Tesla Model X Launch event, livestream | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model X Launch event, livestream

teslamotors.com

160 pointsRomP145 comments

People complaining about Elon's charisma are missing a lot of Tesla's history and brand. It has a very significant customer base that almost consider themselves part of the company (e.g. throwing parties for employees at a Tesla store). Part of the reason is because Elon Musk treats these events not as a marketing presentation but basically like someone showing off their latest creation to their family (a lot of customers are invited to the events).

Also, Tesla is seeing awesome success right now, but there was a time (pre Model S) when Elon Musk was basically begging customers to trust him and keep their preorders because they were close to going bankrupt (eventually a govt loan combined with the faith those customers placed in Elon Musk is what saved them). He had enough charisma to convince a significant chunk of people to give him a significant amount of money when it was looking like the company would not even be there a few months from then. Tesla's brand is that they genuinely care for their customers (and I have not seen any reason to disbelieve that so far), and Elon Musk's presentations while not spiffy help reinforce that.

Caught the tail end of the event. Elon definitely comes across as genuine and a real person. That said, a little practice in the stage presence / showmanship department could certainly help things flow smoother and amp up the excitement a bit; something this brand and its cars deserve!

Everything is overmarketed these days.

I prefer things underdone.

And he is actually plowing hard on real value, unlike so many industries. Tesla raises everything up to eleven, leaving the low hanging fruits being background noise. I don't want to win an easy Jobs point, but it feels like the early iPhone era. They bring out new engineering features on a regular basis that are 2x better than the state of the market. I wonder how angry the other manufacturers are now.

I enjoyed it a lot.

It had that iPhone/iPad launch (genuine) excitement to it. Those cheers were real even if half of them were Tesla employees. And yeah he should practice more but I also don't think you can fake the kind of charm someone like Steve Jobs just naturally had on stage.

That's an odd expression: "comes across as genuine and a real person". Aren't we all real? Is this a fantasy?

Genuine as compared to other CEOs talking about their products. See: recent talk by Blackbery CEO.

or how about the adobe CEO trying to defend their product's costs in Australia?

Genuine in the sense of honesty

I love the way he presents. None of this over the top nonsense or Lenny Kravitz.

He's claiming 6% possibility of injury during high speed collision. Imagine any other CEO saying something similar for their product - Elon is the man!

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

I was thinking about what a module from Iain Bank's Culture series would rate for injury percentages, and thinking that it would be rad for a team to have that sort of goal, like every few years aiming at cutting 50% of the remaining risk out.

I had a side impact in my Model S recently. When he showed the slide with the side-impact versus other cars it made me realize that I was lucky to be driving my Model S, since my car looked like the Tesla in the picture, and it likely could have looked like the other picture.

I'm curious what are the insurance rates on the Tesla cars? And how much does it cost to repair the damage? Do you have to go to Tesla for the repairs or are the qualified thrid party car body shops?

I think it's about $600 more a year than my Mini's insurance. It happened Friday, so I don't know how much it's going to cost to repair it, or if they're going to total it. The insurance guy sent it to "the only place around here that does Teslas", which happened to be the place Tesla recommended.

(EDIT: It appears that the crash test rating was also mentioned. I really should watch the presentation before commenting next time; sorry folks.)

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

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

You don't see how one looks better than the other?

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

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

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

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

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

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

People die in crashes, they don't like to breathe smog, they prioritize their safety. All cars "kill", that is an established fact, but we also need to transport ourselves whether we like it or not. Here is a car that is, compared to other cars, safer in those areas by a large margin. Wanna buy it?

This gives you a good description: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-...

With graphs!

He's claiming they did better than 5 stars, similar to what Tesla claimed about Model S. Tomorrow, you can bet that the feds will be complaining.

Can you source that actual claim about Model S?

Tesla press release:

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

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

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

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

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

This is the claim that the feds disagreed with:

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

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

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

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

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

The first paragraph ends with "...where the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars."

He mentions both, goes above and beyond. The 6% approaches a theoretical 6-star rating.

In which case I apologize. I really should have watched the presentation first.

Are those safety tests accounting for electric cars that carry large Lithium batteries? Those can be very dangerous...

The doors opening in that narrow space; crowd went insane.

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

Yes, clever. The dual hinges don't open up on a consistent arc, their action is recalculated each time based on sonar measurement.

This sounds cool, but I'm not sure why they couldn't just design it to always open with the tightest possible arc?

Maybe cause it's slower?

they probably can actuate both hinges at the same time when a tight arc is not needed

In the tight parking spot scenario, how does the driver get out of the car?

As many of us know, it's still possible in many situations if you can get the front door open just enough to squeeze through. The reason why you want to engineer something better for the rear door is for families, mainly. You need a bigger aperture to help kids in and out of car seats, for example. That's a huge use case for the Model X.

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

Climb over the front seat into the back seat or vice versa. I've had to do it before, when boxed in at a weird angle.

Since it's a suv I bet you could get out through the 2nd row. Would be a heck of a lot easier than opening a regular swinging door.

If there's space between the front seats you could get through that way.

Err, kinda: https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/tes...

You would have to be pretty athletic and not too big.

Yeah, the console sort of makes that route impractical, doesn't it?

Dunno, but he showed the falcon door opening problem doesn't exist.

Probably ask it to park itself.

What happens if it's rainy and windy? You've just opened up part of the roof!

Normal doors do just as bad in those conditions. Falcon doors perhaps block better at the side and worse, obviously since there is a hole in the roof, at the center.

I just watched this but I was hoping that there was a feature to automatically back up the cap 10' or something so everyone could get in.

Deleted comment

If you keep watching the video they have a rear-mounted rack for stuff like that. Almost certainly not as good as a roof rack, but you'd have to really wait until someone reviews it I'd imagine.

It's important to note - these events happen on MST, not PST. That's 'Musk' Standard Time.

Elon Musk is a terrible speaker but it works because he's so genuine.

He's not terrible, just a bit rough. I find his presentations far more appealing than any "perfect" presentation companies like Google, Apple or Facebook make.

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

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

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

I assume the people at the end were early 'buyers'. The smile on their face worked better than any words to me.

The Model 3 will be my first car, unless my circumstances necessitate that I have one sooner. The stuff that Tesla is doing is just so bonkers cool. Not only that though, I'm sure it's going to be safe, reliable and fast.

I hope it's release on time, but Musk doesn't have the best track record when it comes to timing.

Barring someone making a cheap open source electric car that doesn't report my location to Google or the company making them before then, me too.

Been waiting 45 minutes now. Some updates are available on

http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/live-tesla-model-x-event/

I admire Tesla as a company, but I can't help but wonder why they still have Elon Musk do the entire presentation himself. Sure, he's their superstar, but he comes off as a very underprepared public speaker. I wish they had him do an introduction, and then have a spokesperson do the bulk of the talking. Instead, he's showing off these new and amazing products with nearly no charisma and enthusiasm.

Couldn't possibly disagree more. He comes off as genuine instead of as a script-reading marketing person. He really cares about the product and the end goal and every inch of this originates from him.

This is his version of enthusiasm. Steve Jobs wasn't any more "enthusiastic"....he was soft-spoken and straightforward, too, he just didn't stutter/hesitate the way Elon naturally does, so he came across as much smoother.

If you think not having Elon out front and center for this company would be a good thing, you've really not grasped the symbiotic bond between him and his companies and his customers.

This is just another way Tesla is unique-- they don't overmarket everything, they don't run ads, they don't have some slick super-model announce their products. The main engineer, the guy who designed it, talks about it in his own way. I wouldn't have them change a thing.

You make very good points, and I agree that having Elon as the spokesperson makes the event feel more personal and genuine. I still feel like his presentation manner is disappointing, though. I get that it's a petty thing to complain about, but he seems nervous when he's talking publicly and I find that distracting. I don't want to make it seem like I'm dissing Tesla or Elon Musk directly. I liked the launch event otherwise.

I understand. I guess I just find that that hesitancy adds a lot for me, makes it feel less corporate and more like just another guy showing off this cool thing he made and which he really hopes you like. I wonder how long it's been since a car company announced a car this way. I don't remember EVER seeing a car reveal in the first place, actually. Just one day you start seeing commercials for the ALL NEW 2017 NISSAN ALTIMA etc etc

I think I like it better with Elon, than if there was some random sales pitch person with a perfectly rehearsed and forcefully over-enthusiastic presentation. It's a combination of respect for the man, and a sense in which we're geeking out over the features together in an informal and relaxed manner. Something like that.

There a happy middle ground.

People like Schiller or Federighi from Apple are both slick presenters, sometimes teetering on the edge of cheesiness, but it's all saved by the fact that you can tell they really know and care about the product.

I really love his style. He has a very persistent values-based set of talking points (environment, safety, not sucking, doing cool shit), and he delivers those in the same way that he would if he had lunch with you and his aunt, and he were nerding out about his values.

Whether it's a chosen style or just how he is, to me, it works and feels genuine in a way that's charming. As he talks, I can imagine him sitting down with his engineers saying "Does this = good for the environment, improve safety, reduce car suckage, and is it cool?" And, I can further imagine him digging in to fix it if the product doesn't match, like with diagrams, and left over space x physics books, and a cool napkin he drew on in the shower with a strut design that would be better..

No PR person could ask for more from a lead presenter, seriously. You can imagine him doing that too, I bet, and that's a key and critical part of the tesla brand.

Tesla are building a great brand and part of that comes from the presence of a visionary like him. I think a lot of people respect the fact he doesn't allow a PR person to BS the audience. But hey, they've come this far doing it this way so I don't see a need to change now.

If there had been charisma and enthusiasm propped up on the stage, I'd have suspected the Model X isn't that good after all. Elon just let the car speak for itself.

People respond to that. Makes me feel like he believes in the product and is not some gypsy.

Because it matters. Would you rather hear about any Tesla news from elon musk or some random pr person they hired?

People get Teslas because they want something different. If you put the normal carnival barker salesman up there prospective customers will come away thinking "Hey, that kind of sounds like every other pitch at the car show I went to."

Who is "they"? You think somebody is forcing Musk to do those presentations? Elon Musk is the CEO. He does the presentations himself because that's his decision and that's what he wants.

If your product is good enough you shouldn't need showmanship.

Made me cringe when customers came up to drive off with their cars. Really felt like a Samsung tier presentation.

Keep in mind the audience is largely filled with customers and people who have placed preorders.

Tesla's launches and reveals are largely Employees + Customers with some press thrown in.

In contrast to an uptight corporate event, it felt genuine and realistic. You know, like that time you got your keys, for the car you bought, from a normal human being.

If the crowd keeps cheering every time Musk takes a breath, it's going to be a long night. Imagine if they did this at the board meetings.

Late as usual. If any Tesla event ever starts on time, I'm going to miss the beginning because I won't tune in for 30 minutes.

First time trying to watch one of their events for me, figured I already missed it and wondered why their stream was still running.

Did the exact same thing, 40 mins in and nada...

The car looks absolutely beautiful. Sadly, as much as I want to go electric, I have no use for it, at $140K for an SUV I expect a lot more than this.

I think the falcon doors solve a non-existing problem while parking. I can't remember the last time this was an issue, with or without kids, with or without cargo or bags on the back seat of either an SUV or a minivan.

The same is true of the third row seat. We've had both SUV's and minivans with third rows. Never an issue, even for adults.

The falcon wings are very cool from a technological perspective but a complete non-starter for me. Bikes, surfboards and other stuff need to go on a roof rack. I can't see any way to transport our Maas rowing shells on this thing. They are 24 feet long and have to go on the roof. I've even brought home 2x4's and sheets of plywood from Home Depot on top of SUV's and minivans.

Can you open the falcon wing doors by hand if you have no power? I'd be surprised if this was not possible.

Towing is another aspect of this car that is likely to disappoint outside of a stage. If anyone expects to be able to do 250 miles while towing a 5,000 lbs trailer on anything other than an absolutely flat road with a 60 mile per hour tail winds they are going to be disappointed. As drag increases so will current draw and electrical losses, which will be constant and very significant. Weight is more of a factor on non-flat roads, which is nearly 100% of them anywhere I've been. I'd be surprised if the actual range while towing is much more than half the rated non-towing range.

What's good?

Crash performance is fantastic!

HEPA filter: Unreal. Nice.

It looks amazing.

It's electric!

I sincerely think Tesla should have come up with a new acronym for Model X: LUV - Luxury Utility Vehicle. That, no doubt, it is.

Tesla really needs to earn the title of luxury.

The S-model really does have one of the worst interiors I've seen on a brand new car at any price. They really need to hire someone from Land Rover or Mercedes to understand what luxury actually looks like. They can't use the cheap plastics and leather and expect people to look at it as a luxury car. It's a shame when the exterior is so well designed.

I agree. I've been in a Model S and it had a considerably worse interior than my 10-year-old 3 series. But I imagine they'll improve.

You've made this complaint repeatedly in HN threads, but it doesn't seem that many reviewers or Tesla customers agree with you.

Many reviewers have shared the same sentiment actually.. One such example from Ars where they seem satisfied with the newer interior but repeatedly reference how bad the original Model S interior was;

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/05/review-teslas-new-model-...

Huh. Given that the only thing that's changed in the interior is new seat options, one wonders why they changed their minds? I think I'll stick with the opinion of buyers.

The did describe it as a kindof hybrid SUV/MPV/XUV in previous announcements. Its sortof an SUV but then sortof a completely new thing too.

Curious how much the Whole Foods bags from the frunk cost as a product placement.

I took it as Tesla trying to connect with Whole Foods' demographic.

Yep. People with money who're going to be receptive to the "sustainability" pitch.

Why's that in quotes? It's definitely one of their explicit pitches, and there's a solid demographic of people who care about sustainability and the environment, especially amongst people buying all electric cars.

I didn't mean that to be interpreted as scare quotes, rather that there's a lot that goes into that concept that isn't reflected in the word itself.

Ah ok, I'm a bit scarred on the Internets I guess, making assumptions about simple quotes. Thanks for clarifying =)

Definitely highlights Tesla's target market.

Superchargers have been located at Whole Foods, if there's any connection to that. The San Mateo branch in particular.

I'm sure the crowd would have loved to see a Walmart bag instead.

I found a Periscope stream on Twitter, keeping an eye on that to know when the event starts.

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

I do wish they had used YouTube for live stream, instead of livestream.com, like SpaceX. Less janky.

This seems to be a good capture on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUz_EXSmp9w

I'm on the market for a car in Bay area and was considering Tesla until met with somewhat uninspiring people at Tesla dealership delivering conversation in kind of "Yes. No. Thank you" manner leaving me with impression that they were busy with something more interesting than my presence and hoping i won't keep asking these stupid questions about tesla cars.

Were i suppose to make an appointment to avoid being an intrusion factor? Not sure how it works there.

Their self-guided, touch screen TV was way more entertaining but not enough to convince me to become customer though.

Funny enough, I ordered my Tesla specifically because I didn't have to go into a showroom or order through a person. To each their own I guess.

Sounds like you want to buy from salespeople on commission.

I don't mind paying for good service, whatever way it was delivered.

Good service followed by the good product seems like a win win, unless of course some links in this chain are not "as good".

Tesla's non-commissioned showroom employees are a lot less pushy than commissioned car salespeople. Maybe you prefer the latter.

Not being pushy is not the same as seeming disinterested. Compare with Apple stores sales staff - also not on commission.

Personally, I found Apple and Tesla's employees to be about the same in attitude.

I have visited the Tesla store on Santana Row couple of months ago. Told the guy that mine is totally geeky/touristic interest, I wasn't living in US, there's no way I can afford it to import, no way to charge it here etc. but the guy genuinely answered my every question and spend some 15-20 minutes with me.

I wouldn't buy any other car if I was there.

Looks nice. Is this really an SUV, though? It looks like a sedan.

A lot of SUVs are basically raised sedans. Only the very largest SUVs have fundamental differences from "cars" - Expedition, Escalade, Tahoe, etc.

Disclaimer: I work for GM.

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

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

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

3 rows of seats. 5000lb towing capacity. taller styling. yup.

I guess it's styling is a bit like the X6: http://www.bmwusa.com/bmw/xmodels/x6

Not just available now, but the cars are being given directly to the initial buyers right on stage.

He seemed to get a bit technical when talking about filters. I wish he had been more clear and described exactly what the use of filters were to normal people. In that when you're in the vehicle, you'll be breathing in less toxins emitted by other vehicles etc.

> you'll be breathing in less toxins emitted by other vehicles etc

Yes, air pollution from ICE cars (petrol and diesel) and all other sources of pollution.

I think they are touting this with an eye to the China market, where many people have air filtration systems within their homes and apartments. This means that they will be able to have good quality air when they are in their cars too.

Tesla events always start late. Powerwall event started 40 minutes late.

Anybody knows the price?

If they haven’t already updated the website, it’s priced about $5000 more than a comparable-spec Model S: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/639170376186990592

They revealed today that the base model has a 90kWh battery, which is currently the top-of-the-line pack size for the Model S. Thus, it's almost certain that the starting point will be north of 90k and very likely over 100k with a few basic options thrown in.

First time I have seen a HEPA filter as a central feature of a car. Tesla certainly understands the main reason people buy SUVs: feel safer

Is there a reason why Tesla events happen at night?

It's basically a party for their longtime supporters.

Finally it starts, 52 minutes late.

Beautiful and everything so far, but looks and demeanor wise it's like a full size car.

Yup. Saw one driving around their HQ recently and it was a rather large vehicle.

So that was the launch, and there's still no price?

They've announced prices for the full loaded expensive models. And they're expensive. The entry level models are coming later. Elon said an X will be about $5000 more than the equivalent S (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/639170376186990592). So if they release a 70D version it will be about $80,000 before incentives are taken off.

The price has been known for months? At least for the initial cars, which are fully-loaded and thus a lot more expensive than the base model. Tesla has said for quite a while that the base model is going to be a bit more than Model S.

so who were the VIPs who took possession? I heard that he mentioned "Sergey" as the owner for vin 3. I didnt recognize the others.

Only recognised the last one. It's Steve Jurvetson, from DFJ. He got the one of the first Model S's. Also invested in Tesla.

"Also invested in Tesla" is a bit short... He's on the board at both Tesla and SpaceX (DFJ gave both tens of millions of dollars).. According to his Twitter / Flickr feed, he's probably the world's biggest Musk fan, and probably not just because his investments with Elon made him hundreds of millions in personal wealth.

Well aware of the history, did not find it immediately relevant. Also, Steve doesn't sell shares of most/any of the companies he invests in, he donates them.

Apologies if that came off rude, I get a bit excited with SJ.. I'm almost as much of a Steve Jurvetson fan as many others are Elon Musk fans.. the dude is amazing. He should probably start delivering some of the Tesla event speeches, he's well-spoken but every bit as technical as Elon.

Didn't think it was rude at all. For what it's worth I enjoy Steve's talks more than Elon's, I think it's fair to say he's the smartest VC out there. Incredible breadth of intellect, and from what it seems, a really cool guy.

Did a little digging:

VIN 1: Elon

VIN 2: Steve Jurvetson, board member Tesla/SpaceX (also has Model S VIN#1)

VIN 3: Mark Templeton, President / CEO of Citrix (Owned one of first Roadsters)

VIN 4: Sergey Brin, ..Google, likes pink Teslas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22AQyWBSWrg)

VIN 5: ??

VIN 6: ??

Anyone know a link that doesn't require Flash?

Given it may be another 30 minutes until it starts, you might have time to snapshot one of your VMs, install Flash in that VM, watch the event, and then rollback to your snapshot.

Oh wait, it's starting right now.

Try Periscope.

It has a zombie apocalypse mode? I'm sold!

The automatic opening front door is cool

Little slow, though. I'd rather wrench open the door manually than wait for that thing. When Musk demoed it he slid in sideways so it wasn't so obvious.

Probably door sensors doing

   1: omg is there something next to me?
   2: nope! ok..open door a bit more..
   3: goto 1

I imagine the door flying open and bonking into things would be far more upsetting to customers than a slow one that you can open by hand to speed up the process.

It's 8:52 now, wtf is going on?

Starts at 19:30 on the player.

Starting now!

8pm PACIFIC

it's now 8:42pm PACIFIC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com