As an auto enthusiast, I generally feel "yucky" after surveying the comments and feedback following a Tesla press release. C&D and MotorTrend generally bias hard for anything American made, which is fine and par for the course. My discomfort comes from the feeling that journalists are making the Model S out to be a competitive alternative to a high performance automobile, which it is not.
A Model S can't make a single lap in anger around Mazda Raceway without the software putting it in limp mode to prevent heat build up from causing permanent damage. A half-day jaunt through twisty mountain roads is absolutely out of the question. It is a car that can drag race from a stop, hit a freeway on-ramp with some gusto, and give you carbon-free credentials the rest of the time.
No one shopping for an M3, 911, or AMG product who actually intends to use them for their performance is cross-shopping a Model S as a like-for-like option, but the press consistently paints the picture that Tesla is a gas-free alternative or even superior to current offerings. I don't intend to degrade what it is, because it is a marvel of modern business, politics, and a little engineering that this car exists. I simply feel gross when I see how much hype puts it up for the Model S being something it isn't.
Drive one. Rent/borrow one for a day: it's possible and doable. Take it to a mountain road, take corners faster than you should, then report back.
I owned and tracked E46 M and E37 M Roadster. Sold the last one when I got my Model S. Now I will never go back to an Internal Combustion Engine. Yes, the Model S is not an M3 and won't last through a lap on any decent raceway. But it's not the goal. It's beyond adequate for everyday driving AND for fun through the mountain curves. It's got impeccably precise throttle response, unbelievable lateral grip and no body roll due to incredibly low center of gravity. The fact that it's fully charged every morning for nearly free, that the juice is free in the superchargers and that it's cargo volume and crash safety are out of its class, is just icing on top. The point is: for ALL uses (but tracking) this $70-120K car is better than anything in the $100-300K category.
My friends own 997 4S, E93 M, Viper, E39 M, F10 M, S6 and whatever the GTR Nizmo is (all US spec). Some of them are tracked, some are not. Half of them have deposits down for a Model S.
Another point: Juan Pablo Montoya owns one and uses it as his daily driver.
> No one shopping for an M3, 911, or AMG product who actually intends to use them for their performance
Yeah, but how many of those folks exist? I can't count the number of times I'm stuck behind an M3, 911, or AMG on the uphill chicane entrance ramp I frequent in my Nissan Leaf wishing Mr. SlowPoke in his $80K car would give it some stick. Oh, they're trying as evidenced by them gunning it up the straight part, but as soon as that ramp goes anywhere but straight they're testing the throttle-lift oversteer. (The ramp goes to the Microsoft campus, so I get to test this theory frequently.)
People more often than not buy a car because of the badge on the back end, not because they're doing track days. They'll punch it in a straight line from a stoplight and that's about the extent of their performance testing. For that use case, the Tesla does just fine.
But 98% of M3, 911, or AMG owners will never take their car to the track or engage in such long-duration, high-performance jaunts. So I don't think the comparison is as unfair as you make it out to be.
Realistically, it's probably more like 99.9%, if we're talking about new car purchasers. Out of the box these are trophies, not race cars.
I bet the percentage of people taking their car to the track is actually quite a bit higher if we're talking about, for example, used 911s. I don't know if that will hold true forever, though. There are a lot of super expensive parts on the newest cars.
Yes, many drivers won't ever drive them to a track; however, when you look at general attendance at public road courses, 911s (and less-so M3s) appear to be grossly overrepresented in proportion to their street popularity.
I think it is safe to say that less than 2% of automobiles are ever driven on a track, so assuming the 98% figure is correct, you would expect to see exactly what you describe.
If 2% of 911s and M3s were regularly driven on a track, I would expect tracks to be full of them.
As a Tesla owner, I actually feel like the press is too generous in their comparisons to similarly priced vehicles. Unless I was buying a car for a special purpose like track racing, I can't imagine spending the same amount or more on a legacy vehicle with a lower passenger capacity, less storage space, more mechanical complexity, and the constant hassle of having to stop to buy gas.
We're in the process of replacing our second car and that will end up being less than half the price of the Tesla. But if I were going to spend > 60k, I would buy a second Tesla without the slightest hesitation.
In 37k miles I've never experienced limp mode and don't know much about it. I regularly drive for over 2 hours at Midwest highway speeds.
Can you describe your half-day jaunt through the mountains in more detail? I'm having trouble figuring out how this is out of the question.
While I don't agree with the tone or much of what the grandparent poster said, the "limp mode" is arguably true. Several people who have taken their P85 or P85+ to a track and run it hard have quickly hit slow-downs due to overheating. You can do some searching on teslamotorsclub.com for details if you are interested.
Having previously taken our S85 into the White Mountains for vacation, I can agree that it would be tough to get even 200 miles out of a single charge. The elevation changes, steep grades at highway speed, and especially the occasional strong winds will sap away the battery much faster than you'd want. We were able to get by just fine with a small amount of foresight and planning, but that is something many people don't want to deal with.
Granted, those factors would all hit an ICE just the same, but people are comfortable with the ability to pull over into even a tiny backroad town and find a gas station somewhere. That is a valid complaint.
Yeah, but I would never provide that as an argument for equability. Charging from a 110 volt outlet typically provides as little as 3 miles of range per hour of charge, and I have personally experienced the FUD factor from various business owners when I have tried to make charging arrangements on a long trip, including one RV park owner who insisted that plugging my car in to one of his RV outlets would likely cause an explosion or at least set fire to it. :/
I agree with the other benefits you highlight, but the model s has a similar range to most gas vehicles. You could just as easily complain about the constant hassle to stop and charge your model s (and the fact that charging stations are less common than gas stations).
I don't typically drive more than 250 miles a day, so I charge at home almost exclusively. Everyday I start with a full charge.
Imagine every few days having to take your cell phone to a special store to charge it. That's what we've been doing with cars and we just accept it as an inherent part of car ownership.
Fueling at home is extremely liberating, more than making up for the rare need to find a charger.
If an electric car is your daily driver then you charge it each night, and never worry about how many more commuting trips you can make before you have to stop at the gas station. In one sense you are filling up every day, and at the same time you never have to worry you will be late in the morning because you have to stop and fill up.
Road trips are a completely different issue. For me, trips over 200 miles happen once every few months, and I think I get out more than a lot of people do.
I don't own a high-performance car and have never driven a Model S, but to me this car is truly unique in it's category.
You can't compare the Model S with gas-powered engines that had many decades to be refined. Considering everything, the Model S appears to have made a larger jump than any other car in recent history.
It's not designed to be raced on a track, but it does give you an edge in some situations where any other EV or most gas powered vehicles won't.
> You can't compare the Model S with gas-powered engines that had many decades to be refined.
Well, there's nothing in a Model S that is earth shattering in terms of technology.
The batteries are used in laptops and model airplanes. That technology has been around for ages and continues to improve well outside of the automotive industry.
We've known how to make super high efficiency electric motors for, well, I am only guessing, a century [1]. Large electric motors that are over 90% efficient were built decades ago. With the shift to brushless Cobalt and Neodymium based motors we've been able to shrink them and increase their output power. Again, I'll use the example of the early pioneers in model airplane electric flight who were building high efficiency 2KW motors that fit in the palm of your hand decades ago. Switched reluctance drives have also been around for decades, they can deliver insane amounts of power in a very small volume with no magnets and really good efficiency. Control is more difficult.
If I had to guess I would suggest that the advances brought forth by Tesla have been in control and safety. Building a huge battery pack that is safe in a crash requires careful engineering. They had to figure that out. Of course, they build their own motors and have developed their own advanced control electronics for these motors. The rest is, if I dare say, standard automotive engineering work.
Again, not diminishing Tesla in any way. I am just countering the "walking on water" aura that seems to orbit around anything Tesla. They should be praised for what seems like flawless execution and laser-like market focus. They are building a fantastic world-class high-end electric car. And it is fantastic. Supernatural? No. A work of engineering art? Absolutely.
> Well, there's nothing in a Model S that is earth shattering in terms of technology.
Of course the car or company is not supernatural. But there's a HUGE difference between saying "anyone could have done it" and ACTUALLY doing it. That's the key to understanding the reviews.
I am not sure anyone is reviewing the electric motors. They are not reviewing how efficient their motor is or even how small it is. They are reviewing the car as a whole.
I believe you can say similar things of any market leader. Rarely does someone change a market and invent great technology or are involved in engineering marvels. But they do solve the problem in such a way that is significantly gives them a lead.
I don't think we disagree. As I pointed out, they excel at execution. Few ideas in electrics are new. This could very well segue into a discussion about patents, because some of the same issues exist there.
Given enough funding, a team of capable engineers and a solid vision (both of which are present at Tesla and other companies) the expectation of results should be the norm, not the exception. We, as engineers, are trained to solve problems using the scientific process.
To use battery packs as an example, there are probably thousands of engineering teams around the world who could design excellent battery packs that could withstand the rigors of automotive use. Tesla (and others) don't happen to have the only 12 engineers in the world who can do that. The same could be said of motors, electronics, software, suspension systems, chassis systems, etc.
I --and this is just my own bias-- am not impressed by what I consider to have to be the normal result of posing a problem to a capable group of engineers. That is to be expected. If you can't expect that out of engineers there's something seriously flawed with the way we are trained.
Of course, there's a continuum of capabilities out there. There is such a thing as lousy engineers with no imagination and a lack of understanding of reality despite years of schooling. Hiring is important. A company forming a substandard team will produce substandard results.
The patent segue is that there really isn't a lot today that most of us would consider to be true invention. Most everything being patented are implementations, which is a tragedy.
What is hard in the context of an organization, despite money and possibly vision is to execute on a consistent basis, keep focus on a reasonable mission and do so on a timely manner and within a reasonable budget. A good comparison of a polar opposite to a company like Tesla is just about any government-run organization where money is never a problem yet they fail to deliver consistently on even the simplest projects.
Tesla doesn't walk on water, but they have been executing a vision in what appears to be a constant series of flawless moves. They have good people who obviously work well together, they seem to know very well where they are going and, of course, they have the drive and funding to make it happen. Larger car companies could very well have to try to push the same ideas forward while mired with unmotivated and inefficient teams that just can't get anything done at the same time scale. And then there's the organizations themselves getting in their own way, AKA, "The Innovators Dilemma" [1]. There's plenty of history on that last point.
To some extent Tesla doesn't have to be a super organization, they just have to keep to their mission and they will outplay everyone else who is still failing through good management while trying to sell 5.25in drives because that's what their customers tell them they want (a reference to the book).
Subsystems integration is an engineering discipline in its own right, and is perhaps the one with the greatest impact on user experience. The SI work that Tesla does is not often mentioned but IMHO it's a big part of the secret sauce.
"No one shopping for an M3, 911, or AMG product who actually intends to use them for their performance i"
I was easily able to pull .9 g's in my 911 (2012) [1] at least according to the g meter that it had (yes it has one and which measures forces in all direction) on a highway on ramp.
Not that I ever looked into it but I'm now seeing the 911 can pull 1.04 g's.
One other thing to note that is important. The size of the car matters not just the speed and the lateral g's. For example in the Porsche Macan S I have now the performance and ride is great. But the simple larger physical size makes it a completely different experience than driving the 911. [2] To quiet, to comfortable (but really nice not complaining..)
[1] Noting that I earned the money for this car by a traditional, what would be called here "lifestyle" business, not a hit the lottery internet VC funded win.
[2] For that matter a Mini Cooper S that I owned a few years before was more fun in many situations even though the tires and grip were way less and the acceleration palled in comparison to the 911. (But it was well over 1/4 the price and well worth it..)
Going to paraphrase this as "yes, it is better in every way but in this 2% corner case that almost no one will ever encounter so it makes me nauseous to read reviews seriously comparing it to neanderthal-generation cars which manage to cover that 2%."
I've got a better comparison for you. Has the owner of [any given model year] BMW ever sued BMW because [any given model year plus 1] was that much better for the same price? We've gotten used to this with computers for years, it's frankly about time we got this pace of development with cars. I mean, real jealousy for the next year's generation of the same car. Tesla will create that. Who else is creating that?
I recently purchased a 991 911 Carrera S and previously owned a 987 Boxster that I tracked. I actually did cross shop the cars and had a deposit down on the Model S before it was even released. Ended up not getting the Model S b/c its simply to big to drive in SF and it was questionable if I could get my condo to let me install a charger.
The model S is no sports car but its rather capable and the low center of gravity helps negate its massive curb weight.
As far as the car not making it around MRLS, thats not true. Every year speed ventures puts on an EV day and there are certainly Model S in attendance: http://www.refuelraces.com/
I don't think the average consumer understands or appreciate how Tesla is different. I often talk with family members about Musk and Tesla and most don't really get what's so different than say another all-electric car. For example this:
"During a chat with Musk at the P85D's introduction, he mentioned that on average, Tesla implements about 20 modifications to the car per week. Not software, mind you, but actual hard parts. Per week."
I'm sure traditional car makers tweak hardware as well, but it seems Tesla's focus on software-esque hardware iteration is unique. Their willingness to push updates constantly breaks from the "mid-cycle" refresh and small year-over-year iterations commonplace amongst all established automakers.
And this:
"Lift the front trunk's lid (the frunk, they call it), and you're struck by how much all of this was anticipated back when the Model S was penned. What was a recessed cavity near the firewall becomes the new forward engine room with enough left to swallow a duffle bag and retain its terrific 5-star frontal crash performance."
This is not just a scrappy startup car maker just getting by with an acceptable but not brilliant first generation product. You get the feeling that Tesla is always three steps ahead yet are confident enough to reveal them one-at-a-time.
Well, I certainly appreciate it, but like a lot of people dismiss it, at least currently, as toys for rich people. I can't afford a 90k car, no matter how awesome it is. All these breathless Tesla testimonials are great, but in my head its like listening to some guy talk about how wonderful the leather is in his Maserati. It is so far outside my economic world that it might as well not exist.
I know there's this mythology that Elon will magically deliver a 25k electric that changes the world, but if anything, they've double-downed on the luxury market with that giant non-city friendly SUV and, more complexity and cost, with their driver assist stuff.
Meanwhile, the Leaf and Volt keep dropping in price. VW has moved into the market, as well as BMW. Oh, low price leaders like Kia haved move in as well. 2015 EVs are still pricey, but no where in the same league as Tesla.
At this point I'm finding it very hard to believe Musk will ever leave the profitable premium car market. A 25-30k Tesla would hurt the brand and he'd be competing with larger companies with the scale and know-how to get Joe Everyman on-board, and worse, coming to the low-end game very late.
Tesla is using the luxury market to finance the rollout to the mass market. It was the only way they could do it, because to achieve the economics needed for the mass market, you need a lot of money. It would have been essentially impossible for them to do it from the start, because they're not Nissan and they didn't have the ability to invest billions pre-revenue.
Witness, for example, the $5 billion gigafactory they're building, of which Tesla is contributing $2 billion. This only could happen because they now have access too good financing (their recent convertible bond issuance) which could only happen because of the success of the Model S. And the other $3 billion being contributed by partners? That wouldn't have happened if they didn't have the credibility coming from making the Model S a success. And in any case, the gigafactory would make no sense to build if they truly intended to keep to the "luxury EV's for rich people" market because it's too much capacity for that segment.
I don't know that Tesla will ever compete in the $25-30k market as you state, or at least not for a while -- their stated goal is a $35k car for the Model 3, and I wouldn't be surprised if that goes up to $40k at release, but that's still worlds apart from an $80k car in terms of affordability. Especially factoring in consumers' savings from gas (NPV of $10 - 15k), that gets to the point where they can sell serious volume, even if it's on the high end of the "everyman's car" that a $20 - 25k car would be.
Due to toughening CO2 standards, ICE automakers are going to see their costs rise over the next decade. Meanwhile Tesla's gigafatory will reduce the cost of batteries ~30%, which will significantly increase the gross margin on the Tesla S & X, while simultaneously enabling a high-margin mid-market auto offering; the Tesla 3 or whatever it'll be called.
Also, does buying cars have a future at all, or are we going to lease them or even just use them JIT via proxies like Uber? The depreciation of an electric car is very different from an ICE car, and so I think there's a need to reboot our perspective about what car-ownership means back to to first principles, just as Tesla has done.
> Tesla implements about 20 modifications to the car per week
Traditional car makers do slipstream changes into their cars, but this is just crazy. Think of the service challenges, and the parts catalog challenges. Not to mention the cost of all those different parts.
"Oh, your's was made the fifth week of August, so you need a different bracket. We don't keep those in stock because they're all different. Here's a service loaner and we'll call you when it's done."
It's a bit misleading of a conclusion to make, because most of those changes likely aren't non-compatible changes.
For instance, maybe a chip goes out of manufacturing, and they can no longer get it supplied, but a successor product from the same supplier meets all the same requirements.
Perhaps a bracket goes out of manufacture, but an almost identical bracket is sourced from a different supplier.
This would qualify as a hardware modification, but is a non-breaking change.
They still have to track all those changes - NHTSA requires it for recall & safety purposes -- cars & highway gear are highly regulated.
A good example is the company that changed the design of their guard-rail endcaps. They reduced the size by an inch, which allegedly resulted in 5 deaths (court cases are ongoing). They (again, allegedly) failed to test the change, and failed to report the design change to NHTSA and the various state highway departments that specified it's use.
Another example is the ignition switch in GM cars. The engineer changed the design, but did not issue a new part number for it. Externally, same shape & mounting points & connector pinouts. Internally, very different.
So while a design change in a part might be "like for like", it requires a full lifecycle of testing and documentation. And that's expensive, so auto makers try very hard to get their designs correct up front.
I wonder if this is a place where being young hand having lots of automation really helps out. Organizations invariably grow organically, GM had no way of knowing what would be required of them 50 years ago, so the processes are likely weird.
Tesla's processes will be weird in 50 years - if they're even around. but today, I'd imagine that kind of complexity is way way easier to manage if you're aware of it from the start. Rather than getting it right the first time, build the whole organization around coping with those little variations.
OTOH, i have no evidence they actually do that... Just seems possible for Tesla and very hard for GM.
I have a feeling that while they implement 20 modifications per week, they will not roll out differently speced cars from week to week. It just doesn't seem possible with the regulation and testing that is mandatory.
So far as I've been able to determine data total sales of Model S cars seem hard to come by. You'd think Tesla would be a bit more open. I'll go ahead and throw in my own estimate of about 30K to 40K Model S cars sold since the beginning of time. I could be wrong, but I doubt I am wrong by an order of magnitude.
In sharp contrast to this, once you are selling millions of cars per year ([1]Ford, 2013, 2.5MM; [2]Others) this idea of making twenty changes per week that actually make it out to the production line is simply impossible.
At volume supply pipelines have huge inertia. You can't make changes on a whim. Doing very simplistic math and assuming a JIT process, Ford receives 50,000 parts per week. Tesla, assuming 20K cars per year, receives 370. I am not trying to be dismissive, but that's the difference between a garage operation and a real industrial operation at scale. A constant flow of 50,000 parts per week needs to be planned months in advance with all sorts of tests and controls during the process. Changes require the same planning and effort. Imagine making a change that does not work well (for whatever reasons) and you have 50,000 parts per week descending on you. By the time you make a change tons (literally) of raw materials are being processed at some factory, container cargo ships are in the middle of the ocean on their way to your port and trucks are en-route to deliver your parts for the coming wees.
At a few hundred parts per week you can pretty much afford to experiment and throw out whole shipments if something goes wrong. Your supply pipeline is much shorter. You don't have dealers to feed and contractual obligations in terms of delivery. You don't have the same kind of output pipeline. Add to this perhaps having a lot of the small-scale manufacturing done in-house and, yes, it's a garage operation, an expensive one, but the scale simply doesn't compare to that of a high volume manufacturer.
I am not saying any of this to diminish Tesla. It's a neat company. Their cars are not for the masses. And that's OK. However, I really don't subscribe to the idea of Musk walking on water. Is he a great CEO? It sure looks that way. Nobody could dispute that for a minute. I am simply proposing that we do not ascribe supernatural powers to an organization that operates at a scale and within a framework that allows it to behave in a manner very different from that of larger volume producers.
This is a really thoughtful counter-point and I appreciate the response.
The problem with it is that I don't see Tesla changing, or morphing into a "traditional" car company as it scales.
Yes Ford and the like are constrained by old business models and huge scale, but that's kind of the point. Tesla is not, and has the chance to scale and do things differently along the way.
I'm amazed at how they continue to grow (from roadster to model S), and consistently reveal products and technologies that seem genuinely very progressive and well though out. I'm also struck by their ability to address issues and controversies that like landmines, stand in the way of anyone trying to break into this very established marketplace.
I would love to have two horses in this game, Tesla and another to see how contrasting methodologies in the modern car market would play out.
The 3.1 second 0-60 time is the equivalent of a 0-60 distance of 136 feet. That's impressive in comparison with the 113-foot 60-0 stopping distance.
The car is only 20% slower speeding up than it is slowing down. One wonders what they could do in 0-60 and 60-0 times if the tires were replaced with gears and the road with a geared track. It only takes 250' of track, less than a football field, to find out.
Put another way, this four-door sedan reaches 60 mph when it's made it to the 45-yard line of an american football field.
Has that ever been done? I can imagine it'd just skip out of the gears and crash horribly. You know, like square wheels. Fitting warmed-up soft slicks and doing it on an F1 track or specialized tarmac would probably yield better results.
I think the torque output would probably break internal drive train components as soon as you hit the accelerator on a gear type setup (you also cant use the back tires for output, it will flip the car over).
You actually want / need some tire flex to absorb the initial torque. This is especially true with electric motors, where 100% of the torque shows up instantly (gas engines have a torque curve)
Watch a NHRA funny car start in slow motion. The big fat back tires actually wrinkle up into themselves a lot, then spring back out[1].
It would definitely shred the drivetrain. The Tesla's Drive Unit is already the weak link in the chain when it comes to hard acceleration, they've been failing left and right after a few thousand miles which caused Tesla to bump their powertrain warranty up to 125,000/Unlimited miles depending on the model (the 65kwh version has the lesser warranty).
The issue is in the straight gear-to-gear interface where ~600NM of torque is transferred through a contact area measured in square centimeters. Modern metallurgy can produce some very strong alloys but any flaw means the gear teeth will wear at an incredible rate, leading to the widespread reports of noisy/failed Drive Units. I'd imagine that future designs will use a planetary gearset which spreads the force over more teeth/surface area, that type of gearset would look like this: http://www.rohloff.de/uploads/pics/planeten_start.en.jpg
Well on an electric car you can precisely control the torque output, so put a strain/torque gage on the drive train and include those in a feedback loop.
The torque is also massive - 687 lb. ft. but still this car seems totally impractical to me. If you drive it like a sports car which does 0-60 in 3.1, you would most certainly drain the battery twice as fast. Charging it every 100 - 150 miles doesn't seem very convenient.
Impressive acceleration time! The new record for accelerating from 0-100 km/h of only 1.785 seconds was just set a few days ago[1]. The car required less than 30 meters to accelerate to this speed. Of course it was only a prototype car but still impressive to see the limits.
Hence the emphasis on production cars, once you get into special racing or one-offs it's meaningless: you can just strap a soon-to-be-dismantled body on a rocket sled and launch it at 50+G.
Haha, I thought the same thing, like "what email service has this guy been using?". When they brought the comparison around to the Pony Express it made more sense.
I think a motoring review of an electric car that doesn't feel the need to mention range or recharging problems marks a significant shift in public perception of EVs.
For what it's worth, the relevant Wikipedia page[0] lists the P85D as #24 on the list of fastest-accelerating production cars, far behind e.g. the 911GT3, Aventador, McLaren P1 or the ridiculous 918 Spyder's 2.2.
It is however listed as the fastest-accelerating sedan/non-supercar, a hair's breadth in front of the Audi RS7 and the Mercedes E63AMG's 3.2.
Just $11,000 in frosting. Right... What I want to know is where are they taking $40k off of the price to make a sedan that a larger percentage can own.
I love the quote about 100 changes. Constant innovation. Do any of the hardware upgrades flow into the field? Is the chassis modular enough to bother upgrading?
Selling a few high end car (Porsche) and selling a mass-market car (VW, Ford) are vastly different businesses. Boutique style pampering you get today when buying a Tesla does not scale, or at least not easily. For example, online buying, Tesla shop, even the SuperCharger network would need to scale dramatically.
They could do it, like Apple. But with this news and the opening of their patent sooner, I'm just wondering if they are not simply giving up on the mass market leaving it to generalist brands like Toyota, VW, ... IMO that would not be so bad, they risk to devaluate their brand significantly in the mass market if they fuck up there and fucking up there has a not much to do with technology. ( after all, brand like Toyota have Lexus counterpart just for the purpose of splitting luxury from mass market )
Tesla's idea of mass market is somewhat different. They're talking about selling 500,000 units per year of the Model 3. That's huge for them, an order of magnitude increase over their current sales, but tiny compared to bigger car manufacturers.
I don't think they want to leave it to generalist brands, but they also recognize that they can't go it alone. Musk wants (or says he wants) to drive EV adoption above all else, and the Model 3 is as much about getting others to follow suit as it is about Tesla's growth.
Regarding the cost savings, a lot of it is supposed to come from the gigantic battery factory they've started building in Nevada. Batteries are still really expensive, which is why every cheap electric car has crappy range. If they can meet their price projections for batteries from the new factory, that will make up a big chunk of the difference in price right there.
s/specialist/generalist. Unless you are using a different definition for those words, I don't know why you would call Toyota a specialist brand relative to Tesla.
Somewhat, brain went straight to "brand specialising in mass market" which was already incorrect but still understandable. Unfortunately I also wanted to avoid repeating "mass market" hence the shortening.
"Specialising in $0"=="someone with expertise in $0" is wired in my brain without any validation of $0.
From what I can gather, their waiting list for the Model S is ~3 months. So it seems as though they are sitting pretty close to the sweet spot on the price/demand chart.
There's no point in them making lower priced widgets until they can drastically scale up their production capacity (which is what they're trying to do with the Gigafactory, etc.).
I really doubt Tesla will deliver any mass market car and by that I mean a car starting under 40k. They already are over reliant on California subsidizing them through pollution credits, effectively having other automakers keep them in business. However that will fall off quickly as the other companies sell sufficient cars to get out from under that law.
Selling niche cars to rich people isn't exactly a challenge. Many of the other big makers could sell the same car but don't need to as they have established track records. The difficulty of breaking into the market was being able to differentiate yourself enough from existing marquees and it took an all electric to do that.
I said this before but I will say it again - I will happily pay money for a chrome plugin which allows for automatic conversion of every imperial unit into SI unit on any website visited. Or maybe a built-in JS script which does it depending on where you visit the page from(or a toggle on the top).
Every time I read a Tesla article like this I feel like I'm dreaming. Actual, usable, daily-driven electric cars with performance comparable to dino-powered cars were talked about as being vaporware for the longest time. It's amazing to see this company keep moving.
That said, I can't wait to see their "everyman" offering, whenever that arrives. I could see them making it a sub-brand so that they could scale down the service to make it financially feasible (and so the rich could still feel like big shots when they say "I've got a Tesla" without people thinking they mean the everyman car).
I have an S already and am also looking forward to the III. I am not worried about the brand loosing value by producing an everyday car and I do not know any other owners that are. I hope Tesla doesn't go for those cheap gimmicks and just continues to focus on engineering excellence.
I do hope they can maintain their level of service as well. I think they will. The S is already a fairly reliable car and electric cars are fundamentally more reliable that their gas counterparts and by the time the III comes out Tesla will have improved their QA further.
My favorite part of the article is the comments at the bottom about how the sucker buying a Dodge Charger will have to pay for gas. I had a friend a few years ago who bought a $15,000 BMW motorcycle to save gas money 4 months a year in New York, and now you can go one better: buy a $120,000 car and then leach off of the supercharger network.
I love Teslas, but buy one because it is an amazing luxury car with an AWD option, not because it is the best financial decision.
The Charger is an odd comparison, but it would be fun to race an R/T AWD against one of these. I don't think the Charger would even compete but I'm curious if the financial aspect would be the same when factoring in gas/maintenance/value etc.
I believe there was a link on HN awhile ago from a guy that did a very in-depth analysis of cost of ownership. I believe the Tesla actually did come out on top of comparable vehicles due to lower fuel costs, lower maintenance costs etc. I'll try to find the link.
EDIT Here is the link http://www.teslacost.com/
The creator has since updated the figures after HN members noticed some errors and the Honda Odyssey came out on top (unless you are able quantify safety, HOV access etc).
If your buddy wanted to save gas, he would have purchased $4000 Kawasaki Ninja 250. Your buddy wanted a BMW motorcycle, gas savings was the excuse he felt he needed to tell others. I bought a new BMW motorcycle this year. Sure, it gets 50mpg but that's not why I bought it. I feel no need to make apologies for my purchase. :-)
I make software money, I can afford gas just fine. I still bought a Nissan Leaf for a lot of reasons other than saving money on gas.
I don't know about that. I see quite a few people talking about buying one, or actually buying one, and the savings in gas is a big part of it. It may sound crazy, but it makes sense for people who would spend that much on a car anyway, and who drive a lot. If you're debating between a Tesla and a Corolla then the gas savings doesn't matter much. If you're debating between a Tesla and a similarly-priced BMW and you drive a lot, saving several thousand dollars a year in gasoline can be nice. People who spend a lot of money on cars don't suddenly not want to save money.
offshot topic, from reading the stats at the end of the article: How are cars with higher city than highway milage not violating conservation of energy?
I've heard the explanation that regenerative braking in city driving recharges the battery, but surely it's still better to not brake at all, right? You must incur some loss recharging the battery from kinetic energy?
Most gasoline cars are designed to get best overall efficiency cruising at 55 MPH. That's kind of the crossover point where wind resistance is not crazy high and the engine is still getting good efficiency. So you're burning more gas per minute than you would be in a city, but you're covering a lot more ground per minute as well, so your gas-per-mile is very low.
Yep. Don't confuse "highway" for "best". My Prius v is rated at 44 city and 40 highway. If I drive it for extended periods on back roads (i.e. mostly around 55MPH) I can easily get 60+MPG. Optimal speed for any given car will vary depending on the engine, the gearing, and other such things, but typical highway speeds are usually beyond it. This is especially true with hybrids, which can reduce or eliminate a lot of the efficiency losses that normal cars suffer from at lower speeds.
That's remarkable. My Prius V (2013) gets about 49 mpg when I drive 55 MPH on smooth, level roads. A couple of times I've hit 50 mpg. Also, I frequent the Prius Chat forum and I've never heard of anyone getting 60+ mpg. Have you modified your vehicle? Is it a plug-in?
Weird. It's as stock as stock can be. I get 48-50MPG in my normal mix of city/interstate driving. That's on the clock, so de-rate by 5% or so for real MPG as calculated by miles on the odometer divided by gas purchased. Best I saw was 65MPG on the clock over a ~2 hour drive on various country roads coming back to my house, and not flat either (but a pretty minor net elevation change).
It is better not to brake at all, and if you drive around in circles at low speeds in a light, tiny, aerodynamic car you can literally get thousands of miles per gallon[1]. Even an efficient car like a Tesla is not close to a theoretical limit, so conservation of energy is not an issue.
In general, ICEs are very efficient at a constant speed (highway driving) but much less efficient when accelerating and breaking is a net loss of useful energy.
EVs have a different sort of performance profile. They're far more efficient at accelerating, they partially regenerate their energy when braking, but they use a lot of energy when cruising at highway speeds.
It consists of long-range radar, a single forward-looking
video camera, and 12 ultrasonic sensors to create a 16-foot
bubble around the car providing lane-keeping, full drogue-
chute emergency stopping, and autonomous following in stop-
and-go traffic. It has long-range radar, a single forward-
looking video camera, and 12 ultrasonic sensors that create a
16-foot bubble around the car to allow for lane-keeping, full
drogue-chute emergency stopping, and autonomous following in
stop-and-go traffic.
How much of a problem is using Tesla vehicles in cold climates these days? I recall adverse battery performance as a result being up for discussion a while ago.
Consumer reports managed to get 175 miles out of a 85 kWh model on a brisk (30-45 F) day, with an overnight stay unplugged at 30F. I think they had about 180 miles total on that one.
And for extremes, a guy on the Tesla forums that drove around 163 miles on a 175 mile charge in -31 to -40F weather, including a cold soak for several hours.
This is consistent with most reports about cold weather - you'll get around 200 miles on a charge, with much depending on whether your car is plugged in when idle (it needs to keep the battery pack warm, which uses up juice).
I don't own one, but they recently added some cold climate pack on their ordering page, so I guess they are taking that into account. Especially that Netherlands is/was their second biggest client.
The cold climate option just adds extra seat heaters and wiper defrosters and such accessories. It doesn't impact the fundamental troubles with the battery and such.
The Model S battery pack has an active heating and cooling system, so it avoids a lot of the problems that batteries have in the cold. The main trouble it has is that it needs to expend some energy to warm up the battery pack, meaning that you lose some range when starting cold. Secondary trouble is that cabin heating isn't free the way it is with gas cars, which also costs some range. If you're plugged in, you can mitigate these problems by telling the car to warm up in advance, which will heat both the cabin and the battery using mains electricity, saving the battery for driving. If you're not plugged in or just forget to heat the car in advance, everything still works, you'll just lose some range.
I think you mean Norway rather than Netherlands there, and Tesla is apparently hugely popular there. Whatever trouble it has in cold weather can't be too bad.
Every car maker tests models in cold weather climates. Even car makers with electric models. In fact I've seen video footage of a Tesla driving around in frozen conditions...it was boring, but that was the point- it just worked.
I do think cold weather operation has some trade-offs, but I don't think it's enough to impede sales in cold climates.
I think the point is that cold weather imposes different trade-offs on a pure electric than it does on a conventional car. This is largely expressed in decreased range -- but then again, an IC engine will also be less efficient in Winnipeg than LA.
> I think the point is that cold weather imposes different trade-offs on a pure electric than it does on a conventional car. This is largely expressed in decreased range -- but then again, an IC engine will also be less efficient in Winnipeg than LA.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Doesn't the Carnot equation imply that it's the difference between engine temperature and ambient that helps determine efficiency?
Eg, a 100° engine running in 100° ambient is inefficient, but a 100° running in 200° or in 0° will be equally efficient?
I apologize if my tone implied that your question was illegitimate. I thought that someone reading your comment might think that IC engines do not lose efficiency in low temperatures. I wanted to make it clear that in fact they do, but that they don't fundamentally have to. I did not present an explanation because I did not know the correct explanation (thanks for that link).
I love the autobahn. I travel on it frequently while doing business in EU, and there's something special about travelling at 200-250km/h(120-150mph) without any problems. But I am afraid you will not find a lot of sympathy from other HN readers - the autobahn is such an exception in today's world, that for vast majority of people it's really not important how a car drives at 120mph+. That makes me sad personally, but rationally autobahn driving is not a major component of any discussion.
> that for vast majority of people it's really not important how a car drives at 120mph+
That's why Tesla increased max speed for the new model to 250 km/h?
> That makes me sad personally, but rationally autobahn driving is not a major component of any discussion.
'Rationally driving' is not a part of any discussion of a car in this class. Nobody needs such environmentally unfriendly cars like a Tesla S or the cars of the German brands...
Well, the first one is mostly a bragging right, and also something that some clients will use on closed circuits, so it's not completely meaningless.
And I didn't say anything about rational driving. I said that rationally, since only a very tiny minority of people in the world can experience driving on the autobahn, autobahn driving is most probably not very important point of discussions for majority of people in the world.
>>The amount of people who can experience driving a Tesla is much much smaller.
So is the number of people who buy S-Klasse AMG...your point?
>>Well, here in Germany a lot of people use the Autobahn. I see lots of people from France, Poland, Denmark, Austria, ... using it
Yep, I am not German and I use it too(thank you for it). Even if you added all Germans, Austrians, British and Poles together it's still going to be "only" a couple hundred million people. And most of them are not interested in going that fast on the Autobahn. When I drive through Germany there's plenty of people driving in the fast lane going 200km/h or faster, but there is even more "regular" people in "regular" cars going at 130km/h.
In fact I don't know what (and even if) we are arguing about. Tesla is awesome. And I would love to take it on the autobahn.
The Model S P85D is not for the "vast majority of people". They increased the max speed to appeal to the tiny fraction of people who care about that number enough to spend a lot of money on achieving it.
> At 250 km/h the battery will be empty quite fast…
Then again, the typical high-performance sedan doesn't have much range either at 250km/h. At that speed, a 3-series will burn through 30L/100km and they have a 60L tank. A 5-series has a 70L tank but I don't know how much fuel it goes through at 250. I don't expect significantly better efficiency though.
A Model S can't make a single lap in anger around Mazda Raceway without the software putting it in limp mode to prevent heat build up from causing permanent damage. A half-day jaunt through twisty mountain roads is absolutely out of the question. It is a car that can drag race from a stop, hit a freeway on-ramp with some gusto, and give you carbon-free credentials the rest of the time.
No one shopping for an M3, 911, or AMG product who actually intends to use them for their performance is cross-shopping a Model S as a like-for-like option, but the press consistently paints the picture that Tesla is a gas-free alternative or even superior to current offerings. I don't intend to degrade what it is, because it is a marvel of modern business, politics, and a little engineering that this car exists. I simply feel gross when I see how much hype puts it up for the Model S being something it isn't.