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.
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.
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 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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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..
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)."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
> 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)
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?
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.
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!
> 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.)
> 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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 475 ms ] threadYou'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.
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-s/2017/2017-tesla...
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.
For comparison, a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket -- without payload -- at takeoff mass has 1.19 g of thrust.
Imagine having to strap into a HANS device to drive a road car. I want this future.
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.
https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984
Metric system, where are you?-)
(Which sadly means it's unlikely to depreciate into my price range any time soon!)
I guess we'll never know.
Hope they stay solvent long enough to ship it.
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
They can't waste a large portion of battery capacity, because the heat from that much energy getting wasted would blow up the car.
Wikipedia has a nice graph to illustrate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_MPG_to_L-100km_v200...
[1] https://www.powerstream.com/z/US18650VCT4-discharge.png
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
See: Hennessy Supercars
"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."
" 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)."
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...
[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.]
I'm also curious as to how much it will weigh given the batteries (given the weight of other Teslas).
See https://www.quora.com/Why-don%E2%80%99t-Tesla-cars-need-a-ge...
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.
The 2nd picture on this page is interesting: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/271674/tesla...
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.
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.
> 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.
It’s not a track car...what do people expect?
I'm not saying that Tesla has invented a sufficiently efficient battery, but to vaguely claim "physics" makes it impossible is wrong.
Yes, power is lower when efficiency is greater all other things equal, but you work around that by not making all other things equal.
Not necessarily applicable to this particular vehicle.
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.
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?
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".
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.
Also guessing that a 300k P4-AWDD will be announced at some point.
I’m sure in another 5 or 10 years they’ll get there but these figures are for headlines not the track.
I'm pretty sure they aren't making it up.
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.
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.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15719411
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.
Motor RPM will go higher than 10000 RPM at really high speeds.
How big is the difference?
It must be pretty substantial to offset both friction losses and gearing efficiency.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
"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 delivery will be in 2025.
Knowing how bad Tesla is with keeping their schedule
I thought the instant torque was able to get great acceleration at all speeds?
> 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
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?
Telsa is 4wd and has all it's torque and power from standing with no gears
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.
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.
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...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
I'm pretty sure they aren't making it up.
this guy is just collecting money on Kickstarter. Nobody needs this car and nobody really wants to make it. Will they have to?
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.
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.
None of them will? Why? Has Tesla got some trade secret?
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".
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'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.
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.
That might have been what you meant, but just pointing out that it's not necessarily "all electric".
The best combination is ultimately both though, hybrid systems are already used quite frequently in everything from LMP1 WEC racers to modern hypercars.
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.
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.
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.
Regardless, very interesting to watch the competition heat up.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
edit: Ford didn't start Jaguar.
Except make enough Model 3's, they don't do that.
> 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...
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.
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.
I doubt they'd allow that judging by what happened the last time they were featured.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
Is that to stand out from the slogan tropes like "fastest car in the world" / "fastest in its class"?
Bugatti probably has them beaten on top speed. This roadster doesnt look very stable at 200+ mph with its short wheelbase.
Is this a generational leap in energy density? What kind of materials are being used here?
What happens when a gigantic battery like that starts failing and needs to be replaced? Can they be recycled or maybe refurbished?
It might take 20 years, but it'll happen.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
the 620 mile range is super impressive. How??? Or is it just that the roadster is super light?
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.
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".
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.
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.