, how much would insurance companies have to charge all their even remotely healthy people to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown away in a futile attempt to save every life using every possible means regardless of cost?
Do you really want to know why the delay was put in place? Basic mathematics. The insurance companies have actuarial tables which tell them down to 1-3% mark just how much it'll cost them to cover all their millions of customers. The new legislation skewed the numbers by forcing insurance companies to add tons and tons of very sick people who'll never pay into the pool what the pool will pay out on their behalf. As such, they have to adjust their rates to match, but that big a change wasn't politically feasible; the backlash would have sunk the politicians and the insurance companies. So the extra time was built in to ensure a feasible boiling frog effect.
Boil, froggy. Boil and believe the lie that at least we've all got our own pot of water now.