Musk to build worlds fastest production car and it's electric.

[doppler]

I saw this promo clip and thought yea sure.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/17/16669024/tesla-roadster-2017-fastest-car-world

But after a bit of googling I found this clip. Interesting stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp8_0EwNaV4

[Wavytone]

This will kill a generation of 18 year-olds when these eventually fall into their hands either when they borrow dads keys, or 10+ years secondhand.

Musk is irresponsible IMHO. It would be better if the performance was toned down in return for better range.

[Camelopardalis]

Surely, due to the laws of physics, if you don't put your foot down the range IS better :shrug:

[raymo]

The claimed range is already brilliant, so not much incentive there, and
the car is not cheap, so relatively few kids are likely to get their hands
on one, and lastly the kids of rich parents can already get their hands
on insanely fast cars.[0-100 in around 2.3 secs or so.
I have wondered for years why manufacturers have produced ever faster
cars, when in most countries they can't be used to within cooee of their
maximum performance, although there is of course no limit put on
acceleration.
raymo

[Robair]

I’d put a bet on the fact that when autonomous, or, semi autonomous driving is a fully mature and legal technology there will be a condition attached. The vehicles will only be able to travel at the mandated speed limit relevant to its location. It is also my understanding that there are already some vehicles out there that can be speed limited if little Jimmy on his P plates borrows the car. Can’t remember if that tech is an add on or embedded.
Rob B

[xelasnave]

I think it is great folk are devoting time and effort into getting the most out of electric powered cars.
Eventually their efforts should mean the cars get better and this will see electric cars more acceptable.
Alex

[Shiraz]

Agree with Alex - I think that it's clever marketing.

The "Top Gear" crowd in the world of motoring has been hammering electric cars for years and Musk is just trying to show even the most committed petrol heads that the future is not petrol - by invading their last bastion, extreme performance.

[xelasnave]

All an electric car needs is a "broooom" recording to satisfy whatever it is that it will satisfy.

Alex

[xelasnave]

All we need now is a Hollywood action movie showing the hero silently burning rubber and driving the girl quietly away into the sunset.
We need to make quiet the new cool.
Alex

[gary]

Hi Raymo,

A U.S. colleague owns a Tesla Model S P85D (circa late 2015) which will
do 0 to 100kmph in around 2.9 seconds.

You can find no shortage of acceleration reaction videos, such as this one, on YouTube :-
https://youtu.be/vFwxlCp_wpU

A Ferrari 458 will out do a Tesla P85D over a quarter mile.
But the enormous torque provided by the electric motor of the
Tesla P85D's provides initial acceleration in a different league :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cA1doO_9h8

In May this year, a Chinese NIO EP9 all-electric supercar broke the Nurburgring lap record :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcepG9Twa_8

[gary]

IEEE have a story today on the Tesla truck and the Roadster sports car,
which is the supercar cited in Rick's original post.

That story is here :-
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/tesla-launches-an-electric-semi-truckand-a-new-sports-car

TV news last night showed the glitzy launch of both vehicles
by Elon Musk and highlighted the "production hell", as Musk put it,
of the delays in delivering the more modestly-priced Model 3 car.

The news clip featured Musk camping out on the roof of the Gigafactory - the
largest manufacturing building in the world - spanning an area equivalent to
107 American football fields.

Dec 2016 IEEE story on the Gigafactory, which produces the batteries, here :-
https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/2017-is-the-makeorbreak-year-for-teslas-gigafactory

[doppler]

That's a big part of the whole power effect, the exhaust noise or "note" as we used to call it in the 70's. People used to spend a lot of money on their exhausts to get the best sound. You can't beat the sound of a pre-catalytic convertor, v8 twin system exhaust, purring along the highway.

I guess they will also have to change the definition of a car.


car
kär/
noun
noun: car; plural noun: cars
a road vehicle, typically with four wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine and able to carry a small number of people.

[julianh72]

Ten thousand newton-metres of torque.

TEN ..... THOUSAND ... newton-metres. :eyepop:

[gary]

Hi Julian,

That will be at the wheels though, after gearing. :thumbsup:

By comparison, the Model S P85D delivers about 931 Nm from the power unit.

I Googleed and from what I could see, the Model S P85D has a gear
ratio of 9.73 to 1.

So 931Nm * 9.73 would be 9058Nm at the wheels on the earlier
Model S P85D. So the new Roaster would be about 10% more.

You definitely want the tyre grip to match. :)

I recollect watching a video of Kimi Räikkönen when they were testing the current
F1 power units a couple of years back at Barcelona.

Rounding a corner in the Ferrari, he must have planted the foot a little too much or too early
and with the additional torque provided by the Energy Recovery Unit it spun up the tyres
and the car went sideways into the barrier. So even for an experienced rally car driver, it requires
a fine touch to drive a car with that much torque. For the rest of us, computerized traction
control on a production car like the Tesla would come to the rescue.

[Shiraz]

here is a bit of the anti-electric propaganda that the new car is trying to overcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV_bYBtl-Ho
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/aug/05/top-gear-bbc

[AndrewJ]

Gday Ray
I notice the top gear link is from 2011, so not really fair????
To me its linked to modern advertising more than anything else.
Think sport ie football in Vic
In the old days, teams racked up wins and became good and people went to watch. Momentum grew "based on actual performance", and the media then proclaimed them good.
These days, paid media/propaganda proclaims something is good "and you should go and watch" just in case it is.
When electric cars go from propaganda to normal day to day reliability ( at an affordable cost ), it will all change.

Andrew

[xelasnave]

The top gear mob hopefully belong to a dying past.

All these folk who like fast road cars are pathetic.
Put them on a race track and I bet they could not go half as fast as they think they can...let's face it if they had any talent you would think they may have got a race drive but of course they won't because they are too immature and undisciplined to cut it with real drivers.
I was going to say they act like children but that would be wrong as most children have much more sense than that hopeless trio can assemble between all of them.
However they appeal to the masses which says a great deal about those who follow their sad antics.

Now give the electric car a broooom broooom switch and perhaps you could win them over.

Little men seeking to be noticed by making believe they have some sort of driving ability...look at me look at me complex.

There are those who embrace change who lead the human race to better things and those like the immature trio who...well what can you say for them that by their actions they don't say for themselves.

Sadsucks they be.

Alex

[xelasnave]

I would like to see all cars with a system that enables their speed to be regulated by WiFi to hold speed within 10% of the legal limit of the road they are driving upon.
High performance road cars need to be outlawed...we can't have guns but speeding drivers kill many more humans...its is weird how the populace tolerates reducing guns in the community but let folk behind the wheel of cars most should not be allowed to drive.

Alex

[doppler]

To pass a drivers licence test you only need to be able to drive to the road rules. It is illegal to learn how to actually handle a car in all driving situations, that's hooning. So most people come unstuck when they hit a greasy corner or a bit of gravel or another driver does something stupid and they don't have the skills to avoid an accident.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

A noble option, but will never happen as that would require "the system" to maintain the required data behind it in realtime, and then what is the "legal limit" as that changes based on the phases of the moon, roadworks in process or if an emergency vehicle has its lights on in a specified location ?????????
Todays models ( driven by beancounters ) are maintenance by failure, ie you dont spend money until something fails ( and hope it isnt too expensive when it does) ie You dont actively "try" to prevent failure.
Until that mentality changes, systems like you propose will never be feasible.
A good example in melb is the constant calls to radio stations re the chaos on our FEEways, where "automated" signs can post 60 kph on the left side of the road but 80kph on the right
meantime a plod has pulled someone over and has their lights on which means you really need to slow to 40 ??????
Computers are only as bright as the monkeys we pay to program them.

Andrew

[Shiraz]

hi Andrew.

The Top Gear put-downs occurred in about 2011 and, like many such WWW memes, they have never been rescinded - as Musk's later video shows, the damage was lasting.

The Tesla supercar looks to me like an attempt to put to rest the impression that electric cars are inferior, by showing that they can be superior to the very best of the old technology in terms of "petrol head" measures of performance.

[xelasnave]

Hi Andrew
All you say is true.
But the electric driverless car hopefully will be the future and the fast and furious mentality be seen by all as a stupid selfish stand not worthy of a decent human.
I like that top gear is on so I can not watch it.
Alex

[AndrewJ]

Gday Ray

Who cares????
Labor vs liberal
Ford vs Holden
Christianity vs Islam
Meataterian vs Vegan
If people base their lifes on what some one in the media "says is correct"
you will eventually come a cropper
Believe what "has happened", not something someone says "will happen"

Andrew

[Shiraz]

Who cares????

I don't care Andrew, but Tesla clearly did.

Am just suggesting a possible reason why a low-volume high-cost project like the Tesla electric supercar came about. The car is the topic of the thread. It is an amazing idea, but has come about for cred reasons - it is not the main game.

[N1]

I have a distinct feeling that this is not what a (personal) transport revolution looks like. He's basically just milked a little extra performance out of, and made some improvements to, technology that's been around for donkey's without addressing any of the motor vehicle's inherent faults. The most important being the crass misproportion of required energy versus kg's of meat moved.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Ray

I doubt it bothered Elon a jot ( all advertising is good )
Based on how the man appears to work, he was always going to push the limits of any technology he was playing with, and probably knew that an insane car would get buyers attention, irrespective of any "motoring commentators" comments. But at the end of the day, its not a practical car ( what supercars are ??? )
ie he probably knew that a car like this would get at least a few dozen buyers who dont care re price or anything else. They just want one, and the sheep will follow.

The biggest problem with general takeup has been ( and still is ) range and cost, pure and simple.

Andrew

[The_bluester]

Well, if developing a "Very rich mans toy" hypercar helps push the development along the it is all for the good (Seems it is supposed to have a 200KWH battery pack, twice the current ones. It is hard to believe in the context of a hypercar they would live with the concept of simply doubling the size and mass of the battery)


It is interesting to note that despite all the fuss about Tesla cars (And I would admit that if I won tatts I would likely go out and buy a P100D without hesitation) by what I have read the most successful seller of electric cars worldwide is Nissan.

The next generation of the Leaf electric car is supposed to be pushing 400KM plus range, I have a lengthy work commute but if they had even three quarters of that in real life use (Winter, raining, reverse cycle heating and lights on) I could see myself looking at one. With the rise of renewable energy supply even the argument that EV's are just displacing emissions from the tailpipe to the Latrobe Valley (In the case of Vic) is loosing relevance.

[furgle]

Call me a sheep, but I own a Tesla Model S P85D and it's fantastic. I previously owned a converted 2013 V8 Camaro, and while it was fun, the Tesla is leagues ahead.

I've never had a problem with range or charging. I've done trips to sydney, toowoomba, and noosa in it without any range anxiety.

Next year we are taking it to Mt Hotham. I'm not worried about charging along the way. With superchargers, destination chargers, my 3 phase portable charger (works at most showground and caravan parks), and standard household plug charger, there's no need to worry.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Adam

Your Tesla is not what i would call cheap for the sheep (yet), but it shows how the research is resulting in costs coming down.
ie The comments made by topgear 5 years ago were probaly correct "at the time" and massive advances have been made ( and continue to be made ) since then, I just doubt that their comments really affected any sales at the time. The product wasnt good enough.
Elon is going to keep pushing and good on him, and now countries are talking about banning IC engines, it is only going to go faster.
I suspect what happens in the next 5 years will make the last 5 years look pedestrian, esp if they can crack the storage costs.

Andrew
PS one side effect is going to be interesting.
My local Coles has just put in 2 dedicated Tesla charging bays
so it is going to speed up, however, they are 50% wider than the regular bays????

[Retrograde]

Congratulations - they are a beautiful car.
I was wondering how are your running costs? I suspect 'fuel' costs are pretty cheap?

[julianh72]

Actually, it's called a "Defensive Driving Course", and it's highly recommended for all young drivers. Learn how to handle a car with / without anti-lock brakes on a skid-pan, effects of worn tyres, etc - all done in controlled conditions by professional instructors.

[julianh72]

The Tesla Model 3 (a conventional passenger car at an affordable price) is the "main game" for Tesla. They're currently having some big issues ramping up to full production (which is concerning traditional investors with short-term views), but I think these issues will be resolved within the coming months, and the "patient" investors with a longer-term view will be well rewarded.

Yes, the Roadster Mk II is quite ludicrous in some respects (as is "Ludicrous Mode" on the Model S), but it gains publicity, and demonstrates that there is no market where electric vehicles can't compete with internal combustion. Special projects like this also raise capital to fund the mainstream business.

There was a reason that the first Tesla (the original Roadster) was an expensive indulgence for rich wannabee racing drivers - and it wasn't because Elon Musk wanted to build racing cars. The rich buyers were prepared to pay a premium for an expensive and rather impractical toy, which was used to fund the Model S limousine (also a premium product, but competitively priced against other luxury saloons), and now we're seeing it trickle down to the Model 3, which is a car that most of us could imagine having in our garage. (I fully expect electric autonomous cars will be a pretty main-stream option for personal transport within a decade or so - if not sooner).

There will be no shortage of billionaires who are prepared to pay the US$250,000 to secure one of the 1,000 "Founder's Editions", so there's $250 million of other people's money that Musk can start spending on developing Tesla cars, trucks, and associated technology generally. Whether they get their hands on it by 2020 is to be seen - Musk has a habit of over-promising and under-delivering - but when he does deliver, it tends to redefine the status quo.

[furgle]

Running costs are practically zero. I charge at work and that is a net gain as I get twice as much charge as I need, which gets me through the weekends. I can charge at home if needed though. Long trips are free within the supercharger network, and that gets bigger each year. I can currently drive from Brisbane to Adelaide for free (I'd rather fly though)

The only thing I need to spend money on is wiper fluid/blades, and tyres.

[Retrograde]

Thanks Adam.
Given the fuel costs of most cars that's a substantial saving which offsets the up-front cost of the car. :thumbsup:

[furgle]

Given the 6 figure cost of the car, it's not really about the offset in fuel prices. I just like the tech, and the insane acceleration.

[The_bluester]

I think the real purpose of the Tesla is to help get people excited about electric cars so that hopefully when they get to something more like price parity people will actually consider buying them.

What is more likely to get people lining up to trade a petrol engine for electric, A G-Wiz or a P100D with Ludicrous mode? Even if what they will probably end up buying is a Nissan Leaf?

[xelasnave]

Apart from the batteries you would think an electric car should be cheaper...probably will be in time.
Once wood boats were cheap but after glass got going wood became much more expensive.
Alex

[xelasnave]

If one thinks how it must have been when everyone had a horse or horse and cart or carriage the appearance of the first cars would have been met with cries of too expensive and will never get wide appeal much like talk around the electric car...and add to that the difficulty in fuel acquisition they would have seemed only a novelty for the rich...
Alex

[furgle]

The batteries are definitely the most expensive component. The typical household battery installation is 5kw. I forgot the minimum specs now, but last I heard Teslas now start at 70kw, so at least 14x the cost of a home battery system (not accounting for installation costs)

[bobson]

Alex:


This is much cheaper option :)
https://youtu.be/OOu6d1XYUZY

Bob

[doppler]

They have defensive driving courses here, but you don't need to do one to get a licence, so most drivers don't go. We don't have the skid pan stuff here, so not a lot of practical experience but great to hear that the capital cities have those facilities available. Someone here did try to set up a drift track so people could learn car control skills, but were shut down as it promoted hooning.

[doppler]

It's about $12,000 for a tesla power wall, with a 10 year warranty, not small bickies, probably only viable for rural properties without grid access.

[xelasnave]

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Alex

[AndrewJ]

Just saw this
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42055841
Beginning of the end of private cars anyway ??????

Andrew

[furgle]

Fleets of self driving cars with lease options or PAYG are 100% the future. The sooner the better. No more requirements for a garage. No requirements for traffic lights. No real need for speed limits. And if your boss is a jerk, you can even work on your way to work.

[doppler]

I doubt if self driving vehicles will ever be economically viable in regional areas, but having experienced capital city traffic a few times I can see why it would work there.

[julianh72]

Or someone who own a Tesla car, and wants to run it for free!

[furgle]

Why would I pay $12k for a powerwall when I can charge at work and use the superchargers for free? :P

A 5kw powerwall isn't going to charge an 85kw battery for free.

[The_bluester]

What sort of average range do you get out of 85KWH, or percentage thereof?

It is one thing I have never really seen, there is all sort of blurb about estimated touring range, but how far can $25 worth of electrons actually drive you in normal real world use with aircon and headlights etc?

[N1]

Rumour has it that such technology already exists... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport). I don't know what the story is exactly, cause I'd have to get out of my car to find out :P

[AndrewJ]

Gday Adam

Dunno about that. For every benefit, there is a downside.
Listening to radio reports this morning, it seems Uber have finally admitted they got hacked last year and lost details on millions of drivers, users, where they went and when as well as credit card details.
Feedback after the news indicated a lot of locals are reporting being scammed within days of using their cards with Uber????
Monocultures like Uber probably dont care about "securing" your data as much as yr bank, so it will be interesting if ease of being driven around is cheaper than burgeoning identity ( or plain simple ) theft.

Andrew

[furgle]

full charge on 85kwh = ~400km. Air conditioning doesn't use much power, I haven't really noticed a difference in range while using it. The car lowers down close to the road at highway speeds for better range. I don't know exactly what the price of electrons are these days, but at an estimate of $0.27/kwh, a full charge is around $23. That gets you 400km in a large, high performance luxury car. After 18 months, I've rarely charged at home, and when I do, I lower the charge rate to utilise my on-roof solar.



Ewww. public transport!



10 years replacement, unlimited km warranty. Reports so far on the older models are very little degradation due to the active liquid cooling and charge management of the battery.

[The_bluester]

So, basically to equal the "Fuel" cost a regular car would need to do something in the region of 4L/100KM. Even if the price of power doubled there are not too many cars that size which would equal the cost, and that is assuming that the price of petrol remained static. And that is for those who missed the boat on free Tesla charging in perpetuity (Which was inevitable once they got enough units out there)

I have long thought that once there is a commuter car available that had a safe range of at least 300km and around the $50K mark it would become viable even for me with a 140KM round trip to work each day.

[julianh72]

Most "urban commuters" don't need a full 400 km range every day - you would do a daily "top up" if you want your EV to to be a "zero-cost-to-run" proposition.

And battery technology is improving all the time - Tesla Powerwall 2 are currently rated at 13.5 kW.hr.
https://naturalsolar.com.au/tesla-powerwall-home-battery/

As you said, you get about 400 km range on an 85 kW.hr battery, so a 13.5 kW.hr daily "top-up" will give you around 60 km range, which would exceed most people's typical daily commute.

Even if you start the week with a close-to-empty "tank", you could well be fully topped up come the next weekend. E.g. think of a typical weekly cycle for someone doing 25,000 km/year - say 500 km in a typical week (e.g. 5 weekday commutes @ 50 km plus another 250 km on the weekend). Even if you come home on Sunday night with an almost flat battery, you charge overnight and and you've got something in excess of 60 km range for your 50 km daily drive on Monday morning; by the end of the week, your charge level exceeds the coming weekend's 250 km driving.

Your mileage may vary (pun intended!), but many people should indeed be able to run an electric car from the Sun using a single Tesla Powerwall most weeks.

(But yeah - if your boss will let you charge for free, why would you send money on solar infrastructure at home!)

[julianh72]

We're still in the very early days of practical EVs, so the price of EVs will keep going down, and the price of energy (especially non-renewables) will keep going up. Simple economics still favour petrol cars at present, but the balance is shifting.

I think we're pretty much at the "tipping point" right now - e.g. the Tesla Model 3 for US$35,000 (which translates to say AU$50,000, if the government doesn't tax it as a luxury car) is within range of a typical household for a full-size family sedan, and would have much lower running costs than the equivalent Mazda / Toyota / Ford petrol-powered car.

When all the global manufacturers get their next-gen EVs on the market in a couple of years, we'll cross that "tipping point" for good. The first models on the market will still tend to carry a premium price (in part, to recoup the development costs, and partly because "early adopters" will be prepared to pay a premium), but give it another 5 to 10 years, and I think we'll all be checking out EVs as a viable option to replace the Camry as our "daily drive".

[The_bluester]

I think you are right. I have mentioned the Leaf a few times, and I could honestly see one of them replacing (Or displacing into towing only use) my current ute in three years or so when the lease gets to or near the end.

[xelasnave]

My first mobile phone cost $5,500.
The first radio was gigantic and needed multiple huge steel plates.
The first TVs cost probably many months pay for the average person.
The EV will get cheaper and better as will methods and places to charge them.
There will be folk who will always be there pointing out why something can't be done and so often they are wrong because of an inability to comprehend possible change.
A little off topic but does anyone know the approx price of the new Tesla wall?
I will need one pretty soon.
Alex

[furgle]

I get my own parking space too

Power walls are abou $12k

[AndrewJ]

What happens if a little old lady on a mobility scooter beats you to it ?????
:lol::lol:
Andrew

[furgle]

There are four bays. But I'm not afraid to draw a blade

[xelasnave]

Thank you I can start saving.
Alex

[doppler]

Interesting web site. Lots of articles if you keep scrolling down.
https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/tesla-battery-cost-gigafactory-model-3/