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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

"Model X is the safest, fastest and most capable sport utility vehicle in history."

From any other company I would roll my eyes at the ridiculous hyperbole. Here, it's probably just a statement of fact.

Safest and fastest seem possible, but I'm rather doubting its off road capabilities. Unless of course being capable of driving off road isn't something we expect from an SUV these days.

You can tell from the photos you won't be taking this off road.

It's more akin to a people mover with the 7 seat option and the ground clearance being limited. If you look at the most popular SUVs i.e. BMW X3/5, Mercedes M, Land Rover they have a lineage in proper 4WDs.

But let's be honest almost nobody who drives an SUV actually takes it off road.

Right. SUVs in this category are going after the need-a-van-but-want-a-sportcar market.

The irony is that a van will often handle better than a SUV with a car based platform and a lower center of gravity.

My wife has a BMW X5 and it drives like a piece of industrial farm equipment. We also own a Honda Odyssey which IMO handles significantly better - it's basically an Accord with a taller roof.

The current X3, X5, and M-Class are all built on unibody car platforms. Only the Range Rover models have a remotely "proper" lineage in 4WD vehicles.

This. There's a fine line between SUV and minivan. At best, the X is sitting on top of the line.

Do people actually go off road with SUVs? You just need to stand near any speed bump, pot hole filled road or construction zone for five minutes to realise that the cars that slow down the most are usually SUVs.

People with SUVs want a smooth and "safe" ride, not to throw themselves down a mountain and conquer nature like in TV ads.

Ugh this is the worst, I genuinely do not understand buying that huge car and being so incredibly afraid of a pothole.

Cool thing is, they could actually claim "safe" in a bigger sense of the word that most companies do not. Zero emissions is safer for everyone over the long term.

I'd want to see a cradle-to-grave carbon footprint analysis first, though.

Good point. Maybe there's an asterisk in there somewhere stating this claim is predicated on successfully launching used batteries into space and having them crash into a dump on the moon.

Or building that giant solar array around Mercury that beams energy for free to every Tesla car.

Build it around Earth of course. Get about 10X the solar density outside atmosphere. Even with 50% losses due to translating to/from laser, still magnitudes more efficient than ground-bases. And Mercury-based orders of magnitude harder yet!

Nah, just get them to orbit and then gently nudge them towards the sun. After the cost of getting out of the gravity well, let physics take care of the rest. We will need the moon one day, no point in trashing it beforehand.

Doesn't work that way. It take about 3 times as much delta v to crash something into the sun from low-earth orbit as it does to put it into orbit in the first place. If you gently nudge something in orbit, it will continue to be at risk of crashing into other orbiting thing or falling back to earth.

(Of course there's also the fact that it's very unlikely that launching even the most dangerous kinds of wastes into space is a net environmental win.)

How much more to go from low-earth to the outskirts of orbit where the gentle nudge will work? If we can plan getting a small satellite to land on a moving comet then we should be able to work out the mechanics of plotting a course for a bit of junk to eventually make its way to the sun. Think positive!

Here are some calculations, and a good explanation, showing why you don't want to try to shoot waste into the Sun:

http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun/

Your link is totally ruining my bit.

Nonetheless, interesting article.

I guess proposals to the UN will have to wait until technology catches up with my business plan.

What? Used lithium batteries aren't radioactive, there's no reason we couldn't recycle them. And their proliferation will only make them more economical to recycle.

Lithium batteries are widely recycled.

Okay, but how does that scale to Tesla vehicles? Is it cost-effective? Is it part of the ownership / leasing arrangement that Tesla will recycle them? I genuinely would like to know.

Well if it's economical to recycle now, with comparatively tiny and hugely varied laptop and cellphone batteries, I can only imagine it would be more cost-effective to do with very large and regularized car batteries.

Tesla's battery packs are really just a very large array of relatively standard lithium ion cells, 18650 lithium ions if you're curious.

These individual cells fail independently of each other, so the packs slowly degrades over time as a bell curve function of the MTBF, a Tesla battery can be "rebuilt" at any point in time during this lifecycle by replacing the individual dead cells within it.

These individual cells that have gone bad over time and no longer hold a charge can be "recycled" more completely, where the individual materials and electrolytes are separated, processed and reconstituted as a new battery that can then be used in a pack rebuild or a new Tesla car or wall pack.

Personally, I'm much more impressed by the crash safety than stuff like emissions.

It's hard to get people to care about emissions. But almost everyone has been in a car crash at some point. Most people know someone who has been killed or severely injured in one.

What makes Tesla remarkable is that their EVs aren't just good EVs, they're good cars. Previous EVs were basically sold as, "Well, this is kind of a crap car, but it doesn't burn gasoline!" And then people wondered why there were few buyers. Being extremely safe is a big part of that whole "good cars" thing.

Spoken like a person who didn't live through the 70s. The roads were a blue haze, with choking smog over most cities. Think Beijing today.

Once emissions were controlled to a comfortable level, then further improvements became marginally less important. That's natural and probably correct. I imagine Federal regulations are too stringent now; that's part of why car companies are resisting.

Tesla is around today, not the 70s.

Yes, emissions in general are very important. But they don't sell cars. Crash safety sells cars. "Better crash safety than anything else out there" really sells cars.

Agreed - Tesla is in a position to succeed because it exceeds by traditional car criteria. The long-term benefits are visible, but don't really drive the purchasing decision. But much like Apple seems to be doing with security, it can be developed as a differentiator once traditional bona fides are established (which they seem to be).

The only other company than Apple, in my opinion, that consistently slathers on more self-adulation and importance than reasonable on their own products, is Tesla.

Safest? Hummer H1. Fastest? Brabus 800 G. Most Capable? Toyota Land Cruiser.

Edit: Every downvote is sweet with your tears of being confronted by actual facts, just letting you know.

I really doubt the H1 is safer than the Model X. Just because it's big and strong doesn't mean it's safe. On what basis do you make that statement?

I'm having trouble finding much info on the Brabus 800 G, but from what I can dig up it looks like it does 0-60 in 4.2 seconds with a top speed of 155MPH. Model X P90D with ludicrous upgrade does 0-60 in 3.2 seconds with a top speed of 155MPH.

Most capable is a vague term that can mean almost anything, so that can't really be argued either way on anything objective.

Thanks for responding and I'll chime in.

I'm using the 8,100 pound vehicle weight of the H1 as an off-the-cuff reference point in physics, because in practical terms, yes, bigger tends to be safer in the real world. If somebody can find the NHTSA numbers for the H1 that'd be relevant to clearing that up. Oh, and I'm talking about the military converted version that was road legal, not the GM product.

Until we get the official test numbers from a 3rd party, I'm not going to believe Tesla's numbers. For all I know they could be better than advertised, but they could also be worse. I saw the 800 G having a top speed closer to 170, which would make it faster. Also, having been on the road with 50+ Teslas, I can assure you that the speed of the vehicle absolutely does not matter, because they don't use it. Anecdotal, sure, but there's always a bragging rights speed metric to brag about, which means it's not really worth bragging about.

So basically on the last point you agree with my premise, that Tesla likes to pick terms to hype itself along the lines of Apple and how "revolutionary" their products are. Basically the Model X hasn't proven itself capable of anything yet, because it's a year behind and I haven't seen any 3rd party tests of it...unlike the Land Cruiser, which is highly regarded worldwide for being, you know, capable of handling normal and abnormal conditions.

Bigger is safer, all else being equal. But all else is far from equal when it comes to crash safety in cars, especially when you're comparing a brand new 2015 design with one from 1992.

Cars have become dramatically safer over the years. A 60% increase in mass isn't going to make up for 20+ years of improvement in safety design and technology. As far as I can find the H1 was not crash tested, so it's hard to say just what its safety is truly like, but I would not expect it to fare nearly as well as something modern.

Regarding speed, if you're saying you don't believe Tesla's numbers then you have no facts on which to base a claim either way.

The last point is puffery. (That's a technical term.) It can't be objectively compared, because it's inherently a subjective claim.

None of this supports your rather insulting invocation of "actual facts" in your previous post. I see no actual facts coming from you here.

So based on your 3rd paragraph, you frequently see Brabus 800Gs running at 170mph on the highway? I mean, there's always a bragging rights speed metric to brag about, which means it's not worth bragging about...

I don't think those 8100 pounds will help much if you are crashing into a mountain wall or drop down into a 1m deep ditch on the side of the road. Just slamming the brakes will probably give you a whiplash in that thing and it probably has tons of sharp and hard edges in the interior. Modern cars have so many safety features, auto tightening of the safety belts, seats give way in strategical locations to save your back, etc etc etc. And don't forget active safety such as auto brakes.

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