- Summary:
Semi:
500 mile (806 km) range at max weight megacharging: 400 miles (644 km) per 30minutes 5s to 60mph by itself, 20s to 60mph full laden autopilot standard (automatic emergency breaking / lane keeping / collision warning) 65mph at 5% grade (as opposed to 45 mph for diesel) production 2019 brakes last a very long time (regen does the heavy lifting) 1,000,000 mile drive line guarantee no chance of jackknife 0.36 drag coefficient thermo-nuclear explosion proof glass frunk! 4 individual drivetrains price: ??? 80,000lbs (36,287kg) gross vehicle weight < 2 kWh/mi cost per mile is 20% better solo and 2x better in convoy, better than rail.Roadster 2:
1.9s 0-60, 4.2s 0-100 mph. > 250 mph (402 kph) top speed 620 miles (998 km) of range 200kwh pack 4 seats 10,000 NM torque AWDPrice: $200k (base), $250k (founders)
Most notable to me is the insane ranges on both vehicles.
That Roadster is insane. He could sell a nerfed version of it and people would still want it. Though if it's a 2+2 configuration, the term "roadster" might be a bit of a misnomer and I remember the last time there was an argument on Hubski about what constitutes a sports car and I think Musk is trying to bring up bad blood. Edit: Damn. That $200,000 price tag is insane for that kind of performance.
Turns out you can pre-order a limited run of 1000 'Founders Edition' Roadsters now, as in Tesla want your money now and you may get a car later: In other words, Tesla will have $250 million next week without much effort. If Musk's biography is anything to go by, it means Tesla really needs money right now.
Dude. No lie. I've yet to see a Model 3 on the road. . . . Which means trucker jobs will probably be safe for a little while longer.In other words, Tesla will have $250 million next week without much effort. If Musk's biography is anything to go by, it means Tesla really needs money right now.
Last I saw, which was admittedly overt a month ago, the only Model 3 deliveries had been to special customers and not Joe Blow. Do you know if that's changed? It's disappointing.
From what I understand, they're having all sorts of hinks in their constructing of the cars so around this time, they were supposed to be pumping out like 5,000 a week but that number is closer to a couple hundred. I was talking to someone at work the other day and they said that the reason the first cars were going to employees was because they weren't too sure about build quality and reliability and that employees would be a good avenue at addressing those problems before going to the public and embarrass themselves (kind of like what happened with the Model X). I can't imagine much has changed, because if so, I probably would have seen at least one, even if only in passing.
Google says seen trucks average 6.5 miles per gallon of diesel. Wikipedia has 10 kWh/L which converts to 37.6 kWh/gal. Wikipedia also says diesel engines can be 45% efficient. So to get kWh/mile It's 37.6/6.5×0.45=2.6 kWh/mile. That doesn't include regenerative braking, so let's just round down to 2 kWh/mile. So 400 miles would mean 800 kWh, and getting that in 30 minutes means 1.6 MW. I'd love to see how Tesla does that.megacharging: 400 miles (644 km) per 30minutes
I saw someone on Reddit make the same calculation. Supposedly it requires a Powerwall-esque setup, where that Powerwall can do the heavy lifting which is then charged slowly. I also thought battery charging is not linear...an empty battery charges faster than a slower one, so that would also aides quick charges. It still sounds nuts though. That said, the biggest freight truck corridor in terms of volume in the EU is less than 300km one-way (Rotterdam to the Ruhrzone) so there are plenty of opportunities to disrupt trucking even when limited to one charge.
I definitely agree. This has a lot of applications. Just poking around at Google Maps and starting at Houston (Gulf of Mexico port), Albuquerque is 900 miles, St. Louis 800, Nashville 800, and Atlanta 800. With a 500 mile starting range and one megacharge, a truck can reach a lot of places.
Lots of conversation around this unveiling, here at work today. The Slack channel is full of discussion! Big picture: Good. It's about time people rethought the semi truck driver experience and stepped out of the "safe" designs we have been stuck with for years. 360-degree view of the vehicle at all times? Good. Windows are... odd? How do you reach over and hand your paperwork to the receiver in their little booth at the gate of the delivery location? That center seating position helps eliminate blind spots, but is going to introduce some practical kinks... like re-learning how to back up to a loading dock. A lot of that is gut, not visibility. Getting drivers to rely on screens for backing up (as long as a bug splat hasn't obscured a key camera's view) is going to be like switching from a keyboard to a PlayStation controller... slow and error-prone at first, before it becomes learned and second-nature. Anti-jackknifing is the thing that has us most in a tizzy, though. With two separate motors on each wheel, I expect there are some very clever algorithms that the computer can rely on to modify the power/drag generated by each wheel, to mitigate the trailer coming around the cab and jackknifing. I think this is going to be FASCINATING to watch, in practice, on a skid pad...
I'm pretty sure that centered position is entirely to get the low Cw value that they achieved. Someone else said that that cost-per-mile factor was pretty much the key factor from the entire presentation. However, they were very unclear as to what they did and didn't count in that number. Did they assume it'll be a convoy with only one driver in the first truck, which inevitably plummets the cost per mile per tonne down? Did they factor in the increased weight of the truck, leading to higher tolls? I don't think we get answers for that. That said...I would love for a progressive government to just subsidize electric trucks (or tax non-electrics) to push companies make the jump. Trucks are such a large contributor to pollution, and it's a boring task that begs for lanekeeping. By the looks of it they're definitely going to be much more safe than regular trucks, too.
There is a LOT of low-hanging fruit in the area of "reducing pollution". Here in Seattle, my ex-girlfriend is a part of the Puget Sound Clean Energy Commission, and she noticed that cruise ships sitting along our docks were emitting big black clouds of smoke. So she started asking around about that. Turns out that the cruise ships would turn off their engines and turn on completely unregulated diesel generators to provide power to the ships while in port. Long story short, she put together a plan and a project that resulted in all cruise ships shutting down their systems when at port, and using power provided from the dock. Win: Reduces pollution. Win: Makes our tourist waterfront more pleasant. Win: Port of Seattle makes more money now, providing power to parked cruise ships. Win: Cruise ships get cheap hydro power, rather than expensive diesel. There are so many of these things that can be done, now, TODAY, to move the ball forward. Increasing the efficiency of trucking is definitely one of those. Trucks are such a large contributor to pollution, and it's a boring task that begs for lanekeeping.