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Late as usual. If any Tesla event ever starts on time, I'm going to miss the beginning because I won't tune in for 30 minutes.
First time trying to watch one of their events for me, figured I already missed it and wondered why their stream was still running.
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Tesla events always start late. Powerwall event started 40 minutes late.
I found a Periscope stream on Twitter, keeping an eye on that to know when the event starts.

Hitting play on the live stream logs a 403 forbidden from Akamai on the official stream, I'm not confident it'll work when there's actually some content.

Anyone know a link that doesn't require Flash?
Given it may be another 30 minutes until it starts, you might have time to snapshot one of your VMs, install Flash in that VM, watch the event, and then rollback to your snapshot.

Oh wait, it's starting right now.

It's 8:52 now, wtf is going on?
Starting now!
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It's important to note - these events happen on MST, not PST. That's 'Musk' Standard Time.
Finally it starts, 52 minutes late.
He's claiming 6% possibility of injury during high speed collision. Imagine any other CEO saying something similar for their product - Elon is the man!

Any other suit would say "Five star" over and over.

I was thinking about what a module from Iain Bank's Culture series would rate for injury percentages, and thinking that it would be rad for a team to have that sort of goal, like every few years aiming at cutting 50% of the remaining risk out.
(EDIT: It appears that the crash test rating was also mentioned. I really should watch the presentation before commenting next time; sorry folks.)

I haven't heard the actual presentation yet so perhaps I'm missing some context but:

How exactly is stating a percentage any better than a crash test rating? At least the rating gives you something to compare with (other vehicles) and the tests themselves are well-documented and reasonably well-designed. I would have no idea what to do with a percentage, so it seems like he has replaced a buzzword (crash test ratings) that means something with a buzzword (possibility of injury during high speed collision) that doesn't provide a point of reference.

He's claiming they did better than 5 stars, similar to what Tesla claimed about Model S. Tomorrow, you can bet that the feds will be complaining.
Can you source that actual claim about Model S?
Tesla press release:

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20130820005458/http://www.tes...

(Edit: I had to link to the wayback machine because Tesla subsequently removed the press release. Alternately, there's also the blog posting that you yourself pointed to elsewhere in this thread, with the same language: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-...)

The feds pushed back that 5 stars is the max, and there's no such thing as doing better than 5 stars.

And where is the claim, I can't seem to find it in your link.

Edit: My comment is still valid, there was simply no such claim made.

This is the claim that the feds disagreed with:

"NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5, however safety levels better than 5 stars are captured in the overall Vehicle Safety Score (VSS) provided to manufacturers, where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars."

Elsewhere in this thread, you point to a different Tesla blog post with the exact same language!

And the only problem is because they technically used 5.4 and stars together. If they called 5.4 with some other magical unit they invented, or simply called it theoretical/hypothetical rating, there would be no problem.

They also make it pretty clear: NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5

You would have to be either a lawyer or pretty dense to see that as deceptive.

The first paragraph ends with "...where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars."
He mentions both, goes above and beyond. The 6% approaches a theoretical 6-star rating.
In which case I apologize. I really should have watched the presentation first.
You don't see how one looks better than the other?

"Stay with us at our 5-star hotel!"

"Stay with us, there's a 6% chance you will get hurt if there's an accident!"

Yes, at one point he literally used the word 'death'. Don't remind people that your product might one day kill them!

Then he had a slide that showed how you would die early by living in a big city. The first ~10 minutes was a real downer.

After they spent all of that time on all the things that could kill you, they didn't once show the drivers seating area which seemed like a real omission.

(And, yes. I like Elon. I like Tesla. I own a teeny tiny amount of TSLA stock. I'd be sorely tempted to get a Model S if I had somewhere to charge it. )

People die in crashes, they don't like to breathe smog, they prioritize their safety. All cars "kill", that is an established fact, but we also need to transport ourselves whether we like it or not. Here is a car that is, compared to other cars, safer in those areas by a large margin. Wanna buy it?
I had a side impact in my Model S recently. When he showed the slide with the side-impact versus other cars it made me realize that I was lucky to be driving my Model S, since my car looked like the Tesla in the picture, and it likely could have looked like the other picture.
I'm curious what are the insurance rates on the Tesla cars? And how much does it cost to repair the damage? Do you have to go to Tesla for the repairs or are the qualified thrid party car body shops?
I think it's about $600 more a year than my Mini's insurance. It happened Friday, so I don't know how much it's going to cost to repair it, or if they're going to total it. The insurance guy sent it to "the only place around here that does Teslas", which happened to be the place Tesla recommended.
Are those safety tests accounting for electric cars that carry large Lithium batteries? Those can be very dangerous...
If the crowd keeps cheering every time Musk takes a breath, it's going to be a long night. Imagine if they did this at the board meetings.
Is there a reason why Tesla events happen at night?
It's basically a party for their longtime supporters.
It has a zombie apocalypse mode? I'm sold!
The doors opening in that narrow space; crowd went insane.

Livestream link: http://livestream.com/accounts/4186560/events/4387735/player

In the tight parking spot scenario, how does the driver get out of the car?
Dunno, but he showed the falcon door opening problem doesn't exist.
Climb over the front seat into the back seat or vice versa. I've had to do it before, when boxed in at a weird angle.
Since it's a suv I bet you could get out through the 2nd row. Would be a heck of a lot easier than opening a regular swinging door.
Probably ask it to park itself.
As many of us know, it's still possible in many situations if you can get the front door open just enough to squeeze through. The reason why you want to engineer something better for the rear door is for families, mainly. You need a bigger aperture to help kids in and out of car seats, for example. That's a huge use case for the Model X.

If you have kids and you watched this you are going bonkers right now.

What happens if it's rainy and windy? You've just opened up part of the roof!
Normal doors do just as bad in those conditions. Falcon doors perhaps block better at the side and worse, obviously since there is a hole in the roof, at the center.
Yes, clever. The dual hinges don't open up on a consistent arc, their action is recalculated each time based on sonar measurement.
This sounds cool, but I'm not sure why they couldn't just design it to always open with the tightest possible arc?
Maybe cause it's slower?
they probably can actuate both hinges at the same time when a tight arc is not needed
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If you keep watching the video they have a rear-mounted rack for stuff like that. Almost certainly not as good as a roof rack, but you'd have to really wait until someone reviews it I'd imagine.
I just watched this but I was hoping that there was a feature to automatically back up the cap 10' or something so everyone could get in.
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Elon Musk is a terrible speaker but it works because he's so genuine.
He's not terrible, just a bit rough. I find his presentations far more appealing than any "perfect" presentation companies like Google, Apple or Facebook make.

He also doesn't fluff anything up or over sell anything. He tells the facts in a way people can understand and that's it.

I have watched Google IO, WWDC etc many times. Speaker come and speak fluently about a teeny tiny feature for half an hour.

Elon on the other side is plain and direct. The halts and the roughness actually makes me more attentive because of the change.

I assume the people at the end were early 'buyers'. The smile on their face worked better than any words to me.
Beautiful and everything so far, but looks and demeanor wise it's like a full size car.
Yup. Saw one driving around their HQ recently and it was a rather large vehicle.
Not just available now, but the cars are being given directly to the initial buyers right on stage.
Looks nice. Is this really an SUV, though? It looks like a sedan.
A lot of SUVs are basically raised sedans. Only the very largest SUVs have fundamental differences from "cars" - Expedition, Escalade, Tahoe, etc.

Disclaimer: I work for GM.

Side note: no one will get away with building shit after this. And thats a GOOD THING.

No, a lot of SUVs are basically raised estate cars. This is a raised sedan. When Mercedes did the same thing and said the new MLC (which looks identical to a Model X) is an SUV they got laughed at. When Tesla does it it's apparently all-OK.

But really, they couldn't build a "proper" electric SUV, the poor aerodynamics would kill the range of a car which already has ~20% less range than the Model S.

3 rows of seats. 5000lb towing capacity. taller styling. yup.
The automatic opening front door is cool
Little slow, though. I'd rather wrench open the door manually than wait for that thing. When Musk demoed it he slid in sideways so it wasn't so obvious.
Probably door sensors doing

   1: omg is there something next to me?
   2: nope! ok..open door a bit more..
   3: goto 1
I imagine the door flying open and bonking into things would be far more upsetting to customers than a slow one that you can open by hand to speed up the process.
Curious how much the Whole Foods bags from the frunk cost as a product placement.
I took it as Tesla trying to connect with Whole Foods' demographic.
Yep. People with money who're going to be receptive to the "sustainability" pitch.
Why's that in quotes? It's definitely one of their explicit pitches, and there's a solid demographic of people who care about sustainability and the environment, especially amongst people buying all electric cars.
I didn't mean that to be interpreted as scare quotes, rather that there's a lot that goes into that concept that isn't reflected in the word itself.
Ah ok, I'm a bit scarred on the Internets I guess, making assumptions about simple quotes. Thanks for clarifying =)
Definitely highlights Tesla's target market.
I'm sure the crowd would have loved to see a Walmart bag instead.
Superchargers have been located at Whole Foods, if there's any connection to that. The San Mateo branch in particular.
So that was the launch, and there's still no price?
The price has been known for months? At least for the initial cars, which are fully-loaded and thus a lot more expensive than the base model. Tesla has said for quite a while that the base model is going to be a bit more than Model S.
They've announced prices for the full loaded expensive models. And they're expensive. The entry level models are coming later. Elon said an X will be about $5000 more than the equivalent S (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/639170376186990592). So if they release a 70D version it will be about $80,000 before incentives are taken off.
The Model 3 will be my first car, unless my circumstances necessitate that I have one sooner. The stuff that Tesla is doing is just so bonkers cool. Not only that though, I'm sure it's going to be safe, reliable and fast.
I hope it's release on time, but Musk doesn't have the best track record when it comes to timing.
Barring someone making a cheap open source electric car that doesn't report my location to Google or the company making them before then, me too.