I LOLed at this one. Supercars want lots of downforce so they don't constantly go off the road and you die. They're not built for low Cd. A Toyota Prius has 35% lower drag coefficient than a Bugatti Veyron.
It's like when the "superfruit" people go "look at this amazing berry, it has 20% more vitamin C than a lemon!" Well yeah, an orange has 70% more vitamin than a lemon. Marketing wank for the uninformed masses.
> On empty 30 min of charging will get you 400 miles.
I did a double take here. To do that we're talking ~ 1000 kWh drawn from the grid in 30 min; that's pulling 2 megawatts of power. None of the existing Supercharger installations come close to providing enough power for even one truck.
It also means that on the distribution grid, a charging station for 8 semis will need a dedicated 20 MVA 33/11 kV distribution transformer, plus 4 11kV/480V transformers. Unless you manage to keep those charging slots filled 90% of the time, that's going to be bloody expensive electricity.
There will likely be huge fields of solar cells scattered across the nation with countless trucks pouring through. There is no way this is not the future, even if Tesla doesn't pull it off. But who else is even trying?
Musk stated in the presentation that they plan to use solar with on-site battery storage at these "Mega-Charger" stations and will guarantee a max electricity cost $0.07/kWh. No grid needed (my phrase, not his). Not sure if it is doable, but that is the plan.
> It also means that on the distribution grid, a charging station for 8 semis will need a dedicated 20 MVA 33/11 kV distribution transformer, plus 4 11kV/480V transformers.
FYI the 500 mile range figure is fully loaded (cargo is at maximum load for U.S. roads). They claim "80% of routes are less than 250 miles", so they say that the truck can take most routes back and forth without needing to charge.
The million miles is on the drive train. I don't remember if they mentioned the battery warranty?
IIRC the cost per mile in a convoy that they quoted was $0.83/mile.
Same enhanced auto driving features of current Teslas. Automatic breaking, etc.
EDIT1: The dash is the wheel and two screens (left and right). Supposedly their software has all the integrations drivers need, so they don't need to slap other 3rd party devices into their vehicle (which they describe as a problem for existing trucks. I have no clue one way or the other).
Most semi-trucks are filled with proprietary technologies. Then more such is layered on by fleets, leasing companies, maintenance providers, etc.
Little of it natively works together. The contractual limitations are nuts.
From what I recall technology often isn't shared between automobile and truck manufacturing companies owned by the same parent because of these restrictions.
Even if each truck is manned, the increased safety from having rear trucks tied in with the front truck might reduce insurance premiums enough to make it viable. Especially if you can give the front truck a "pilot and co-pilot" setup (or good enough AI to simulate that with human pilot and AI co-pilot).
When you think about it, tax payers subsidized the cost of fuel now. Defense spending related to the Middle East is a large petroleum fuel production externality. I wonder if we’ll reduce our defense spending once we loose our dependence on oil?
That's 10,000 Nm (aka 7375 ft-lbs) wheel torque. The hellcat has 650 ft-lbs engine torque. First gear in the hellcat is 4.71:1 and rear axle ratio of 2.62:1, which gives you 8021 ft-lb at the wheel at torque peak. In second gear, we have 5347.
So, a small car with more wheel torque than a Hellcat in 2nd gear, nice!
Generally wheel torque would be quoted in the gear that gives you a 1:1 (or close to) ratio. Hence in a lot of cars a dyno run will be done in 4th gear as higher gears are generally overdrive gears. Also your calc is missing the final drive ratio.
It might do better than 300mph if they can build tires capable of holding the car down in one piece. I’m not kidding, I do genuinely suspect that’s a possibility given the figures they announced. I’d wager that’s part of why they wouldn’t commit, because they aren’t sure what it can do yet and have been working with Michelin or Pirelli to find out.
It’s hard to comprehend 1.9 pushing a battery pack. If that thing doesn’t break 300, it’ll flirt.
This isn't anywhere near as impressive as one might think: a Veyron has a pretty bad drag coefficient because of the amount of cooling intakes it has (turns out cooling an engine producing over 1000PS takes a lot of air).
That is the reason they chose that comparison. a.) everyone thinks a Veyron must have a good coefficient b.) they know it's not that good. Basics of modern marketing (also "low fat high sugar", "low carb high fat", "organic sugar", ...)
I'm pretty sure that Musk and most of the potential buyers are aware about this. But consider this - if Roadster has exact same road performance as Veyron (accel, max speed, cornering speed etc.) while being more streamlined that makes technically superior to Veyron. Imagine a concrete brick on wheels that has the same road performance as Veyron - its engine and aux controls should be insane and deserve an award on its own, but as a complete car it would less impressive as a Veyron despite being the same on the road.
The semi is quite interesting. The presentation was a bit underwhelming, Elon was very nervous and the stuttering wasn't something I expected. To me this shows how great Steve Jobs was salesman, when he did his presentations.
Elon Musk decided that spending days or a week preparing for a presentation is not the best use of his time. At least that much time is generally what it takes to pull off a really smooth presentation. I heard that he does not script them and just does them off the top of his head.
Tim Urban has a great essay about different levels of prep people do for talks [1] which he wrote when preparing to give a Ted talk. Musk's talks are on the "Wing it" side of prep while a Ted talk is suppose to be on the "Follow an exact script - Happy-Birthday-Level memorized" level.
Considering Tesla is depending on it's image to get more money to fill the gap of it's ever deepening losses, spending days preparing a presentation is the best use of his time.
Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality. Therefore it depends on Musks presentations with visions of a glorious future.
I don't think Elon Musk's plan is to build up Tesla as a huge pyramid scheme, cash out at the peak, and move to Mars before he gets arrested. He is running a couple of very technical companies and is down in the trenches working 80-100 hours weeks to keep them moving forward as fast as possible. Getting the Model 3 up to a production rate of 5,000 a week is what will start to prove out Tesla's current stock price, not a slick demo.
"[...] as long as 1) wealthy consumers in western
nations but also China are eager to seek indulgence
by way of green-washing and, 2) are in search of a
Steve Jobs replacement persona onto which they can
project their hopes for a gleaming future and,
3) are disillusioned with the establishment and
its leaders, the company will likely succeed to
raise cash again."
> Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality.
The stock price is not the arbiter of whether a company is vision or reality. Nothing would change about those companies if public opinion suddenly shifted and made those ratios go the other way.
Or maybe Tesla's "image and vision" stem from its founder's tendency to completely ignore sideline commentary on non-substantive issues and focus on product.
Could it be that the stuttering is part of Musk's brand? Why try to be someone else? The Apple inspired pauses for applause at many tech reveals are cringe-worthy, e.g.
agreed. However, what elon is selling resonates with me well enough that his speech qualities don't matter to me and don't seem to matter to the crowd/most other people either.
-500 mile range on a full charge. On empty 30 min of charging will get you 400 miles.
-Lower drag coefficient than a bugatti veyron
-They're claiming cost per mile is less than rail for shipping goods.
-2019 availability
-Lane centering + other features (jack knife prevention)
-1,000,000 mile guarantee
----------------
Also they surprised announced a new roadster:
-New plaid mode (beyond ludicrous) 0-60 in 1.9s.
-620 mile range