from the Jaaane-stop-this-crazy-thing dept.
Elon Musk had teased Twitter a few days ago about giving us "the D".
The announcement today includes both a front-axle motor with intelligent four-wheel drive capability (and a claimed slightly extended range), and the fact that all Model S built in the last couple weeks are equipped with new sensors to enable limited autopilot and extended driver assistance.
Ars has the rundown of the new performance numbers, and nifty dreams about future plans of self-parking cars picking you up autonomously. No indication on how they unplug themselves from the wall charger, yet. The cheapest Model 60D will provide emission-displaced AWD for a mere $75k, while the fully-kitted P85D sits just shy of $138k, before taxes and incentives.
No update on the actually-affordable Model X and 3, but let's hope the new advanced features make the leap down to the rest of us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:39AM
She'll have fun, fun, fun until Tesla takes her T-bird away
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @12:05PM
I'm always having fun with my D.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:05AM
A previous suggestion that items should remain visible in the queue while an editor is prepping those for the front page is an excellent idea.
Submitted nearly an hour after super_bob's. [soylentnews.org]
8-(
...and, WOW! what the site's software does to a double quote mark in a title is a sin.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday October 11 2014, @01:37PM
This feature is available to subscribers now.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @11:07PM
available to subscribers
Well, there's an incentive for me to submit items that are really fringe and that no one else will mention while avoiding "mainstream" stuff that someone else -might- have already submitted.
The logic of that decision evades me.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Saturday October 11 2014, @11:17PM
It's a feature we're testing, subscribers receive early access to some features, it helps us test them out. We will likely roll it out to everyone eventually.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:14AM
In the 1940s and 50s, lot of people dreamed of there one day soon being flying cars. Flying cars were a feature of a futuristic cartoon of the 60s, the Jetsons. Somehow George Jetson still ended up frequently stuck in traffic jams.
Why isn't the flying car still not even on the horizon? Why did people back then think they'd see flying cars become the new reality? I think people didn't appreciate how hard it is to fly. It was also the sexy, big dumb engineering way to advance transportation. But flying needs a lot of fine control of wings and our mechanical and computer tech still is not up to that. Can take a great deal of energy as well. One of the most promising methods right now is the helicopter with multiple rotors, not because it's efficient, but because it is easier to control.
I'll put my money on the electric car and battery tech. Hoping that what I have now lasts until electric cars become ubiquitous and inexpensive. I do not want to buy a gas powered car ever again, especially not a new one. Am afraid that would be like buying a brand new tube TV in 2008, the year before flat screen TVs swept them off the market and into history. I don't think we're one year away, but 5 years is definitely possible.
(Score: 1) by Solaarius on Saturday October 11 2014, @05:36AM
TL;DR.
I have no idea why you are talking about flying cars. However, my next car will be a Tesla Model 3.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 11 2014, @11:08AM
Flying cars are inefficient compared to ground cars. They are also planes, not easily operated by Average Joe. So they require driverless (pilotless) tech to catch on, as well as dirt cheap energy and a good way of storing that energy.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by velex on Saturday October 11 2014, @02:27PM
Well, it's almost 2015, so I'm planning to take my Fiesta to "Goldie" Wilson III's shop and get it hover converted. Don't forget to wear your jeans inside out!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:58PM
> Self parking
Self-parking, or at least self parallel parking is already a shipping feature in a lot of cars.
On the other hand "self valet parking" is just a subset of self-driving.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:35AM
The Ars write-up is pretty good, slightly blurring the lines between what is here today, and what might come along via software upgrades.
Most of the lane change, lane monitoring, adaptive cruise control, self braking, and self parking sound like off the shelf systems that already appear on many medium to high end cars. I'm surprised to find these didn't exist, since there are at leas 6 or 8 off the shelf systems that manufacturers routinely buy from third parties and integrate it as if it were their own.
The one surprise is that the car will actively resist allowing you to do a lane change that would result in a collision.
The option to have it read speed limit signs, and adhere to them seem a bit odd. Who follows the speed limit these days?
Also mentioned in the story is why these cars sell so well in Norway, (also found here [wikipedia.org], namely:
Among the existing government incentives, all-electric cars are exempt in Norway from all non-recurring vehicle fees, including purchase taxes, which are extremely high for ordinary cars, and 25% VAT on purchase, ... electric cars exempted from payment of ferry fees, and receive preferred parking, and can travel in lanes reserved for buses.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:21AM
Not so keen on them preventing me from doing stuff, speeding or hitting another car ( to avoid a worse collision?). Traction control, ABS etc is different (since these tech more often help people do what they want to do). Maybe some slight feedback is ok - e.g. higher steering wheel resistance on doing something the car thinks is stupid.
But having one car with effectively two active drivers seems to be a bad idea. Either the car takes over and drives, or it leaves the driving (and crashing) to me.
(Score: 1) by Solaarius on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:31AM
The big surprise for me is the performance. A 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds is retarded. That's Ferrari Enzo territory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:59AM
That thing looks fast even when it's standing still.
Just don't let a comedian get near it. [google.com]
retarded
I would have said "insane".
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Saturday October 11 2014, @12:30PM
Giving up control?
I see it more as the car become a bit more, well, alive. Is it so hard to believe that one day your car will want to do everything in it's power to preserve itself, knowing that by preserving itself it is doing it's best to prevent harm to it's occupants?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16 2014, @06:25PM
Then you'd be going into it anyway with or without this feature. Hopefully if you feel the car resisting you you'd double check it was safe before trying the maneuver again rather than get annoyed. I'd only expect you to get annoyed if it frequently resists you when there isn't anything there. It seems to me more like an intuitive way to provide feedback to the driver when they might be doing something stupid rather than actually taking control away from the driver.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday October 11 2014, @07:00AM
Is this new model affordable and practical? Neither myself, nor anyone that I know would buy a car with lane assist or 4WD for this insane amount of money ($75K to $138K.) Even if they sell it for $20K many people would be having an internal debate, as this car can be fueled only at home or at a handful of chargers (the nearest may well be in another state.) Fueling at home takes all night. Cold weather eats into the energy supply. I, for one, hate range anxiety - and I live on hilly terrain, for which Tesla provides no calculators. (They only talk about range on flat land.) So... will this car go over several mountain passes, at about 6,000 feet each? If not, it's nearly useless (unless you never drive farther than the church that is closest to your retirement home.) I can understand buying one for a really low price, just for quick trips in the city. But as such use is limited, the price should be comparable - say, $5K to $10K top. Neither myself, nor the vast majority of car buyers will want to pay more than that for a car that has special care and feeding requirements, IMO. Selling those for prices that are far higher is possible only into a luxury market, where price is no object. That market has finite size.
I mentioned more than once that such an EV has a very narrow niche where it is financially effective. If you only do short trips within the city, you will never drive enough miles to justify the lump sum payment for the car. Your gas expenses would be very low anyway, and you can drive any car, even those that sell for $1K at used car lots. If you do a lot of long road trips, the car is not useful at all. So the only market for such an EV is people who have a long but well constrained commute - say, 50-60 miles each way (maybe more.) This could be a useful commuter car. Unfortunately, people who have such a commute are rarely rich enough to afford it; if they were rich, they'd simply move, instead of living in a remote town where the house prices are low enough for them to buy. To be financially effective, at this price level an EV has to be driven hard, like a taxicab, because it takes a hundred thousand miles (or double, triple that) to realize profit. Perhaps corporate fleets, taxicabs and such would find an EV of this type a good investment. (But considering the upfront cost, this is yet another question - it is often cheaper to buy a cheap gas car and pay for the gas as you go.) In this aspect Prius did very well because it was sold for an average price of a new car ($22-25K). Prius required no special service, could be fueled at any corner gas station well within 5 minutes, and could take you across the country non-stop if you wanted. The price of Prius remains the same today.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Saturday October 11 2014, @09:54AM
A lot of people buy BMW and Mercedes and Lexus cars costing that much or more. It's a high end product, sure, but there is clearly a big market. If you do a lot of mileage the reduced fuel and maintenance costs actually make it pretty cheap too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:44PM
275 miles is nothing to sneeze at.
And when you get to your "trip to the city" destinationthere will be a charger there.
You see, you are making the common mistake that the only place you can charge a Tesla is at a Tesla charging station.
That's just not true. You can charge them at ANY EV charging station. The Tesla stations provide Free Charging for a Tesla for life.
So instead of using Tesla' map [teslamotors.com],
use This Map [plugshare.com].
Or just go to Google Maps, select any random place, and key in ev charging stations in the search field.
Keep zooming in. They are everywhere.
There are smart phone apps to find you a charger.
As for your economic argument, that is a moving target, and it definitely works for some people.
Surf on over to Edmonds [edmunds.com] TCO calculator and look at just the fuel costs on any vehicle.
Subtract that from your car for every year you intend to keep it. Add in the Tax advantages, and pretty soon you are near the price
of a nice car, mid range Cadillac or Beamer or Lexus, or what ever blows your skirt up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Tuesday October 14 2014, @11:03AM
Actually the big change is the charging at home overnight. Charging on a 240V outlet averages 30 miles/hour. That means in 9 hours you can charge from zero, which sounds pretty long. But...
...no one drives there car down to zero. First of all, it's really not recommended and is about the only thing you can do to void your battery warranty.
But more importantly, you will be charging at home every night. Which means every time you leave your house you'll have a full charge. (Realistically, they recommend a 90% charge unless you really think you need the 100% for a long trip.) You just have to get into the habit of plugging it in when you get home.
It's not for the 5 hour road trip. Which means you need to plan your trips in advance a bit. But you can go pretty far with a 250+ mile range.
I've had mine for about 6 months. Range anxiety occurred for the first couple weeks. No problems since then.
If you want to have a better idea of where the superchargers are and are coming soon, I recommend: http://supercharge.info/ [supercharge.info]
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday October 14 2014, @07:39PM
What happens if you travel to a friend (or a lover, or a work site, or a cabin in the woods) and spend the night there, on a couch? There are no chargers at the location; at best you could hope for 120V AC, but it won't be able to sufficiently charge the car - it would only stop the discharge. Aren't you running a risk of leaving the friend's home next day with a half-empty battery? I don't return home every single night; usually I do, but I also have other goals in life, aside from worrying about my car :-) If I want to worry about my vehicle, I'd buy a horse :-)
Also I don't have perfect memory, especially if I return home at 2am and have other urgent things to do before I find a bed and drop into it like a stone. It would be disappointing if I discover next morning that the car has 23% of charge left and won't carry me to where I need to be.
It looks like a modern EV requires a certain routine on part of the user, and any deviation from that routine has consequences. If that's indeed so, not too many people would be interested in getting a car that imposes its own lifestyle upon the owner.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:46PM
Is this new model affordable and practical?
Its aimed at a segment of the market where affordability is not an issue and, I guess, Tesla have sufficient profit margin to be able to survive on the niche market of people with a substantial daily commute, enough money to afford a luxury car for that specific purpose. In that case, you've probably got a second car that you can use for road trips. Maybe your accountant can do a bit of doublethink-entry-bookkeeping and find you some sort of tax reason why any "saving" on fuel isn't completely dwarfed by the extra cost of the car c.f. a comparable luxury gas-burner (what's the depreciation like on Teslas?)
If you fit that use case, it seems very practical and, from what I hear, EVs are really, really nice to drive.
If not - if you want one car that will do everything you need, and that includes the occasional >150 mile journey along a route that doesn't conveniently feature a supercharger stopover perfectly placed for lunch, without meticulously planning in advance, then forget it for the moment.
I'm not in the market for a full-sized sedan anyway, but I was vaguely interested in the BMW i3 with range extender - but at the end of the day I could get (say) a fully tricked out BMW "Mini" for £10,000 less and not worry about range at all.
I did end up getting an EV, though: it has two wheels, pedals, a bell, top speed under power of 15mph, a range of ~50 miles (plus however far you can pedal), you can ride it on cycle paths and through parks etc. and you still get exercise from using it (basically, its like cycling if you were fit). Tesla ought to get into the e-bike business: there's some design issues around gearing, controls, weight and security that they could sort out, and I'm sure that Tesla-branded e-bikes would sell like hotcakes around Silicon Valley.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday October 11 2014, @07:20PM
That's the case with me. Normally I don't drive more than 60-80 miles per day, plus the hills that surround Silicon Valley. But now and then I make trips south (on 101) and north (I-5.) The shortest of them is well beyond 220 miles. I refuel half-way - not because the car needs it, but because I want to have a full tank just in case. The same reason is why I don't want to do meticulous planning. There may be occasions when I cannot do planning - say, I got a phone call when I am on the road. I cannot go home, fire up a computer and spend 30 minutes investigating. Second, I hate range anxiety (as well as any anxiety - I don't gamble, for example, and don't watch sports.) I would buy a Tesla with 200 miles of range and then use it up to 100 miles - and then an anxiety would set in, especially if I am 50 miles away from home.
Chargers are of no use to me, as I rarely stop for lunch; even if I do, it takes 5-10 minutes to inhale a sandwich and be on my way. It's not in my lifestyle to sit around and drink coffee for 30-40 minutes, waiting until the car charges up. I want it done instantly, or faster :-) Well, fueling of a gas car in my case takes about 3 minutes (on average I add 6-7 gallons.) An EV would present too much worrying for me - about the range, about the lifetime of the battery, about the A/C, about the heater, about the headlights... I wouldn't want it even for $20K if a competing car doesn't have such drawbacks. Gas expenses are not even on my radar, as my car gives me 46 mpg with all the hill climbing that I do. I telecommute a lot, so my car is sitting idly, entirely happy, for about a week without drawing even a milliampere of current. An EV would have to be plugged in and constantly being trickle-charged. Sometimes there are power outages, since as you know the electric grid is ancient and poorly suited for the winter weather. A power outage could not only prevent me from going somewhere (as I prefer to do, if there is nothing to do at home without power) - it could, in theory, also brick the car if I cannot plug it in soon enough. Or it could be bricked if I go somewhere for a couple of weeks, and meanwhile a breaker blows somewhere. About five Tesla roadsters were bricked by not being charged for two weeks. It's a delicate beast, not a gas car that can take a lot of abuse.
So, perhaps, as you are saying an EV is not a good fit to my needs. The catch is that I am far from being unique, and my needs reflect the needs of a lot of people. An EV would be bought by the common folks even despite those problems -if only it is sold for $5K or $10K. Then it would be used for strictly local operation. But for the price of a Tesla you could fill a whole garage with cars, and buy them a lifetime supply of fuel. (Don't forget that you are paying for the Tesla up front, but paying for the fuel as you go - which means "much later.") Teslas are currently just a curiosity, a luxury car that is pretty good when it works. A common man does not need a luxury car; at least, he cannot afford one, especially in a post-industrial society, when workers lose jobs left and right to robots and to Chinese workers. For Tesla the luxury market is large enough, as it seems. But they appear to only tease the public with plans of selling an affordable EV. As I said before, such an EV would have to be very cheap if they want it to compete with gas cars. I don't think it is technically possible - not until a new battery is invented. Cold fusion, perhaps? There was a report a few days ago about testing of the H-Ni reactor. Once we have a real power source that can run the car for a long distance and then be trivially refueled, the sales of new gasoline cars will disappear. But today... just the production of those Lithium batteries is probably more harmful to the environment than all the CO(2) that a gas car produces during its lifetime. CO(2) is food for plants. Lithium is far from that.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Tuesday October 14 2014, @11:27AM
Gotta tell you: You're not going to make up the cost differential on mileage alone. (copied from teslamotorsclub website, where I originally posted it...)
I created a simple formula to figure out how much I save in my Tesla compared to my previous car.
Gas Car variables:
A = Fuel consumption in miles/gallon
B = Cost of fuel in dollars/gallon
Electric Car variables:
D = Fuel consumption in Wh/mile
E = Cost of fuel in Dollars/KWh
Savings/mile = B/A - E*D/1000
So, comparing my Model S to my previous 2013 BMW 328 xDrive, going 20,000 miles/year:
(The fuel consumption for both the Tesla and the BMW were my real world fuel consumption. I drive aggressively in both, greater than 90% on highway miles)
A = 28 miles/gal
B = $4/gal
D = 344 Wh/mile
E = $0.12/kWH
((4/28)-((0.12*344)/1000))*20000 = $2031/year savings in fuel.