Am I the only one who's worried that Tesla is really starting to bite off more than they can chew? Right now their finances are a mess, they are publicly struggling to produce their most important car ever, their CEO is spending time figuring out how to dig holes underneath LA...and now they're announcing a semi truck and a roaster in the same day? Don't get me wrong, Teslas are incredible cars. But this seems like an overreach considering they are struggling to figure out how to meet demand on the Model 3. It's also insane to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI! These are some very bold announcements and there isn't much explanation for how these goals will be met. I hope this all turns out as advertised, but I'm very skeptical.
You have been reading too many finance blogs. Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on. If they don't execute they will go out of business, and they will take my money as an investor with them. I'm OK with that and as long as they continue to have a path to profitability I am all on board. I want to see them burning money to get market share, especially as they do something new. The idea that companies must always operate within a specific set of financial metrics is why GE is going out of business
If Amazon listened to those same finance blogs that are chastising Tesla, they wouldn't be where they are today. Wall Street hates companies that invest every cent they make into future growth; they want solid companies like GE and IBM that pay out regular profits to investors, and end up old dinosaurs because they didn't invest in innovation.
The market analysts and financial blogs may hate companies like AMZN and TSLA, but Bezos and Musk will be laughing all the way to the bank because they didn't focus on short-term profits at the cost of long-term innovation.
Remember, every company on this planet has to constantly reinvent itself, or it will be disrupted by someone else. Musk is doing that. Don't listen to the financial blogs and analysts.
> Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on.
In other words, their finances are a mess. Negative free cash flow of $1.4b in the most recent quarter with $3.5b in the bank is cutting it very close. They're going to have to raise a ton more capital or issue debt just to execute on the Model 3, let alone all the other stuff they keep talking about (anyone remember the Solar Roof?). Their recently issued junk bonds are already trading off par, another issue is going to be expensive.
Spending money while building out your main product pipeline is perfectly acceptable to me. How many quarters of runway would you want them to hold on hand? If in six months when their cash on hand gets low they can issue a new round of funding and investors can decide if its worth pumping more money into the company or if they won't be able to turn a profit. This would be the exact behavior you get from any company in a high growth phase, the only difference is most of the time the only people who get a look at the books of these companies are the investment firms who lead crazy valuation rounds since the public doesn't have access to pre IPO startups.
That's kind of the point though - it's much more acceptable (to the markets) for a private company to be doing crazy things, low runway, etc, because if the company goes broke, the damage is limited to 'skilled' investors (those with enough means and know-how to get in on the investment). If a public company goes bust (which is the risk here) the damage is much more widespread, and will undoubtedly hit retail investors as well as professionals.
I bought a bunch of put options on the cheap, so I'm betting on reckoning next year, but not a bankruptcy.
Based on their valuation being too high for where they are, I'm guessing they'll do a share offering to get cash. This could cause they're shares to tumble and I'll make 400-1200% or not. I'm ok with writing off such a small bet, but wow what a fun ride it'll be to see how this all turns out.
Exactly. As a small investor in them I fully support them. Even if I lose all my money I know it went to cool research that has benefit the progress of science in a cool way.
I mean, that's fine and dandy, but then you're really just donating your money to "science" and not investing it. Which goes back to the original claim that their finances are a mess.
I have done the same with two fusion energy companies, almost zero chance of payback but always the slim chance for a breakthrough to save the world. Think of it as a lottery ticket for rich and middle income people. Tesla is a lottery ticket that will probably pay dividends many years down the line, and if not they have at least kickstarted a better future.
> struggling to produce their most important car ever
Isn't this part of not executing the roadmap as planned? Put another way, how do you know if they are on the right trajectory to profitability? How much are they ahead/behind?
Tesla projected that it would produce 5K Model 3s per week by the end of 2017. In all of Q3 they produced 260! That kind of shortfall is clearly not part of any plan, unless it's one drawn up by GM and Ford. Source: http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/tesla-model-3-product...
They also moved this timetable up a year due to high demand, meaning more CapEx required. A few months won't scare people in the know, and thinking this would work without a hitch would have been naive anyway.
A three month delay on their first mass market car is hardly struggling. We get insight into where they are on that road map every three months. Come February they will have slipped even more, made up some of that delay or stayed three months behind. Right now they have more then enough money to get them to May of next year, if they miss again in Februrary and then can't raise more funds they need to change their plan.
Your comment reveals that you don't know what you're talking about. Very fast cars are rare so their rate of acceleration looks strange to someone that's not used to it.
I'm curious as to why you choose to believe that their was a conspiracy to release a sped up video rather than the fact that the car really is just that quick. Cognitive dissonance? Shorting Tesla stock?
It's not like you're mentally deficient or anything so there has to be a logical reason in your mind as to why you ended up thinking this. I would be very keen to know what that is.
I don't think it's altered video. I'm just describing possible things that people could see in that video, which might lead to that conclusion:
1. an odd camera motion;
2. scared spectators jerking; or,
3. altered video.
I do, however, think the people downvoting me have significant reading comprehension problems. However, that's a thing they will have to reflect on, internally, and has no bearing on me.
God damn....that acceleration is almost cartoon-like.
I'm kinda sad about the $200k price tag. I was planning on budgeting $125k for my next car in 2022. Obviously options have yet to be announced, but I'd really like to see a 100 kwh option for a cheaper price. That would give about a 300 mile range which would be plenty for me. Considering they announced 200 kwh as the base though, I'm not exactly holding my breath.
I think that the 200kwh battery pack is probably important for getting the instantaneous power out of the pack to hit their performance numbers.
More battery cells in parallel = more current draw. The range is probably more of a bonus side effect of having enough battery cells to hit the power and acceleration targets.
I've been waiting for details on the next Roadster for quite a while now, really on the edge of my seat for the price. My plan was to get a Nissan GT-R in 2021 if the Roadster ended up being too expensive.
But since it was announced and too expensive, I'm still on the fence. I don't want to spend $120k on a GT-R and feel disappointed that I settled. I'm thinking I'll just have to save money for a couple years to make a serious down payment. Maybe I'll pick one up used depending on what kind of warranty Tesla will offer on a used one.
Only problem there is, I expect Tesla won't be making very many of these for at least the first few years, so I doubt they'll depreciate much, if at all, on the used market. Could actually sell at a premium, as you see with other hard to buy supercars.
You can probably get a P150D or whatever it will be at that time. Which will give you Roadster like acceleration, probably 400-500 mile range, and will still be a family sedan.
I don't want a family sedan, I want a small, reasonably agile coupe. My current car is a Subaru BRZ. I want something that still has that kind of handling.
No, I haven't. I've been told they handle really well for their size and weight since the center of gravity is so low, but that they still don't handle super tight like a sports car.
Founder series limited to 1000 requires full deposit, that's $250 mil
Base model requires $45k deposit.
Not sure what semi requirements are.
Even if they are biting off more than they can chew, they can gauge reaction and devote more/less to this. I'm thinking that these ventures give their engineers a space to get really creative and push the envelope. And, these advancements make their way into the mainstream models.
They laid off "a ton of people" but a small fraction of their workforce, not affecting their burn rate much. Watch out for those financial press headlines, Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks out there.
oh please. they're putting money into R&D and into the ramp up. Your statement makes it sound like they're using the money to wipe their @$$es. No, they're putting the money to work. And if the analysts and shareholders didn't believe that, the stock would tank.
I think that may be the core point of why they are doing this. They are in a cash crunch, if they get enough deposits it can certainly help their bottom line... without dilution.
Developing a car like to a car to that state (drivable at the event) will have taken 2 or 3 years already so I doubt it originally started as a fix for cash flow.
Agreed, but I would be surprised if that didn’t play into the math. One of Elon’s greatest strengths is to think ahead strategically and position himself for maximum upside towards his goals. So yes, I am sure he didn’t think he would need this to help with Model 3, but I am sure he knew he would need more cash on hand to make another “big bet”. Unfortunately it looks like this cash will go to current projects rather than a brand new initiative. Unless of course this was to help with Tesla Semi...
What's even more amazing is that F or GM couldn't possibly do this. First mover advantage plus the allure of someone like Musk is what is needed. I know many bash him for spreading himself too thin among all his other ambitions but it gives him good will capital (which can translate to economic capital) when needed.
Ford or GM couldn't possibly do what? Pre-sales? The new Ford GT cost $450K and will only be available to select buyers during the first production year. I imagine GM does something similar with the higher-end Corvettes. Dodge did the same with Viper.
If they need more cash then they can just have another investor round. There's enough fan boys that would invest.
I would prefer that Ford and GM not do this... I don't see how producing a $250,000 car will help the common folk, which is who Ford and GM serves.
Tesla had first mover advantage with their Model 3 and now they are floundering. GM's Chevy Bolt is out producing and out selling the Model 3 despite first movers advantage and all the 'good will' Tesla generated... Despite people saying 'GM could never do this'.
I also don't know why you would say Ford or GM couldn't do it when they produce vehicles that race in Nascar and have R&D for that sport.
Ford and GM are mature companies and expected to actually make money, while Tesla is expected to make good will and headlines.
I'll be more excited when Tesla meets their originally projected production numbers.
Don't underestimate the importance of these flagship cars. They serve a purpose. Why do you think Ford has the GT? They are a test bed for new technologies and increase brand prestige.
Ford and GM can absolutely do this. Tesla is "hot", but Ford is successful.
People underestimating the big players and cars aren't thinking about the economics right. Ford markets are almost two orders of magnitude more than Tesla is producing. If Ford sees the global opportunity to sell 10-20 million EVs a year they'll build the crap out of them.
Ford sells pieces of shit and then tells you you're crazy every time you report a problem -- until a month after your last complaint when there's a company-wide recall.
I am never doing anything that gives them my money again.
"First mover advantage" is a concept that applies to platforms, and not to a millionaire status symbol/fashion statement. Most people spending $200,000+ on a vehicle want to be among the only people at the country club with it. This looks like a hot car, but I wouldn't hesitate to test drive Aston Martins or Ferrari's if I was playing with that kind of cash.
Also, GM and Ford do highly profitable business with the wealthy - Ford pickups are the most owned vehicle among millionaires and Cadillac keeps turning profits that Musk should envy.
They DID show a monster of a pickup truck at the unveiling as well. It's almost like a /second/ roadster but aimed at the millionaire truck lover. Of course, they aren't taking reservations for that because someone probably convinced Musk the number of rich truck lovers who also would love electric is small enough that it's not yet worth spending too much energy on the idea.
It's based on the semi truck. They didn't announce reservations for it or anything. It might be fair to call it a concept truck at this time, but I doubt it's the last we'll see of it.
They have planned this for years. The "new roadster" and even plaid has been announced for years. More than that, Production starts 3 YEARS from now. If they still have model 3 problems by then, I'll be surprised.
> It's also insane to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI!
They had multiple real Roadsters at the announcements. You can see a red one in the main event video, and there are pictures of a silver one on Twitter.
That’s exactly why they need this. They are running out of money. $250k reservations provide cash now and the promise of a semi might convince more investors to invest.
Yes. It is only human to be worried. They lose money on every car they sell. And the losses are accelerating. If you bought $TSLA at $300. And are looking to hold on for dear life. The next 12-24 months is gut check time.
But there is so much to be optimistic about! Uber or Lyft or Didi could place 100K size orders of Model 3s for their driverless fleets, with substantial support contracts, by 2019. Powerwalls may become standard components in emerging market power grids in the global sun belt. And envisioning charging stations as travel lounges or overnight rest stops is a stealth real estate and hospitality investment.
Tesla is acting as if the Model 3 will change the game. My personal bias is that the analysts are neglecting the raw consumer demand for this brave new electrical world. And if that holds true, continuing to raise cash to finance their production via stock, debt or pre-orders shouldn't be the hard part. Especially if 12 month price targets in the $350-375 range hold ;)
They don't lose money on every car they sell. Because they have a lot of NRE and other capital expenses they start out deeply in the hole before they sell any cars. But each extra car they sell after that hole increases their profits by something like $20,000 so they're making a lot of money when they sell cars even if their net divided by the number of cars sold is negative.
Has the 8 second quarter mile been confirmed to be done in stock trim (i.e., no special tires or other modifications)?
The reason I ask is because that is EXTREMELY impressive. I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.
Even all wheel drive cars (GTRs, DSMs, EVOs, etc.) usually run 4 slicks once they get to that speed.
It seems very hard to make a pass like that on regular street tires, even with AWD.
EDIT: To add, I'm not knocking Tesla here, as there are very few cars that can actually run an 8 second pass off the showroom floor without any modifications at all. Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.
Yes but in those cars traction control is usually off. In Tesla extremely precise traction control may work in your favour giving only as much power as tires can handle effectively allowing to near zero time loss on regaining tracktion. In quarter mile cars you don't have option, either tire will handle all that power or slip causing time loss.
Modern high-end aftermarket EFI systems (such as MoTeC) do have traction control, but it's not as effective as one would expect.
The main issue I found is that street tires often just don't have the traction required, even under ideal conditions. The result is that traction control has to cut power so much that it ends up hurting the quarter mile times.
It does help tremendously on consistency and safety though. Things start to pucker when all four wheels start hazing in a 1000 HP AWD car.
You seem familiar, but for others, here's what a typical 8 second car looks like leaving the line:
EDIT: Added picture of an 8 second all wheel drive car (GTR). The interesting thing here is the clear bias of traction towards the rear. When launching a car with that much power, the weight shifts towards the rear enough to render the front wheels almost useless (unless the suspension is extremely stiff).
I suspect Tesla's advantage is in linear acceleration. Those internal combustion cars need a gearbox so the initial acceleration is very high in that first gear. This the same reason the Navy wants to go from steam to electric catapults: you get the plane to the same speed off the cat, but the acceleration curve is straight, so there's lower peak load on the airframe, so your planes last longer. Similarly, the Tesla can keep linear acceleration with gear shifts.
Right but to hit an 8 second 1/4 you're trap speed is 170-190 depending on how fast your 1/8 mile was. There simply isn't even distance to accelerate linearly in 1/4 to hit 8 seconds without leaving the line like a bat out hell.
The suspension on most of these cars is also far from normal. There's very few cars in the world which make an8 second pass on independent rear suspension. Most of these cars have straight axles and 4 link suspension.
I really want to see a Tesla Roadster make an 8 second pass with whatever tires it needs because tires alone won't get you there. They got some serious engineering in that thing to make it hit 8 seconds with a suspension that doesn't make you hate life.
Accelerating at > 1g off the line has its own set of issues - without extra downforce from somewhere you have traction problems regardless of tires, street tires just make it worse.
This is why you see so many approx 2.9s 0-60 times in higher end sports cars, it's hard for aerodynamics to affect it much over the first couple of seconds.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't downforce an aerodynamic issue? There are no aerodynamics at 0 mph. You do have a torque problem, but the Tesla is actually a fairly heavy car, is it not? Also, isn't Tesla's center of mass pretty near the same height as the axles? So it's not like the rear end is going to get under the front end.
Sorry, i just worded it badly. The point is that without downforce, you can't overcome the traction issue. To a first approximation at 1g accel from a standing start, your resulting force vector is at 45 degrees (mass at 1g down, accel at 1g forward). Accelerating harder just makes the problem worse. At speed, the answer to this is downforce (e.g. how F1 cars can corner as fast as they can).
But for the first couple of seconds, you can't generate much downforce from aerodynamics because you aren't going fast enough. And there are limits to what a spoiler, etc. can generate. For a lot of street legal sports cars, this all evens out about the same way, and they end up with very similar 0-60 times.
If you try and systematically knock down all of these problems, you'll end up with a top fuel car. In that case you may get ~1000lb of downforce from exhaust alone, which gets you past the first bit while you are going too slow for the big wing to be really effective.
There are some IRS cars capable of going 8's. The ones I've seen the most are GTRs, Supras, and the occasional 2JZ/LSx swapped 240sx (I think they swap a Nissan/Infiniti Q45 rear into it or something).
Now that the 2015+ Mustang has IRS, I expect to see more of them as well. I think there's already one in the 8's.
But yeah, IRS is a major pain at that power level. Most (all?) of the performance cars today have IRS, so I expect improvements to come.
Wow, the buckling of the tire wall in the last two pictures is crazy. I guess that happens because there is enough friction to stop the wheel moving, and the axle is trying to turn it faster, causing a shear force. With normal tires, I assume they would just slip at that point and spin because they don't have enough friction in the contact patch touching the road.
Yep! The tires are actually designed to do that. It really helps to prevent things from snapping by absorbing some of the shock when the cars drop the clutch or let go of the trans brake.
Thanks, that's really interesting - there's some amazing technology going into what I had previously assumed was a fairly boring static (modulo the rotation, of course) component of these vehicles.
I'll be amazed, amazzzzed, if that car, stock, can create enough down force to keep itself on the road with stock tires, I don't care how good your TC is. Look at the size of the wing on the new Zr1 https://youtu.be/O_adY_b-aLQ?t=3m14s
Downforce is more than the wing. You see those giant diffusers in the back? Those work as venturi tunnels, creating a sucking force, sticking the car down.
As a matter of fact, F1 cars in the 70s-80s were using venturi tunnels that extended the entire length of the vehicle. This is impractical in a modern gasoline-powered car.
Theu were even getting so good with their aerodynamics that they were rumoured to be generating more downforce with ground effects than from wings.
In an electric car, you could do what they were doing back then.
I guess I'll be eating my hat then. I'm pretty amazed that you'll be able to keep it planted that fast around corners, but if you can, this will be an incredibly fun (or maybe very boring!) car to drive.
Just pretend, the same way they do with the claims about the GTR's ~0-degree wing, and most all aero claims on street-legal cars.
Aero at street legal speeds is basically worthless and range-destroying. Many supercars don't have more aero than the Roadster, just go look at them, they usually either have no wing, like the Lambo Huracan, or a wing with virtually no angle of attack.
Wing shouldn't matter all that much in this case. Grip is most important in the initial moments of acceleration on the drag strip where having a wing isn't quite as important. This car[1] runs in the 7s without a wing at all.
Oh absolutely. That car is almost certainly a tube frame with a fiberglass shell.....was what I was going to say but then I looked into it and actually it's still sheet metal and weighs 3800 pounds. It has run a 6.987, and probably has north of 2,000 horsepower. Oh and it is street legal.
I'm confused. :( You think the hotrod will weigh the same as or more or less than the new roadster? I looked around and I couldn't find the roadster weight anywhere.
> Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.
Horsepower is a misleading figure, because 1000 HP means a maximum of 1000 HP at some engine RPM. So, in other words, if a gasoline car delivers 100 HP @ 0-2000 RPM, and only delivers 1000 HP between 5500-6000 RPM, we call it 1000 HP.
The Tesla delivers its power constantly, from 0 RPM and — more importantly — its torque is also constant and available from 0 RPM. Add to this the fact that an electronic drive train can adjust the power independently for each wheel 100 times per second, which is simply impossible for a combustion engine (mechanical parts transferring that much power can’t switch that fast).
> — its torque is also constant and available from 0 RPM
I don't think torque is constant. The power is constant, and torque gradually decays as RPM increases as per the following equation:
HP = Torque x RPM ÷ 5252
Most 1000 HP drag cars are in their power band from the time the driver lets go of the trans brake until the race is over (unless it's a stick shift, but most drag cars are automatic).
Like any other conventional automatic, there is a torque converter between the engine and the transmission which allows the engine to spin faster than the transmission input shaft.
At the starting line, the driver engages the transmission brake, which locks the transmission and allows him to floor the engine, which brings it up to the optimal RPM (and spools the turbos if so equipped). It's almost the same as if you were to hold the brake and floor the accelerator at a red light. The only difference is that the brakes on a drag car wouldn't be able to hold it back, so they use the transmission instead.
Then, when it's time to start, he lets go of the trans brake and the power is instantly delivered to the wheels.
There usually isn't an issue with not having enough power at the starting line. It's actually the opposite. High power cars usually have to limit their starting RPM to avoid doing a wheelie or losing traction.
Interesting. Do they do that on purpose or is it due to how the motor works? It's so flat that It seems like they limit the torque on purpose, perhaps to prevent breaking things.
The almost perfect linear decline after the constant part is what I would have expected for an electric motor running with a constant power.
They almost certainly are limiting the torque. Zero rpm torque on these electric motors goes asymptotic since torque is power per change of angle and the angle isn't changing.
Also he specified max torque was 10k newton meters which is absolutely enough to pull a steel driveshaft like taffy. That's triple the torque a semi produces.
I would say with 99% certainty it wasn't stock tires.
Tesla specs special tires because one of their selling points is "look how quiet EVs are and how little maintenance they need". Said special tires have increased mass over normal tires. Tesla also needs to spec something that delivers a reasonable service life under a big heavy Tesla. You can't just hand wave and say "it's a 700hp rocket, of course it eats tires" because that doesn't fit their brand image. Then there's rolling resistance. They can't spec something that has a ton of rolling resistance because it would tank range.
All of those design criteria require trade-offs from traction and each other.
Well, most of my friends happen to be "in to" cars, so I've spent a lot of time being around and talking about cars.
Since I'm "good with computers", I would always help them with their electrical issues, which eventually evolved into me tuning their cars and dealing with any other EFI related issues. Most tuners charge around $500, but I do it all for free, so that helps.
If you really want to get involved, seek out some car clubs in your area and check out some of the open source ECU projects (such as Speeduino). Usually, car hobbyist can be identified by a group of people standing in a parking lot staring at their cars. Most of them love to brag about their setup, so they're pretty receptive to people asking questions.
The OP is right that 8 sec 1/4 is extremely impressive, but he is wrong that there are few production cars that can run 8s. No production car runs anything close.
The fastest 1/4 mile production cars are supercars such as the Veyron and 918, which are at or just under a 10seconds.
Remember, an increase from 20->18 seconds is roughly a 10% increase in acceleration; 10->8 is roughly 20% increase over an already ludicrously fast million-dollar supercar.
The 9.65 time is impressive, and the engineering team design as well. However, the claim is arguably disingenuous. Consider one needs a long time to go through a list of impractical things to prep the car to actually achieve that time, such as laying down what is literal tire glue to the road.
You're right - I can't find any other car that can run 8's without modifications. There are some that can achieve those numbers with under $10,000 worth of modifications, but that's kind of irrelevant since we're talking about stock cars.
That's also why I am skeptical of this Tesla running an 8 second pass in stock trim. Is there a video of the pass?
Most of the 8 second cars I've seen are running slicks or drag radials, and usually weigh a lot less.
I'd be curious to see how Tesla managed to make a car that probably weighs over 4000 pounds have enough traction for those numbers using regular tires. Even with all wheel drive, 8 second Nissan GTRs usually have to resort to slicks.
If we're talking about anything, you can build a turbo Gen 4 LSx swapped Foxbody Mustang for very cheap (check out the sloppy mechanics group). The same goes for an automatic AWD DSM. Both of those have the potential to get into the 8's with little money, but it does take some fine tuning.
However, I'm assuming you are interested in brand new production cars. The cars I listed above are all old and do not compare to the Tesla in anything other than drag racing. If you're interested, let me know and I can go into a more detailed breakdown of the last car I tuned (LSx swapped Mustang).
As for new cars, it depends on how much work you're willing to do yourself vs paying a shop.
Here's a link to a newer 5.0 Mustang with a completely stock engine and a ~$8500 twin turbo kit. He does have other supporting mods (tires, suspension, torque converter) that likely put him over the $10k mark, but you can also save a few thousand on the turbo kit by piecing it together yourself.
"He estimates the car makes over 900 horsepower at the tire, but what really matters is the stock Coyote engine paired with an off-the-shelf Hellion turbo kit added up to an 8.6-second e.t. at over 150 mph."
True. GTRs are not the best for drag racing. I think the Alpha 12 (~1200 HP) GTRs are actually dipping into the 8's, but I was thinking more along the lines of a Mustang, which is one of the most common cars used for drag racing and is usually much lighter.
Many cars in the 1200 HP range are much faster, such as the "Red Demon" DSM which is somewhere in the 7 second range.
I was wondering that myself after seeing the 1.9s 0-60 time. My understanding was that anything under 2.5s was the domain of racing slicks and sticky compounds.
The car in the image has some monster tires on it. Doesn't give you the compression (or whatever you use to describe the give in the tire) friction you get with serious drag tires, but with a good four wheel drive system?
> I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.
Right, but you're comparing what is ultimately powered by the good old Karl Benz design from the 1880s, burning dinosaur juice, that has zero torque at zero RPM, needs to shift gears multiple times, and is about as responsive to control inputs as a cow munching on marijuana leaves - with a very different thing powered by something that has maximum torque at any RPM, has no gears, and responds to control inputs extremely quickly and with immense precision.
1. A drag car does not start at zero RPM. The engine is probably over 4000 RPM and under load before the race even begins. In fact, many cars have to dial their launch RPM down because it ends up making enough power to lose traction from a dead stop. Look up "trans brake launch" to see what I'm talking about.
2. Your comment actually further confirms my skepticism of the Tesla not being able to maintain traction. If an unresponsive internal combustion engine powered car has trouble, imagine a car capable of shocking the tires even harder.
I own a modern sportbike and I've done enough of quarter mile attempts to understand how the process works in general, even though it's not a 4-wheel vehicle.
The main point here is that the internal combustion engine has a primitive torque profile. You have to keep it in the sweet spot if you want maximum performance. Hence all the stupid tricks you need to play with gear shifts and the clutch and all that junk.
This whole coordinated ballet is unnecessary with electric motors, that's the point that you've missed. At any RPM, including zero, the electric motor is near peak torque. A whole range of complex issues that would otherwise need to be mitigated simply vanish, so you can focus on defeating other obstacles. Understand the difference now?
> If an unresponsive internal combustion engine powered car has trouble, imagine a car capable of shocking the tires even harder.
You're missing the point again. A much more responsive engine such as the electric power plant allows traction control to work much, much more precisely and respond much faster. No inertia from crankshaft assembly and transmission. No clutch. Torque goes from any value to any other value in a small fraction of a second. The feedback loop can operate that much faster, and with greater precision. Internal combustion engines are not even in the same ballpark.
Like I've said, I do own a racing vehicle powered by internal combustion. I am quite fond and proud of it, which is something I believe you understand. But it's game over for this technology. Electric engines are winning by all metrics and in all applications, either sports, or utility, or whatever. It's the end of an era.
Yeah. Nobody claimed that magic was at work here. Current tire technology has certain limits imposed by physics. But I suspect electric cars can get quite a bit closer to those limits, with a much faster traction control loop.
The Tesla roadster specs are insane! No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).
Plus 620 miles of range, and it is a 4 seater. Expensive as hell, but this is exotic car territory.
Sounds really good on paper but the production is scheduled for 2020, so it’s unfair to compare it to the cars currently on the market. No other manufacturers announce cars so far ahead so it seems at least partly like a hype for Tesla investors. Acceleration is just one part of what makes a great sports car. And how is the acceleration past 100 mph? That’s the traditional weakness of electric cars and it matters more on the track. How about its weight, brakes, turning, steering feel, grip, suspension, weight distribution (it should be quite good), downforce? Will the battery last for a full track day? Of course sound has always been a very important part of what made sports cars exhilarating to drive and Tesla can’t compete there. And the design and brand matter too. Ferrari and Lamborghini don’t make $40k cars (or even $100k cars).
MotorTrend's review of the Model 3 makes me optimistic about the Roadster:
"What’s blanching, though, is the car’s ride and handling. If anybody was expecting a typical boring electric sedan here, nope. The ride is Alfa Giulia (maybe even Quadrifoglio)–firm, and quickly, I’m carving Stunt Road like a Sochi Olympics giant slalomer, micrometering my swipes at the apexes. I glance at Franz—this OK? “Go for it,” he nods. The Model 3 is so unexpected scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives. The steering ratio is quick, the effort is light (for me), but there’s enough light tremble against your fingers to hear the cornering negotiations between Stunt Road and these 235/40R19 tires (Continental ProContact RX m+s’s). And to mention body roll is to have already said too much about it."
And so how many Gs can it sustain on a flat corner? The faster a reviewer talks, the less we should listen. Give it to the Stig and let us see exactly how it laps.
> No other manufacturers announce cars so far ahead
Surely, you're joking? Virtually every carmaker has announced a whole bunch of electric cars for 2020-2021 (without giving nearly as many details or demoing the cars already). And that's discounting their "concept cars".
This. If you're buying a supercar to actually drive on a track, this is key. Any specs relating to what happens below 100 mph are worthless. If you spend any significant percentage of time going so slow, you need to spend ~$8k on a BMW E36 M3 instead, and learn how to drive.
But if you buy a supercar mainly to park in front of Harrods, 0-60 time is... still worthless.
Not to be a Tesla apologist, but how many people track their supercars? Or at least proportionally to road use? An Aventador is pretty crummy as a track car, and its performance is all but unusable on the roads (unless, ahem, liberties are taken).
A lot of the appeal is in the perception of performance and that initial acceleration. It's putting your foot down with a passenger, or breezing someone at the lights whilst putting a smile on your face. 0-60 is probably one of the more relevant performance statistics for road use (even if 1.9s renders it all but pointless!)
More than a few race tracks in America are basically pet projects of the super rich. They operate as for profit entities and do their best to be profitable or at least break even, but really they exist for the entertainment of the billionaire owners groups.
But, what are they driving on those tracks? If I had a few 'bill laying around I'd be in a FXXK or P1 GTR, rather than a supercar or some of the hypercars, no?
I drive a 2004 330i; I track it. I get better times than most drivers who have much better 100-140 high speeds in the straights - despite me only getting to ~100.
Of course, somehome a pro driver in a lowered 140hp toyota pickup truck can get better times than all of us.
Most people don't have the nerves to take high speed turns at the limit. I used to take a Lotus Elise to the track and it requires courage to look for the limit when you go 100mph+. Going straight is easy.
> The 2016 F1 cars have a power-to-weight ratio of 1,400 hp/t (1.05 kW/kg). Theoretically this would allow the car to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in less than 1 second. However the massive power cannot be converted to motion at low speeds due to traction loss and the usual figure is 2.5 seconds to reach 100 km/h (62 mph)
Even adjusting for 60 mph = 2.4s, I don't see how the traction of the Tesla is better.
Formula-E cars are doing 0-62 it in 3s [1]:
> An average Formula E car has a power of at least 250 horsepower (190 kW). The car is able to accelerate from 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 3 seconds, with a maximum speed of 225 km/h (140 mph)
I agree, I think this is another case of "well it works on our computer" pre-release specs that will turn out not to get close to real-world performance. The 0-100mph is very suspicious but I think the 0-60 time quoted is simply impossible for a road car, even making allowances for a few years of tech advancements.
F1 tires are nothing like road tires. They're not even vaguely comparable - at normal operating temperatures (over 100C, and they're preheated before starting - although not to quite this hot) they have the consistency of chewing gum. They are also huge - far bigger than a road car could ever hope to accommodate. This car also looks to weigh around double what an F1 car will weigh, and with far, far, FAR less grip, so it simply doesn't seem possible that it can accelerate faster.
To address some of the other replies. Traction control: F1 cars are driven by some of the best drivers on the planet. I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree. Gear changes: F1 gear changes take about 8 milliseconds. A road-going automatic gearbox is definitely not going to beat this.
In short - it doesn't matter HOW much power you have, if you can't get it down on the road. Given the limitations of the weight of the car, the limited grip from road tires, and a gearbox that needs to survive everyday use, it seems frankly totally impossible that a sub-2s 0-60mph is correct.
Agreed, but they don't need to be. Remember, the magic number here is ~1.4G, for a 1.9s 0-60. The Pilot Sport Cup 2 – a track-friendly R-compound tire used in the webcast car and in the videos – can pull close to that on a skidpad (i.e. less than optimal conditions), meaning the grip is there.
> I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree.
Launch control and traction control can make several tenths of seconds of difference, which is critical when you're talking about sub-2s times. Also, traction control can keep the car on the cusp of slip the entire run to 60MPH, which is critical in a car that has a completely flat torque curve and probably enough torque to break the wheels loose at any speed (which is not true for F1 cars).
I also suspect that the Roadster has active damping – another technology disallowed in F1 – meaning that the duration of contact with the road can be maximized. This is important if the road surface isn't glassy-smooth.
> This car also looks to weigh around double what an F1 car will weigh
That doesn't help it at all in cornering, but in a straight line, the increased weight of the car will help it launch even better since it'll increase the traction on the drive wheels (equivalent to downforce at speed).
> Gear changes: F1 gear changes take about 8 milliseconds. A road-going automatic gearbox is definitely not going to beat this.
There's no gearbox to speak of; the wheels are direct-drive. To be fair, this won't contribute significantly to faster 0-60 times, but the gearbox exists to compensate for some less-than-ideal characteristics of an ICE, namely uneven power delivery and physical limitations on peak RPMs. An electric motor has none of these problems.
> Agreed, but they don't need to be. Remember, the magic number here is ~1.4G, for a 1.9s 0-60. The Pilot Sport Cup 2 – a track-friendly R-compound tire used in the webcast car and in the videos – can pull close to that on a skidpad (i.e. less than optimal conditions), meaning the grip is there.
That's lateral grip, which isn't the same at all. Longitudinal grip, which is what's important here, is very different. There's a lot of clever things you can do to increase lateral grip, such as wheel camber, that don't really apply to purely longitudinal grip, so I'm not sure this is valid.
> I also suspect that the Roadster has active damping – another technology disallowed in F1 – meaning that the duration of contact with the road can be maximized. This is important if the road surface isn't glassy-smooth.
But it has to have (comparatively) extremely soft road-going suspension. I really doubt that no matter how smart the active damping is that it will compare with race springs and dampers. Le Mans cars have all these active damping tricks, traction control, along with slick tires, low weight, very high power:weight ratios, skilled drivers, etc, etc, etc and they still don't get to 60 that quick.
That's an excellent example actually - the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car has a 0-60 of 2.2 seconds, despite electric power, FAR less weight, FAR better tires and drivetrain [0]. There is just no way you can make a road car that's faster than an LMP1 hybrid. If you can, maybe you can put a roll-cage in and take it to Le Mans.... but I doubt it.
> That doesn't help it at all in cornering, but in a straight line, the increased weight of the car will help it launch even better since it'll increase the traction on the drive wheels (equivalent to downforce at speed).
Weight increases the grip, but it also increases the amount of grip you need - you need more power to maintain the same acceleration, and this power needs to be transferred to the road. I'm not an expert, but AIUI, increased grip due to weight scales linearly, whereas the increase in power required (and thus the increase in grip required) scales geometrically, thus weight is counterproductive in getting you to 60mph faster. I could be wrong about this though - as always I'd be happy to be corrected by someone with more knowledge!
> That's lateral grip, which isn't the same at all. [...] There's a lot of clever things you can do to increase lateral grip, such as wheel camber, that don't really apply to purely longitudinal grip, so I'm not sure this is valid.
Camber isn't a magical trick to get more grip; it's a way to restore grip that would otherwise have been lost because of uneven tire loading in a corner. In a straight-line drive situation, the load is already ideal; the contact patch is the maximum size and fairly evenly distributed across the width of the tire.
> There is just no way you can make a road car that's faster than an LMP1 hybrid.
Indeed, it's currently impossible to make an all-electric race car that can compete with an ICE or hybrid race car in general race conditions, mostly because of the limitations of the energy storage. If the goal is just for a road car to beat a hybrid LMP1 (or even F1) car in a drag race though, as is the case here, I think that's much more doable. The ICE is really the weak link there.
> Camber isn't a magical trick to get more grip; it's a way to restore grip that would otherwise have been lost because of uneven tire loading in a corner. In a straight-line drive situation, the load is already ideal; the contact patch is the maximum size and fairly evenly distributed across the width of the tire.
Mostly. But only mostly. Tire grip is actually really, really, really complex however, and this is one of the places where a simplistic model breaks down really badly.
If we were able to model tires with simple newtonian physics, then no car would be able to hold more than 1g in a corner, as at that point the force sideways would be more than the force of gravity holding it to the road. Manifestly this is not actually the case.
Tire grip through a corner is more than just coefficient of friction against a surface. There's a lot of complicated things that happen, but the one I'm going to very lightly cover here is that when you go around a corner your tires deform slightly. The sidewall of the tire is pulled out of place, and at the maximum cornering speed of a tire, it will actually be slipping slightly (which can be heard as tire squeal). Cambering the tire corrects for uneven loading, but it also changes the sidewall stress profile, and thus affects the way the tire deforms under lateral load.
> AIUI, increased grip due to weight scales linearly, whereas the increase in power required (and thus the increase in grip required) scales geometrically
The high-school physics model of grip has them both linear, but more sophisticated models may show a difference.
(Interestingly, more mass on a vehicle does help when it is towing something heavy.)
> namely uneven power delivery and physical limitations on peak RPMs. An electric motor has none of these problems.
Electric motors do actually have an uneven response at different RPMs (in the form of back-emf losses). I worked for a while with an electric car team in university, and we used a mechanical system to adjust the stator position and tune the motor for different RPMs. I’m not sure what Tesla is doing to address this (could be mechanical or solid state), but you definitely can’t just keep dumping more power into a motor and expect it to get correspondingly faster, not even as a reasonable approximation.
What is the best 60-to-0 time for a road car? If traction is the limiting factor, you should be able to get very close to that same time in the reverse direction.
Edit: the shortest 60-to-0 braking distance I find claimed is for a Dodge Viper ACR (Mk 5) at 87 feet. Assuming constant acceleration, that works out to 1.98 seconds.
>Traction control: F1 cars are driven by some of the best drivers on the planet. I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree.
I'm with you for the rest of the post, but this is not straining credulity. Look at the F1 season where traction control/launch control was not yet banned. You can see how the cars with that technology gained a massive advantage. Look no further than some starts featuring Schumacher vs Senna. The former wasn't a better driver, but Senna couldn't do anything but watch him pull away on the starts. And that's 1993 technology.
Not really, wider tires for example let you have constant pressure per surface area in contact with the road.
Now there are minor effects that do come into play, so 100x the weight would be meaningful. But, weight within the range of normal cars is not really important.
Traction control has been banned in F1 since 2008, so this severely limits how quickly they can start from a standstill. The tires themselves certainly have enough grip to handle the acceleration; F1 cars routinely hit several lateral Gs in cornering (though with the help of downforce), well exceeding the ~1.4G required to accelerate to 60 in 1.9s.
The F1 engines are already revved up when they start. They just engage the clutch. And F1 gear changes are pretty much instant as the old and new gears are connected at the same time and the moment that would start to cause problems the old one gets disconnected
But yeah its the real wheel drive that stops F1 cars going faster 0 to 60. (limited by the friction instead of the power the engine can deliver)
The whole startup trickery with the two clutch paddles is interesting too. Basically they use one of the paddle to find the bite point and leave it there and then use the other to fully disengage the clutch. Then once the lights go out they drop the other clutch so the clutch goes instantly to the bite point and then use the other paddle to modulate the launch (they are pretty much flatout while standing still and use the clutch to control wheel spin). A launch control computer probably could do this better but such things are banned in F1.
Per your links, the minimum permissible weight of an F1 car is 731kg including the driver, but not fuel. For FE it is 800kg. The 2011 Tesla Roadster weighed 1235kg, sans driver. The 2011 Bugatti Veyron 1834kg.
The very long range also suggests that this car will weigh considerably more than the old Roadster. Maybe there is an improvement to traction with all that extra weight? Or maybe the weight just helps with keeping the wheels on the ground at 250mph?
Yes. The Chiron matches it in speed, but not acceleration. 1.9s vs 2.4s to 60mph.
Since the roadster has a 250+ mph figure, the tires are probably going to be one of the limiting factors. (same with the Chiron).
"
The Chiron can accelerate from 0–97 km/h (60 mph) in 2.4 seconds according to the manufacturer,[4] 0–200 km/h (120 mph) in 6.5 seconds and 0–300 km/h (190 mph) in 13.6 seconds. In a world-record-setting test, Chiron reached 400 km/h (250 mph) in 32.6 seconds, after which it needed 9.4 seconds to brake to standstill.[14]
The Chiron's top speed is electronically limited to 420 km/h (261 mph) for safety reasons.[2] The anticipated full top speed of the Bugatti Chiron is believed to be around 463 km/h (288 mph)."
Very unlikely. With power you weight beyond useful (this has basically been "solved" since the day someone built a cat around a ww2 military aircraft piston engine), acceleration is determined by aerodynamics (drag and downpressure), tires and the time spent shifting gears. It's pretty evident where Tesla has the advantage.
Tangent: please don't downvote someone asking questions, people. I for one had not considered that electric motors have no gears to shift, and wondered "surely both cars are automatic? Does Tesla have a patent on a faster automatic transmission or something?" so I appreciated someone asked.
The basic idea is that it is wasting time.
But this is no longer a factor as the gear change is instantaneous with Automatic GearBox.
Electric cars do not have a gearbox and just have one rotor.
This does place them in a disadvantage when starting though as there acceleration is affected.
Formula E cars, have started using a 3 gearbox for their cars in order to have a faster start.
So it is possible that the Roadster does have a gearbox.
I don't think you're right about this. If the 60-0 time and the 0-60 time are the same for the Chiron then it's limited by traction (assuming brakes that are strong enough to break traction at 60).
Most high performance cars only shift once before 60, and with modern dual clutch transmissions it only costs a fraction of a second.
The only way Tesla are going to get below 2 seconds is either with non-street legal tyres (cheating!) or some new tyres that nobody else has.
Their demo car uses Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, which are also used on the Buggati Chiron and Koenigsegg Agera RS (which recently set two records for fastest 0-400kph-0 and fastest production car road speed). These tires are street legal.
The Roadster is significantly faster than other supercars from 0-60 on the same tires, so the advantage must come from much more efficient anti-wheel slipping from the three electric motors coupled to AWD. This dramatic speed advantage is probably a result of the ability to quickly alter the power output per wheel to minimize efficiency losses from breaking traction.
FWIW, all of the hypercars on the market have custom compounds, so the fact they're both called "Pilot Sport Cup 2" by Michelin doesn't really matter all too much.
Braking has a very different load distribution, even with a center of mass as low as in supercars. I would not put to much into that comparison. Tires are depicted as Michelin in the announcement, it would be very surprising if they keep their best exclusive to Tesla, considering the relative proximity between Bugatti and Michelin, the relative cheapness of the Tesla and Volkswagen group representing a much bigger part of the tires market than Tesla for the foreseeable future.
> it only costs a fraction of a second
In other words: exactly the scale of the differences we are talking about. In addition to the short interruption itself I guess that it also takes a few millis until traction control has settled after a shift.
This sounds very dubious, unless it has negative aerodynamic downforce. Even then, the times for each successive mph drop off too fast for it to be traction limited. Even F1 cars are not traction limited for more than a brief spell of straight-line acceleration. Aero drag dominates very quickly.
[My caveat on this, I'm not a road-car enthusiast, so I'm just deducing. But I used to work in motor racing, mostly bikes. Based on the standard of reporting I saw about stuff I did know well, I don't trust the motor press on tech claims.]
Doesn’t mean much. They had to replace a lot of stuff between the presented and production model x, like the door hinges, because from prototype to reality there’s an abyss, especially for a car that’s supposed to sustain thise speeds.
The first thing I did was to compare against the Dodge Demon SRT and sure enough, I think overall the Tesla Roadster beats it. If you go to Dodge's website, they boast the claim "Fastest Production Car from 0-100 mph", with a little note saying "Excludes non-mass production vehicles and hybrids/electric."
Any car that has less than 100 of produced units, it just exotic car prototypes territory. If you can't really go an buy one, does it matter? It is not a real 'production' car.
"Venom GT "World's Fastest Edition" (2014)[edit]
Is a limited (3 units) version of the Venom GT coupe commemorating the Venom GT coupe's 0–300 km/h Guinness World Record.
The vehicle went on sale for US$1.25 million.[14] All three units were sold to customers shortly after their production was announced by the manufacturer."
This is true, though it's not really my point... Once someone sets a new benchmark, it will get broken. I doubt that all advancements in performance cars will stop here..
1600Nm is the engine torque for the Chiron. The 10000Nm value Tesla gave is the wheel torque. You need to multiply the 1600Nm by the gear ratio to get the wheel torque.
I wonder at what speed you get that range. Those specs are in Bugatti Veyron league, even beating it at acceleration (for 1/8 the price tag), but at full speed, the Veyron empties its full tank in... 12 minutes. I'll let you calculate how many miles that is at 250mph.
I seem to recall reading that the Veyron's tyres will disintegrate after 15 minutes at top speed, but that's OK because it only carries fuel for 12 minutes.
Most of the car do since tank is sized to fuel consumption and full throttle petrol eat a lot of fuel - even a smart can reach 2km to the liter flat out and I know my alfa tank would only last 15 minutes give or take from the figures I got lapping at Monza
The Model S can seemingly do it quite often, Tesla Racing Channel does it quite a bit. You will thermal limit at some point but having twice the battery capacity is probably helping there.
The Porsche CEO has been sorta claiming that but it doesn't make sense to me. The kinetic energy of your car at a given speed is the same, regardless of how fast you accelerated to get to that speed. Do batteries waste more energy when you drain them faster?
They can't waste a large portion of battery capacity, because the heat from that much energy getting wasted would blow up the car.
Drag. Recall, wind resistance is proportional to the square of velocity. The vast majority of energy goes into overcoming drag, even at regular highway speeds. Remember when we capped speed limits at 55mph during the '70s energy crisis? We did so because fuel efficiency really starts to drop off at faster speeds. 250mph is very, very far up this curve.
It takes more power to accelerate faster but the total change in kinetic energy is the same either way. Any energy consumption that doesn't go into the final kinetic energy is going into waste heat, and there can't be too much of that without melting things.
All of the electrical systems waste more energy if you drain them faster. To drain them faster you need higher currents which lead to higher waste power. Waste power goes up with the square of the current (P=I^2*R). This is most apparent in batteries heating up due to their internal resistance. Here's [1] an 18650 lithium cells discharge graph at different currents.
Paper stats are one thing but show me this beating even something like a GT3 in an actual circuit race, or posting a Nurburgring time worthy of the price tag.
I’m sure in another 5 or 10 years they’ll get there but these figures are for headlines not the track.
> Paper stats are one thing but show me this beating even something like a GT3 in an actual circuit race, or posting a Nurburgring time worthy of the price tag.
An actual race is one thing: you wouldn't expect most "supercars" to finish an actual race without being torn down and rebuilt for the race. I have no idea how you'd prepare something like a Bugatti for an endurance race, but I know the end result wouldn't be worth the expense. GT3 cars are a pretty good example of something bridging the gap. (On the other hand, the Bugatti is said to be a pleasant car to drive on the street, which I wouldn't necessarily expect out of a GT3 car.)
One lap at Nurburgring? I imagine Tesla can swing that. It seems like it would just be function of keeping the battery cool enough. If they found a way to air cool the battery effectively at speed, Nurburgring is a pretty friendly track for that.
Think of it this way, if some server or database came out claiming incredible benchmark numbers you’d say okay now show me some real world workloads. Same here. 0-60 is an artificial benchmark, a circuit time is a real world workload.
I haven't said they're making up the 0-60 time. I'm saying show me a test against the competition that lasts for longer than 1.9 seconds.
Don't get me wrong it's a deeply impressive vehicle. I'm just not an Elon fanboy and the precise milisecond that what Porsche, McLaren et. al. customers want something like that is when they will start making it. It's not like one company is the future and the rest of them are dinosaurs. One company is small and loosing money and the others are making it, enough of it to buy Tesla any time they feel like it, which being realistic is what's going to happen eventually.
10,000 NM of torque. That's INSANE. I drive a car with 400NM torque and that thing scares the sh*t out of me when I accelerate. 10,000 NM? Isn't that something along the lines of a tram or a train (I'm not sure, I'm asking you guys). This is CRAZY. I'm getting one for sure.
After gearing, you'll have the same order of magnitude torque at the wheels as the Tesla.
Randomly picked example: Porsche G97/01 (997 Carrera 2 2005-08)
First gear total reduction 13.45 (gear 3.91, rack&pinion 3.44)
So, ignoring efficiencies, you'd have a first-gear torque of 400Nm * 13.45 = 5380Nm at the wheels.
Still "only" half of the Tesla, but not an earth-shattering difference anymore.
It can be, even though many electric vehicles apparently use a fixed-ratio gear as well. But it's still an apples-to-oranges comparison since traditional ICE-driven cars tend to publish engine torque, not wheel torque.
Of course, they weren't trying all that hard to alleviate any confusion, and it worked even on the fairly tech-savvy HN crowd.
Even if there is not a traditional transmission, there is still a gearbox behind the electric motor.
Tires only rotate at ~1000 RPM on the freeway where the electric motor in a Tesla might be at 10k rpm. That 10x reduction still needs to be factored in.
Right. And electric motors are more efficient at higher RPMs. At high RPM, the voltage drop due to back-EMF (i.e. actual work) is higher but your voltage drop due to coil resistance is about the same, so you lose proportionally less energy in the form of coil resistance at higher rpm.
Consider that at ~0mph and ~0rpm, producing any kind of torque at all is done with ~0% efficiency, all just resistive losses as the back-EMF is effectively zero. (Note this is no different for an internal combustion engine, although the heat generated is in the clutch or similar such device...)
Friction losses don't change much as a proportion of power as you increase speed. For aerodynamic drag, however, your losses do proportionally increase with speed, so "windage" (i.e. drag from spinning parts of the motor) needs to be cleverly reduced by making the rotor aerodynamic if you're planning on operating at high rpm.
EDIT: for properly designed electric motors (i.e. thin wire windings, iron core optimized for low eddy current losses), coil resistance usually dominates even at high rpms.
For those of us in the US, and vaguely familiar with traditional hot rods, the Chevy big block engine generally came with ~500-700 lb-ft of torque, which in a lead sled, relatively speaking, such as a 60-70s era Camaro or Chevelle would throw your head back and shake your chest like a roller coaster as the car started to slightly drift sideways.
10,000nm in comparison is 7,375lb-ft, which sounds like Harry Potter land in comparison, if all of my conversions and memories serve me.
700lb-ft is apparently 950Nm. So assuming the same gearing as in the sibling post (very likely a false assumption -- I guess these cars had longer gears), you'd end up with 12.7kNm of torque at the wheels.
BTW, if such traditional hot rods had automatic transmissions (they did, didn't they?), the torque converter would have amplified the torque even beyond the numbers I just gave you.
My car has 1092nm of torque from about 1500rpm and it's mind-boggling... 10,000nm is hard to comprehend and surely more than enough to give the occupants some serious whiplash if not sat properly.
I work in cybersecurity. I'll have to set money aside for a couple years to make a considerable down payment, but I might be able to afford one of these.
Acceleration is not all that matters. I'm going to hold until a hands-on driving test before I make such claims as "best sports car on the market" and "no Ferrari can compete".
Yes tho the Maclaren does comes closer as far as spec goes for about the same price (720s is £208,000 in the UK).
The top speed would be the interesting part how long can it actually sustain it.
GM could probably release an EV 'vett-like car that puts down similar numbers if they cared to invest the money to do so.
Building fast cars that are a little rougher in finish but can hold their own on the track compared to cars that cost a few times as much is kind of their thing. The teams that work on the Bolt are probably crossing their fingers for this.
No exotic maker will match it with internal combustion.
Mclaren, Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, BMW M division are all in the process of producing electric sports cars. I don't think Tesla is holding any technology that makes other makers with a lot more racing experience unable to match their performance.
> No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).
None of them will? Why? Has Tesla got some trade secret?
They're both incorrect, I think. Acceleration rate would be the rate of change of the rate of change of speed, or what is known as 'jerk' in engineering. I guess that would be the time that it takes to go from 0 to the '0-60 in 1.8s' acceleration? The correct term is simply 'acceleration' on its own.
alls i'm saying is that if anyone wrote "acceleration speed" on reports in high school physics class they'd get points off. acceleration is a kind of rate.
It uses 3 motors (2 in the back) and has a 200 kWh battery pack. The reason for such a large battery is so that they can draw more total current without overheating, theoretically twice as much as the Model S P100DL which only has two motors (1 in the back). Having more motors means you are spreading out the current/heat. The 600+ mile range is mostly a side effect of this engineering approach to performance.
If you look at Teslas, they have a grill in the front that sends air to a radiator that's shared by the battery cooling system and the cabin air conditioning.
For S and X and 3, it's not beefy enough to handle an extended period of time. Also, the engine has to radiate heat.
So, you're boldly predicting that Tesla, which understands basic physics well enough that their existing cars accelerate well and don't burst into flames because of heat issues, is going to be unable to do any better cooling the battery and motors of a future car?
Making snap engineering conclusions about technology that had tens of thousands hours R&D poured into them is a popular genre of fiction.
I just see how the thinking goes. "No way this issue that crossed my mind in the first 40 seconds I heard about the product was addressed by the bunch of hacks behind it".
So, you're boldly predicting that Tesla is going to overdesign their cooling system to meet the unrealistic demand of unlimited-duration maximum power draw (in a supercar!).
I'm not saying either of you are wrong. I'm saying either of you know equally little about the engineers' decisions, and are making equally unreasonable demands.
No, it's incorrect, physics does not mandate that battery should heat up as you expend energy. Ideally all the energy would go into kinetic energy and be dissipated by friction losses due to air or contact between the road and the tires. The battery heats up only because the process of tranferring the chemical energy from the batteries to the car motion is imperfect, and there are internal losses do to the internal resistance of the battery.
I'm not saying that Tesla has invented a sufficiently efficient battery, but to vaguely claim "physics" makes it impossible is wrong.
It does. It will heat up. To quote a physics textbook: “Power transfer between a voltage source and an external load is at its most efficient when the resistance of the load matches the internal resistance of the voltage source.” IOW in the configuration where the power transfer is at its most efficient, battery has to dissipate as much thermal energy as motor(s) are consuming. Too much internal resistance and most of the thermal energy ends up in the battery. Too little, and your motors aren’t going to do their best. But in either case even with the load that’s not 100% matched, you do end up with a ton of heat dissipation in the battery when a heavy car like this is driven hard.
You get voted down by people who just want to believe stuff, physics be damned. Doesn't matter that the same exact thing happens to the existing S models which manage a more than decent 0-to-60 performance on paper (they're in the same league with the Lambos and the Ferraris), but because of those damned physics I don't think that any of them actually completed a Nurburgring lap (that's ~7 km driving the S model like a sports car).
Perhaps getting down downvoted by people who expect Tesla may have thought about this. I remember reading the overheating was due to the regenerative braking trying to push power back into the battery so it was getting hard charged and discharged constantly and you couldn't switch off the charging. The bigger battery may be so you can switch off the regenerative braking.
The Porsche Mission-E will handle continuous top-speed just fine without overheating, so I figure Tesla will come up with a competitive cooling solution until 2020 as well.
Porsche has hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D poured into the 919 hybrid Le Mans Prototype, which I imagine will translate to the Mission E. Tesla has no such experience.
Too bad almost no-one watches the E series, because they're boring af (and the whiny sounds are cringy). Porsche did the translation to Mission E because its parent company is called VW, i.e. a company that should have paid damages worth tens of billions of euros because its diesel engines have killed and worsened the health of tens of thousands of people all over Europe, but because VW is a German "national treasure" nothing of that really happened.
Seriously? I'm 90% sure this will NOT reach Lambo times in Nordschleife. And as a sports car, it will 100% not be fun to drive, weight is everything in a quick small car for fun.
Look at the road, he had already done that jaunt a few times before this video was shot. The road is full of skid marks from the wheels slipping before being caught by the traction control.
This car is absolutely traction limited. It should be able to post even better times with racing slicks.
It fell flat. Sometimes to make comedy you have to attempt new things and sometimes they miss wildly. I actually started the thread so I do know the reference.
Probably not sped up. What you're seeing is a sudden acceleration of the camera's viewpoint when panning to the left in order to keep up with the 1.9s to get to 60mph.
Elon talked during some event how the latency / response time of the torque control in the Tesla drive-train is ridiculous compared to gasoline and for that reason even RWD models should handle well in the snow. To be fair, some people talk about the (at least older) RWD models being a bit crazy on Snow/Ice. I can only assume that the newer models are much better and the Roadster likely better again - plus it's actually AWD but anyway the point was more about the torque control :)
By comparison one of the kings of Launch Control is well known to be the Nissan GT-R. You can see in this wet launch that while it still does a great job, it definitely has some spin as it basically intentionally causes a loss of traction at the start, calculates the traction available based on the acceleration it does get to then adjust the power output and differential splits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTJGE0wzJpE
For other really fun scientific/computerised stability control, this video about the Koenigsegg Agera R is great:
https://youtu.be/SywqgH7n-5g?t=34
It shows him literally reefing the wheel side to side at 1m15s while full throttle. Even my 2009 Evo X has surprisingly good stability management in the wet - and it is now probably nearly 2 decades old technology behind any of these other cars and only a 50k car not a 200k-1m car. Still crazy and computers are amazing.
I'd be pretty nervous running something RWD with massive torque and power on ice. I'm sure it's better to have a more predicateble delivery, but with ice 7 months per year I'm staying clear of high power RWD cars...
The electric advantage though is that you can infinitely (or well close enough) modulate that power delivery. And in fact I think they recently added a "slow and comfortable" acceleration option to the Model S (the opposite of Maximum Plaid :-)
The snow comments were also mostly in regards to the context of the Model 3 which is not that "high power" but it also has obviously quite a substantial amount of torque from a get-go compared to traditional gasoline torque curves.
Generally speaking though I would agree.. I love AWD, Breathe AWD.. and my Model 3 will be AWD :) .. and we don't get any snow!
Also 7 months of snow is probably very different to much less of it I imagine.
200K is actually good value, seeing as gas supercars that are near it in terms of performance (except slower) often cost over $1M.
EDIT: Tesla probably should fix their homepage going to a what appears to be the live stream page. I'd have to imagine they are losing valuable pageviews and sales. Tesla.com should be redirecting to either the Semi or Roadster landing pages.
Yes, we should totally judge the next gen Roadster based on the first gen one. Ignore the advancements in battery tech and other lessons Tesla has learned in the nearly 10 years since the first Roadster.
Does this mean that Tesla is pivoting from their attempt to produce a medium-priced car in quantity and going back to hand-building high-end cars?
Tesla is good at high-end, low volume products. But the Model 3 production fiasco shows they don't know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota City do. This is in a way a step backwards. Tesla is going back to targeting the 1%.
There are lots of little supercar companies. It's not that hard to build an electric supercar in tiny volume. I know some people who've done it. It's fun, and there are idiots with too much money who'll buy the thing. But it's a waste of engineering talent which should be getting the volume product out the door.
Pretty mich every car company makes a high end sports car. This isn’t a pivot, this is establishing Tesla as a car company with a range of cars rather than just 1 or 2 that are very similar. Product diversification is a good thing for companies that make physical products. The manufacturing process and higher margins on this will likely fund new developments that will trickle down to the less expensive models.
Also I think the sports car helps solve problems. You can spend a little more on a solution, then figure out how to do it cheaper on the next generation family sedans. Even decide if that’s just the wrong approach due to maintenance headaches.
But why does Tesla need a halo car? They already have the consumers’ attention. Lots of people would buy Teslas today but can’t because Tesla is unable to mass produce the Model 3.
Musk did mention in his presentation that the motivation for making this car was as "a complete smack down to gas powered cars" and it may be no more than that, though the halo effect doesn't hurt and neither does the R&D effort.
To get featured the list of fastest cars in magazines etc., to go to car shows, to get people into a show room, to get featured on TopGear/The Grand Tour, for kids to talk about at school and so on. All of which boost Tesla's brand (outside the tech echo-chamber, where it is already strong).
Yes, on the UK one. However, there are many versions around the world. Also, the presenters involved have all left, and are now on the Grand Tour. My point was about halo cars in general, not Telsa's experience in general.
The team at the Grand Tour are going to have to get used electric cars, since I expect all the fastest cars will be electric from this point. If they can't get a loaner car, they'll borrow or buy one, they've done that before.
I don't think kids are going to be lusting after an SUV the way we used to lust after the Lamborghini Countach. This, on the other hand, is lust-worthy.
The project / delivery timeline seems to stage this rather clearly as "next".
Product design / R&D is also different resource pool to manufacturing (well, at least in my mind it is). Manufacturing issues may have forced redesigns but they'll need to keep working on the next thing; competition certainly won't stand still.
1,000 reservations @ $250k means they can pay for 5% of their new gigafactory, and that's just the founder's run. If that means they can scale better, I'm all for it. And I say that as someone who won't be able to afford a car like this for a looong time, if ever.
It works because they're using a stack & roll approach to financing the corporate build-out.
In two years they'll have a new thing to take deposits on. Stack the pre-orders, roll to the next announcement, deliver the last thing, then do it all over again. They're floating a lot of cheap financing this way.
In the meantime, the approach of announcements & pre-orders keeps their stock charged, which they can also abuse for financing if necessary.
It's precarious and dangerous (inevitably stock market decline & recession), and it works extremely well while it works.
Of course, but what I mean to say it's a not-insignificant amount of short term (2y?) cash.
More generally, my point was that producing a high-end vehicle with (most likely) much better margins for the company than, say, the Model X, would subsidize advancements in their more accessible options.
I think that that is the person's point. This is several years of development which amounts to wasted resources in light of the manufacturing setbacks of their truly disruptive product.
While I actually agree with Animats, I do feel the need to point out that I do not agree that the Model 3 is the "truly disruptive product" vs. this newly announced Roadster... this car has a 620 mile range... that is "truly disruptive"; the Model 3 only has at its best a 334 mile range: this is finally an electric car that can rival the long-range convenience of a gasoline vehicle (as no matter what the range, filling up your take with gas is essentially instantaneous vs. trying to charge a battery).
> This is several years of development which amounts to wasted resources in light of the manufacturing setbacks of their truly disruptive product.
Different teams. Model 3 design & engineering was completed in July.
The folks working on the Roadster design would've otherwise been idle (or mostly idle except for maybe any refinements that might've been necessary due to production process limitations/issues) during Model 3 production ramp.
I'd place good money on them having already produced the first draft of this design as part of the whole lineup remodel that did away with the Model S's nose-cone prior to the Model X launch. i.e figuring out a "Tesla" design language that worked across the S, X, 3, and R (and perhaps the Semi, to some degree)
Toyota owns Lexus, Ford had Jaguar and Land Rover, Hyundai owns Genesis, Volkswagon has Bentley, Fiat owns Ferrari. Just like other car manufacturers, Tesla does it all.
Tesla doesn't run a volume production line. All the major players have production lines that make about one car a minute. Tesla isn't able to play in the big leagues until they can do that.
Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata motors during the recession. They also sold Aston Martin and Volvo.
> edit: Ford didn't start Jaguar.
I don't even know what this even mean. Nor do I understand what the original comment of yours mean. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't seem like you are well verse with cars or automakers at all...
> But the Model 3 production fiasco shows they don't know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota City do.
What fiasco? It was obvious from the start that their schedule was wildly optimistic. But that's probably just Elons way of pushing workers as hard as possible.
It's way too early to call the Model 3 a success or failure. Of course it takes a few months to ramp up and stabilize production. It's their first truly mass produced car, and there's a lot of differences from their previous model. Not to mention that they're using a brand new battery.
If it's that obvious, how come Tesla didn't know that? Contending that Tesla is incapable of comprehending basic, obvious facts isn't a great way to promote confidence in the company.
We're a long way from fiasco territory, sure, but it's also pretty clear Tesla are still quite a way off from getting their production process under control.
Given how many people are involved, I‘m pretty sure they have considered a lot of the problems they have now, beforehand. I mean, do you think they don’t have a time range of best case through worst case? Elon just constantly tells us the best case, or almost best case version.
There is a narrative in the business world that TSLA doesn't know what its doing. They are taking a three month delay to its first mass market car as an opportunity to push that. Anyone who has done anything of significance knows that this would be considered wildly successful if they can keep to just a three month delay.
If it's that obvious, how come Tesla didn't know that? Contending that Tesla is incapable of comprehending basic, obvious facts isn't a great way to promote confidence in the company.
It makes no sense to go back and it's financially almost impossible. If Tesla gets into trouble, it's better to sell the company or parts of the company for some carmaker who can mass produce.
My brother pointed out that other Tesla cars (even the semi they announced) have a "front trunk". This one's hood is seamless. Our theory is that under the entire front hood is batteries.
I wonder what happens when one of these cars crashes head-on into something. The front of a car is supposed to act as a crumple zone. Batteries aren't very good at crumpling.
Neither are internal combustion engines. What crumples are structural supports, not all the components within. And if they go that route I guess they'll go with slightly different battery chemistry as well to avoid a fire. They might have to do so anyway to sustain power output.
Yeah, and Tesla has talked about this extensively in the past. It would be pretty surprising if they switch to using this area for battery, but it is possible.
Most super cars have very little safety in mind. At $200k, a small percentage of people will be driving one. It's all about specs at this point, throw everything else out other than meeting the road legal requirements.
I was just about to write my own comment about this: the battery capacity is the real eye-opener in this announcement, I think. The new roadster looks like a car which is rather smaller than the Model 3, certainly not larger. And as a sporty car it wouldn't be heavier either.
So how in all worlds do they fit a 200kWh battery in there?
This can only mean, it has more than twice the capacity per weight and volume than the current Tesla battery tech. Very intriguing. Of course, it could be a very obvious case of history repeating itself. The original Tesla roadster pioneered the current Tesla battery tech, what would be more appropriate (and reasonable) than to launch the next generation battery tech with the next gen roadster? The high price and corresponding smaller sales numbers allows for an easy introduction of experimental technology.
You're discounting the fact that this will be released in 2020. We've had a 4x increase in density between 2010-2016.
Also, Model 3 benefits from the new smaller gigafactory-made battery packages (at least a 35% increase in density over older Model S battery packs).
When you take all of this into account, it's very likely that they could fit an older Model S-size battery pack (which is more from 2015-2016 era) in a Roadster 2 with 2x the density.
Oh, I don't doubt, that Tesla can do it :). I just think it is interesting that the specs to the roadster point to a clear and significant increase in battery density. The Model S went from 80 to 100 kWh in 5 years, which is a nice increase but much smaller what they seem to plan with the roadster. And it would be exciting for electrical cars in general, because with that increase a more realistic 100 kWh battery changes from being something you can barely fit into a rather large Model S to something which should fit easily in much smaller cars designed for electric propulsion.
Seeing how Tesla struggles with new car production I would love to see them take a role like Samsung; they can still make popular flagship cars, but they can also become a primary battery supplier to other automakers, just like Samsung has extremely popular flagship smartphones, but also is a primary supplier of parts like OLED screens. I think selling their battery tech could help them become and stay profitable while smoothing over the wrinkles they have in car production.
This could also free up cash flow to give them more resources to work on self driving tech. Honestly, the idea of an electric Honda or Subaru with a "Powered by Tesla" logo could seems really exciting.
This explains their battery supplier "problems". Those ebay sellers want you to buy a flashlight with each one of those batteries. It all makes sense now. /s
This car isn't surprising considering the existing Model S performance in any way except that range. WTF?? 650 miles in a car that size is totally game changing. Will next gen of Model 3 and Model S also have 3X their current range?
Probably not. Normal practical cars need space to put stuff that you want to bring with you. This car doesn't appear to have much of that kind of space, probably in lieu of batteries.
Gas will always have sound. The growl of an Aston Martin V12 on startup, or a Lexus LFA screaming through a tunnel, or the flat-plane V8 burble from a Mustang GT350. EM cars only have a dull whine the faster they go. Motorheads are secretly all musicians who happen to love driving.
The best combination is ultimately both though, hybrid systems are already used quite frequently in everything from LMP1 WEC racers to modern hypercars.
The thing is that sound is associated with speed because a bigger/stronger engine is usually louder.
Electrics will break that association. Or it will create a new expectation about what a fast car sounds like. Because from now on, they will always be faster than ICE vehicles.
I think there will be a niche of people buying ICE cars for their loud sound, just as there are people who buy the loudest possible motorcycles even though they're not very fast. But I think this will be a niche, and they will probably be considered obnoxious people.
I think we'll also see more sound engineering in EVs. They'll perhaps get a more satisfying sound, but will still be quiet.
Car makers employ sound engineers for that very purpose ;)
Although I seem to recall that many cars bought for sound already play synthesized motor noise through the speakers, simply because if the shift to smaller, better performing engines means that they don't have the same sound anymore anyway.
Steam engines have a distinctive sound too, one which I quite enjoy when one goes past, despite being too young to have any actual nostalgia. People will get over the sound thing, and ICE cars will be a historical curiosity/enthusiast hobby.
I am sure you can engineer an electric motor to sound very enticing. Even without resorting to speakers. As a kid, wouldn’t you have wanted your family station wagon to sound a little more Star Wars?
Sound is I think the biggest nuisance of these cars. If Tesla manages to quiet down cars in big cities, this would be a huge improvement. Next step doing the same for scooters and motorbikes.
Porsche has already pulled out of WEC (Le Mans, Rolex 24 Hours) in favour of Formula E and is planning to release a electric vehicle by 2019. My bet is that they're going to get an electric performance vehicle on the road way before Tesla.
Moreover, what does this mean to Tesla? Competitors with decades of manufacturing experience cranking out reliable, fast electric vehicles with likely better build quality might pose an interesting problem.
A few places have reported this, but it's slightly misleading as what they've actually said is they'll stop making "gas only" cars by that date. So, a mix of hybrid or all electric.
That might have been what you meant, but just pointing out that it's not necessarily "all electric".
If this thing has torque vectoring and does a 9 second 1/4 mile, it's going to drop at wave 2.
But wave 3 is already here - a lot of smaller companies are talking about making their own electric vehicles. If batteries become commodities, it's going to reduce the R&D cost of making a road legal car by an order of magnitude. We're just waiting on the batteries.
I wonder if GM (or Tesla) will sell crate batteries the way they sell crate engines? Everyone will be drooling over the next big battery they release the way motor heads drool over crate engines. They'll need a reasonably standard size/configuration to be successful, and they could sell the motor, power management and PCM to go with it.
GM make batteries in much the same sense that Tesla do - the cells are bought in from LG, but the battery engineering, testing and integration work is done in-house. (Maybe even more so than Tesla's given their explanation for the Model 3 delay.) I believe the motor is simply bought in from LG though.
They could, but they're functionally middlemen for Panasonic, LG, and Samsung (which are the 3 big EV battery manufacturers).
I'm tangentially involved with hot rodders, and a lot of them have spent some time thinking about adding some amount of electrification to their vehicles. Hot rods usually have thermal management problems for their engines and they run the risk of overheating when they're crusing around car shows / parades. Some folks think a small electric motor and battery would be a good way for them to drive short distances slowly and save the engine for higher torque demands.
High-end battery packs will not be a commodity for at least the next few years. The continuing (decade-long+) trend of improving Li-ion battery cells and Tesla's demonstration that you can significantly improve pack performance by improving the packaging, clearly indicates that we aren't yet near the point where battery packs are a mature discipline.
We'll probably get there at some point, once diminishing returns starts setting in. And lots of industries that aren't interested in developing battery packs (e.g. general aviation, construction, etc.), would have a sea change if high-performance battery packs were easily available. So I think the incentive to start a company in the space is good.
But for the next few years, I think battery pack design will still advance very rapidly and hence be left to the industries that are massively capital intensive and where the best battery packs are an obvious competitive advantage.
It's a super exciting development, and I can't wait to see what the future brings in this regard.
Taking reservations for 1000 founder series cars at $250k each up front means they're pre-selling $250,000,000 worth of product at least 2 years out. Kind of smart.
I wonder what the handling will be like. Teslas on the track have had over heating issues, and cornering performance has been just average at best.
Not every exotic car owner (Ferrari, Lambo, Mclaren) brings their car to the track, but I feel like a good % do. When you own a 200k car, you don't drive it to the grocery store because it attracts too much attention, and you worry something bad will happen to it.
Edit: For more clarification on the grocery getter comment: As an owner of an older exotic car, I've seen that most do not drive their exotics that much. 1-5k miles max/year. The cheapest insurance policies won't let you drive it to any public parking lots. And policies from the normal companies will cost $3-8k in large metropolitan areas for 40-50 year olds. So where do you go? You make excuses to drive it. Cruise to a friends house, drive in the mountains, or to the track if you have time. Daily errands are for your other car. Why risk it. Elon's a pretty good showman, and he makes me feel like I could do anything with this car! But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @ 130-150k.
> But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @ 130-150k.
The good/bad thing about electric cars is that they're sort of like computers right now (they're getting twice as good every 1-2 years), so I expect they'll depreciate more along the lines of used smartphones than (the existing market in) used cars.
Bold prediction: if they manage to produce a battery capable of 620 mile range promised, it will essentially be game over for ICE cars. My bet is that next generation of Model S and X will easily be in the 400-500 mile rsnge.
As a Tesla Model S owner, you really don't need to fill your car in minutes. It's a totally different (but not bad) mindset.
Every morning my car is full, because I plug it in in my garage. So if I don't go more than 260 miles that day, it's plugged in the next night. It doesn't matter that it takes a few hours. My gas car was just sitting in the garage each night anyway doing nothing. How many hours does your car sit idle per day? Probably way more than enough to charge it for your daily driving.
For road trips, there are super chargers.
I was a bit worried, after hearing all the fuss about range anxiety and all that. Overall, charging has just been such a non issue.
More like they need to handle street parking. I live in the bay area, live in an in-law unit, and can only use street parking. Even then, this house would need some serious rewiring to be able to charge that car in any kind of reasonable amount of time. The woes of 1930's homes.
There is plenty of incentive for landlords to install charging points in apartment parking. Landlords who do that can lay claim to being "environment friendly" and add a $100 extra to rent, which people will pay because, well, who wouldn't want to be environment friendly?
Honestly, electric cars are sitting in a cultural spot from where they can't lose. You can make all the arguments in the world that electric cars have the same or worse carbon footprint as gas cars, but the public at large is convinced that "gas = bad", "electric = solar = good".
After some time of thinking and also talking to some Tesla owners, I decided to buy a Model S.
Sadly I have to say that for me the range and charging is, in fact, an issue for me. The range is just a little too short to get to my holiday apartment so I have to drive to a supercharger which is not directly on my way.
All this makes my travel about 1.5h longer than before. I for one would be very happy with a 200KWh battery in my Model S.
Yes, for a daily driver you don't need to recharge in minutes... But if you go on a trip you do. Super chargers are great, but not everyone wants to take along break every few hours of driving.
No. I disagree. When you have 600 miles of range, you're going to charge your car at home 99%+ of the time.
Even when you travel that should be enough for a full day driving, which means you will charge it at a hotel or whatever.
Only in rare occasions will the 30 minute fast-charging "inconvenience" you.
Once most EVs will have 100+ kWh batteries, the "slow charging" argument will die off. This is why I hope the 100 kWh battery becomes standard for 2021+ EVs, which should be cheaper than current 60 kWh batteries by that point.
Although I wouldn't discount most carmakers' laziness and greed for profits to keep the batteries a smaller size for as long as possible, unless Model 3 is refreshed with 100, 120, and 150 kWh battery options by 2021, which will force them to make the change, too.
That's 8-10 hours of driving at the speed limit in most countries. You need to be taking breaks of more than a few minutes if you're driving that kind of stretch.
This might sound really stupid. But isn't performing such acceleration on a daily basis close to the limit of harming one's health? I mean micro concussions for example.
Really curious because that acceleration is amazing!
Yes, that's a real problem. I took my Model S P85D to the track (fun, but felt really heavy in corners) and had a concussion for 3 weeks afterwards. And that was just Insane mode, not even Ludicrous.
Similar acceleration figures to a litre sportsbike (though the new Roadster takes it to a faster level again, but still in the same ballpark).
The acceleration is mind-bendingly fast at first, but after a while, you get used to it and it just feels kind of normal. I can't imagine the new Tesla being any different.
Not to play down the achievement at all, those stats are amazing! But highly doubt there's a health risk associated with some mild longitudinal G forces, assuming you're in otherwise good health.
That's what caught my attention the most. This is unheard of in a production car. I'm also generally very excited that Lamborghini is also experimenting with electric power.
We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5 second range....that is insane acceleration.
There has got to be an astroturfing campaign going on here, or the HN crowd is a lot more naive than I thought. Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)? What matters more than anything to Tesla is production at scale, but they are busy promising ever more fantastic new products that will distract even more from hitting core goals. Every announcement from Tesla seems more like flimflam at this point, hardly better than an ICO (with preordering and everything).
That's not even getting into Elon Musk's ever expanding personal commitments with Tesla, SpaceX, Boring company, Solar City and what have you, each making bold new announcements every other week, like saving Puerto Rico (and Australia too, while we're at it).
There are definitely issues with the Model 3 - but I'd imagine that the production line for the Semi will ramp up significantly after the Model 3 is working, and will involve an entirely separate team.
So sure we should be skeptical about the actual deadlines. But they're trying to compete against BMW & Mercedes (plus numerous other brands, but it seems like those two are their main competition). It's not like those are terrible companies, they've produced cars and engineering discipline of the highest quality for nearly a century.
I'd be more worried if there's some major flaw in the car, like if it's got the reliability of an 80s Jaguar (of which the stories about breakdowns in the gizmodo article are the biggest concern). The issues coming out about panel misalignment are bad (but I noted that my VW Golf I'm just buying wasn't perfect either), but not end of the world.
Still though my inner child doesn't care, it still gets very excited when car manufacturers show unrealistic made up cars [1]. But it seems like the Roadster might actually happen and it's nice to see the Roadster getting some love after being the car that started it all.
Exactly. I've working in a few places that when product slips management panic and throw more bodies at it. Then the team swells with sales people, admin assistants, shop floor dudes... and none of them have a clue what is going on or what to do to help. All while management is shouting and the project is slipping more.
Better to let the team crack on and fix all the issues. Pay them well.
> Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)?
It's almost like.....there's nothing to say about Model 3 right now, where the bulk of their effort is going, because it's just a matter of steadily toiling away ramping up production, just like they said all along. It's almost like....a proportionately tiny amount of their engineering resources have been working on these other projects for some time, and they're just announcing them because.....they're ready to be shown off, and are unrelated to the Model 3 progress.
It's almost like....you're determined to cast this in a negative light, like so many others.
They're not just announcing the Tesla Roadster here, they're opening up pre-orders for it too, with a substantial up-front deposit of either the entire price of the car or a fifth of it depending on how early in the queue you want to be. While they're having major problems delivering on their big current product they took in a fairly substantial amount of money in reservation fees for.
Hitting production targets isn't enough to keep wall street happy with Tesla though, to keep raising money and servicing the debt that they have, he needs to keep creating value inflection points to stoke the hype and keep the money coming in.
I agree that the main concern should be delivering cars but production delays are solvable while he is still raising money. As soon as he takes his foot off the pedal then their ability to raise money will be much harder than it is while he is announcing new stuff and increasing their risk of going under.
Worst case scenario with his current strategy: they run out of money and an acquirer buys them for the cost of their debt and gets a company with a fully fleshed out product roadmap and some solvable production issues (and no need to solve those issues quickly).
Drop the new product roadmap and focus on production: the going under acquisition is less attractive as they would be acquiring a company with a limited product roadmap and a load of production issues.
He is showing that the future is going to be so amazing that it is worth pouring money into Tesla.
>> Worst case scenario with his current strategy: they run out of money and an acquirer buys them for the cost of their debt and gets a company ...
Yes. And the acquiring company could be Apple, which has cash and past form in buying a company for its charismatic CEO.
Years from now, I would not be surprised to find out that a handshake deal occurred last Summer, just before Apple apparently stopped trying to make a car.
I like what Tesla & co. are doing, I think Musk is very good at hyping things up and mostly pointing us in a good direction development wise, but I'm not a fanboy. Especially considering what I've read about Musk's personal life and his attitude to employees.
Even so, if Uber can have several billion dollars pumped into it, surely Tesla is more deserving of investments on the same scale.
Elon Musk has a decade of track record. Model 3 will eventually be delivered. My point of contention with TSLA is that the stock price does not match the up-side, but sooner or later Tesla always delivered. They will learn and deliver, I have seen reviews of Model 3, the average delivered vehicle will cost around 50K no doubt, but its worth every penny of it. Model 3 is not every man's car, but again a used Model 3 can be.
I am really impressed by Elon, even if fails spectacularly he has set things in motion his impact will be there in the fields he touched. In my opinion, he is better than Steve Jobs both in vision and execution.
I would say vision is comparable to Jobs, but execution— not yet. The problem is a lack of focus and a lot of distraction with big public announcements before actually figuring out how to ship. Jobs (and Cook’s) advantage over Musk in the Tesla context is that they considered the supply chain as vital as the flash and sparkle. Supply chain isn’t sexy but it’s essential. Tesla’s supply chain is fragile to say the least and should be focused upon. Musk’s execution isn’t there yet. Jobs created/launched an iPad and it shipped millions. Waiting times for an iPhone rarely have exceeded a few weeks because their supply chain is solid. But getting a replacement fender for a Model S? Good luck with that.
If I were a Tesla investor, the only thing I would care about is supply chain efficiency. We know Tesla can innovate and titilate — but can they ship?
My advice to Musk would be: announce things after you can ship them reliably and at scale. Less sparkle more shipping. Prove you can ship the 3, then I might be confident you can ship a truck.
I really like Musk and Tesla, but there is a hell of a lot more involved with changing the world than creating essentially limited edition concept cars — you actually have to ship. Based on the 3, it’s clear that there are some execution issues that still need solving.
>Elon Musk is an engineer.
If his production line isn't as efficient as it should be it will get fixed 'scientifically'. I'd agree with you if his background was different.
I forgot that Elon Musk is single handedly changing the way assembly line engineering is done...
How about a little respect to the thousands of capable engineers working for every other car company-- building stuff, innovating and making money.
Also, what is with calling people who aren't engineers "engineers"?
My point is that he has enough engineering know-how to let engineers do their jobs and prioritise methodical fixes, not that he will single-handedly do the work.
I couldn't agree more, the number of anti-Tesla comments here are staggering.
You could literally copy-paste comments from the Roaster v1, Model S, and Model X launches and relate them to the Model 3. All of those were a success, and had initial production ramp issues.
Guess what, they all ramped. I can't tell you how disappointing it is to see the HN crowd fall for the SeekingAlpha narrative.
I would suggest the opposite; This type of cynicism over Tesla and Musk's other companies seems ever-increasingly popular and widespread, despite relatively few failures and setbacks - which are outweighed by the numerous earlier successes showing both Tesla's and Musk's ability to deliver on far more difficult challenges.
> Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)?
I dunno man, every time before I've said "Tesla/SpaceX can't possibly do that", they've succeeded in doing it (albeit usually a year or so behind schedule) so I've given up trying to tell them what they can't do.
Those acceleration figures are meaningless. The Chiron isn't the best car on a circuit for example. I would be interested to see this car compete against say a gt3 on a track like Nürburgring :)
I mean what's interesting is handling, behavior in curves, power consistency, steering accuracy. Weight could be a drawback. Acceleration isn't the only metrics. Those are some reasons Porsche is considered to be making good cars.
Rolling acceleration and track handling are more important than Drag racing. Bit fed up of 0-60 times being such an important feature. 50-70 more important, handling a bit more important again. And of course for most people build quality, running costs and environmental credentials.
The car also has record-setting 0-100mph times. And I'd argue for most uses, 0-45mph is more important, and all electric cars pretty much do awesome there.
A friend of mine who owns a Leaf and a BMW 3-series was impressed that the Leaf was amazingly quick from a dead start... up to low speeds. The Bolt is faster than a Leaf, so there's your awesome, at least from my BMW-loving friend.
The specs are astonishing, and I believe they can deliver. The original Roadster is the iconic car that made electric vehicles cool.
Would be nice if they could get production of the Model 3 properly ramped up so us peasants who've been drooling over performance electric cars since before we had our driver's licenses can actually get our hands on them...
I used to navigate/copilot a 480ci methanol powered jet sprint boat, Group-A class. It would pull just over a G accelerating, and did the 0-100kph sprint in 1.9 seconds.
That boat could also do 100kph-to stop-to 180 degree turn - to 100kph the opposite direction in about three seconds. (This is something unique to jetsprint boats, they can pirouette like nothing I've ever experienced). That pulled insane G's, so much so that you needed the HANS device around your neck to stop the weight of your helmet breaking your neck.
Imagine having to strap into a HANS device to drive a road car. I want this future.
For those that are unaware, all rockets then rapidly increase their G. For example the Saturn V had 1.20 g at takeoff but climed up to 4-ish: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm
Someone on the Saturn V started experiencing more G than the Roadster about a minute into the launch.
When you move a building-sized fuel tank under its own thrust it's going to start off slow, but accelerate as more fuel is burned.
that's a significant challenge from a friction/grip/tire treat compound (and electronic traction control) perspective, no matter what kind of AWD systems is in place...
I wonder how a AWD system works, when the Roaster has 3 motors (according to the Tesla live stream today only 3 motors). Why not 4 motors, one for each wheel.
It's darn near the limit of what we can do with current tire technology, don't be surprised if this drops - all we need is a tire that can deal with it.
You're right that it's absurd but most sports cars can do 60-0 in about the same amount of time, it's interesting to think about running that acceleration in the oppisite direction.
The parent just wanted to point out that braking is just as fast as accelerating. They didn't mean to say that the Model S can accelerate as fast as the new Roadster.
Yes exactly. I was just pointing out that Tesla has already managed to make a car that had acceleration times equal to stopping times. With this purpose built performance car I would expect nothing less. The Model S will of course not match up to the new Roadster.
Being traction limited 0-60 is nothing new for high performance sports cars, the difference is that using an electic motors, the power output can be modulated on a millisecond by millisecond basis. So the electric car can live on the ragged edge of traction eeking out every last newton. ICE cars on the other hand use motors that throttle responses that are orders of magnitude greater. Restricting how much the the traction envelope they can use. Which is why their 0-60 and 60-0 times tend to be different.
It'll be interesting to see if they can keep the battery power output up for a sustained length of time. Acceleration numbers are all well and good, but racetrack performance is about sustained high-load operation, and Tesla has had some trouble there:
> Then again, how many people actually care? I don't think they'll have trouble finding buyers.
You're right, the actual performance doesn't matter for the buyers of such cars. All supercars are playthings for folks with money burning holes in their pockets. Pure luxury, thrill and ostentation. The vast majority of these cars will be slogging it out in mind-numbing stop-and-go traffic just like the rest of us. Sure, there may be an occasional opportunity to make a dramatic passing maneuver on a pristine highway against a driver that doesn't think he's racing-- big whoop.
So basically Musk unveils future products of lesser demand but probably higher profit so he can raise Tesla stock value a bit and also grab some preorder cash flow and help Model 3 while it's stuttering ?
The hucksterism is brazen. I kind of want Musk to succeed, but yeah, it's sad what's taking place right now. Is it a real car company or a stock swindle?
While the specs of this car are no doubt impressive i wouldnt say no one can compete with them. Porsche is/has been working on a high end electric car for quite a bit and they have specifically said they would challenge Tesla with it. Porsche also is someone who knows how to build high end cars and with their racing heritage i wouldnt be suprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of Teslas sail
Anybody know why Tesla didn't solve model 3 production scaling issues by subcontracting to someone who could do a "running start"? I would imagine a large portion of the car is relatively standard, being made of steel, mass produced components etc.
I'd really like to see a clearer shot of the steering wheel (steering device?) I'm curious why they decided to go with something that looks more like a plane's yoke than a normal wheel. Is this something that's common with supercars?
It would seem over 200 mph isn't useful, except the Boring company could change that. A private tunnel could enable such leisurely travel for only cars that had level 3+ autonomy safety features.
200mph top speed is just a consequence of the base abilities of the car, it does not really matter in practice, but the fact that the car is capable of doing it shows that it is really powerful and very aerodynamic. Besides far away niche uses like tunnels under LA and autonomy, in Germany you could drive 200mph if you find a good stretch in the early morning ;)
A lot of people seem to have an electric car fetish that is blinding them to the amount of work that went into the chassis and suspension design which is the real achievement here.
If you have 1000hp available at any speed not going at least reasonably fast would be an achievement.
Putting 1000hp to the ground at really low wheel speeds in a semi-production ready (let's not kid ourselves, nobody is going to be sending a $200k+ car off the line in high volumes) chassis is the interesting thing here.
Electric motors are absolutely better compared to combastion engines. But Guys, please don't compare apple to oranges. Tesla is no match to Ferrari nor McLaren. Ferrari's main intention is to build a car that has a good cornering on track. 0-60 is for muscle cars which you can compare to SRT Demon. All these Bugattis, Koenigseggs are a bunch of unsteerable rockets on tracks. Last but not least you know how Koenigsegg ended up in Nordschleife.
While this cars specs are no doubt impressive I wouldnt say no one will be able to challenge them. Porsche has been working on a high end electric car for a while and they specifically said they would challenge Tesla. Porsche can build some nice high end cars, and with their racing/electric technology i wouldnt be surprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of teslas sail
I guess that kind of language is always going to represent some hyperbole. People like porsches.
That said, the stats posted here are faster than any car you can currently buy. Porsche have a very fast supercar at the top of that list now, but it's not as fast as this roadster (again based on the table in this link) and costs 3-4 times as much.
The kind of cars that approach the performance suggested here are generally very expensive, very low volume "Sheikh" cars. Tesla is claiming that they beat all of them, for a lot cheaper. If so... I wouldn't want to be a Porsche dealer in 2021
I'd like to see this kind of battery tech on a lowest-end, lowest-cost mass production car with a 2-3k mile range on a single overnight charge. For my usage in the city, this would mean I'd charge every other week.
How far are we from such a feat I wonder, and, can't help but speculate as to why we're not.
Tesla also announced the semi truck "Megacharger." 400 mile range (at less than 2kWh/mile) in 30 minutes. That's about 1.5MW. One and a half Megawatts. Made feasible by using a Tesla stationary battery to buffer the load to the grid and/or solar panels. And a flat 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.
At least for the roadster, it doesnt seem to matter that much. The people who will buy this will do it for the flashy logo and the ridiculous (And dangerous) speed of course.
I'm curious about the claim that it fits 4. Because my friend has a late 90's firebird that while having 4 seats, it's clearly made for children / teens. So any information if the backseats in this model is made for adults?
Oh no, they're doing what all the other carmakers do and reuse the same name for completely different cars whose only thing in common is to target the same market segment. We'll have to call this the 2020 Roadster.
I'm hoping they actually tested that 250mph+...I'm no expert but that car looks bit too light and short to do that speed...can't see how it will stick to the road...unlessssss...they want it to fly away :)
Mostly, you want to generate a load of lift downwards to keep the thing attached to the ground.
But to answer your question, if you define "enough" as "enough to make it go airborne", then yes. You would then have to be very careful to make sure it is actually stable in the air, or the results could be very non-pretty. And then you also have the problem of keeping it going fast in the air, when previously your only forwards force was provided by the wheel contact with the ground.
Great another car for the super wealthy. I thought Tesla's mission was to take on the GM's and Toyota's of the world. I'd personally be more excited if they announced an affordable Tesla SUV.
This doesn't really makes sense as a sports car if you want to do anything but go straight. If they had wanted good handling they should have gone for half the range and saved the weight.
0-60 in 1.9s for $200k that is affordable by a good range of people. I can see disasters happening with this car as young dudes lose control when they accelerate.
It's interesting that people are so quick to dismiss this as merely a rendering, with the videos being CGI. Is that because the videos are 'too good' perhaps, or it just looks too much like a racing game car on the X-box? You'd have to deliberately ignore the fact that there were real cars presented at the announcement, for instance. Also interesting is that because the acceleration is so fast, there were accusations of the video being sped up at that point - people couldn't believe it was real. Are HN readers getting more skeptical of TSLA because of its recent financial and production issues, and this is showing in the cynical comments here?
Oh please. I should hope that people aren't so intoxicated on the Kool-Aid that when Tesla claims the Roadster outperforms the fastest production cars in the world, people want to dig deeper.
You're seriously implying that blindly accepting what they say is better?
No, no - it's just the 'only exists in CGI' I have an issue with, since people are arguing against factual evidence. But, this is a prototype, so of course I expect the performance figures are going to change, and speculation about that aspect is par for the course and I have no problem with that.
Why is it that concept car designers insist on not adding wing mirrors or else tiny little stalks that are significantly smaller than production wing mirrors? Every damn time...
Multiple Porsche owner here. The acceleration on the Roadster is great obviously, however the sound of a car (or in this case lack of it) is definitely a factor in the experience.
I was wondering recently what happened to all the first generation roadsters? I used to see them frequently enough but they've been hiding from the road a long time it feels.
Today, the fastest lap time of the Nurburgring by an electric car was set by a Tesla Roadster driving itself round the track in 8m30s. The autopilot software developers are said to be 'very proud' of the achievement.
Let's see if that makes it from prototype to production, though; if you could meet the legal requirements with cameras and displays I think someone else would have done it by now.
Concept cars often lack mirrors, or have ridiculously small mirrors that wouldn't be legal. Apparently car designers really just don't like adding them.
The statement from Elon Musk at the car's announcement was 'Has anyone here watched Spaceballs? What's faster than Ludicrous? That's right, Plaid!' So in the Roadster, there is a 'Plaid' mode which enables the 0-60 in 1.8s acceleration, accompanied by suitable graphics on the 17" screen ;)
Most sports cars are at that point at low speeds and either need a skillful foot or an electronic system to prevent burning out. A 1.9 second 0-60 is pretty much the limit on street tires (and requires AWD). Someone will take it even further by putting drag slicks on there.
Tesla can barely ship the Model 3, and now they're adding yet another consumer vehicle to the lineup?
Tesla's vision is completely scattered. I have little faith in them at this time since they can't deliver the "economy" Model 3, but now suddenly have the bandwidth to develop, engineer, ship, and maintain yet another car?
Tesla, ship the Model 3 at scale and then we'll talk.
For the uninformed, a part of building a successful vertically integrated battery, car, and truck company that spans the globe that also uses a brand new powertrain and form factor for their products is getting lots of investment so that you can fund your long-term technology play. To get a lot of investment, you have to sustain the public's interest in your product. If you're in the limelight, you are going to get investment. so why not use your new powertrain and form factor in new products that build upon previous products, thus advancing your technology and locking in future investment thanks to the hype?
Do this for a decade and wow, you actually have a clear path to taking over the world's energy and transportation markets thanks to your incredible technological advantage.
That was my initial reaction, but it leads to a question: do you stop doing R&D (and shed talent as a result) because production in another part of the company is blocked by some (hopefully transient) supply chain issue?
Preface: I don't have any stake in Tesla's success or products.
If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be pissed that they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at scale.
This makes Tesla look like they care little, because after all they already have your Model 3 money.
R&D engineers and car designers are usually separate people from manufacturing and supply chain engineers.
Now that Model 3 has been passed onto mass(-ish) production, Tesla is using those engineers to develop other products. Tesla would lose those talented people if it asked them to just sit and do nothing, or if it asked them to work on areas completely outside their (not just lose, but lose to competitors).
>If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be pissed that they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at scale.
I mean, by the same reasoning, Model S owners should be pissed, Model X owners should be pissed too. But the money from both seems to have made Model 3 possible.
True I haven't even touched on them either! Tesla has yet to prove they can build cars at scale, they are nothing compared to current auto manufacturers.
I think they are biting off more than they can chew.
People are overreacting on Model 3 challenges. It is a really simple car to manufacture. Once the supply chain bottlenecks are ironed out, it will be really easy to pump out cars at scale. They already produce 2500 S and X per week.
This car will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in preorders immediately, and cost much less than that for them to produce when they get around to it over two years from now. That doesn't seem like a good idea to you? If Model 3 isn't in full production by 2020 then the company will no longer exist anyway.
The economy version is the ultimate goal, along with industrial applications like the Semi. But high end cars make headlines, make people believe and make people excited about the future. That’s more important than you’d think in getting the economy version to be a reality.
Though I do understand the concerns about constant hype and not fully delivering on it, I think that’s infinitely better than the alternative where nothing happens at all.
Maybe he's just repeating the same Roadster business model? Small quantity (can hand-assemble if necessary), high margin, prestige product to help keep money coming in for the rest of the business.
Sure that worked well for Tesla early as they were growing, but this is a company that is already shipping three vehicles to the consumer space.
They shouldn't be trying to do "small quantity" work , and instead should be focused on going wide and getting those Model 3's out the door to the those that have already bought in to the Model 3.
Splitting your attention is going to introduce more problems, but so is not having money or having to beg for money every year or two.
Maybe the Roadster reboot should have been scrapped, but this has clearly been in the works before Model 3's production scaling issues. With a large company you have a diverse group of talent; you aren't going to have your designers sit around while you are tuning capacity. Hopefully, this helps compliment their growth.
That's wheel torque, not engine torque. Existing high power cars, like the Hellcat, exceed that number, at least in first gear. Hellcat makes 10875 Nm (8021 ft-lb). That's 650 engine torque at peak, * 4.71:1 first gear ratio * 2.62:1 rear axle ratio.
Of course, electric engines have much flatter torque curve, so they'll be at torque peak all the time until they exceed pack wattage limts.
Wheel torque is not the same thing as engine torque. I'm pretty sure the confusion is intentional, since it's the first time I see wheel torque advertised for any car.
I always wondered why engine torque was put on the spec sheet. Since geering can turn that engine torque into any number you want at the wheels. Wheel torque seems much more relevant.
Wheel torque isn’t really that important since you don’t know what speed it’s being delivered at. The only thing that really matters is horsepower since you can gear for torque and you can assume the engineers did a decent job with the transmission.
That being said, peak torque is a good indicator of low rpm horsepower on internal combustion engines. Low rpm horsepower is good for sustainable work (like towing) or street power.
Gotta be honest here, if I would won a lottery to pick a car for 200k I would choose between Porche GT, Mercedes AMG or BMW M3 any day over this tesla.
Easily. The Roadster will have far fewer customers than the Model 3. They just won't have to build as many. Sure, the Roadster probably takes a bit more labor to build than a Model 3, but probably not by much.
Apple needs to buy Tesla and run it better than Elon Musk can right now. He's overloaded himself with responsibilities.
Apple could do a lot of good by applying their skills to such an important problem. And Tesla's have been called "laptops on wheels" which has some truth it. They have the money, people, and management skill to do it well. Tesla has the industry lead that Apple needs to get in the race.
First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I'd guess. But maybe not.
I'd say Elon is doing just fine. The semi business long term could be a game changer that propels Tesla beyond a car company. Think fleets, partnerships with FedEX, UPS, DHL, long haul companies, van lines moving companies, Amazon deliveries. Lot's of very lucrative business opportunities. Also, the pickup truck market in the United States is huge, Tesla is getting into that as well.
Yeah, and the first thing Jonny Ivy would do is make car more thinner and beautiful while completely screwing up battery life and usability. No thanks. If it was in my hand I will take iPhone out of Apple (or wherever Ivy is employed) and give to Musk instead.
But you have to get out of the car and remove the roof to use it as a convertible. Then I think I'd stick with a BMW 438i convertible which takes the entire roof down at the push of a button in about 20 seconds. Driving isn't all about acceleration.
Am I the only one who's worried that Tesla is really starting to bite off more than they can chew? Right now their finances are a mess, they are publicly struggling to produce their most important car ever, their CEO is spending time figuring out how to dig holes underneath LA...and now they're announcing a semi truck and a roaster in the same day? Don't get me wrong, Teslas are incredible cars. But this seems like an overreach considering they are struggling to figure out how to meet demand on the Model 3. It's also insane to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI! These are some very bold announcements and there isn't much explanation for how these goals will be met. I hope this all turns out as advertised, but I'm very skeptical.
You have been reading too many finance blogs. Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on. If they don't execute they will go out of business, and they will take my money as an investor with them. I'm OK with that and as long as they continue to have a path to profitability I am all on board. I want to see them burning money to get market share, especially as they do something new. The idea that companies must always operate within a specific set of financial metrics is why GE is going out of business
If Amazon listened to those same finance blogs that are chastising Tesla, they wouldn't be where they are today. Wall Street hates companies that invest every cent they make into future growth; they want solid companies like GE and IBM that pay out regular profits to investors, and end up old dinosaurs because they didn't invest in innovation.
The market analysts and financial blogs may hate companies like AMZN and TSLA, but Bezos and Musk will be laughing all the way to the bank because they didn't focus on short-term profits at the cost of long-term innovation.
Remember, every company on this planet has to constantly reinvent itself, or it will be disrupted by someone else. Musk is doing that. Don't listen to the financial blogs and analysts.
Amazon could have had a wildly profitable quarter by slightly slowing their expansion. Doing so would not kill the company.
It's not clear if Tesla can do the same.
There was a time in the past where Amazon could not have done that at all.
Sure, but how many companies have been in the same position and failed?
If they retooled to maximize profitability now they would not be worth the multiple they are.
> Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on.
In other words, their finances are a mess. Negative free cash flow of $1.4b in the most recent quarter with $3.5b in the bank is cutting it very close. They're going to have to raise a ton more capital or issue debt just to execute on the Model 3, let alone all the other stuff they keep talking about (anyone remember the Solar Roof?). Their recently issued junk bonds are already trading off par, another issue is going to be expensive.
Spending money while building out your main product pipeline is perfectly acceptable to me. How many quarters of runway would you want them to hold on hand? If in six months when their cash on hand gets low they can issue a new round of funding and investors can decide if its worth pumping more money into the company or if they won't be able to turn a profit. This would be the exact behavior you get from any company in a high growth phase, the only difference is most of the time the only people who get a look at the books of these companies are the investment firms who lead crazy valuation rounds since the public doesn't have access to pre IPO startups.
That's kind of the point though - it's much more acceptable (to the markets) for a private company to be doing crazy things, low runway, etc, because if the company goes broke, the damage is limited to 'skilled' investors (those with enough means and know-how to get in on the investment). If a public company goes bust (which is the risk here) the damage is much more widespread, and will undoubtedly hit retail investors as well as professionals.
I bought a bunch of put options on the cheap, so I'm betting on reckoning next year, but not a bankruptcy.
Based on their valuation being too high for where they are, I'm guessing they'll do a share offering to get cash. This could cause they're shares to tumble and I'll make 400-1200% or not. I'm ok with writing off such a small bet, but wow what a fun ride it'll be to see how this all turns out.
Exactly. As a small investor in them I fully support them. Even if I lose all my money I know it went to cool research that has benefit the progress of science in a cool way.
I mean, that's fine and dandy, but then you're really just donating your money to "science" and not investing it. Which goes back to the original claim that their finances are a mess.
I have done the same with two fusion energy companies, almost zero chance of payback but always the slim chance for a breakthrough to save the world. Think of it as a lottery ticket for rich and middle income people. Tesla is a lottery ticket that will probably pay dividends many years down the line, and if not they have at least kickstarted a better future.
you are a good person.
either that or it was snorted from Amber Heards tits
> struggling to produce their most important car ever
Isn't this part of not executing the roadmap as planned? Put another way, how do you know if they are on the right trajectory to profitability? How much are they ahead/behind?
Tesla projected that it would produce 5K Model 3s per week by the end of 2017. In all of Q3 they produced 260! That kind of shortfall is clearly not part of any plan, unless it's one drawn up by GM and Ford. Source: http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/tesla-model-3-product...
GM and Ford would be good at drawing up plans like that since its fairly common for production to be delayed on new car designs
http://www.leftlanenews.com/ford-may-be-facing-f-150-delays-...
https://jalopnik.com/chevy-bolt-ordering-delayed-by-three-mo...
They also moved this timetable up a year due to high demand, meaning more CapEx required. A few months won't scare people in the know, and thinking this would work without a hitch would have been naive anyway.
And they will when you adjust for Elon time.
Kidding aside they've been in much worse situations before, it just wasn't nearly as public because it was well before their IPO.
A three month delay on their first mass market car is hardly struggling. We get insight into where they are on that road map every three months. Come February they will have slipped even more, made up some of that delay or stayed three months behind. Right now they have more then enough money to get them to May of next year, if they miss again in Februrary and then can't raise more funds they need to change their plan.
> If they don't execute they will go out of business
Well this is exactly the concern. Tesla seems to be struggling to execute on their plan to build Model 3s.
when it comes to finance, it matters what finance people want to see
This isn’t CGI :-) https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705...
I took this video. I assure you it is real
No doubt, but sped up at the moment of acceleration.
nope. Did not speed it up. Straight from photos app on my phone to Twitter
Your comment reveals that you don't know what you're talking about. Very fast cars are rare so their rate of acceleration looks strange to someone that's not used to it.
What makes you say this?
A human is holding the camera and at the beginning of the video has a specific cadence and wobble. The cadence and wobble speeds up.
Furthermore, the human's reaction time to keep the car somewhat centered in the frame is unlikely.
The people around the car jerk a bit. Could be camera motion, scared spectators, altered video; I’m not an expert.
I'm curious as to why you choose to believe that their was a conspiracy to release a sped up video rather than the fact that the car really is just that quick. Cognitive dissonance? Shorting Tesla stock?
It's not like you're mentally deficient or anything so there has to be a logical reason in your mind as to why you ended up thinking this. I would be very keen to know what that is.
I don't think it's altered video. I'm just describing possible things that people could see in that video, which might lead to that conclusion:
1. an odd camera motion;
2. scared spectators jerking; or,
3. altered video.
I do, however, think the people downvoting me have significant reading comprehension problems. However, that's a thing they will have to reflect on, internally, and has no bearing on me.
You started off with a claim that the video was sped up (i.e. _altered_). I'm not sure anyone downvoting you has a problem reading.
He's not the one that made the claim. Look at the usernames.
oh, whoops
prove this :)
God damn....that acceleration is almost cartoon-like.
I'm kinda sad about the $200k price tag. I was planning on budgeting $125k for my next car in 2022. Obviously options have yet to be announced, but I'd really like to see a 100 kwh option for a cheaper price. That would give about a 300 mile range which would be plenty for me. Considering they announced 200 kwh as the base though, I'm not exactly holding my breath.
I think that the 200kwh battery pack is probably important for getting the instantaneous power out of the pack to hit their performance numbers.
More battery cells in parallel = more current draw. The range is probably more of a bonus side effect of having enough battery cells to hit the power and acceleration targets.
Yep, this is why Tesla's current flagship is the P100D, rather than a P75D. The larger battery gives you better performance, even though it's heavier.
Despair not. The new Roadster will likely have some good competition by 2022.
I hope so.
I've been waiting for details on the next Roadster for quite a while now, really on the edge of my seat for the price. My plan was to get a Nissan GT-R in 2021 if the Roadster ended up being too expensive.
But since it was announced and too expensive, I'm still on the fence. I don't want to spend $120k on a GT-R and feel disappointed that I settled. I'm thinking I'll just have to save money for a couple years to make a serious down payment. Maybe I'll pick one up used depending on what kind of warranty Tesla will offer on a used one.
Only problem there is, I expect Tesla won't be making very many of these for at least the first few years, so I doubt they'll depreciate much, if at all, on the used market. Could actually sell at a premium, as you see with other hard to buy supercars.
You can probably get a P150D or whatever it will be at that time. Which will give you Roadster like acceleration, probably 400-500 mile range, and will still be a family sedan.
I don't want a family sedan, I want a small, reasonably agile coupe. My current car is a Subaru BRZ. I want something that still has that kind of handling.
Have you test-driven a Tesla Model S?
No, I haven't. I've been told they handle really well for their size and weight since the center of gravity is so low, but that they still don't handle super tight like a sports car.
Don't be sad. In 4 years, the price will likely be back down near your budget range, once mass market production kicks in.
This video freezes right before the excitement, I can tell because the sound keeps going. I blame a very complex conspiracy.
Safari doesn't grok the video on my setup. Firefox does.
Had the same issue in Safari, it worked in Chrome though.
Founder series limited to 1000 requires full deposit, that's $250 mil
Base model requires $45k deposit.
Not sure what semi requirements are.
Even if they are biting off more than they can chew, they can gauge reaction and devote more/less to this. I'm thinking that these ventures give their engineers a space to get really creative and push the envelope. And, these advancements make their way into the mainstream models.
$250mil sounds a lot - until you remember they currently burn through $400mil of cash in a month
They also just laid off a ton of people, so maybe that burn rate is going to lower quite a bit.
$400M a month would be equivalent to ~20k full time engineer's total compensation, so I doubt layoffs will put a serious dent in it.
Good point.
They laid off "a ton of people" but a small fraction of their workforce, not affecting their burn rate much. Watch out for those financial press headlines, Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks out there.
oh please. they're putting money into R&D and into the ramp up. Your statement makes it sound like they're using the money to wipe their @$$es. No, they're putting the money to work. And if the analysts and shareholders didn't believe that, the stock would tank.
Very true. Belief - not actual results - is what is behind Tesla's valuation.
Is Tesla that different from Amazon 15 years ago?
Net income was flat but the revenue kept going up.
I think that may be the core point of why they are doing this. They are in a cash crunch, if they get enough deposits it can certainly help their bottom line... without dilution.
Developing a car like to a car to that state (drivable at the event) will have taken 2 or 3 years already so I doubt it originally started as a fix for cash flow.
Agreed, but I would be surprised if that didn’t play into the math. One of Elon’s greatest strengths is to think ahead strategically and position himself for maximum upside towards his goals. So yes, I am sure he didn’t think he would need this to help with Model 3, but I am sure he knew he would need more cash on hand to make another “big bet”. Unfortunately it looks like this cash will go to current projects rather than a brand new initiative. Unless of course this was to help with Tesla Semi...
What's even more amazing is that F or GM couldn't possibly do this. First mover advantage plus the allure of someone like Musk is what is needed. I know many bash him for spreading himself too thin among all his other ambitions but it gives him good will capital (which can translate to economic capital) when needed.
Ford or GM couldn't possibly do what? Pre-sales? The new Ford GT cost $450K and will only be available to select buyers during the first production year. I imagine GM does something similar with the higher-end Corvettes. Dodge did the same with Viper.
If they need more cash then they can just have another investor round. There's enough fan boys that would invest.
I would prefer that Ford and GM not do this... I don't see how producing a $250,000 car will help the common folk, which is who Ford and GM serves.
Tesla had first mover advantage with their Model 3 and now they are floundering. GM's Chevy Bolt is out producing and out selling the Model 3 despite first movers advantage and all the 'good will' Tesla generated... Despite people saying 'GM could never do this'.
I also don't know why you would say Ford or GM couldn't do it when they produce vehicles that race in Nascar and have R&D for that sport.
Ford and GM are mature companies and expected to actually make money, while Tesla is expected to make good will and headlines.
I'll be more excited when Tesla meets their originally projected production numbers.
Don't underestimate the importance of these flagship cars. They serve a purpose. Why do you think Ford has the GT? They are a test bed for new technologies and increase brand prestige.
I'll note the original date for the 5k and 10k/week numbers were end of 2018 and 2020. Musk pushed it by 2yrs so "floundering" seems unfair here.
Ford does produce cars that are not for the "common folk". Same with Mercedes, BMW, etc.
Ford and GM can absolutely do this. Tesla is "hot", but Ford is successful.
People underestimating the big players and cars aren't thinking about the economics right. Ford markets are almost two orders of magnitude more than Tesla is producing. If Ford sees the global opportunity to sell 10-20 million EVs a year they'll build the crap out of them.
Ford sells pieces of shit and then tells you you're crazy every time you report a problem -- until a month after your last complaint when there's a company-wide recall.
I am never doing anything that gives them my money again.
Source: [ashamed] owner of Ford for 3+ years.
Focus RS head gasket failure per chance?
Transmission.
I think this is the one. http://fordpowershiftlawsuit.com/
"First mover advantage" is a concept that applies to platforms, and not to a millionaire status symbol/fashion statement. Most people spending $200,000+ on a vehicle want to be among the only people at the country club with it. This looks like a hot car, but I wouldn't hesitate to test drive Aston Martins or Ferrari's if I was playing with that kind of cash.
Also, GM and Ford do highly profitable business with the wealthy - Ford pickups are the most owned vehicle among millionaires and Cadillac keeps turning profits that Musk should envy.
They DID show a monster of a pickup truck at the unveiling as well. It's almost like a /second/ roadster but aimed at the millionaire truck lover. Of course, they aren't taking reservations for that because someone probably convinced Musk the number of rich truck lovers who also would love electric is small enough that it's not yet worth spending too much energy on the idea.
They did? I watched it and never saw a pickup truck.
Here: https://electrek.co/2017/11/17/tesla-pickup-truck-first-imag...
It's based on the semi truck. They didn't announce reservations for it or anything. It might be fair to call it a concept truck at this time, but I doubt it's the last we'll see of it.
They have planned this for years. The "new roadster" and even plaid has been announced for years. More than that, Production starts 3 YEARS from now. If they still have model 3 problems by then, I'll be surprised.
> It's also insane to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI!
They had multiple real Roadsters at the announcements. You can see a red one in the main event video, and there are pictures of a silver one on Twitter.
Yeah, it's just so odd that their website has the ultra fake video to demonstrate the 1.9 second 0-60 time!
That's because the actual ones can't make that time.
They absolutely seem to, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXWfL-1ieuE for example...
Absolutely nothing happens until the very end: https://youtu.be/aXWfL-1ieuE?t=3369
That’s exactly why they need this. They are running out of money. $250k reservations provide cash now and the promise of a semi might convince more investors to invest.
Tesla is already established in the business of luxury electric cars. It's the low cost ones that seem to be the challenge.
Yes. It is only human to be worried. They lose money on every car they sell. And the losses are accelerating. If you bought $TSLA at $300. And are looking to hold on for dear life. The next 12-24 months is gut check time.
But there is so much to be optimistic about! Uber or Lyft or Didi could place 100K size orders of Model 3s for their driverless fleets, with substantial support contracts, by 2019. Powerwalls may become standard components in emerging market power grids in the global sun belt. And envisioning charging stations as travel lounges or overnight rest stops is a stealth real estate and hospitality investment.
Tesla is acting as if the Model 3 will change the game. My personal bias is that the analysts are neglecting the raw consumer demand for this brave new electrical world. And if that holds true, continuing to raise cash to finance their production via stock, debt or pre-orders shouldn't be the hard part. Especially if 12 month price targets in the $350-375 range hold ;)
They don't lose money on every car they sell. Because they have a lot of NRE and other capital expenses they start out deeply in the hole before they sell any cars. But each extra car they sell after that hole increases their profits by something like $20,000 so they're making a lot of money when they sell cars even if their net divided by the number of cars sold is negative.
Did you not watch the presentation? They're not going to start producing it for another 2 years.
Hold on its not cgi, its a real car.
just dont give them money upfront and maybe the reality will take care of the rest.
Has the 8 second quarter mile been confirmed to be done in stock trim (i.e., no special tires or other modifications)?
The reason I ask is because that is EXTREMELY impressive. I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.
Even all wheel drive cars (GTRs, DSMs, EVOs, etc.) usually run 4 slicks once they get to that speed.
It seems very hard to make a pass like that on regular street tires, even with AWD.
EDIT: To add, I'm not knocking Tesla here, as there are very few cars that can actually run an 8 second pass off the showroom floor without any modifications at all. Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.
Yes but in those cars traction control is usually off. In Tesla extremely precise traction control may work in your favour giving only as much power as tires can handle effectively allowing to near zero time loss on regaining tracktion. In quarter mile cars you don't have option, either tire will handle all that power or slip causing time loss.
Modern high-end aftermarket EFI systems (such as MoTeC) do have traction control, but it's not as effective as one would expect.
The main issue I found is that street tires often just don't have the traction required, even under ideal conditions. The result is that traction control has to cut power so much that it ends up hurting the quarter mile times.
It does help tremendously on consistency and safety though. Things start to pucker when all four wheels start hazing in a 1000 HP AWD car.
You seem familiar, but for others, here's what a typical 8 second car looks like leaving the line:
http://www.speednik.com/files/2015/01/screen-shot-2015-01-26...
https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cobra-jet...
http://cdn.dragzine.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2011/11...
Notice how massive the rear tires are.
EDIT: Added picture of an 8 second all wheel drive car (GTR). The interesting thing here is the clear bias of traction towards the rear. When launching a car with that much power, the weight shifts towards the rear enough to render the front wheels almost useless (unless the suspension is extremely stiff).
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Nf4pJZaK7P4/maxresdefault.jpg
I suspect Tesla's advantage is in linear acceleration. Those internal combustion cars need a gearbox so the initial acceleration is very high in that first gear. This the same reason the Navy wants to go from steam to electric catapults: you get the plane to the same speed off the cat, but the acceleration curve is straight, so there's lower peak load on the airframe, so your planes last longer. Similarly, the Tesla can keep linear acceleration with gear shifts.
Right but to hit an 8 second 1/4 you're trap speed is 170-190 depending on how fast your 1/8 mile was. There simply isn't even distance to accelerate linearly in 1/4 to hit 8 seconds without leaving the line like a bat out hell.
The suspension on most of these cars is also far from normal. There's very few cars in the world which make an8 second pass on independent rear suspension. Most of these cars have straight axles and 4 link suspension.
I really want to see a Tesla Roadster make an 8 second pass with whatever tires it needs because tires alone won't get you there. They got some serious engineering in that thing to make it hit 8 seconds with a suspension that doesn't make you hate life.
Accelerating at 1.28g (41.25 ft/s2) for 8 seconds will get you to exactly a quarter mile.
Under that acceleration, your final speed is 225 mphAccelerating at > 1g off the line has its own set of issues - without extra downforce from somewhere you have traction problems regardless of tires, street tires just make it worse.
This is why you see so many approx 2.9s 0-60 times in higher end sports cars, it's hard for aerodynamics to affect it much over the first couple of seconds.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't downforce an aerodynamic issue? There are no aerodynamics at 0 mph. You do have a torque problem, but the Tesla is actually a fairly heavy car, is it not? Also, isn't Tesla's center of mass pretty near the same height as the axles? So it's not like the rear end is going to get under the front end.
Sorry, i just worded it badly. The point is that without downforce, you can't overcome the traction issue. To a first approximation at 1g accel from a standing start, your resulting force vector is at 45 degrees (mass at 1g down, accel at 1g forward). Accelerating harder just makes the problem worse. At speed, the answer to this is downforce (e.g. how F1 cars can corner as fast as they can).
But for the first couple of seconds, you can't generate much downforce from aerodynamics because you aren't going fast enough. And there are limits to what a spoiler, etc. can generate. For a lot of street legal sports cars, this all evens out about the same way, and they end up with very similar 0-60 times.
If you try and systematically knock down all of these problems, you'll end up with a top fuel car. In that case you may get ~1000lb of downforce from exhaust alone, which gets you past the first bit while you are going too slow for the big wing to be really effective.
To clarify, it's 8.8 seconds, which is still absurdly fast, but that 0.8s makes a gigantic difference.
There are some IRS cars capable of going 8's. The ones I've seen the most are GTRs, Supras, and the occasional 2JZ/LSx swapped 240sx (I think they swap a Nissan/Infiniti Q45 rear into it or something).
Now that the 2015+ Mustang has IRS, I expect to see more of them as well. I think there's already one in the 8's.
But yeah, IRS is a major pain at that power level. Most (all?) of the performance cars today have IRS, so I expect improvements to come.
Wow, the buckling of the tire wall in the last two pictures is crazy. I guess that happens because there is enough friction to stop the wheel moving, and the axle is trying to turn it faster, causing a shear force. With normal tires, I assume they would just slip at that point and spin because they don't have enough friction in the contact patch touching the road.
Yep! The tires are actually designed to do that. It really helps to prevent things from snapping by absorbing some of the shock when the cars drop the clutch or let go of the trans brake.
So the tires are acting like torsion springs then?
It increases the footprint of the tire at the start, giving the car more grip. Here is a video: https://youtu.be/-VF0JwxQqcA?t=10m42s
Thanks, that's really interesting - there's some amazing technology going into what I had previously assumed was a fairly boring static (modulo the rotation, of course) component of these vehicles.
And what if the battery weight is nearer axle centerline than an ICE?
I'll be amazed, amazzzzed, if that car, stock, can create enough down force to keep itself on the road with stock tires, I don't care how good your TC is. Look at the size of the wing on the new Zr1 https://youtu.be/O_adY_b-aLQ?t=3m14s
Downforce is more than the wing. You see those giant diffusers in the back? Those work as venturi tunnels, creating a sucking force, sticking the car down.
As a matter of fact, F1 cars in the 70s-80s were using venturi tunnels that extended the entire length of the vehicle. This is impractical in a modern gasoline-powered car.
Theu were even getting so good with their aerodynamics that they were rumoured to be generating more downforce with ground effects than from wings.
In an electric car, you could do what they were doing back then.
I guess I'll be eating my hat then. I'm pretty amazed that you'll be able to keep it planted that fast around corners, but if you can, this will be an incredibly fun (or maybe very boring!) car to drive.
And the Roadster doesn't have real side skirts to seal up the tunnel, which significantly degrades any diffuser downforce.
Just pretend, the same way they do with the claims about the GTR's ~0-degree wing, and most all aero claims on street-legal cars.
Aero at street legal speeds is basically worthless and range-destroying. Many supercars don't have more aero than the Roadster, just go look at them, they usually either have no wing, like the Lambo Huracan, or a wing with virtually no angle of attack.
Wing shouldn't matter all that much in this case. Grip is most important in the initial moments of acceleration on the drag strip where having a wing isn't quite as important. This car[1] runs in the 7s without a wing at all.
[1] http://st.hotrod.com/uploads/sites/21/2017/09/149-test-tune-...
Does it have a willy bar? It's also gonna be pretty heavy with lots of torque when it hits off the line.
Fair! That said, I do doubt those cars weigh close to the same. :)
Oh absolutely. That car is almost certainly a tube frame with a fiberglass shell.....was what I was going to say but then I looked into it and actually it's still sheet metal and weighs 3800 pounds. It has run a 6.987, and probably has north of 2,000 horsepower. Oh and it is street legal.
I'm confused. :( You think the hotrod will weigh the same as or more or less than the new roadster? I looked around and I couldn't find the roadster weight anywhere.
Here is a gutted Model S P100D (4460 lb, 2 motors, 100kWh battery) running a 10.4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO8sXUGfjWQ
Roadster will be lighter, have a better drag coefficient, 2x the power (1500hp), 3 motors, 200 kWh battery (?).
According to Electrek's ride along the wheels are "fat" - 325mm rear/295mm front. Dodge Demon's are 315/40R18 Nitto NT05R. https://electrek.co/2017/11/17/new-tesla-roadster-halo/
Should be close!
> Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.
Horsepower is a misleading figure, because 1000 HP means a maximum of 1000 HP at some engine RPM. So, in other words, if a gasoline car delivers 100 HP @ 0-2000 RPM, and only delivers 1000 HP between 5500-6000 RPM, we call it 1000 HP.
The Tesla delivers its power constantly, from 0 RPM and — more importantly — its torque is also constant and available from 0 RPM. Add to this the fact that an electronic drive train can adjust the power independently for each wheel 100 times per second, which is simply impossible for a combustion engine (mechanical parts transferring that much power can’t switch that fast).
> — its torque is also constant and available from 0 RPM
I don't think torque is constant. The power is constant, and torque gradually decays as RPM increases as per the following equation:
HP = Torque x RPM ÷ 5252
Most 1000 HP drag cars are in their power band from the time the driver lets go of the trans brake until the race is over (unless it's a stick shift, but most drag cars are automatic).
Like any other conventional automatic, there is a torque converter between the engine and the transmission which allows the engine to spin faster than the transmission input shaft.
At the starting line, the driver engages the transmission brake, which locks the transmission and allows him to floor the engine, which brings it up to the optimal RPM (and spools the turbos if so equipped). It's almost the same as if you were to hold the brake and floor the accelerator at a red light. The only difference is that the brakes on a drag car wouldn't be able to hold it back, so they use the transmission instead.
Then, when it's time to start, he lets go of the trans brake and the power is instantly delivered to the wheels.
There usually isn't an issue with not having enough power at the starting line. It's actually the opposite. High power cars usually have to limit their starting RPM to avoid doing a wheelie or losing traction.
"I don't think torque is constant."
The torque is constant for the first 40% of the RPM, something like this:
http://image.motorcyclistonline.com/f/30634938/122_0910_03_z... http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/TeslaTorqueg...
The horse power increases gradually as RPM increases.
Interesting. Do they do that on purpose or is it due to how the motor works? It's so flat that It seems like they limit the torque on purpose, perhaps to prevent breaking things.
The almost perfect linear decline after the constant part is what I would have expected for an electric motor running with a constant power.
They almost certainly are limiting the torque. Zero rpm torque on these electric motors goes asymptotic since torque is power per change of angle and the angle isn't changing.
Also he specified max torque was 10k newton meters which is absolutely enough to pull a steel driveshaft like taffy. That's triple the torque a semi produces.
I would say with 99% certainty it wasn't stock tires.
Tesla specs special tires because one of their selling points is "look how quiet EVs are and how little maintenance they need". Said special tires have increased mass over normal tires. Tesla also needs to spec something that delivers a reasonable service life under a big heavy Tesla. You can't just hand wave and say "it's a 700hp rocket, of course it eats tires" because that doesn't fit their brand image. Then there's rolling resistance. They can't spec something that has a ton of rolling resistance because it would tank range.
All of those design criteria require trade-offs from traction and each other.
"I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby" How did you get into such hobby? I would be glad to do that as a hobby :)
Well, most of my friends happen to be "in to" cars, so I've spent a lot of time being around and talking about cars.
Since I'm "good with computers", I would always help them with their electrical issues, which eventually evolved into me tuning their cars and dealing with any other EFI related issues. Most tuners charge around $500, but I do it all for free, so that helps.
If you really want to get involved, seek out some car clubs in your area and check out some of the open source ECU projects (such as Speeduino). Usually, car hobbyist can be identified by a group of people standing in a parking lot staring at their cars. Most of them love to brag about their setup, so they're pretty receptive to people asking questions.
> that still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars
I think you'll find it's past those. Even 1200hp GTRs don't run eights.
The OP is right that 8 sec 1/4 is extremely impressive, but he is wrong that there are few production cars that can run 8s. No production car runs anything close.
The fastest 1/4 mile production cars are supercars such as the Veyron and 918, which are at or just under a 10seconds.
Remember, an increase from 20->18 seconds is roughly a 10% increase in acceleration; 10->8 is roughly 20% increase over an already ludicrously fast million-dollar supercar.
It's frankly ridiculously fast.
>The fastest 1/4 mile production cars are supercars such as the Veyron and 918, which are at or just under a 10seconds.
Except for the Dodge Demon, which does the 1/4 in 9.65
The 9.65 time is impressive, and the engineering team design as well. However, the claim is arguably disingenuous. Consider one needs a long time to go through a list of impractical things to prep the car to actually achieve that time, such as laying down what is literal tire glue to the road.
You're right - I can't find any other car that can run 8's without modifications. There are some that can achieve those numbers with under $10,000 worth of modifications, but that's kind of irrelevant since we're talking about stock cars.
That's also why I am skeptical of this Tesla running an 8 second pass in stock trim. Is there a video of the pass?
Most of the 8 second cars I've seen are running slicks or drag radials, and usually weigh a lot less.
I'd be curious to see how Tesla managed to make a car that probably weighs over 4000 pounds have enough traction for those numbers using regular tires. Even with all wheel drive, 8 second Nissan GTRs usually have to resort to slicks.
> There are some that can achieve those numbers with under $10,000 worth of modifications
Can you provide links? I seriously doubt you can get anything into the 8s with only $10k.
If we're talking about anything, you can build a turbo Gen 4 LSx swapped Foxbody Mustang for very cheap (check out the sloppy mechanics group). The same goes for an automatic AWD DSM. Both of those have the potential to get into the 8's with little money, but it does take some fine tuning.
However, I'm assuming you are interested in brand new production cars. The cars I listed above are all old and do not compare to the Tesla in anything other than drag racing. If you're interested, let me know and I can go into a more detailed breakdown of the last car I tuned (LSx swapped Mustang).
As for new cars, it depends on how much work you're willing to do yourself vs paying a shop.
Here's a link to a newer 5.0 Mustang with a completely stock engine and a ~$8500 twin turbo kit. He does have other supporting mods (tires, suspension, torque converter) that likely put him over the $10k mark, but you can also save a few thousand on the turbo kit by piecing it together yourself.
"He estimates the car makes over 900 horsepower at the tire, but what really matters is the stock Coyote engine paired with an off-the-shelf Hellion turbo kit added up to an 8.6-second e.t. at over 150 mph."
https://www.svtperformance.com/2015/04/13/feature-quickest-s...
Since D=0.5at^2, going 10->8 would need a 50% increase in acceleration.
True. GTRs are not the best for drag racing. I think the Alpha 12 (~1200 HP) GTRs are actually dipping into the 8's, but I was thinking more along the lines of a Mustang, which is one of the most common cars used for drag racing and is usually much lighter.
Many cars in the 1200 HP range are much faster, such as the "Red Demon" DSM which is somewhere in the 7 second range.
GTRs are not the best for drag racing? Do you mean not the best to go slow in drag racing?
Because at the top of the ladder of the 1/4 (excluding top fuel making 4000-8000hp), you only have Lambos and GTRs.
I was wondering that myself after seeing the 1.9s 0-60 time. My understanding was that anything under 2.5s was the domain of racing slicks and sticky compounds.
The car in the image has some monster tires on it. Doesn't give you the compression (or whatever you use to describe the give in the tire) friction you get with serious drag tires, but with a good four wheel drive system?
Looked like it had cup2s on it during the reveal. I have them on my car and they are amazing but still far from a drag radial.
> I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.
Right, but you're comparing what is ultimately powered by the good old Karl Benz design from the 1880s, burning dinosaur juice, that has zero torque at zero RPM, needs to shift gears multiple times, and is about as responsive to control inputs as a cow munching on marijuana leaves - with a very different thing powered by something that has maximum torque at any RPM, has no gears, and responds to control inputs extremely quickly and with immense precision.
A couple of points:
1. A drag car does not start at zero RPM. The engine is probably over 4000 RPM and under load before the race even begins. In fact, many cars have to dial their launch RPM down because it ends up making enough power to lose traction from a dead stop. Look up "trans brake launch" to see what I'm talking about.
2. Your comment actually further confirms my skepticism of the Tesla not being able to maintain traction. If an unresponsive internal combustion engine powered car has trouble, imagine a car capable of shocking the tires even harder.
> A drag car does not start at zero RPM.
I own a modern sportbike and I've done enough of quarter mile attempts to understand how the process works in general, even though it's not a 4-wheel vehicle.
The main point here is that the internal combustion engine has a primitive torque profile. You have to keep it in the sweet spot if you want maximum performance. Hence all the stupid tricks you need to play with gear shifts and the clutch and all that junk.
This whole coordinated ballet is unnecessary with electric motors, that's the point that you've missed. At any RPM, including zero, the electric motor is near peak torque. A whole range of complex issues that would otherwise need to be mitigated simply vanish, so you can focus on defeating other obstacles. Understand the difference now?
> If an unresponsive internal combustion engine powered car has trouble, imagine a car capable of shocking the tires even harder.
You're missing the point again. A much more responsive engine such as the electric power plant allows traction control to work much, much more precisely and respond much faster. No inertia from crankshaft assembly and transmission. No clutch. Torque goes from any value to any other value in a small fraction of a second. The feedback loop can operate that much faster, and with greater precision. Internal combustion engines are not even in the same ballpark.
Like I've said, I do own a racing vehicle powered by internal combustion. I am quite fond and proud of it, which is something I believe you understand. But it's game over for this technology. Electric engines are winning by all metrics and in all applications, either sports, or utility, or whatever. It's the end of an era.
Thanks for your explanation mentioning "coordinated ballet", only at this point the realization hit home how big the differences are.
Even if the difference was that drastic, none of that accounts for the fact that tires only have so much friction.
Yeah. Nobody claimed that magic was at work here. Current tire technology has certain limits imposed by physics. But I suspect electric cars can get quite a bit closer to those limits, with a much faster traction control loop.
Yep the tires... Unless this shit floats, I don't see how they could do 8 sec 1/4 mile.
The Tesla roadster specs are insane! No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).
Plus 620 miles of range, and it is a 4 seater. Expensive as hell, but this is exotic car territory.
Base Specs
Acceleration 0-60 mph1.9 sec
Acceleration 0-100 mph4.2 sec
Acceleration 1/4 mile8.8 sec
Top SpeedOver 250 mph
Wheel Torque 10,000 Nm
Mile Range 620 miles
Seating 4
Drive All-Wheel Drive
Base Price $200,000
Base Reservation $50,000
Founders Series Price $250,000
Founders Series Reservation
(1,000 reservations available)$250,000
Ah, but do the doors go like this ^(o_o)^ or like this \(o_o)/ not like this <(o_o)>
HBO's Silicon Valley reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJIAOosI6js
Your comment made everybody in the office laugh
Now that seems like a good place to work!
Yeah where can I get paid to read HN?
Literally anywhere.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
almost got kicked out of class for laughing too hard
O_o
Sounds really good on paper but the production is scheduled for 2020, so it’s unfair to compare it to the cars currently on the market. No other manufacturers announce cars so far ahead so it seems at least partly like a hype for Tesla investors. Acceleration is just one part of what makes a great sports car. And how is the acceleration past 100 mph? That’s the traditional weakness of electric cars and it matters more on the track. How about its weight, brakes, turning, steering feel, grip, suspension, weight distribution (it should be quite good), downforce? Will the battery last for a full track day? Of course sound has always been a very important part of what made sports cars exhilarating to drive and Tesla can’t compete there. And the design and brand matter too. Ferrari and Lamborghini don’t make $40k cars (or even $100k cars).
MotorTrend's review of the Model 3 makes me optimistic about the Roadster:
"What’s blanching, though, is the car’s ride and handling. If anybody was expecting a typical boring electric sedan here, nope. The ride is Alfa Giulia (maybe even Quadrifoglio)–firm, and quickly, I’m carving Stunt Road like a Sochi Olympics giant slalomer, micrometering my swipes at the apexes. I glance at Franz—this OK? “Go for it,” he nods. The Model 3 is so unexpected scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives. The steering ratio is quick, the effort is light (for me), but there’s enough light tremble against your fingers to hear the cornering negotiations between Stunt Road and these 235/40R19 tires (Continental ProContact RX m+s’s). And to mention body roll is to have already said too much about it."
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/exclusive-...
And so how many Gs can it sustain on a flat corner? The faster a reviewer talks, the less we should listen. Give it to the Stig and let us see exactly how it laps.
There was a bit of a fuss last time they gave a Tesla to Top Gear...
> No other manufacturers announce cars so far ahead
Surely, you're joking? Virtually every carmaker has announced a whole bunch of electric cars for 2020-2021 (without giving nearly as many details or demoing the cars already). And that's discounting their "concept cars".
Ford announced their Bronco a while back that isn’t available til the 2020 model year.
With their acceleration stats that cause all the excitement?
> And how is the acceleration after 100 mph?
This. If you're buying a supercar to actually drive on a track, this is key. Any specs relating to what happens below 100 mph are worthless. If you spend any significant percentage of time going so slow, you need to spend ~$8k on a BMW E36 M3 instead, and learn how to drive.
But if you buy a supercar mainly to park in front of Harrods, 0-60 time is... still worthless.
Not to be a Tesla apologist, but how many people track their supercars? Or at least proportionally to road use? An Aventador is pretty crummy as a track car, and its performance is all but unusable on the roads (unless, ahem, liberties are taken).
A lot of the appeal is in the perception of performance and that initial acceleration. It's putting your foot down with a passenger, or breezing someone at the lights whilst putting a smile on your face. 0-60 is probably one of the more relevant performance statistics for road use (even if 1.9s renders it all but pointless!)
More than a few race tracks in America are basically pet projects of the super rich. They operate as for profit entities and do their best to be profitable or at least break even, but really they exist for the entertainment of the billionaire owners groups.
But, what are they driving on those tracks? If I had a few 'bill laying around I'd be in a FXXK or P1 GTR, rather than a supercar or some of the hypercars, no?
Some truth to that. But some wrong too.
I drive a 2004 330i; I track it. I get better times than most drivers who have much better 100-140 high speeds in the straights - despite me only getting to ~100.
Of course, somehome a pro driver in a lowered 140hp toyota pickup truck can get better times than all of us.
Most people don't have the nerves to take high speed turns at the limit. I used to take a Lotus Elise to the track and it requires courage to look for the limit when you go 100mph+. Going straight is easy.
> And how is the acceleration past 100 mph?
I thought the instant torque was able to get great acceleration at all speeds?
The torque drops off as the motor RPM increases.
“Production is scheduled for 2020”.
And delivery will be in 2025.
Knowing how bad Tesla is with keeping their schedule
From Wikipedia's F1 page [0]:
> The 2016 F1 cars have a power-to-weight ratio of 1,400 hp/t (1.05 kW/kg). Theoretically this would allow the car to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in less than 1 second. However the massive power cannot be converted to motion at low speeds due to traction loss and the usual figure is 2.5 seconds to reach 100 km/h (62 mph)
Even adjusting for 60 mph = 2.4s, I don't see how the traction of the Tesla is better.
Formula-E cars are doing 0-62 it in 3s [1]:
> An average Formula E car has a power of at least 250 horsepower (190 kW). The car is able to accelerate from 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 3 seconds, with a maximum speed of 225 km/h (140 mph)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_car#Acceleration
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_E#Car
I agree, I think this is another case of "well it works on our computer" pre-release specs that will turn out not to get close to real-world performance. The 0-100mph is very suspicious but I think the 0-60 time quoted is simply impossible for a road car, even making allowances for a few years of tech advancements.
F1 tires are nothing like road tires. They're not even vaguely comparable - at normal operating temperatures (over 100C, and they're preheated before starting - although not to quite this hot) they have the consistency of chewing gum. They are also huge - far bigger than a road car could ever hope to accommodate. This car also looks to weigh around double what an F1 car will weigh, and with far, far, FAR less grip, so it simply doesn't seem possible that it can accelerate faster.
To address some of the other replies. Traction control: F1 cars are driven by some of the best drivers on the planet. I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree. Gear changes: F1 gear changes take about 8 milliseconds. A road-going automatic gearbox is definitely not going to beat this.
In short - it doesn't matter HOW much power you have, if you can't get it down on the road. Given the limitations of the weight of the car, the limited grip from road tires, and a gearbox that needs to survive everyday use, it seems frankly totally impossible that a sub-2s 0-60mph is correct.
> F1 tires are nothing like road tires.
Agreed, but they don't need to be. Remember, the magic number here is ~1.4G, for a 1.9s 0-60. The Pilot Sport Cup 2 – a track-friendly R-compound tire used in the webcast car and in the videos – can pull close to that on a skidpad (i.e. less than optimal conditions), meaning the grip is there.
> I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree.
Launch control and traction control can make several tenths of seconds of difference, which is critical when you're talking about sub-2s times. Also, traction control can keep the car on the cusp of slip the entire run to 60MPH, which is critical in a car that has a completely flat torque curve and probably enough torque to break the wheels loose at any speed (which is not true for F1 cars).
I also suspect that the Roadster has active damping – another technology disallowed in F1 – meaning that the duration of contact with the road can be maximized. This is important if the road surface isn't glassy-smooth.
> This car also looks to weigh around double what an F1 car will weigh
That doesn't help it at all in cornering, but in a straight line, the increased weight of the car will help it launch even better since it'll increase the traction on the drive wheels (equivalent to downforce at speed).
> Gear changes: F1 gear changes take about 8 milliseconds. A road-going automatic gearbox is definitely not going to beat this.
There's no gearbox to speak of; the wheels are direct-drive. To be fair, this won't contribute significantly to faster 0-60 times, but the gearbox exists to compensate for some less-than-ideal characteristics of an ICE, namely uneven power delivery and physical limitations on peak RPMs. An electric motor has none of these problems.
> Agreed, but they don't need to be. Remember, the magic number here is ~1.4G, for a 1.9s 0-60. The Pilot Sport Cup 2 – a track-friendly R-compound tire used in the webcast car and in the videos – can pull close to that on a skidpad (i.e. less than optimal conditions), meaning the grip is there.
That's lateral grip, which isn't the same at all. Longitudinal grip, which is what's important here, is very different. There's a lot of clever things you can do to increase lateral grip, such as wheel camber, that don't really apply to purely longitudinal grip, so I'm not sure this is valid.
> I also suspect that the Roadster has active damping – another technology disallowed in F1 – meaning that the duration of contact with the road can be maximized. This is important if the road surface isn't glassy-smooth.
But it has to have (comparatively) extremely soft road-going suspension. I really doubt that no matter how smart the active damping is that it will compare with race springs and dampers. Le Mans cars have all these active damping tricks, traction control, along with slick tires, low weight, very high power:weight ratios, skilled drivers, etc, etc, etc and they still don't get to 60 that quick.
That's an excellent example actually - the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car has a 0-60 of 2.2 seconds, despite electric power, FAR less weight, FAR better tires and drivetrain [0]. There is just no way you can make a road car that's faster than an LMP1 hybrid. If you can, maybe you can put a roll-cage in and take it to Le Mans.... but I doubt it.
> That doesn't help it at all in cornering, but in a straight line, the increased weight of the car will help it launch even better since it'll increase the traction on the drive wheels (equivalent to downforce at speed).
Weight increases the grip, but it also increases the amount of grip you need - you need more power to maintain the same acceleration, and this power needs to be transferred to the road. I'm not an expert, but AIUI, increased grip due to weight scales linearly, whereas the increase in power required (and thus the increase in grip required) scales geometrically, thus weight is counterproductive in getting you to 60mph faster. I could be wrong about this though - as always I'd be happy to be corrected by someone with more knowledge!
0: https://www.porsche.com/usa/eventsandracing/motorsport/works...
> That's lateral grip, which isn't the same at all. [...] There's a lot of clever things you can do to increase lateral grip, such as wheel camber, that don't really apply to purely longitudinal grip, so I'm not sure this is valid.
Camber isn't a magical trick to get more grip; it's a way to restore grip that would otherwise have been lost because of uneven tire loading in a corner. In a straight-line drive situation, the load is already ideal; the contact patch is the maximum size and fairly evenly distributed across the width of the tire.
> There is just no way you can make a road car that's faster than an LMP1 hybrid.
Indeed, it's currently impossible to make an all-electric race car that can compete with an ICE or hybrid race car in general race conditions, mostly because of the limitations of the energy storage. If the goal is just for a road car to beat a hybrid LMP1 (or even F1) car in a drag race though, as is the case here, I think that's much more doable. The ICE is really the weak link there.
> Camber isn't a magical trick to get more grip; it's a way to restore grip that would otherwise have been lost because of uneven tire loading in a corner. In a straight-line drive situation, the load is already ideal; the contact patch is the maximum size and fairly evenly distributed across the width of the tire.
Mostly. But only mostly. Tire grip is actually really, really, really complex however, and this is one of the places where a simplistic model breaks down really badly. If we were able to model tires with simple newtonian physics, then no car would be able to hold more than 1g in a corner, as at that point the force sideways would be more than the force of gravity holding it to the road. Manifestly this is not actually the case.
Tire grip through a corner is more than just coefficient of friction against a surface. There's a lot of complicated things that happen, but the one I'm going to very lightly cover here is that when you go around a corner your tires deform slightly. The sidewall of the tire is pulled out of place, and at the maximum cornering speed of a tire, it will actually be slipping slightly (which can be heard as tire squeal). Cambering the tire corrects for uneven loading, but it also changes the sidewall stress profile, and thus affects the way the tire deforms under lateral load.
I found a mathematical explanation of some the bits mentioned above here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/5838/why-does-a-... but I haven't checked carefully through it to ensure it's actually correct.
> AIUI, increased grip due to weight scales linearly, whereas the increase in power required (and thus the increase in grip required) scales geometrically
The high-school physics model of grip has them both linear, but more sophisticated models may show a difference.
(Interestingly, more mass on a vehicle does help when it is towing something heavy.)
> namely uneven power delivery and physical limitations on peak RPMs. An electric motor has none of these problems.
Electric motors do actually have an uneven response at different RPMs (in the form of back-emf losses). I worked for a while with an electric car team in university, and we used a mechanical system to adjust the stator position and tune the motor for different RPMs. I’m not sure what Tesla is doing to address this (could be mechanical or solid state), but you definitely can’t just keep dumping more power into a motor and expect it to get correspondingly faster, not even as a reasonable approximation.
What is the best 60-to-0 time for a road car? If traction is the limiting factor, you should be able to get very close to that same time in the reverse direction.
Edit: the shortest 60-to-0 braking distance I find claimed is for a Dodge Viper ACR (Mk 5) at 87 feet. Assuming constant acceleration, that works out to 1.98 seconds.
[1] http://fastestlaps.com/lists/top-quickest-stoppers-60mph
There's an Engineering Explained video that takes this approach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAvIVGGhEis
They estimate 2.0s is roughly the limit on standard tires, F1 cars can do it faster due to stickier tires.
He also has a video about Tesla acceleration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVGsWvRa1XA
Which talks about whether the Model S has an advantage over the (old) Roadster due to the heavier vehicle gripping better.
Interestingly the number he calculates for a theoretical roadster car is very close to Tesla's new number.
They also have a video about "rollout" which can alter 0-60 times and needs to be taken into account for comparisons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAvIVGGhEis
There are already videos of the test car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3380&v=aXWfL-1ie...
I'm pretty sure they aren't making it up.
>Traction control: F1 cars are driven by some of the best drivers on the planet. I think it's straining credulity to believe that an electronic traction control system is going to outperform them to such a huge degree.
I'm with you for the rest of the post, but this is not straining credulity. Look at the F1 season where traction control/launch control was not yet banned. You can see how the cars with that technology gained a massive advantage. Look no further than some starts featuring Schumacher vs Senna. The former wasn't a better driver, but Senna couldn't do anything but watch him pull away on the starts. And that's 1993 technology.
Have a reality check of a 0-74 mph on the real thing (with 2 people aboard):https://youtu.be/aXWfL-1ieuE?t=3369
What about weight? The Roadster is probably quite more more heavy than an F1, doesn't that play a big role in traction?
Not really, wider tires for example let you have constant pressure per surface area in contact with the road.
Now there are minor effects that do come into play, so 100x the weight would be meaningful. But, weight within the range of normal cars is not really important.
There are no gears in an electric car, and doesn’t more weight make it easier to stay on the road, not harder?
Traction control has been banned in F1 since 2008, so this severely limits how quickly they can start from a standstill. The tires themselves certainly have enough grip to handle the acceleration; F1 cars routinely hit several lateral Gs in cornering (though with the help of downforce), well exceeding the ~1.4G required to accelerate to 60 in 1.9s.
F1 cars are rear wheel drive and still have to build their torque and power up the rev range and change gears.
Telsa is 4wd and has all it's torque and power from standing with no gears
The F1 engines are already revved up when they start. They just engage the clutch. And F1 gear changes are pretty much instant as the old and new gears are connected at the same time and the moment that would start to cause problems the old one gets disconnected
But yeah its the real wheel drive that stops F1 cars going faster 0 to 60. (limited by the friction instead of the power the engine can deliver)
The whole startup trickery with the two clutch paddles is interesting too. Basically they use one of the paddle to find the bite point and leave it there and then use the other to fully disengage the clutch. Then once the lights go out they drop the other clutch so the clutch goes instantly to the bite point and then use the other paddle to modulate the launch (they are pretty much flatout while standing still and use the clutch to control wheel spin). A launch control computer probably could do this better but such things are banned in F1.
Per your links, the minimum permissible weight of an F1 car is 731kg including the driver, but not fuel. For FE it is 800kg. The 2011 Tesla Roadster weighed 1235kg, sans driver. The 2011 Bugatti Veyron 1834kg.
The very long range also suggests that this car will weigh considerably more than the old Roadster. Maybe there is an improvement to traction with all that extra weight? Or maybe the weight just helps with keeping the wheels on the ground at 250mph?
Actually the opposite. You get less traction with more weight due to "load sensitivity" of viscoelastic materials (= rubber).
> No exotic carmaker will be able to match it.
Did you fact check that? Actually, Bugatti is pretty close and partially outperforms, although at a way higher price point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Chiron
Yes. The Chiron matches it in speed, but not acceleration. 1.9s vs 2.4s to 60mph. Since the roadster has a 250+ mph figure, the tires are probably going to be one of the limiting factors. (same with the Chiron).
" The Chiron can accelerate from 0–97 km/h (60 mph) in 2.4 seconds according to the manufacturer,[4] 0–200 km/h (120 mph) in 6.5 seconds and 0–300 km/h (190 mph) in 13.6 seconds. In a world-record-setting test, Chiron reached 400 km/h (250 mph) in 32.6 seconds, after which it needed 9.4 seconds to brake to standstill.[14]
The Chiron's top speed is electronically limited to 420 km/h (261 mph) for safety reasons.[2] The anticipated full top speed of the Bugatti Chiron is believed to be around 463 km/h (288 mph)."
Chiron is traction limited for most of its run; I presume to beat the Chiron's time the Tesla Roadster has better tyres for initial grip.
Very unlikely. With power you weight beyond useful (this has basically been "solved" since the day someone built a cat around a ww2 military aircraft piston engine), acceleration is determined by aerodynamics (drag and downpressure), tires and the time spent shifting gears. It's pretty evident where Tesla has the advantage.
Tesla may have a better traction-control algorithm. Or the electric motors may make it easier to modulate power more rapidly/precisely (vs gas).
The 2nd picture on this page is interesting: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/271674/tesla...
Shifting gears? Why does it have an advantage?
Tangent: please don't downvote someone asking questions, people. I for one had not considered that electric motors have no gears to shift, and wondered "surely both cars are automatic? Does Tesla have a patent on a faster automatic transmission or something?" so I appreciated someone asked.
Teslas don't need gears since they use electric motors. So there is literally no time spent shifting gears.
See https://www.quora.com/Why-don%E2%80%99t-Tesla-cars-need-a-ge...
The original Veyron could change gears in 8ms, and will, IIRC hit 60 in 2nd. Changing gear isn't going to be a considerable part of the time here.
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron states that the original Veyron gearbox could change gears in 150ms, so it is a considerable part of the time.
While the gear are shifting the engine RPM must go down then up; the 8ms figure certainly doesn't account for the complete sequence.
The Veyron does 70 in first gear. I don't know if its 0-60 times require a gear change or not.
The basic idea is that it is wasting time. But this is no longer a factor as the gear change is instantaneous with Automatic GearBox.
Electric cars do not have a gearbox and just have one rotor. This does place them in a disadvantage when starting though as there acceleration is affected. Formula E cars, have started using a 3 gearbox for their cars in order to have a faster start.
So it is possible that the Roadster does have a gearbox.
Tesla tried a gearbox in the first Roadsters, and it didn't go so well.
I don't think you're right about this. If the 60-0 time and the 0-60 time are the same for the Chiron then it's limited by traction (assuming brakes that are strong enough to break traction at 60).
Most high performance cars only shift once before 60, and with modern dual clutch transmissions it only costs a fraction of a second.
The only way Tesla are going to get below 2 seconds is either with non-street legal tyres (cheating!) or some new tyres that nobody else has.
Their demo car uses Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, which are also used on the Buggati Chiron and Koenigsegg Agera RS (which recently set two records for fastest 0-400kph-0 and fastest production car road speed). These tires are street legal.
The Roadster is significantly faster than other supercars from 0-60 on the same tires, so the advantage must come from much more efficient anti-wheel slipping from the three electric motors coupled to AWD. This dramatic speed advantage is probably a result of the ability to quickly alter the power output per wheel to minimize efficiency losses from breaking traction.
FWIW, all of the hypercars on the market have custom compounds, so the fact they're both called "Pilot Sport Cup 2" by Michelin doesn't really matter all too much.
Braking has a very different load distribution, even with a center of mass as low as in supercars. I would not put to much into that comparison. Tires are depicted as Michelin in the announcement, it would be very surprising if they keep their best exclusive to Tesla, considering the relative proximity between Bugatti and Michelin, the relative cheapness of the Tesla and Volkswagen group representing a much bigger part of the tires market than Tesla for the foreseeable future.
> it only costs a fraction of a second
In other words: exactly the scale of the differences we are talking about. In addition to the short interruption itself I guess that it also takes a few millis until traction control has settled after a shift.
> Chiron is traction limited for most of its run
This sounds very dubious, unless it has negative aerodynamic downforce. Even then, the times for each successive mph drop off too fast for it to be traction limited. Even F1 cars are not traction limited for more than a brief spell of straight-line acceleration. Aero drag dominates very quickly.
Cornering or braking, on the other hand...
From memory, I remember seeing something claiming that the Chrion's 0–60 and 60–0 times were identical.
That's doubly fishy, since it has an airbrake.
[My caveat on this, I'm not a road-car enthusiast, so I'm just deducing. But I used to work in motor racing, mostly bikes. Based on the standard of reporting I saw about stuff I did know well, I don't trust the motor press on tech claims.]
The Veyron had little downforce when put into suicide mode, right?
Most likely a lot more weight.
Lighter tires as rolling at 400kph+ is not a requirement and a fraction of the interiors
The top speed is quoted as being in excess of 400km/h? They have the same problem with speed rating of the tyres.
I'm also curious as to how much it will weigh given the batteries (given the weight of other Teslas).
one is a real car however, the other a rendering. I don't expect figures to change drastically from the brochure, but still.
The new Roadster is definitely real, not a render. They were driving them around, at speed, and showing off the acceleration, at the announcement!
Doesn’t mean much. They had to replace a lot of stuff between the presented and production model x, like the door hinges, because from prototype to reality there’s an abyss, especially for a car that’s supposed to sustain thise speeds.
The first thing I did was to compare against the Dodge Demon SRT and sure enough, I think overall the Tesla Roadster beats it. If you go to Dodge's website, they boast the claim "Fastest Production Car from 0-100 mph", with a little note saying "Excludes non-mass production vehicles and hybrids/electric."
Not to mention that once the benchmark is set, everyone competes to break it.
See: Hennessy Supercars
Any car that has less than 100 of produced units, it just exotic car prototypes territory. If you can't really go an buy one, does it matter? It is not a real 'production' car.
"Venom GT "World's Fastest Edition" (2014)[edit] Is a limited (3 units) version of the Venom GT coupe commemorating the Venom GT coupe's 0–300 km/h Guinness World Record.
The vehicle went on sale for US$1.25 million.[14] All three units were sold to customers shortly after their production was announced by the manufacturer."
This is true, though it's not really my point... Once someone sets a new benchmark, it will get broken. I doubt that all advancements in performance cars will stop here..
The Chiron also has an MSRP of $2.6m
The Chiron is an order of magnitude more expensive, and still fails to be quicker.
But the Chiron exist today.
Near 10x the price... I think OP unconsciously factor in the price.
Matching the price is part of what "match it" means.
Musk did note those are (supposedly) the base specs of course. So the higher cost versions may surpass the Bugatti accordingly.
I wouldn't call 1600Nm of torque over 2k rpm pretty close to 10000Nm flat...
1600Nm is the engine torque for the Chiron. The 10000Nm value Tesla gave is the wheel torque. You need to multiply the 1600Nm by the gear ratio to get the wheel torque.
Bugatti is fat and slow
I wonder at what speed you get that range. Those specs are in Bugatti Veyron league, even beating it at acceleration (for 1/8 the price tag), but at full speed, the Veyron empties its full tank in... 12 minutes. I'll let you calculate how many miles that is at 250mph.
I seem to recall reading that the Veyron's tyres will disintegrate after 15 minutes at top speed, but that's OK because it only carries fuel for 12 minutes.
Most of the car do since tank is sized to fuel consumption and full throttle petrol eat a lot of fuel - even a smart can reach 2km to the liter flat out and I know my alfa tank would only last 15 minutes give or take from the figures I got lapping at Monza
Also I wonder how many times you can accelerate like that... maybe only once with full charge?
The Model S can seemingly do it quite often, Tesla Racing Channel does it quite a bit. You will thermal limit at some point but having twice the battery capacity is probably helping there.
The Porsche CEO has been sorta claiming that but it doesn't make sense to me. The kinetic energy of your car at a given speed is the same, regardless of how fast you accelerated to get to that speed. Do batteries waste more energy when you drain them faster?
They can't waste a large portion of battery capacity, because the heat from that much energy getting wasted would blow up the car.
Drag. Recall, wind resistance is proportional to the square of velocity. The vast majority of energy goes into overcoming drag, even at regular highway speeds. Remember when we capped speed limits at 55mph during the '70s energy crisis? We did so because fuel efficiency really starts to drop off at faster speeds. 250mph is very, very far up this curve.
Wikipedia has a nice graph to illustrate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_MPG_to_L-100km_v200...
True, I was just thinking about quick accelerations to reasonable highway speeds, which is what the Porsche guy was talking about.
At a given speed, the energy is the same. But to get the car going it takes significant energy.
It takes more power to accelerate faster but the total change in kinetic energy is the same either way. Any energy consumption that doesn't go into the final kinetic energy is going into waste heat, and there can't be too much of that without melting things.
You are right... hmm
All of the electrical systems waste more energy if you drain them faster. To drain them faster you need higher currents which lead to higher waste power. Waste power goes up with the square of the current (P=I^2*R). This is most apparent in batteries heating up due to their internal resistance. Here's [1] an 18650 lithium cells discharge graph at different currents.
[1] https://www.powerstream.com/z/US18650VCT4-discharge.png
1 fifth of those 250 miles: 50 miles
Paper stats are one thing but show me this beating even something like a GT3 in an actual circuit race, or posting a Nurburgring time worthy of the price tag.
I’m sure in another 5 or 10 years they’ll get there but these figures are for headlines not the track.
> Paper stats are one thing but show me this beating even something like a GT3 in an actual circuit race, or posting a Nurburgring time worthy of the price tag.
An actual race is one thing: you wouldn't expect most "supercars" to finish an actual race without being torn down and rebuilt for the race. I have no idea how you'd prepare something like a Bugatti for an endurance race, but I know the end result wouldn't be worth the expense. GT3 cars are a pretty good example of something bridging the gap. (On the other hand, the Bugatti is said to be a pleasant car to drive on the street, which I wouldn't necessarily expect out of a GT3 car.)
One lap at Nurburgring? I imagine Tesla can swing that. It seems like it would just be function of keeping the battery cool enough. If they found a way to air cool the battery effectively at speed, Nurburgring is a pretty friendly track for that.
Are you saying that the numbers aren't true, or that it has other weaknesses that would cause it to lose a race?
Think of it this way, if some server or database came out claiming incredible benchmark numbers you’d say okay now show me some real world workloads. Same here. 0-60 is an artificial benchmark, a circuit time is a real world workload.
They already have a test car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3380&v=aXWfL-1ie...
I'm pretty sure they aren't making it up.
I haven't said they're making up the 0-60 time. I'm saying show me a test against the competition that lasts for longer than 1.9 seconds.
Don't get me wrong it's a deeply impressive vehicle. I'm just not an Elon fanboy and the precise milisecond that what Porsche, McLaren et. al. customers want something like that is when they will start making it. It's not like one company is the future and the rest of them are dinosaurs. One company is small and loosing money and the others are making it, enough of it to buy Tesla any time they feel like it, which being realistic is what's going to happen eventually.
Overheating. Like previous models, it likely can't cool down the engines and batteries fast enough to sustain that power output.
I'd like to see motor trend test it on the track and against competitors
Now if only the folks in front of me would accelerate from the on ramp to the highway at more than 45mph.
10,000 NM of torque. That's INSANE. I drive a car with 400NM torque and that thing scares the sh*t out of me when I accelerate. 10,000 NM? Isn't that something along the lines of a tram or a train (I'm not sure, I'm asking you guys). This is CRAZY. I'm getting one for sure.
Your car has 400Nm at the engine output shaft.
After gearing, you'll have the same order of magnitude torque at the wheels as the Tesla.
Randomly picked example: Porsche G97/01 (997 Carrera 2 2005-08) First gear total reduction 13.45 (gear 3.91, rack&pinion 3.44)
So, ignoring efficiencies, you'd have a first-gear torque of 400Nm * 13.45 = 5380Nm at the wheels. Still "only" half of the Tesla, but not an earth-shattering difference anymore.
Thank you, now that makes perfect sense :)
Isn't the rack-and-pinion for steering, not for power transmission to wheels?
Yes rack and pinion is for steering. Parent may have meant "ring and pinion" which would refer to the differential gear ratio.
Yes, you're right of course. Thank you.
I was wondering, because I seemed to connect the expression with steering as well :-) At least I have the excuse of not being a native speaker.
I had the same thought [0]! They cite their wheel torque, not their engine torque, which is what we're all used to seeing.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15719411
In electric cars, isn't it basically the same?
It can be, even though many electric vehicles apparently use a fixed-ratio gear as well. But it's still an apples-to-oranges comparison since traditional ICE-driven cars tend to publish engine torque, not wheel torque.
Of course, they weren't trying all that hard to alleviate any confusion, and it worked even on the fairly tech-savvy HN crowd.
Ed: improved both facts and wording.
Even if there is not a traditional transmission, there is still a gearbox behind the electric motor.
Tires only rotate at ~1000 RPM on the freeway where the electric motor in a Tesla might be at 10k rpm. That 10x reduction still needs to be factored in.
Honest question: did you just make up these numbers, or are they based in fact? I was expecting the motor to turn slower.
Not OP, but Tesla Model S has approximately 1:10 fixed gear reduction.
Motor RPM will go higher than 10000 RPM at really high speeds.
Right. And electric motors are more efficient at higher RPMs. At high RPM, the voltage drop due to back-EMF (i.e. actual work) is higher but your voltage drop due to coil resistance is about the same, so you lose proportionally less energy in the form of coil resistance at higher rpm.
> electric motors are more efficient at higher RPMs.
How big is the difference?
It must be pretty substantial to offset both friction losses and gearing efficiency.
Gearing and friction losses can be fairly small.
Consider that at ~0mph and ~0rpm, producing any kind of torque at all is done with ~0% efficiency, all just resistive losses as the back-EMF is effectively zero. (Note this is no different for an internal combustion engine, although the heat generated is in the clutch or similar such device...)
Friction losses don't change much as a proportion of power as you increase speed. For aerodynamic drag, however, your losses do proportionally increase with speed, so "windage" (i.e. drag from spinning parts of the motor) needs to be cleverly reduced by making the rotor aerodynamic if you're planning on operating at high rpm.
EDIT: for properly designed electric motors (i.e. thin wire windings, iron core optimized for low eddy current losses), coil resistance usually dominates even at high rpms.
For those of us in the US, and vaguely familiar with traditional hot rods, the Chevy big block engine generally came with ~500-700 lb-ft of torque, which in a lead sled, relatively speaking, such as a 60-70s era Camaro or Chevelle would throw your head back and shake your chest like a roller coaster as the car started to slightly drift sideways.
10,000nm in comparison is 7,375lb-ft, which sounds like Harry Potter land in comparison, if all of my conversions and memories serve me.
I'm kinda speechless, TBH.
Look at my sibling post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15720518
700lb-ft is apparently 950Nm. So assuming the same gearing as in the sibling post (very likely a false assumption -- I guess these cars had longer gears), you'd end up with 12.7kNm of torque at the wheels.
BTW, if such traditional hot rods had automatic transmissions (they did, didn't they?), the torque converter would have amplified the torque even beyond the numbers I just gave you.
My car has 1092nm of torque from about 1500rpm and it's mind-boggling... 10,000nm is hard to comprehend and surely more than enough to give the occupants some serious whiplash if not sat properly.
Wheels will lose traction, or the front of the car would lift, rather than whiplash.
4000-5000nm is the limit in Formula 1 tech. Just for perspective
may i ask what you do for a living
If you can afford one of these cars, you probably don't do anything for a living.
I work in cybersecurity. I'll have to set money aside for a couple years to make a considerable down payment, but I might be able to afford one of these.
I'd suggest the exact opposite - if you can afford one of these cars, you must be working very hard at be very good at whatever you do for a living.
I would reserve judgement on that top speed claim until we see it for real.
Acceleration is not all that matters. I'm going to hold until a hands-on driving test before I make such claims as "best sports car on the market" and "no Ferrari can compete".
Yes tho the Maclaren does comes closer as far as spec goes for about the same price (720s is £208,000 in the UK). The top speed would be the interesting part how long can it actually sustain it.
Can it corner?
GM could probably release an EV 'vett-like car that puts down similar numbers if they cared to invest the money to do so.
Building fast cars that are a little rougher in finish but can hold their own on the track compared to cars that cost a few times as much is kind of their thing. The teams that work on the Bolt are probably crossing their fingers for this.
No exotic maker will match it with internal combustion.
Mclaren, Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, BMW M division are all in the process of producing electric sports cars. I don't think Tesla is holding any technology that makes other makers with a lot more racing experience unable to match their performance.
> No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).
None of them will? Why? Has Tesla got some trade secret?
I doubt these high-end manufacturers will let this unanswered until 2020.
for most, the powerpoint is as good as a car in hand
this guy is just collecting money on Kickstarter. Nobody needs this car and nobody really wants to make it. Will they have to?
this is just the base model
I think there are less than 10 commercially available cars models that can do 0-60 mph within 2s.
Apparently, currently there are none: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_car...
There are zero. Roadster is the first and only.
There are still zero for now, one in planned production.
No cars under 2s and about 20-30 under 3s.
acceleration rates. acceleration speeds is like, kinda sort grammatically incorrect.
It's grammatically correct, but conceptually incorrect (sorry, it's always fun to correct a correction :)
They're both incorrect, I think. Acceleration rate would be the rate of change of the rate of change of speed, or what is known as 'jerk' in engineering. I guess that would be the time that it takes to go from 0 to the '0-60 in 1.8s' acceleration? The correct term is simply 'acceleration' on its own.
alls i'm saying is that if anyone wrote "acceleration speed" on reports in high school physics class they'd get points off. acceleration is a kind of rate.
Too bad it can’t maintain that performance for any extended period of time. Battery is known to overheat if you drive it too hard.
It uses 3 motors (2 in the back) and has a 200 kWh battery pack. The reason for such a large battery is so that they can draw more total current without overheating, theoretically twice as much as the Model S P100DL which only has two motors (1 in the back). Having more motors means you are spreading out the current/heat. The 600+ mile range is mostly a side effect of this engineering approach to performance.
Given that the Model S 85 kw battery is 1,200 lb, how on earth will this thing corner?
Like a ton of batteries.
0-60 in 2 seconds. Slalom time... 4 minutes at a top speed of 36mph.
If you look at Teslas, they have a grill in the front that sends air to a radiator that's shared by the battery cooling system and the cabin air conditioning.
For S and X and 3, it's not beefy enough to handle an extended period of time. Also, the engine has to radiate heat.
So, you're boldly predicting that Tesla, which understands basic physics well enough that their existing cars accelerate well and don't burst into flames because of heat issues, is going to be unable to do any better cooling the battery and motors of a future car?
Making snap engineering conclusions about technology that had tens of thousands hours R&D poured into them is a popular genre of fiction.
I just see how the thinking goes. "No way this issue that crossed my mind in the first 40 seconds I heard about the product was addressed by the bunch of hacks behind it".
So, you're boldly predicting that Tesla is going to overdesign their cooling system to meet the unrealistic demand of unlimited-duration maximum power draw (in a supercar!).
I'm not saying either of you are wrong. I'm saying either of you know equally little about the engineers' decisions, and are making equally unreasonable demands.
No, I'm not predicting that, boldly or not.
Could the make the whole rear a cooling system as you described, with radiators in aerodynamic flow.
Also guessing that a 300k P4-AWDD will be announced at some point.
I’m no Tesla defender, but how is anything “known” about a car that was first announced a couple of hours ago?
I think he's referring to the fact that Model S's are known to overheat and go into limp mode when pushed hard at the track.
Not necessarily applicable to this particular vehicle.
If anything, it’s going to be even more applicable. I don’t see much in the way of air intakes. No intakes——epic fail on the track.
It’s physics, there’s no way around it. You expend a ton of energy——battery heats up. Without massive radiators there’s nowhere for that heat to go.
No, it's incorrect, physics does not mandate that battery should heat up as you expend energy. Ideally all the energy would go into kinetic energy and be dissipated by friction losses due to air or contact between the road and the tires. The battery heats up only because the process of tranferring the chemical energy from the batteries to the car motion is imperfect, and there are internal losses do to the internal resistance of the battery.
I'm not saying that Tesla has invented a sufficiently efficient battery, but to vaguely claim "physics" makes it impossible is wrong.
It does. It will heat up. To quote a physics textbook: “Power transfer between a voltage source and an external load is at its most efficient when the resistance of the load matches the internal resistance of the voltage source.” IOW in the configuration where the power transfer is at its most efficient, battery has to dissipate as much thermal energy as motor(s) are consuming. Too much internal resistance and most of the thermal energy ends up in the battery. Too little, and your motors aren’t going to do their best. But in either case even with the load that’s not 100% matched, you do end up with a ton of heat dissipation in the battery when a heavy car like this is driven hard.
That sentence from the textbook is poorly worded, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_transfer_theorem...
Yes, power is lower when efficiency is greater all other things equal, but you work around that by not making all other things equal.
You get voted down by people who just want to believe stuff, physics be damned. Doesn't matter that the same exact thing happens to the existing S models which manage a more than decent 0-to-60 performance on paper (they're in the same league with the Lambos and the Ferraris), but because of those damned physics I don't think that any of them actually completed a Nurburgring lap (that's ~7 km driving the S model like a sports car).
Perhaps getting down downvoted by people who expect Tesla may have thought about this. I remember reading the overheating was due to the regenerative braking trying to push power back into the battery so it was getting hard charged and discharged constantly and you couldn't switch off the charging. The bigger battery may be so you can switch off the regenerative braking.
Really? Are you saying 7 mins of hard driving will render it literally unable to continue?
The S will go into reduced power mode after 7 minutes of track grade driving: https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-tesla-model-s-can-do-aroun...
It’s not a track car...what do people expect?
https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurbu.... Not “unable to continue” perhaps, but unable to deliver a sports car-like performance.
The Porsche Mission-E will handle continuous top-speed just fine without overheating, so I figure Tesla will come up with a competitive cooling solution until 2020 as well.
Porsche has hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D poured into the 919 hybrid Le Mans Prototype, which I imagine will translate to the Mission E. Tesla has no such experience.
yet.
I await Tesla's foray into serious racing with bated breath. I'm sure Porsche and Audi are terrified.
If they gave a shit about developing actual performance EVs, I'd expect them to be in Formula E, but they're not. BMW, Audi, Mercedes and Porsche are.
Perhaps they're focusing on other things? Motorsport has always been about advertising, maybe they don't see an advantage in that at this time.
Yeah, it could drive more people to want to purchase Tesla cars but since they have production bottlenecks it's not the best of times to do so.
Too bad almost no-one watches the E series, because they're boring af (and the whiny sounds are cringy). Porsche did the translation to Mission E because its parent company is called VW, i.e. a company that should have paid damages worth tens of billions of euros because its diesel engines have killed and worsened the health of tens of thousands of people all over Europe, but because VW is a German "national treasure" nothing of that really happened.
specs insane, but the car doesnt exist anyway, who cares, it's not something people would buy
Look at every other comment in this thread. There are real videos of it on YouTube.
Seriously? I'm 90% sure this will NOT reach Lambo times in Nordschleife. And as a sports car, it will 100% not be fun to drive, weight is everything in a quick small car for fun.
Ridiculous...
Close up video of Tesla Roadster launching from zero:
https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984
Hey folks. I was the one that took that video. let me know if you have any questions.
What is that sound that you can hear right when the car starts accelerating? Is it the tires slipping?
Look at the road, he had already done that jaunt a few times before this video was shot. The road is full of skid marks from the wheels slipping before being caught by the traction control.
This car is absolutely traction limited. It should be able to post even better times with racing slicks.
tires
What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?
European or African?
Is this relevant? Its not like the African swallow is migratory.
No need to be racist about it!
Not sure if you're trying to make a joke and it fell flat, or if you've never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail and are missing the reference.
It fell flat. Sometimes to make comedy you have to attempt new things and sometimes they miss wildly. I actually started the thread so I do know the reference.
I'm not much of a Python fan so this is the first time I had the opportunity to make the reference. Annoying it fell flat!
For people like me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2R3FvS4xr4
Do you not understand what 0 mph is or why do you use scummy clickbait titles?
Meaning of life?
42
That's the answer. What's the question ?
What's 5 x 7?
What do you get if you multiple six by nine?
42
Why did you sped up the video instead of posting the original? You can see it by the movement of people around the car at the moment of acceleration.
Probably not sped up. What you're seeing is a sudden acceleration of the camera's viewpoint when panning to the left in order to keep up with the 1.9s to get to 60mph.
Looks more like they jumped out of surprise rather than the movements being artificially sped up.
I didn't speed up the video. That is the original.
What can you see?
Would be good to get an answer on this from the author since he was so kind to show up.
@davidwhodge ?
That's some unreal level of acceleration. Never seen anything like it.
Something that really impressed me is how smoothly the Model S launches in the Wet, see here: https://youtu.be/iyXSJAICaBc?t=210 [Real Time @ 3m30s] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzLTW_l2q0 [Slow Motion]
Elon talked during some event how the latency / response time of the torque control in the Tesla drive-train is ridiculous compared to gasoline and for that reason even RWD models should handle well in the snow. To be fair, some people talk about the (at least older) RWD models being a bit crazy on Snow/Ice. I can only assume that the newer models are much better and the Roadster likely better again - plus it's actually AWD but anyway the point was more about the torque control :)
By comparison one of the kings of Launch Control is well known to be the Nissan GT-R. You can see in this wet launch that while it still does a great job, it definitely has some spin as it basically intentionally causes a loss of traction at the start, calculates the traction available based on the acceleration it does get to then adjust the power output and differential splits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTJGE0wzJpE
For other really fun scientific/computerised stability control, this video about the Koenigsegg Agera R is great: https://youtu.be/SywqgH7n-5g?t=34
It shows him literally reefing the wheel side to side at 1m15s while full throttle. Even my 2009 Evo X has surprisingly good stability management in the wet - and it is now probably nearly 2 decades old technology behind any of these other cars and only a 50k car not a 200k-1m car. Still crazy and computers are amazing.
I'd be pretty nervous running something RWD with massive torque and power on ice. I'm sure it's better to have a more predicateble delivery, but with ice 7 months per year I'm staying clear of high power RWD cars...
The electric advantage though is that you can infinitely (or well close enough) modulate that power delivery. And in fact I think they recently added a "slow and comfortable" acceleration option to the Model S (the opposite of Maximum Plaid :-)
The snow comments were also mostly in regards to the context of the Model 3 which is not that "high power" but it also has obviously quite a substantial amount of torque from a get-go compared to traditional gasoline torque curves.
Generally speaking though I would agree.. I love AWD, Breathe AWD.. and my Model 3 will be AWD :) .. and we don't get any snow!
Also 7 months of snow is probably very different to much less of it I imagine.
electric dragster 0-100 in 1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LQXB1DX-2Q
Wow, the shape change in the tires is crazy, didn't know that the effect is so big.
> 3000ftlbs torque off the line, equaling zero to 60 miles per hour in 1.0 second flat
Kind of looks like it's from a game with bad physics. Except it's not.
Yeah ok, that's pretty rapid.
200K is actually good value, seeing as gas supercars that are near it in terms of performance (except slower) often cost over $1M.
EDIT: Tesla probably should fix their homepage going to a what appears to be the live stream page. I'd have to imagine they are losing valuable pageviews and sales. Tesla.com should be redirecting to either the Semi or Roadster landing pages.
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/L9oN5
I dunno. check the value of previous model of tesla roadsters and if their owners want to keep them
Yes, we should totally judge the next gen Roadster based on the first gen one. Ignore the advancements in battery tech and other lessons Tesla has learned in the nearly 10 years since the first Roadster.
They haven’t learned how to produce cars, that’s sure. And judging by the past, your car will become outdated and obsolete in 5 years.
Does this mean that Tesla is pivoting from their attempt to produce a medium-priced car in quantity and going back to hand-building high-end cars?
Tesla is good at high-end, low volume products. But the Model 3 production fiasco shows they don't know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota City do. This is in a way a step backwards. Tesla is going back to targeting the 1%.
There are lots of little supercar companies. It's not that hard to build an electric supercar in tiny volume. I know some people who've done it. It's fun, and there are idiots with too much money who'll buy the thing. But it's a waste of engineering talent which should be getting the volume product out the door.
Pretty mich every car company makes a high end sports car. This isn’t a pivot, this is establishing Tesla as a car company with a range of cars rather than just 1 or 2 that are very similar. Product diversification is a good thing for companies that make physical products. The manufacturing process and higher margins on this will likely fund new developments that will trickle down to the less expensive models.
Also I think the sports car helps solve problems. You can spend a little more on a solution, then figure out how to do it cheaper on the next generation family sedans. Even decide if that’s just the wrong approach due to maintenance headaches.
> Does this mean that Tesla is pivoting from their attempt to produce a medium-priced car in quantity and going back to hand-building high-end cars?
It's a halo car...
Car companies build halo car to get consumers attention to their brand and to sell other models.
Nissan didn't have to build the GT-R R35 but it did because it's a halo car.
Another example is Toyota LFA.
But why does Tesla need a halo car? They already have the consumers’ attention. Lots of people would buy Teslas today but can’t because Tesla is unable to mass produce the Model 3.
Musk did mention in his presentation that the motivation for making this car was as "a complete smack down to gas powered cars" and it may be no more than that, though the halo effect doesn't hurt and neither does the R&D effort.
To get featured the list of fastest cars in magazines etc., to go to car shows, to get people into a show room, to get featured on TopGear/The Grand Tour, for kids to talk about at school and so on. All of which boost Tesla's brand (outside the tech echo-chamber, where it is already strong).
> to get featured on TopGear/The Grand Tour
I doubt they'd allow that judging by what happened the last time they were featured.
Yes, on the UK one. However, there are many versions around the world. Also, the presenters involved have all left, and are now on the Grand Tour. My point was about halo cars in general, not Telsa's experience in general.
The team at the Grand Tour are going to have to get used electric cars, since I expect all the fastest cars will be electric from this point. If they can't get a loaner car, they'll borrow or buy one, they've done that before.
Model x is enough for all of that.
I don't think kids are going to be lusting after an SUV the way we used to lust after the Lamborghini Countach. This, on the other hand, is lust-worthy.
Why not? It's their Formula One of development. Lots of competitors are entering the area. This helps remind everyone who the best is.
Because they already have enough on their plate and are worse off for the distraction?
The project / delivery timeline seems to stage this rather clearly as "next".
Product design / R&D is also different resource pool to manufacturing (well, at least in my mind it is). Manufacturing issues may have forced redesigns but they'll need to keep working on the next thing; competition certainly won't stand still.
Maybe because the target is investors, rather than consumers.
I imagine some of the technology in "halo" cars trickles down to mass-produced cars too?
They might want to learn how to mass produce cars first, though...
1,000 reservations @ $250k means they can pay for 5% of their new gigafactory, and that's just the founder's run. If that means they can scale better, I'm all for it. And I say that as someone who won't be able to afford a car like this for a looong time, if ever.
1,000 reservations @ $250k means they can pay for 5% of their new gigafactory, and that's just the founder's run.
That only works if the Tesla don't bother to deliver the 1,000 'Founder' Roadsters, or Tesla have a way of making them for free.
It works because they're using a stack & roll approach to financing the corporate build-out.
In two years they'll have a new thing to take deposits on. Stack the pre-orders, roll to the next announcement, deliver the last thing, then do it all over again. They're floating a lot of cheap financing this way.
In the meantime, the approach of announcements & pre-orders keeps their stock charged, which they can also abuse for financing if necessary.
It's precarious and dangerous (inevitably stock market decline & recession), and it works extremely well while it works.
Of course, but what I mean to say it's a not-insignificant amount of short term (2y?) cash.
More generally, my point was that producing a high-end vehicle with (most likely) much better margins for the company than, say, the Model X, would subsidize advancements in their more accessible options.
I would have to guess that they didn't decide to make a Roadster in the last month or two.
I think that that is the person's point. This is several years of development which amounts to wasted resources in light of the manufacturing setbacks of their truly disruptive product.
While I actually agree with Animats, I do feel the need to point out that I do not agree that the Model 3 is the "truly disruptive product" vs. this newly announced Roadster... this car has a 620 mile range... that is "truly disruptive"; the Model 3 only has at its best a 334 mile range: this is finally an electric car that can rival the long-range convenience of a gasoline vehicle (as no matter what the range, filling up your take with gas is essentially instantaneous vs. trying to charge a battery).
> This is several years of development which amounts to wasted resources in light of the manufacturing setbacks of their truly disruptive product.
Different teams. Model 3 design & engineering was completed in July.
The folks working on the Roadster design would've otherwise been idle (or mostly idle except for maybe any refinements that might've been necessary due to production process limitations/issues) during Model 3 production ramp.
I'd place good money on them having already produced the first draft of this design as part of the whole lineup remodel that did away with the Model S's nose-cone prior to the Model X launch. i.e figuring out a "Tesla" design language that worked across the S, X, 3, and R (and perhaps the Semi, to some degree)
These seem like orthogonal competencies though. Technologies to sell at volume don't match technologies for small-scale design and engineering.
Next you'll be telling me Apple didn't decide on the final hardware design of the iPhone X in August. Pshaw!
Toyota owns Lexus, Ford had Jaguar and Land Rover, Hyundai owns Genesis, Volkswagon has Bentley, Fiat owns Ferrari. Just like other car manufacturers, Tesla does it all.
edit: Ford didn't start Jaguar.
Tesla doesn't run a volume production line. All the major players have production lines that make about one car a minute. Tesla isn't able to play in the big leagues until they can do that.
Fair enough, but how will they ever achieve that without first trying to compete in this outrageously competitive industry?
By solving their biggest problems first, rather than create new distractions? Kinda the same thing any company would do.
Ford didn't start Jaguar or Land Rover; it bought them in 1990 and 2000 respectively. And sold both to Tata Motors in 2008.
> Tesla does it all.
Except make enough Model 3's, they don't do that.
I don't think (although it's complicated), Fiat still owns Ferrari?
I think not. They still have the same (biggest) ownership, but they are not the same company. FCA still owns Lamborghini, though.
As mentioned above, Lambo is VW, but FCA retains Alfa and Maserati.
Oops, I meant Maserati.
Lamborghini is Audi (VW Group).
Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata motors during the recession. They also sold Aston Martin and Volvo.
> edit: Ford didn't start Jaguar.
I don't even know what this even mean. Nor do I understand what the original comment of yours mean. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't seem like you are well verse with cars or automakers at all...
> But the Model 3 production fiasco shows they don't know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota City do.
What fiasco? It was obvious from the start that their schedule was wildly optimistic. But that's probably just Elons way of pushing workers as hard as possible.
It's way too early to call the Model 3 a success or failure. Of course it takes a few months to ramp up and stabilize production. It's their first truly mass produced car, and there's a lot of differences from their previous model. Not to mention that they're using a brand new battery.
Let's wait a year to call the Model 3.
If it's that obvious, how come Tesla didn't know that? Contending that Tesla is incapable of comprehending basic, obvious facts isn't a great way to promote confidence in the company.
We're a long way from fiasco territory, sure, but it's also pretty clear Tesla are still quite a way off from getting their production process under control.
Given how many people are involved, I‘m pretty sure they have considered a lot of the problems they have now, beforehand. I mean, do you think they don’t have a time range of best case through worst case? Elon just constantly tells us the best case, or almost best case version.
The biggest criticism from industry analyst is that they don't consider all the problems before hand, and they were proven right.
Your explanation is laughable when applying it to other companies.
"Oh sorry, your iPhone X is delayed till next year. We just gave you the best case timeline. You knew that right?"
There is a narrative in the business world that TSLA doesn't know what its doing. They are taking a three month delay to its first mass market car as an opportunity to push that. Anyone who has done anything of significance knows that this would be considered wildly successful if they can keep to just a three month delay.
If it's that obvious, how come Tesla didn't know that? Contending that Tesla is incapable of comprehending basic, obvious facts isn't a great way to promote confidence in the company.
No it’s not a pivot. They’ve planned a new roadster for a while.
They've been saying they would make a second roadster for years. This isn't like some surprise change of plans.
Give Tesla a few months before you decide that the Model 3 release is a fiasco.
It makes no sense to go back and it's financially almost impossible. If Tesla gets into trouble, it's better to sell the company or parts of the company for some carmaker who can mass produce.
That's what it looks like. They have utterly failed to make model 3s.
I would really love to know how they are getting such a large battery capacity in a vehicle of this size.
Is this a generational leap in energy density? What kind of materials are being used here?
My brother pointed out that other Tesla cars (even the semi they announced) have a "front trunk". This one's hood is seamless. Our theory is that under the entire front hood is batteries.
Makes sense to help weigh down the front too (so as not to go airborne while doing 0-60 in 1.9s).
I wonder what happens when one of these cars crashes head-on into something. The front of a car is supposed to act as a crumple zone. Batteries aren't very good at crumpling.
Neither are internal combustion engines. What crumples are structural supports, not all the components within. And if they go that route I guess they'll go with slightly different battery chemistry as well to avoid a fire. They might have to do so anyway to sustain power output.
Yeah, and Tesla has talked about this extensively in the past. It would be pretty surprising if they switch to using this area for battery, but it is possible.
Most super cars have very little safety in mind. At $200k, a small percentage of people will be driving one. It's all about specs at this point, throw everything else out other than meeting the road legal requirements.
I was just about to write my own comment about this: the battery capacity is the real eye-opener in this announcement, I think. The new roadster looks like a car which is rather smaller than the Model 3, certainly not larger. And as a sporty car it wouldn't be heavier either.
So how in all worlds do they fit a 200kWh battery in there?
This can only mean, it has more than twice the capacity per weight and volume than the current Tesla battery tech. Very intriguing. Of course, it could be a very obvious case of history repeating itself. The original Tesla roadster pioneered the current Tesla battery tech, what would be more appropriate (and reasonable) than to launch the next generation battery tech with the next gen roadster? The high price and corresponding smaller sales numbers allows for an easy introduction of experimental technology.
You're discounting the fact that this will be released in 2020. We've had a 4x increase in density between 2010-2016.
Also, Model 3 benefits from the new smaller gigafactory-made battery packages (at least a 35% increase in density over older Model S battery packs).
When you take all of this into account, it's very likely that they could fit an older Model S-size battery pack (which is more from 2015-2016 era) in a Roadster 2 with 2x the density.
Oh, I don't doubt, that Tesla can do it :). I just think it is interesting that the specs to the roadster point to a clear and significant increase in battery density. The Model S went from 80 to 100 kWh in 5 years, which is a nice increase but much smaller what they seem to plan with the roadster. And it would be exciting for electrical cars in general, because with that increase a more realistic 100 kWh battery changes from being something you can barely fit into a rather large Model S to something which should fit easily in much smaller cars designed for electric propulsion.
Seeing how Tesla struggles with new car production I would love to see them take a role like Samsung; they can still make popular flagship cars, but they can also become a primary battery supplier to other automakers, just like Samsung has extremely popular flagship smartphones, but also is a primary supplier of parts like OLED screens. I think selling their battery tech could help them become and stay profitable while smoothing over the wrinkles they have in car production.
This could also free up cash flow to give them more resources to work on self driving tech. Honestly, the idea of an electric Honda or Subaru with a "Powered by Tesla" logo could seems really exciting.
Unfortunately, Tesla does not build their own batteries.
Tesla claims that the Model 3 can only fit ~80 Kwh with the current "improved" technology. This is more than double that in an even smaller vehicle!
Double-thick battery? The current battery is one level deep and is pretty thin.
This car is smaller than a Model 3, though, and the 3 can only fit <80kwh.
I read elsewhere it has 6800 18650 li ion cells. I haven't fact-checked that yet, mind you.
This explains their battery supplier "problems". Those ebay sellers want you to buy a flashlight with each one of those batteries. It all makes sense now. /s
This car isn't surprising considering the existing Model S performance in any way except that range. WTF?? 650 miles in a car that size is totally game changing. Will next gen of Model 3 and Model S also have 3X their current range?
Probably not. Normal practical cars need space to put stuff that you want to bring with you. This car doesn't appear to have much of that kind of space, probably in lieu of batteries.
Don't bet on it. Battery density will keep increasing and price will keep decreasing.
It might take 20 years, but it'll happen.
Well ya, but he specifically asked about the next gen Model 3.
Genuinely asking here, because I know very little about batteries;
What happens when a gigantic battery like that starts failing and needs to be replaced? Can they be recycled or maybe refurbished?
This video shows how a battery can be recycled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpSrHZnCi-A
I'm thinking what this means to gas car makers.
Wave 1: "It's all about legacy and prestige, not speed/acceleration".
Wave 2: "The track handling isn't all that good, how can drivers take that corner at full power without losing traction".
Wave 3: "Alright, we will go electric too".
Gas will always have sound. The growl of an Aston Martin V12 on startup, or a Lexus LFA screaming through a tunnel, or the flat-plane V8 burble from a Mustang GT350. EM cars only have a dull whine the faster they go. Motorheads are secretly all musicians who happen to love driving.
The best combination is ultimately both though, hybrid systems are already used quite frequently in everything from LMP1 WEC racers to modern hypercars.
The thing is that sound is associated with speed because a bigger/stronger engine is usually louder.
Electrics will break that association. Or it will create a new expectation about what a fast car sounds like. Because from now on, they will always be faster than ICE vehicles.
I think there will be a niche of people buying ICE cars for their loud sound, just as there are people who buy the loudest possible motorcycles even though they're not very fast. But I think this will be a niche, and they will probably be considered obnoxious people.
I think we'll also see more sound engineering in EVs. They'll perhaps get a more satisfying sound, but will still be quiet.
I find the subtle whine of an electric motor accelerating me into my seat pretty dang satisfying, to be honest.
The sound is satisfying for reasons that are entirely separate with its association.
Do you have any sources for that? Personally, I don't find sports car sounds satisfying at all, so I guess those reasons don't apply to everybody.
It's kinda why someone would buy a Harley Davidson...they have a distinctive sound associated with power.
Yes, but this might just be a cultural phenomenon, not a universal quality of the sound itself.
Car makers employ sound engineers for that very purpose ;)
Although I seem to recall that many cars bought for sound already play synthesized motor noise through the speakers, simply because if the shift to smaller, better performing engines means that they don't have the same sound anymore anyway.
Steam engines have a distinctive sound too, one which I quite enjoy when one goes past, despite being too young to have any actual nostalgia. People will get over the sound thing, and ICE cars will be a historical curiosity/enthusiast hobby.
I am sure you can engineer an electric motor to sound very enticing. Even without resorting to speakers. As a kid, wouldn’t you have wanted your family station wagon to sound a little more Star Wars?
Sound is I think the biggest nuisance of these cars. If Tesla manages to quiet down cars in big cities, this would be a huge improvement. Next step doing the same for scooters and motorbikes.
Put speakers in there. Many nonelectric sports cars already use them to "enhance" the sound.
Electric cars will fake it. For example, the electric BMW i8 has fake engine sounds and this guy loves it: https://youtu.be/EoojNzIL2cQ?t=241
Porsche has already pulled out of WEC (Le Mans, Rolex 24 Hours) in favour of Formula E and is planning to release a electric vehicle by 2019. My bet is that they're going to get an electric performance vehicle on the road way before Tesla.
Moreover, what does this mean to Tesla? Competitors with decades of manufacturing experience cranking out reliable, fast electric vehicles with likely better build quality might pose an interesting problem.
I dont think it will before Tesla. The Porsche Mission E which is sceduled for 2019, is slower than a Tesla Model S P100D.
You may very well be right. The Mission E is closer to a Panamera than a 911.
Regardless, very interesting to watch the competition heat up.
Volvo have already announced their lineup will all be electric by 2022.
A few places have reported this, but it's slightly misleading as what they've actually said is they'll stop making "gas only" cars by that date. So, a mix of hybrid or all electric.
That might have been what you meant, but just pointing out that it's not necessarily "all electric".
That is what I meant but it's good to have clarification for people who might have misunderstood. Cheers.
Wave 3 requires lighter, denser, cheaper batteries that we haven't achieved yet.
If this thing has torque vectoring and does a 9 second 1/4 mile, it's going to drop at wave 2.
But wave 3 is already here - a lot of smaller companies are talking about making their own electric vehicles. If batteries become commodities, it's going to reduce the R&D cost of making a road legal car by an order of magnitude. We're just waiting on the batteries.
I wonder if GM (or Tesla) will sell crate batteries the way they sell crate engines? Everyone will be drooling over the next big battery they release the way motor heads drool over crate engines. They'll need a reasonably standard size/configuration to be successful, and they could sell the motor, power management and PCM to go with it.
GM doesn't make batteries, the Bolt is almost a LG car.
GM make batteries in much the same sense that Tesla do - the cells are bought in from LG, but the battery engineering, testing and integration work is done in-house. (Maybe even more so than Tesla's given their explanation for the Model 3 delay.) I believe the motor is simply bought in from LG though.
They could, but they're functionally middlemen for Panasonic, LG, and Samsung (which are the 3 big EV battery manufacturers).
I'm tangentially involved with hot rodders, and a lot of them have spent some time thinking about adding some amount of electrification to their vehicles. Hot rods usually have thermal management problems for their engines and they run the risk of overheating when they're crusing around car shows / parades. Some folks think a small electric motor and battery would be a good way for them to drive short distances slowly and save the engine for higher torque demands.
High-end battery packs will not be a commodity for at least the next few years. The continuing (decade-long+) trend of improving Li-ion battery cells and Tesla's demonstration that you can significantly improve pack performance by improving the packaging, clearly indicates that we aren't yet near the point where battery packs are a mature discipline.
We'll probably get there at some point, once diminishing returns starts setting in. And lots of industries that aren't interested in developing battery packs (e.g. general aviation, construction, etc.), would have a sea change if high-performance battery packs were easily available. So I think the incentive to start a company in the space is good.
But for the next few years, I think battery pack design will still advance very rapidly and hence be left to the industries that are massively capital intensive and where the best battery packs are an obvious competitive advantage.
It's a super exciting development, and I can't wait to see what the future brings in this regard.
They clearly learned the power of the preorder with the Model 3! This is a great way to raise funding without going back to the equity markets.
Say they can fill up all the founder series slots along with 5,000 regular slots, that’s $500,000,000. Smart :)
The S and the original Roadster had highly publicized pre-orders too... nothing new for them. ;)
Stumble on this video from last night where a few lucky invitees could feel the experience of riding in the new Roadster. https://youtu.be/C6nN-GlghAc
Love it. Perfect showmanship to hype up the truck then announce this.
Hope they stay solvent long enough to ship it.
Taking reservations for 1000 founder series cars at $250k each up front means they're pre-selling $250,000,000 worth of product at least 2 years out. Kind of smart.
I thought the same. These consumer "loans" along the way are a brilliant marketing tactics. Anyone know if this is refundable?
With the M3 all deposits were refundable.
I wonder what the handling will be like. Teslas on the track have had over heating issues, and cornering performance has been just average at best.
Not every exotic car owner (Ferrari, Lambo, Mclaren) brings their car to the track, but I feel like a good % do. When you own a 200k car, you don't drive it to the grocery store because it attracts too much attention, and you worry something bad will happen to it.
Edit: For more clarification on the grocery getter comment: As an owner of an older exotic car, I've seen that most do not drive their exotics that much. 1-5k miles max/year. The cheapest insurance policies won't let you drive it to any public parking lots. And policies from the normal companies will cost $3-8k in large metropolitan areas for 40-50 year olds. So where do you go? You make excuses to drive it. Cruise to a friends house, drive in the mountains, or to the track if you have time. Daily errands are for your other car. Why risk it. Elon's a pretty good showman, and he makes me feel like I could do anything with this car! But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @ 130-150k.
> But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @ 130-150k.
The good/bad thing about electric cars is that they're sort of like computers right now (they're getting twice as good every 1-2 years), so I expect they'll depreciate more along the lines of used smartphones than (the existing market in) used cars.
Something like this I bet the value evaporates just like the manufacture warranty on the battery.
Bold prediction: if they manage to produce a battery capable of 620 mile range promised, it will essentially be game over for ICE cars. My bet is that next generation of Model S and X will easily be in the 400-500 mile rsnge.
When the battery can be refilled in minutes, it will be game over. Until then...
As a Tesla Model S owner, you really don't need to fill your car in minutes. It's a totally different (but not bad) mindset.
Every morning my car is full, because I plug it in in my garage. So if I don't go more than 260 miles that day, it's plugged in the next night. It doesn't matter that it takes a few hours. My gas car was just sitting in the garage each night anyway doing nothing. How many hours does your car sit idle per day? Probably way more than enough to charge it for your daily driving.
For road trips, there are super chargers.
I was a bit worried, after hearing all the fuss about range anxiety and all that. Overall, charging has just been such a non issue.
I've never had a private garage, much less a locked one I could rewire. If Tesla wants to go mainstream they need to handle apartment parking.
Here in Norway it's common for apartment buildings that have parking spots to have electric chargers outside and that seems to be working fine.
Your population density is minimal, though.
Not relevant. In fact, electric infrastructure is cheaper to deploy at high density than low.
More like they need to handle street parking. I live in the bay area, live in an in-law unit, and can only use street parking. Even then, this house would need some serious rewiring to be able to charge that car in any kind of reasonable amount of time. The woes of 1930's homes.
My apartment offers EV charging parking spaces, though they cost a bit more than the others. I don't think this is a terribly new or radical concept.
There is plenty of incentive for landlords to install charging points in apartment parking. Landlords who do that can lay claim to being "environment friendly" and add a $100 extra to rent, which people will pay because, well, who wouldn't want to be environment friendly?
Honestly, electric cars are sitting in a cultural spot from where they can't lose. You can make all the arguments in the world that electric cars have the same or worse carbon footprint as gas cars, but the public at large is convinced that "gas = bad", "electric = solar = good".
One of my neighbors runs an extension cord across the sidewalk to his plug-in Prius. Not sure if he has a surveillance cam trained on it or not.
A few neighbors have had their outdoor chargers stolen. A visible camera is a good deterrent.
My brother is part of a company building appartement blocks; currently all the new parkings have sockets to charge electric cars.
After some time of thinking and also talking to some Tesla owners, I decided to buy a Model S.
Sadly I have to say that for me the range and charging is, in fact, an issue for me. The range is just a little too short to get to my holiday apartment so I have to drive to a supercharger which is not directly on my way. All this makes my travel about 1.5h longer than before. I for one would be very happy with a 200KWh battery in my Model S.
Yes, for a daily driver you don't need to recharge in minutes... But if you go on a trip you do. Super chargers are great, but not everyone wants to take along break every few hours of driving.
No. I disagree. When you have 600 miles of range, you're going to charge your car at home 99%+ of the time.
Even when you travel that should be enough for a full day driving, which means you will charge it at a hotel or whatever.
Only in rare occasions will the 30 minute fast-charging "inconvenience" you.
Once most EVs will have 100+ kWh batteries, the "slow charging" argument will die off. This is why I hope the 100 kWh battery becomes standard for 2021+ EVs, which should be cheaper than current 60 kWh batteries by that point.
Although I wouldn't discount most carmakers' laziness and greed for profits to keep the batteries a smaller size for as long as possible, unless Model 3 is refreshed with 100, 120, and 150 kWh battery options by 2021, which will force them to make the change, too.
That's 8-10 hours of driving at the speed limit in most countries. You need to be taking breaks of more than a few minutes if you're driving that kind of stretch.
With a range of over 600 miles why would you need it to be filled up in minutes?
Also I'd really want to be able to buy one for less than $200K. Cost is still the real problem.
It's cost at that point. For a 25mpg car you can buy 200k miles for 8000 gallons, which is much cheaper than whatever the battery cost will be.
0-60 mph in 1.9 sec
This might sound really stupid. But isn't performing such acceleration on a daily basis close to the limit of harming one's health? I mean micro concussions for example.
Really curious because that acceleration is amazing!
You'd probably go through tires before you'd hurt yourself.
It's less than 2G. Nothing for a couple of seconds.
>But isn't performing such acceleration on a daily basis close to the limit of harming one's health?
Yes, and also the health of nearby drivers, bystanders and inanimate objects.
That's still only 1.5g. That's a lot for a straight-line acceleration, but it's not that crazy for a turning acceleration.
Fighter pilots and race car drivers pull much greater gs all the time. So do rollercoaster passengers, though.
Yes, that's a real problem. I took my Model S P85D to the track (fun, but felt really heavy in corners) and had a concussion for 3 weeks afterwards. And that was just Insane mode, not even Ludicrous.
The Roadster should come with a health advisory
F1 cars accelerate faster than the Roadster's advertised numbers and the drivers don't wander around constantly concussed.
I am curious how you managed to get a concussion in a heavy sedan that can only maintain 0.87g of lateral grip. Were you in a collision?
> had a concussion for 3 weeks afterwards
Should this be "a concussion with symptoms which lasted 3 weeks afterwards"? I thought a concussion was the traumatic injury itself.
Either way I hope you are ok!
Similar acceleration figures to a litre sportsbike (though the new Roadster takes it to a faster level again, but still in the same ballpark).
The acceleration is mind-bendingly fast at first, but after a while, you get used to it and it just feels kind of normal. I can't imagine the new Tesla being any different.
Not to play down the achievement at all, those stats are amazing! But highly doubt there's a health risk associated with some mild longitudinal G forces, assuming you're in otherwise good health.
We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5 second range....that is insane acceleration.
The production Dodge Demon can do 0-60 in 2.1-2.3s. Good, yes, but not unheard of.
There has got to be an astroturfing campaign going on here, or the HN crowd is a lot more naive than I thought. Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)? What matters more than anything to Tesla is production at scale, but they are busy promising ever more fantastic new products that will distract even more from hitting core goals. Every announcement from Tesla seems more like flimflam at this point, hardly better than an ICO (with preordering and everything).
That's not even getting into Elon Musk's ever expanding personal commitments with Tesla, SpaceX, Boring company, Solar City and what have you, each making bold new announcements every other week, like saving Puerto Rico (and Australia too, while we're at it).
Tesla seem to be doing ok in Puerto Rico: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-puert...
Australia work is 80% complete: http://reneweconomy.com.au/musk-says-tesla-big-battery-now-8...
There are definitely issues with the Model 3 - but I'd imagine that the production line for the Semi will ramp up significantly after the Model 3 is working, and will involve an entirely separate team.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/11/teslas-hell-threatens-its...
Elon Musk said it himself with the Model 3:
> Assume the worst [0]
So sure we should be skeptical about the actual deadlines. But they're trying to compete against BMW & Mercedes (plus numerous other brands, but it seems like those two are their main competition). It's not like those are terrible companies, they've produced cars and engineering discipline of the highest quality for nearly a century.
I'd be more worried if there's some major flaw in the car, like if it's got the reliability of an 80s Jaguar (of which the stories about breakdowns in the gizmodo article are the biggest concern). The issues coming out about panel misalignment are bad (but I noted that my VW Golf I'm just buying wasn't perfect either), but not end of the world.
Still though my inner child doesn't care, it still gets very excited when car manufacturers show unrealistic made up cars [1]. But it seems like the Roadster might actually happen and it's nice to see the Roadster getting some love after being the car that started it all.
[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/916407361899708416
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-07/lamborghi...
Exactly. I've working in a few places that when product slips management panic and throw more bodies at it. Then the team swells with sales people, admin assistants, shop floor dudes... and none of them have a clue what is going on or what to do to help. All while management is shouting and the project is slipping more.
Better to let the team crack on and fix all the issues. Pay them well.
> Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)?
It's almost like.....there's nothing to say about Model 3 right now, where the bulk of their effort is going, because it's just a matter of steadily toiling away ramping up production, just like they said all along. It's almost like....a proportionately tiny amount of their engineering resources have been working on these other projects for some time, and they're just announcing them because.....they're ready to be shown off, and are unrelated to the Model 3 progress.
It's almost like....you're determined to cast this in a negative light, like so many others.
They're not just announcing the Tesla Roadster here, they're opening up pre-orders for it too, with a substantial up-front deposit of either the entire price of the car or a fifth of it depending on how early in the queue you want to be. While they're having major problems delivering on their big current product they took in a fairly substantial amount of money in reservation fees for.
Hitting production targets isn't enough to keep wall street happy with Tesla though, to keep raising money and servicing the debt that they have, he needs to keep creating value inflection points to stoke the hype and keep the money coming in.
I agree that the main concern should be delivering cars but production delays are solvable while he is still raising money. As soon as he takes his foot off the pedal then their ability to raise money will be much harder than it is while he is announcing new stuff and increasing their risk of going under.
Worst case scenario with his current strategy: they run out of money and an acquirer buys them for the cost of their debt and gets a company with a fully fleshed out product roadmap and some solvable production issues (and no need to solve those issues quickly).
Drop the new product roadmap and focus on production: the going under acquisition is less attractive as they would be acquiring a company with a limited product roadmap and a load of production issues.
He is showing that the future is going to be so amazing that it is worth pouring money into Tesla.
>> Worst case scenario with his current strategy: they run out of money and an acquirer buys them for the cost of their debt and gets a company ...
Yes. And the acquiring company could be Apple, which has cash and past form in buying a company for its charismatic CEO.
Years from now, I would not be surprised to find out that a handshake deal occurred last Summer, just before Apple apparently stopped trying to make a car.
I like what Tesla & co. are doing, I think Musk is very good at hyping things up and mostly pointing us in a good direction development wise, but I'm not a fanboy. Especially considering what I've read about Musk's personal life and his attitude to employees.
Even so, if Uber can have several billion dollars pumped into it, surely Tesla is more deserving of investments on the same scale.
Elon Musk has a decade of track record. Model 3 will eventually be delivered. My point of contention with TSLA is that the stock price does not match the up-side, but sooner or later Tesla always delivered. They will learn and deliver, I have seen reviews of Model 3, the average delivered vehicle will cost around 50K no doubt, but its worth every penny of it. Model 3 is not every man's car, but again a used Model 3 can be.
I am really impressed by Elon, even if fails spectacularly he has set things in motion his impact will be there in the fields he touched. In my opinion, he is better than Steve Jobs both in vision and execution.
I would say vision is comparable to Jobs, but execution— not yet. The problem is a lack of focus and a lot of distraction with big public announcements before actually figuring out how to ship. Jobs (and Cook’s) advantage over Musk in the Tesla context is that they considered the supply chain as vital as the flash and sparkle. Supply chain isn’t sexy but it’s essential. Tesla’s supply chain is fragile to say the least and should be focused upon. Musk’s execution isn’t there yet. Jobs created/launched an iPad and it shipped millions. Waiting times for an iPhone rarely have exceeded a few weeks because their supply chain is solid. But getting a replacement fender for a Model S? Good luck with that.
If I were a Tesla investor, the only thing I would care about is supply chain efficiency. We know Tesla can innovate and titilate — but can they ship?
My advice to Musk would be: announce things after you can ship them reliably and at scale. Less sparkle more shipping. Prove you can ship the 3, then I might be confident you can ship a truck.
I really like Musk and Tesla, but there is a hell of a lot more involved with changing the world than creating essentially limited edition concept cars — you actually have to ship. Based on the 3, it’s clear that there are some execution issues that still need solving.
> vision is comparable to Jobs, but execution — not yet
Dunno, Jobs failed at execution more than once. Look at the Lisa for example. The Roadster could be the NeXT cube of the EV world?
It's the software equivalent of adding new exciting features rather than doing boring work on bug fixing and stability.
Elon Musk is an engineer.
If his production line isn't as efficient as it should be it will get fixed 'scientifically'. I'd agree with you if his background was different.
>Elon Musk is an engineer. If his production line isn't as efficient as it should be it will get fixed 'scientifically'. I'd agree with you if his background was different.
I forgot that Elon Musk is single handedly changing the way assembly line engineering is done...
How about a little respect to the thousands of capable engineers working for every other car company-- building stuff, innovating and making money.
Also, what is with calling people who aren't engineers "engineers"?
Putting words in my mouth.
My point is that he has enough engineering know-how to let engineers do their jobs and prioritise methodical fixes, not that he will single-handedly do the work.
The supercharger network is expanded to Ireland too. They move, even if they hit some bumps along the way.
I couldn't agree more, the number of anti-Tesla comments here are staggering.
You could literally copy-paste comments from the Roaster v1, Model S, and Model X launches and relate them to the Model 3. All of those were a success, and had initial production ramp issues.
Guess what, they all ramped. I can't tell you how disappointing it is to see the HN crowd fall for the SeekingAlpha narrative.
I would suggest the opposite; This type of cynicism over Tesla and Musk's other companies seems ever-increasingly popular and widespread, despite relatively few failures and setbacks - which are outweighed by the numerous earlier successes showing both Tesla's and Musk's ability to deliver on far more difficult challenges.
I guess that is the genius of Elon Musk.
He has already failed once, was bankrupt and almost broke. And struggled to make rents and has climbed out of it.
Failure doesn't mean much for people like this, they win a lot of things along the way even if they fail.
> Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla is announcing, not one, but two new products, while they are failing to deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production ramp-up)?
I dunno man, every time before I've said "Tesla/SpaceX can't possibly do that", they've succeeded in doing it (albeit usually a year or so behind schedule) so I've given up trying to tell them what they can't do.
Those acceleration figures are meaningless. The Chiron isn't the best car on a circuit for example. I would be interested to see this car compete against say a gt3 on a track like Nürburgring :)
Circuit performance is meaningless. I'd like to see the gt3 accelerate to 100km/h under 2" for example :)
I mean what's interesting is handling, behavior in curves, power consistency, steering accuracy. Weight could be a drawback. Acceleration isn't the only metrics. Those are some reasons Porsche is considered to be making good cars.
Drag racing is meaningless? I totally get that you might not personally like it, but meaningless?
Rolling acceleration and track handling are more important than Drag racing. Bit fed up of 0-60 times being such an important feature. 50-70 more important, handling a bit more important again. And of course for most people build quality, running costs and environmental credentials.
The car also has record-setting 0-100mph times. And I'd argue for most uses, 0-45mph is more important, and all electric cars pretty much do awesome there.
> and all electric cars pretty much do awesome there
The Chevy Bolt with its 6.5 sec 0-60 begs to differ.
A friend of mine who owns a Leaf and a BMW 3-series was impressed that the Leaf was amazingly quick from a dead start... up to low speeds. The Bolt is faster than a Leaf, so there's your awesome, at least from my BMW-loving friend.
Environmental credentials are important for supercar buyers?
"Why choose when you can have both?"
The specs are astonishing, and I believe they can deliver. The original Roadster is the iconic car that made electric vehicles cool.
Would be nice if they could get production of the Model 3 properly ramped up so us peasants who've been drooling over performance electric cars since before we had our driver's licenses can actually get our hands on them...
0-60 in 1.9 seconds is ABSURD
To be precise, 1.44 g.
For comparison, a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket -- without payload -- at takeoff mass has 1.19 g of thrust.
I used to navigate/copilot a 480ci methanol powered jet sprint boat, Group-A class. It would pull just over a G accelerating, and did the 0-100kph sprint in 1.9 seconds. That boat could also do 100kph-to stop-to 180 degree turn - to 100kph the opposite direction in about three seconds. (This is something unique to jetsprint boats, they can pirouette like nothing I've ever experienced). That pulled insane G's, so much so that you needed the HANS device around your neck to stop the weight of your helmet breaking your neck.
Imagine having to strap into a HANS device to drive a road car. I want this future.
For those that are unaware, all rockets then rapidly increase their G. For example the Saturn V had 1.20 g at takeoff but climed up to 4-ish: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm
Someone on the Saturn V started experiencing more G than the Roadster about a minute into the launch.
When you move a building-sized fuel tank under its own thrust it's going to start off slow, but accelerate as more fuel is burned.
Plus I'd expect thrust to be kept low until clearing the lower atmosphere so it's not all lost on drag.
So your body experiences 1.44 g horizontal plus 1 g vertical, giving total 1.75 g. Is that right?
It has twice the wheel torque of a Hellcat, but the traction is impressive too. Obviously making good use of that AWD.
wow i had to reread that, thought it was kmph.. silly me
Wow, that‘s more than 400km/h
that's a significant challenge from a friction/grip/tire treat compound (and electronic traction control) perspective, no matter what kind of AWD systems is in place...
I wonder how a AWD system works, when the Roaster has 3 motors (according to the Tesla live stream today only 3 motors). Why not 4 motors, one for each wheel.
I think the range is even more impressive
and 250mph+ top speed is PLAID
should come with the warning to consume food or beverages before the test drive.
Well, maybe afterwards is safer.
It's darn near the limit of what we can do with current tire technology, don't be surprised if this drops - all we need is a tire that can deal with it.
You're right that it's absurd but most sports cars can do 60-0 in about the same amount of time, it's interesting to think about running that acceleration in the oppisite direction.
The Tesla Model S P100D has the exact same 0-60 and 60-0 times. So Tesla has already achieved that, but with a much heavier car.
I can't find better than 2.28 seconds documented.
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-s/2017/2017-tesla...
The parent just wanted to point out that braking is just as fast as accelerating. They didn't mean to say that the Model S can accelerate as fast as the new Roadster.
Yes exactly. I was just pointing out that Tesla has already managed to make a car that had acceleration times equal to stopping times. With this purpose built performance car I would expect nothing less. The Model S will of course not match up to the new Roadster.
Being traction limited 0-60 is nothing new for high performance sports cars, the difference is that using an electic motors, the power output can be modulated on a millisecond by millisecond basis. So the electric car can live on the ragged edge of traction eeking out every last newton. ICE cars on the other hand use motors that throttle responses that are orders of magnitude greater. Restricting how much the the traction envelope they can use. Which is why their 0-60 and 60-0 times tend to be different.
It'll be interesting to see if they can keep the battery power output up for a sustained length of time. Acceleration numbers are all well and good, but racetrack performance is about sustained high-load operation, and Tesla has had some trouble there:
http://www.thedrive.com/news/5207/this-video-reminds-us-that...
https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurbu...
Then again, how many people actually care? I don't think they'll have trouble finding buyers.
So basically Musk unveils future products of lesser demand but probably higher profit so he can raise Tesla stock value a bit and also grab some preorder cash flow and help Model 3 while it's stuttering ?
Seems obvious now, I wonder why he didn't do this sooner. The first Tesla was a high end sports car after all.
The hucksterism is brazen. I kind of want Musk to succeed, but yeah, it's sad what's taking place right now. Is it a real car company or a stock swindle?
> 0-60 MPH in 1.9 seconds
For comparison, a top fuel dragster does 0-60 in 0.5 seconds.
And then needs its engine rebuilt. Also, the tires are lit on fire before launch...
While the specs of this car are no doubt impressive i wouldnt say no one can compete with them. Porsche is/has been working on a high end electric car for quite a bit and they have specifically said they would challenge Tesla with it. Porsche also is someone who knows how to build high end cars and with their racing heritage i wouldnt be suprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of Teslas sail
Anybody know why Tesla didn't solve model 3 production scaling issues by subcontracting to someone who could do a "running start"? I would imagine a large portion of the car is relatively standard, being made of steel, mass produced components etc.
Because Tesla's real value is production scaling innovation itself.
I'd really like to see a clearer shot of the steering wheel (steering device?) I'm curious why they decided to go with something that looks more like a plane's yoke than a normal wheel. Is this something that's common with supercars?
It would seem over 200 mph isn't useful, except the Boring company could change that. A private tunnel could enable such leisurely travel for only cars that had level 3+ autonomy safety features.
200mph top speed is just a consequence of the base abilities of the car, it does not really matter in practice, but the fact that the car is capable of doing it shows that it is really powerful and very aerodynamic. Besides far away niche uses like tunnels under LA and autonomy, in Germany you could drive 200mph if you find a good stretch in the early morning ;)
At this price point, the target market probably isn't prioritizing for usefulness / raw utility as a purchasing criteria.
A lot of people seem to have an electric car fetish that is blinding them to the amount of work that went into the chassis and suspension design which is the real achievement here.
If you have 1000hp available at any speed not going at least reasonably fast would be an achievement.
Putting 1000hp to the ground at really low wheel speeds in a semi-production ready (let's not kid ourselves, nobody is going to be sending a $200k+ car off the line in high volumes) chassis is the interesting thing here.
Electric motors are absolutely better compared to combastion engines. But Guys, please don't compare apple to oranges. Tesla is no match to Ferrari nor McLaren. Ferrari's main intention is to build a car that has a good cornering on track. 0-60 is for muscle cars which you can compare to SRT Demon. All these Bugattis, Koenigseggs are a bunch of unsteerable rockets on tracks. Last but not least you know how Koenigsegg ended up in Nordschleife.
While this cars specs are no doubt impressive I wouldnt say no one will be able to challenge them. Porsche has been working on a high end electric car for a while and they specifically said they would challenge Tesla. Porsche can build some nice high end cars, and with their racing/electric technology i wouldnt be surprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of teslas sail
I guess that kind of language is always going to represent some hyperbole. People like porsches.
That said, the stats posted here are faster than any car you can currently buy. Porsche have a very fast supercar at the top of that list now, but it's not as fast as this roadster (again based on the table in this link) and costs 3-4 times as much.
The kind of cars that approach the performance suggested here are generally very expensive, very low volume "Sheikh" cars. Tesla is claiming that they beat all of them, for a lot cheaper. If so... I wouldn't want to be a Porsche dealer in 2021
I'd like to see this kind of battery tech on a lowest-end, lowest-cost mass production car with a 2-3k mile range on a single overnight charge. For my usage in the city, this would mean I'd charge every other week.
How far are we from such a feat I wonder, and, can't help but speculate as to why we're not.
Because nobody wants a car that doesn't have enough range to drive to the nearest hospital?
2-3k miles. Not 2-3 miles.
It's a bit unbelievable they were able to double the range of the already highly efficient model S...
Maybe a significant reduction of weight + increase in battery? Whatever it is, it's amazing that they were able to pull it off.
All nice and good. We see the EV revolution in front of our eyes.
But nobody speaks about the EV infrastructure.
Tesla also announced the semi truck "Megacharger." 400 mile range (at less than 2kWh/mile) in 30 minutes. That's about 1.5MW. One and a half Megawatts. Made feasible by using a Tesla stationary battery to buffer the load to the grid and/or solar panels. And a flat 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.
At least for the roadster, it doesnt seem to matter that much. The people who will buy this will do it for the flashy logo and the ridiculous (And dangerous) speed of course.
True.
But the revolution is simply the battery. They claim ~1000km on one charge.
This is impressive and might do something about the missing infratructure.
I'm curious about the claim that it fits 4. Because my friend has a late 90's firebird that while having 4 seats, it's clearly made for children / teens. So any information if the backseats in this model is made for adults?
He was relatively clear that it will be 2+2 rather than four full size seats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B2_(car_body_style)
So, it'll be cramped back there for larger adults.
Oh no, they're doing what all the other carmakers do and reuse the same name for completely different cars whose only thing in common is to target the same market segment. We'll have to call this the 2020 Roadster.
I'm hoping they actually tested that 250mph+...I'm no expert but that car looks bit too light and short to do that speed...can't see how it will stick to the road...unlessssss...they want it to fly away :)
I'm no engineer, but if you generate enough lift with some add-on wings, will this thing go airborn?
Mostly, you want to generate a load of lift downwards to keep the thing attached to the ground.
But to answer your question, if you define "enough" as "enough to make it go airborne", then yes. You would then have to be very careful to make sure it is actually stable in the air, or the results could be very non-pretty. And then you also have the problem of keeping it going fast in the air, when previously your only forwards force was provided by the wheel contact with the ground.
The battery probably has some good weight to it.
Great another car for the super wealthy. I thought Tesla's mission was to take on the GM's and Toyota's of the world. I'd personally be more excited if they announced an affordable Tesla SUV.
Oh wow, I had no idea a company Tesla's size can only focus on one thing at a time!
Meanwhile in reality they're ramping their most affordable car ever.
This doesn't really makes sense as a sports car if you want to do anything but go straight. If they had wanted good handling they should have gone for half the range and saved the weight.
3 motors.
Some kind of torque vectoring deal in the rear wheels? Like the Electric AMG SLS.
Musk says so, yes.
0-60 in 1.9s for $200k that is affordable by a good range of people. I can see disasters happening with this car as young dudes lose control when they accelerate.
There has to be some serious A.I to prevent this.
You don't use AI for that, you use a bunch of sensors and adaptive power or braking vectoring. Calling some heuristics "AI" is a massive stretch.
It could use some image recognition perhaps. "Detected male driver 18-25".
That has been an issue with sports car since they came into existence.
I imagine AWD and TCS will make this much more controllable than most.
It's interesting that people are so quick to dismiss this as merely a rendering, with the videos being CGI. Is that because the videos are 'too good' perhaps, or it just looks too much like a racing game car on the X-box? You'd have to deliberately ignore the fact that there were real cars presented at the announcement, for instance. Also interesting is that because the acceleration is so fast, there were accusations of the video being sped up at that point - people couldn't believe it was real. Are HN readers getting more skeptical of TSLA because of its recent financial and production issues, and this is showing in the cynical comments here?
Oh please. I should hope that people aren't so intoxicated on the Kool-Aid that when Tesla claims the Roadster outperforms the fastest production cars in the world, people want to dig deeper.
You're seriously implying that blindly accepting what they say is better?
No, no - it's just the 'only exists in CGI' I have an issue with, since people are arguing against factual evidence. But, this is a prototype, so of course I expect the performance figures are going to change, and speculation about that aspect is par for the course and I have no problem with that.
Ah, fair enough. Apologies for an unintentionally hostile tone.
In my humble opinion, the 1st roadster was much, much better looking.
I'm a Tesla skeptic for model 3 success, but this is badass.
If I was in the market for a car that I couldn't take advantage of driving legally, and had 200k laying around, would definitely buy lol
Why is it that concept car designers insist on not adding wing mirrors or else tiny little stalks that are significantly smaller than production wing mirrors? Every damn time...
In this case, it's probably due to aerodynamic considerations.
Multiple Porsche owner here. The acceleration on the Roadster is great obviously, however the sound of a car (or in this case lack of it) is definitely a factor in the experience.
I was wondering recently what happened to all the first generation roadsters? I used to see them frequently enough but they've been hiding from the road a long time it feels.
"quickest car in the world" is an interesting choice of word.
Is that to stand out from the slogan tropes like "fastest car in the world" / "fastest in its class"?
“Quickest” in auto-journalism typically refers to acceleration. So 0-60. “Fastest” typically refers to top speed. So e.g. 250mph.
Thanks. I didn't know that distinction.
fast--top speed. quick--acceleration.
Bugatti probably has them beaten on top speed. This roadster doesnt look very stable at 200+ mph with its short wheelbase.
I think they are getting at a subtlety between being fast (speed) and being quick (acceleration).
At what speed/acceleration can you put wings on the thing and be able to fly? I wouldn't put it past Elon for his master plan to include flying cars.
I don't see autopilot or any sort of autonomy mentioned for the new Roadster. That sort of makes sense, but I'm also a bit disappointed about it.
Today, the fastest lap time of the Nurburgring by an electric car was set by a Tesla Roadster driving itself round the track in 8m30s. The autopilot software developers are said to be 'very proud' of the achievement.
No side view mirrors! That helps tremendously with aerodynamics. I wonder if they used cameras and displays. Even the new Ford GT has mirrors.
Let's see if that makes it from prototype to production, though; if you could meet the legal requirements with cameras and displays I think someone else would have done it by now.
Concept cars often lack mirrors, or have ridiculously small mirrors that wouldn't be legal. Apparently car designers really just don't like adding them.
Would ludicrous mode for the roadster go 0-60 in 1 second?
the 620 mile range is super impressive. How??? Or is it just that the roadster is super light?
The statement from Elon Musk at the car's announcement was 'Has anyone here watched Spaceballs? What's faster than Ludicrous? That's right, Plaid!' So in the Roadster, there is a 'Plaid' mode which enables the 0-60 in 1.8s acceleration, accompanied by suitable graphics on the 17" screen ;)
You'd think that the ability for the wheels to deliver power to the ground has to be the limiting factor at some point.
Most sports cars are at that point at low speeds and either need a skillful foot or an electronic system to prevent burning out. A 1.9 second 0-60 is pretty much the limit on street tires (and requires AWD). Someone will take it even further by putting drag slicks on there.
Are people just not testing their websites on non Apple devices or why are there 2 vertical scrollbars next to each other?
Hey, how do you call a guy who takes people money for future orders without delivering on the ones already taken?
Tesla can barely ship the Model 3, and now they're adding yet another consumer vehicle to the lineup?
Tesla's vision is completely scattered. I have little faith in them at this time since they can't deliver the "economy" Model 3, but now suddenly have the bandwidth to develop, engineer, ship, and maintain yet another car?
Tesla, ship the Model 3 at scale and then we'll talk.
Let's talk companies.
For the uninformed, a part of building a successful vertically integrated battery, car, and truck company that spans the globe that also uses a brand new powertrain and form factor for their products is getting lots of investment so that you can fund your long-term technology play. To get a lot of investment, you have to sustain the public's interest in your product. If you're in the limelight, you are going to get investment. so why not use your new powertrain and form factor in new products that build upon previous products, thus advancing your technology and locking in future investment thanks to the hype?
Do this for a decade and wow, you actually have a clear path to taking over the world's energy and transportation markets thanks to your incredible technological advantage.
That was my initial reaction, but it leads to a question: do you stop doing R&D (and shed talent as a result) because production in another part of the company is blocked by some (hopefully transient) supply chain issue?
Preface: I don't have any stake in Tesla's success or products.
If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be pissed that they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at scale.
This makes Tesla look like they care little, because after all they already have your Model 3 money.
R&D engineers and car designers are usually separate people from manufacturing and supply chain engineers.
Now that Model 3 has been passed onto mass(-ish) production, Tesla is using those engineers to develop other products. Tesla would lose those talented people if it asked them to just sit and do nothing, or if it asked them to work on areas completely outside their (not just lose, but lose to competitors).
>If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be pissed that they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at scale.
I mean, by the same reasoning, Model S owners should be pissed, Model X owners should be pissed too. But the money from both seems to have made Model 3 possible.
True I haven't even touched on them either! Tesla has yet to prove they can build cars at scale, they are nothing compared to current auto manufacturers.
I think they are biting off more than they can chew.
>I think they are biting off more than they can chew.
I don't think anyone will disagree with you about that. But we sure as hell want to see them succeed.
Same here! I love their tech and I can't wait to see Model 3 after Model 3.
... but damn it Tesla ship it!
People are overreacting on Model 3 challenges. It is a really simple car to manufacture. Once the supply chain bottlenecks are ironed out, it will be really easy to pump out cars at scale. They already produce 2500 S and X per week.
This car will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in preorders immediately, and cost much less than that for them to produce when they get around to it over two years from now. That doesn't seem like a good idea to you? If Model 3 isn't in full production by 2020 then the company will no longer exist anyway.
>and cost much less than that for them to produce when they get around to it over two years from now
And what do you base this prognostication on? Tesla has been building cars for a few years, and loses money on them.
And don't give me "R&D". You can back it out of their financials and it's still rough, and it will never go to zero; just look at the other majors.
All this stuff is cool, but will it ever make money?
The economy version is the ultimate goal, along with industrial applications like the Semi. But high end cars make headlines, make people believe and make people excited about the future. That’s more important than you’d think in getting the economy version to be a reality.
Though I do understand the concerns about constant hype and not fully delivering on it, I think that’s infinitely better than the alternative where nothing happens at all.
I could be wrong, and this play could totally pan out.
But their current Model S, X, and 3 aren't exactly flooding the market either.
There’s certainly chances for failure, but I’m inspired by the fact they try anyway.
I see at least one Model S everyday. Tesla have objectively made an impact, and in my books that’s a good thing.
Maybe he's just repeating the same Roadster business model? Small quantity (can hand-assemble if necessary), high margin, prestige product to help keep money coming in for the rest of the business.
Sure that worked well for Tesla early as they were growing, but this is a company that is already shipping three vehicles to the consumer space.
They shouldn't be trying to do "small quantity" work , and instead should be focused on going wide and getting those Model 3's out the door to the those that have already bought in to the Model 3.
Splitting your attention is going to introduce more problems, but so is not having money or having to beg for money every year or two.
Maybe the Roadster reboot should have been scrapped, but this has clearly been in the works before Model 3's production scaling issues. With a large company you have a diverse group of talent; you aren't going to have your designers sit around while you are tuning capacity. Hopefully, this helps compliment their growth.
Well here's my "exit event" car, should such a thing ever happen. :)
4 seats, but somehow I doubt it has more legspace than the average budget airliner.
Putting a license plate on that would be like putting braces on the mona lisa.
I wonder how long the trick of masking problems with announcements will work.
Sorry, 10,000 nm of torque? This can't be real. edit: misunderstood
That's wheel torque, not engine torque. Existing high power cars, like the Hellcat, exceed that number, at least in first gear. Hellcat makes 10875 Nm (8021 ft-lb). That's 650 engine torque at peak, * 4.71:1 first gear ratio * 2.62:1 rear axle ratio.
Of course, electric engines have much flatter torque curve, so they'll be at torque peak all the time until they exceed pack wattage limts.
Ahh, that makes more sense, then. Thanks for clarifying!
Wheel torque is not the same thing as engine torque. I'm pretty sure the confusion is intentional, since it's the first time I see wheel torque advertised for any car.
I always wondered why engine torque was put on the spec sheet. Since geering can turn that engine torque into any number you want at the wheels. Wheel torque seems much more relevant.
Wheel torque isn’t really that important since you don’t know what speed it’s being delivered at. The only thing that really matters is horsepower since you can gear for torque and you can assume the engineers did a decent job with the transmission.
That being said, peak torque is a good indicator of low rpm horsepower on internal combustion engines. Low rpm horsepower is good for sustainable work (like towing) or street power.
An 8.8 second 1/4 mile is crazy for any car, let alone a stock one.
Tesla should make a Formula E car. Clearly they have the tech.
No rear view mirrors ?
Tesla has been trying to get laws changed to allow them to replace side mirrors with cameras, as it's a major pain point for aerodynamics.
I thought this was hacker news. Not gearhead news. (:
This is half the top speed of a plane. Insane.
Higher top speed than a Cessna.
0-60 in less than 2 seconds. that’s insane.
0-60 1.9 Why is this still a thing?
This feels like slide ware to me, and I know Tesla has achieved its goals in the past, but color me at least a little skeptical.
Still to see if it can do it over and over again like the sports cars it's billed to compete against.
Want! Man. This is so cool!
Why are they introducing a new car? Have they solved the model 3 deployment problems already?
That front-end tho
Wow, 200k for a car is pretty expensive.
The Bugatti Chiron they used as a direct comparison in the unveil costs 2,7 Mio USD.
The cars this model competes with are at least as expensive, if not more.
Gotta be honest here, if I would won a lottery to pick a car for 200k I would choose between Porche GT, Mercedes AMG or BMW M3 any day over this tesla.
What would be even cooler is if they could build the cars they’ve already taken money for, and service the ones they have already sold.
How are they going to keep up with production on Roadster when Model 3 production itself is slow and low ?
Are you asking how they're going to prioritize manufacturing a car with huge margins over the low margin car?
I guess we'll never know.
Easily. The Roadster will have far fewer customers than the Model 3. They just won't have to build as many. Sure, the Roadster probably takes a bit more labor to build than a Model 3, but probably not by much.
It's $200k, so presumably the volume won't be too high.
(Which sadly means it's unlikely to depreciate into my price range any time soon!)
I don't need to live in a house when I have a car like this do I? Think the wife will buy that argument for selling the house and buying this car?
Sell the wife. Buy the car. Best of both worlds.
Funniest people on reddit right here
> 250mph
Metric system, where are you?-)
Everywhere but the US, apparently.
It's supposedly "in progress", but there is no end in sight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
Are they selling the reservations now? Is this about getting more cash to keep funding their operations?
Off topic, but really nice website.
The specs are insane but it would be better if Tesla focuses on getting its mass market car out in the market, in the hands of consumers.
I really want people to knock it off with the low effort titles on HN.
Is today 1. April?
I didn't hear any rumors about this at all. Is Tesla more secretive than Apple?
Not hard to keep a secret when all you have are 3D renders.
Also, an actual video of the Roadster in all of it's glory.
https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984
Apple needs to buy Tesla and run it better than Elon Musk can right now. He's overloaded himself with responsibilities.
Apple could do a lot of good by applying their skills to such an important problem. And Tesla's have been called "laptops on wheels" which has some truth it. They have the money, people, and management skill to do it well. Tesla has the industry lead that Apple needs to get in the race.
First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I'd guess. But maybe not.
I'd say Elon is doing just fine. The semi business long term could be a game changer that propels Tesla beyond a car company. Think fleets, partnerships with FedEX, UPS, DHL, long haul companies, van lines moving companies, Amazon deliveries. Lot's of very lucrative business opportunities. Also, the pickup truck market in the United States is huge, Tesla is getting into that as well.
Anything but apple, that would be the worst that can happen.
I hope they don't teach Tesla with their closed consumer enslaving "tech"
> First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I'd guess.
Why?
It's too utilitarian and not aspirational enough.
Yeah, and the first thing Jonny Ivy would do is make car more thinner and beautiful while completely screwing up battery life and usability. No thanks. If it was in my hand I will take iPhone out of Apple (or wherever Ivy is employed) and give to Musk instead.
solving the world's important problems.
$250k and it looks like a Nissan Z. Honestly, the old model roadster looked much more distinctive.
Distinctive like a Lotus?
That’s because the old one was a Lotus body and they have a very disinctive look - this look is more inline with Tesla style.
Looks nothing like a Nissan Z in my opinion.
Tesla is true leader in car.I just love it.
Hmmmmm. Tesla seems on the edge of imploding, financially.
Then they announce this. (With reservations starting at $200k.)
I wouldn't put retirement money on that one.
But you have to get out of the car and remove the roof to use it as a convertible. Then I think I'd stick with a BMW 438i convertible which takes the entire roof down at the push of a button in about 20 seconds. Driving isn't all about acceleration.
Modern Corvettes, and classic Porsche 911 Targas all have similar roofs. They are less practical, but lighter, and sell well.