I Drove Chevrolet's Bolt
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
If I'm giving money to a company for a new type of transportation, it's going to be the one committing to the broad goals of bettering humanity, not just capitalizing on someone else proving the existence of a market.
I'm not just behind Tesla, there are other companies like Arcimoto (https://www.arcimoto.com/) that are putting significant effort into redesigning transportation from the ground up.
[1]: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-electric-car-chevy-bolt-mary...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4BIoNsAB8s&feature=youtu.be...
What is so inherently superior about offering preorders? I'm honestly not sure what point you're making here.
1: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-22/how-tesla-...
To put things in perspective, right now there are more preorders than the annual sales of the top 3 or 4 small luxury cars combined (BMW M3, and Mercedes C-Class, etc). I can't recall ever seeing this kind of production capacity needed for a single car model, much less a luxury-class car. Exciting stuff.
Tesla is American; this perhaps isn't the best choice of words.
> ultimately is only doing so to sell units on what they perceive as a new niche.
I don't think I'm cynical to believe that every corporation (including Tesla, etc.) that intends on making profits is trying to sell units in a popular niche.
> it's going to be the one committing to the broad goals of bettering humanity, not just capitalizing on someone else proving the existence of a market.
Fair enough, but for me it comes down to supporting the product that best fits my needs and desires, which I think on a societal level can do a better job of solving the most immediate problems. I would strongly consider any vehicle that fits what I'm looking for when I next shop for a car.
> Tesla is American; this perhaps isn't the best choice of words.
I think the point the OP was making was "The traditional automotive industry (Of which Tesla is not a part)"
I don't think Tesla will be suffering with more people looking at and buying electric cars.
And if we can push renewable energy to produce power for all those cars, then we all win so I'm rooting for everybody.
Agreed - Especially if Tesla's selling batteries, operating systems, and/or infrastructure services to other EV manufacturers. Winning by creating and growing the EV ecosystem sounds like part of the plan.
I want electric cars to win. That doesn't happen if Tesla is the only company making them.
If it were only Tesla doing anything of note - with all the best will in the world - the evolution of products would ultimately stagnate as they refined their own particular flavour of electric vehicle.
A monopoly held by a young, interesting company is still a monopoly.
Tesla is setting a dangerous precedent for the industry. Don't be fooled by their relentless PR machine.
I've had cars where the physical buttons were sliders and I usually had to glance at them, especially when there were multiple slides parallel to each other (say for fan speed and hot/cold mix). That's because the part that I had to interact with would be in different places, depending on the current setting. It would require enough feeling around to make sure I had the right control that it would probably be more distracting than a quick glance.
My current car (2006 Honda CR-V) uses round buttons for many things. I do not need to glance at them. The fan speed control is always in the same place. The hot/cold mix control is always in the same place. The air routing control is always in the same place. So, if I want to change fan speed, for instance, I reach to the same fixed location every time, and then rotate the knob clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on whether I want to increase or decrease the fan speed. Unlike with sliders, the current setting does not affect what I have to do to find the control or interact with it.
That still doesn't help with subfunctions like picking a radio station, etc. but voice control and steering wheel buttons pick up the slack. I still miss well-placed physical controls.
The fact that most manufacturers either do a poor job of making this happen or don't bother trying at all doesn't entitle you to condemn the entire technology.
For me, it's between 1.5 and 2 seconds, or around 100 feet of travel. If that really doesn't seem dangerous to you then I suppose it's your life, but I don't want to be driving anywhere near you.
Touchscreens can meet NHTSA's guidelines if they are used for presenting information. However, it's very difficult to make them safe to physically interact with while driving, short of reducing what's shown to just a few giant buttons. And my original point was that Tesla doesn't even try on this front - the center screen is jam packed with information and small buttons that require quite a bit of attention to operate effectively.
I think you mean displays, not touchscreens.
So that the passenger can't use them either? The car is not my baby sitter, I wouldn't buy a car that did stuff like that.
Also, for what it's worth at least two of the OEMs I've worked with are in the process of adding passenger-detecting tech to the seats and head unit so that if someone is in the passenger seat, the full touchscreen controls will be unlocked.
No, it's not because the car didn't babysit me, it's because I messed with the controls.
I have lots of way to crash into people, the car can help me avoid it, by knowledge and help, but not by restrictions.
If you put in passenger detecting tech I'll be sure to activate it permanently if I buy that car (or not buy the car if I can't).
They already have passenger detecting tech anyway - it's a weight sensor, it makes the seatbelt light beep. I'll probably have to remove the seatbelt beeper though, since it would activate constantly thinking there is someone in the seat.
And this is why you should not add such lockouts - people will disable them, and remove safety features in the process. And in any case machines are not smart enough for them to be in charge, there are too many special cases and failures.
I appreciate skepticism, but that just seems too extreme.
So it depends on how much cpu it takes. Not just where we're looking.
Fortunately that's the kind of mistake you only make once ...
But yes, clearly they should be. But there's a pretty big difference between critical flight controls and controls for the music or HVAC.
Seems like the obvious next step.
Well, they had them in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While not actually shown close-up in the show, the technical manual explained that the flat touchscreens actually provided tactile feedback, and of course were reconfigurable.
How'd they do it? Simple: according to the technical manual, they used miniature force fields.
We're not very close to developing any kind of force fields right now....
On a more serious note, I believe there's been some research into using ultrasonics to provide some kind of tactile feedback. And of course lots of phones now have vibrating feedback.
Or how does the passenger change the music while you are viewing the map?
I really dislike there being only a single control centre. Good for the driver without passengers perhaps, but bad otherwise.
If we Americans can easily ape British accents, you shouldn't have much trouble doing the reverse.
I thought Tesla had an advantage on battery tech and/or production that meant the competition had to produce vastly inferior (on range) cars, such as the leaf/i3 etc.
If GM can produce a 200+ mile range EV at this cost, then Toyota, VW or BMW should soon be able to produce a good 200+ mile EV at a competitive price.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/03/tesla-may-need-cash-to-delive...
Tesla is either going to have to hope for sustained demand at that level, build out a massive production capacity or spread deliveries out farther.
I don't know how this will end up shaking out. They will have competition in 2018 onward. Probably from multiple OEMs. So I guess the next 2 year is really going to be the big test for Musk to see if they can switch from plucky upstart to Big Auto. More than a few companies have been destroyed by too much demand too fast.
The Bolt looks like it's maybe the size and shape of a Honda Fit. I'm pretty sure Priuses (the regular kind) have quite a bit more interior room than that.
Bolt specs: http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/vehicles/bo...
If you compare your link to the Prius (http://www.toyota.com/prius/features/weights_capacities/1223...), you'll see the Prius has larger dimensions for passengers (for instance, 1st row legroom is 41.6in Bolt, 42.3in Prius; 1st row hip room is 51.6in Bolt, 53.4in Prius), however less overall passenger volume (52.2 + 42.2 = 94.4 cu-ft Bolt, 93.1 cu-ft Prius, unfortunately the Prius doesn't list separate 1st vs 2nd row volume, but I suspect the Prius wins because the Bolt beats it in rear-seat legroom 36.5 vs 33.4, so the Prius is sacrificing rear-seat room), but the Prius has greater cargo capacity by quite a lot: 24.6 cu-ft vs. 16.9. (There's also a special "Two Eco" Prius which has a whopping 27.4 cu-ft cargo volume for some reason.)
Overall these aren't that far apart, but it does seem to me the Prius is a generally larger car, with more cargo space and a more spacious front seat but with crappier rear-seat legroom.
Also, the Prius has a much longer wheelbase (106.3 vs 102.4), and its height is much lower (58.1 vs 62.8). That explains why the Bolt gets similar volume from so much less length: it sits up a lot higher, sorta like a mini-SUV. Also, the Bolt's page even makes note that the EPA has no category for "crossover", so they call it a "small wagon", meaning GM itself would prefer to refer to it as a crossover. The Prius has never been called a crossover; it's clearly a hatchback car.
What is really going to be interesting is how well other car companies can build EC cars. I personally like the look of the tesla model 3 way better and at a similar price point, it is a no brainier to get a tesla for me (if I had the money). Also, I'm really interested in autonomous driving and tesla seems to be far ahead (I know lots of companies are catching up but autonomous driving is still in the higher end models.
The difference is that the bigger OEMs are extremely wary of enabling these features in cars and getting into lawsuits as a result. Tesla has shown repeatedly with things like a giant touch screen that flaunts NHTSA guidelines that it just doesn't care about potential legal problems, and is more than happy to put somewhat unproven tech in the hands of drivers and hope for the best.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/11/autos/automatic-braking-nhts...
We'll also have to see how the options wind up comparing at that price point.
Competition is a Good Thing!
Disclaimer: I work for GM, etc.
Tesla made one major innovation. They realized that people will buy an electric car for $100,000. That's really it! They have an attractive and very good car, but it is market innovation that is Tesla's essential advantage.
1: http://www.amazon.com/NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable-Battery...
This guy did a teardown[0] and did a single-cell discharge test and got a little under 3Ah.[1]
[0] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/pics-info-inside-the...
[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/pics-info-inside-the...
I'm not surprised capacity is similar to what you'd find off the shelf, but I'd expect chemistry to be tweaked to account for the different environment and much higher need for longevity.
http://news.panasonic.com/global/topics/2011/6971.html
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084682_what-goes-into-a...
You haven't ridden in a Tesla doing its self-driving thing, have you?
I didn't care about Tesla until I rode in one doing this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_cruise_control_syst...
Collision avoidance systems similarly have a long history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system
As I understand it, Tesla Autopilot is a collection of these ordinary luxury car features (lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, environment sensing/prediction and collision avoidance, integrated navigation) that with branding that recognizes them for what they are: the foundation of self-driving technology.
> not a luxury car
> not a luxury car in Europe
https://www.google.com/?tbm=pts#tbm=pts&q=inassignee:%22Tesl... shows "about 731 results" — 549 of which mention batteries.
The Leaf has been around for a lot longer than Tesla and isn't just a fantasy luxury item only the very wealthy can afford).
In my personal opinion I think their approach of working directly at the mass market price point will pay dividends in the long term.
The free supercharging stations I think is a gimmick. Nothing is free - you get what you pay for. The price of that luxury is folded into the price of the car. I could be wrong - maybe it's a clever enough market tool to get people to pay up - but it'll probably be more practical for most people to rent a car for that long weekend drive.
"Free" seems mostly to be a matter of perception. Here is Australia, a lot of merchants, especially small grocery shops, charge you an extra 1.5% on purchases with credit card or have a minimum amount, say $10. As a customer, that bothers the living hell out of me. I am absolutely happy if they increase the prices of every item they have by 1.5% and don't bother me with credit card charges.
I personally prefer to deal with a business that deals with complexities of running their business themselves, instead of passing it onto me, the customer.
Disclaimer: I work for GM, but not on this product, and any opinions are my own.
It could very well be a close race between 2-5 electric cars. But attractiveness could be another reason 1 is the big winner.
There was a time when most programmers did their own art. This is reminiscent of that time.
No competitor breaks this cycle because all major competitors for middle-class cars also have luxury divisions.
And good evidence that startups (yes Tesla is still a startup) will always be better at exploiting inefficiencies in larger companies.
[1] https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/zoe.html
I think there are other electric cars out there that are the electric version of a "typical" car.
My theory is automakers want the car to stand out, even if it's ugly, since otherwise how will anyone know you are driving an electric vehicle?
(The electric has a practical range of about 80 to 120 km, i.e. around 100 miles, so not a great success.)
For example, the Tesla 3 pushes the passenger space forward and backwards to fit more people in the same space. It can do so because there's no big, heavy engine up front. Starting with a traditional car body and adding electric is just going to waste space.
Also the most iconic full EV car, Tesla model S, looks very much like combustion engine cars. In fact, from distance it's hard to tell it apart from a Ford Mondeo, the symbol of mediocrity (at least in the UK) which is also a fine and nicely contoured car.
The more distinctly formed EV cars, on the other hand, look about as weird as Granma Duck's 1916 Detroit Electric; they have some futuristic aerodynamics but on the desirability scale, they seem to suck.
The interior is where there's a bunch of new rules in play, with the front mounted ICE being replaced with a floor of batteries and between wheel motors. That directly allows Tesla to be amongst the safest cars ever built, and to fit more passengers, more comfortably than similarly sized ICE cars.
Tesla needs those advantages to balance out initial shortcoming of EV cars, at lower mass-market price points that becomes even more important.
There are plenty of normal looking hybrids these days.
I think that it limits how mass market you can go, however it seemed to work for the Prius.
Because unlike other things they discuss, styling is 100% subjective. What would be the point of the journalists talking about their own tastes when you are going to make your own mind up about the styling anyway? On top of that, some cars look better in some colors than others, so there's more personal taste at work there.
Personally, while I really like the Model S and Model X, I found the Model 3 prototype's styling to be kinda meh in the three colors they've shown. I might still get one but it won't be because of the styling.
FWIW, I currently have a Nissan LEAF in blue and I think it looks really funky and fun. But it is "abnormal", so it's polarizing. Most EVs so far are styled in a polarizing way. It just so happens you seem to fall on the "I don't like it" side of that spectrum.
I admit that modern cars are better in every way other than looks. And it is amazing what 60's cars could do without a single transistor. But dang, I do like the way the 60's cars looked.
And, of course, a couple years later the E-bodies appeared from Chrysler. They were so damned good looking that Chrysler revived the style recently.
I had a 67 Mustang in college, and have a 72 E-body today. I'd get a 68 Charger if I had garage space.
Edit: I forgot to add in the original "Gone In 60 Seconds", not the pathetic remake.
It's like that for most action sequences, I recently saw a Jackie Chan documentary that has him explain the differences of his action shots, and the things to be mindful of to make them be more believable as to be of one long full sequence.
1. use of CGI
2. overlaying with music (car nuts want to hear the note of the engine and singing tires instead)
3. hitting the fruit cart
4. hitting the hidden ramp that causes the car to flip over
5. speeding up the film
6. bad foley work, like sounds of double-clutch shifting while both hands can be seen on the wheel, tires squealing on dirt roads, etc.
I really hope they do not make the mistake of making this a front wheel drive car. A front wheel drive car when combined with a high torque electric motor is basically asking for trouble. The high torque applied to the front wheels screws up the steering, makes it imprecise, causes understeer, or in extreme cases even the loss of steering control.
This was a problem with the Chevy Spark electric. It was very fast but, when you slam on the gas, you lose all steering input and the car tends to veer to the right and there is nothing you can do about it. (except of course to let go of the gas, so you can get the steering back).
Electric engines are so small there is a lot of flexibility designers have as to where to place them. It would be a huger mistake if bold designers placed them in the front.
[Edit: I meant understeer not oversteer]
Call me an unskilled driver, but I don't feel as confident in bad conditions with rear wheel drive.
Traction is traction. No matter how a car handles it'll handle the same way on every surface, the traction threshold will be different. No matter which wheels are driven turning and braking is the same. In a straight line it front/rear doesn't really matter. RWD will slip out, FWD will just spin and in either case the driver (the one's that aren't the worst of the worst) will lift off the throttle before anything bad happens. In a modern car traction control will just work it's magic and you wouldn't even know. Ditto for turning from a stop. The driven wheels are irreverent to turning while slowing. The problem is in a long sweeping turn that the driver wants to accelerate out of, like a highway ramp. FWD will just plow straight into whatever is outside the turn. RWD will do the same thing but the car will be oriented differently. No matter which wheels are driven if you break traction in a turn you're going to go wide, better hope you've got enough space to correct it. The safety advantage with understeer is that if you do something monumentally stupid (e.g. drunk guy takes highway off ramp at 90mph) the front of the car with all it's crash test safety will be between you and the consequences of your actions.
The RWD vs FWD thing is more of a "what I don't know can't hurt me." The novice won't notice a little bit of understeer whereas anyone will notice a little bit of oversteer and everyone who can't apply a reasonable amount of self control to their right foot should bend over, grab their ankles and spend their money on some snow tires.
The Miata club of Alaska was featured in one of the car magizines (I forget which) and they basically said "Everyone that thinks we're insane for driving these cars year round in Alaska should know that the design characteristics that help maximize use of available traction in the dry don't stop working in the snow."
I survived the Atlanta snow storm a couple years ago turning a 35 mile commute into 50+ miles due to detours in a BMW on summer tires... The only confidence I felt was that I was going to end up stuck somewhere, but adjusting driving style to conditions goes a long way and then it's just the luck of not getting hit by someone who didn't.
It's because you are, maybe, depending where you live.
I could drive either of them until the snow got deep enough to high-center the car. It's not rocket science.
It also matters when winter temperatures tend to hover around the freezing point vs. well below. It's hard to gain traction when the surface is slippery rather than hard frozen but essentially dry.
I've owned RWD vehicles (e.g., Volvo) in the past, I mean, good cars but useless trying to go up/down a steep incline just after a wet, sloppy snowstorm. To those professing to "know how to drive in snow" with RWD, I've offered the challenge of driving up to my house when our streets are coated with ice-encrusted snow. Nobody has yet taken me up on it.
Even FWD can be insufficient. I've insisted on all-wheel drive at a minimum. My near-ancient 2003 Honda Pilot has a locked 4-wheel range in low gear. There have been times I needed it, and even a few cases where I also had to use chains.
Whether RWD will suffice ultimately depends a lot on environment, road and weather conditions.
Rear wheel drive was great on my '84 Ford Ranger when I needed an excuse to skip school -- couldn't get it up my parent's driveway, sorry!
Also, just for driving dynamics, front wheel is better for day-to-day stuff. More predictable, easier to correct, easier to control on rough or slippery surfaces, ... I'd rather drive a front-wheel car without traction control than a rear wheel drive one.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but a small family car like this should be front-wheel drive. Also, front wheel can be pretty sweet in a small car with a peppy engine.
But small cars that are designed to be performance cars from the beginning tend to be real wheel drive cars. See for example, the mazda miata, the toyota mr-2, the prosche cayman/boxter, the alfa romea 4c, etc. If you look carefully at powerful small cars, you will notice that the ones designed from the ground up to be performance cars tend to be real wheel drive, the ones that are designed merely as an upgrade of a less powerful economy car are often front wheel drive.
The cost efficiency and space benefits of front wheel drive are mostly related to the particularities of internal combustion engines. For an electric, these are not that much of an issue.
And the steering problems of powerful front wheel drive cars are very real.
- Many AWD vehicles, and many 2WD Audi and VW cars, use a traditional longitudinal setup with equal-length shafts driven from a transaxle mounted in the rear of the engine.
- Power-assisted steering can be employed to counteract torque-steer by receiving the current torque application as input.
Like you said, an electric vehicle has neither of these problems, because they do not have to package a transaxle to one side of an ICE-driven crankshaft. There is no reason to believe that the Bolt exhibits torque-steer, and nothing in the article corroborates this suspicion.
The other benefit of FWD vehicles is that understeer is much, much easier to recover from than oversteer. RWD vehicles tend to snap-oversteer the other direction when the untrained driver lifts off the accelerator too quickly; a common occurrence in YouTube videos of Mustang and Corvette conventions. Understeer can easily be recovered from by lifting off the accelerator in the same way, putting more weight on the front wheels and increasing available traction.
If you apply a lot of torque you start getting microslides, or momentary losses of traction which reduce the front wheels ability to steer the car and cause torque steer and understeer.
A lot of the problems of oversteer you see in youtube videos and the like are really just very extreme cases. I doubt the Bolt, even with its electric motor, will have as much torque as a the souped up mustangs and corvettes that you usually see at those conventions.
In general, for the same amount of torque, oversteer is much better than understeer, because it does not cause nearly as much loss of steering (and the little loss it causes usually goes in the right direction, i.e., helping you turn). Oversteer is the result of the rear wheels sliding, and the rear wheels are not as crucial for steering as the front wheels. Thus microslides in the rear wheels will not cause such a loss of steering authority.
I remember i test drove a 200 hp front wheel drive audi, and it had noticeable understeer and torque steer problems. Then i test drove a 300 hp rear wheel drive infiniti, and it had no oversteer problems even though it had much more horsepower and torque.
Of course you can always cause dangerous situations with oversteer, but you need much more power and torque to do it.
What's not true is that torque-steer is caused by lots of torque overcoming available traction. The same torque is applied to both wheels in the absence of unequal-length half-shafts. You might induce understeer with the application of torque, but it will not induce a force which changes the steering angle moreso than the same understeer situation would induce on a RWD vehicle, and that's a function of the suspension setup, and mostly dependent on caster angle.
Thus I submit that torque-steer is not an inherent flaw of FWD design, but of the most common packaging design in ICE vehicles. It's easy to conflate the two.
It's not the first time I read in the papers that some poor woman, or man, slammed their rear-wheel drive BMW or Mercedes sideways into a tree or whatever, occasionally killing the child they carried.
That's when I feel like throttling the young bloods who get their jollies drifting around the roundabouts and pooh-poohing front wheel drive cars which are perfectly adequate for 99.9% of the population.
Man, I can't see the day we featherless bipeds aren't allowed to touch the pedals and wheel any longer on public roads.
That said, I'd be completely shocked if the car wasn't FWD. Most auto makers+small car=auto FWD.
Probably high torque. I can cause tire slip by stomping on the pedal in my Fiat 500e. You just have that much torque and it's available instantly. The low rolling friction tires probably don't help. However, the good news, is that electric acceleration is instantaneously responsive, so you can have the driving pleasure of optimizing how much acceleration you can get away with.
In fact, I would suspect something to be entirely wrong with a car lacking this capability. A vehicle with even less torque than that Tercel would have problems passing, driving up steep grades, and maneuvering slippy situations. No American consumer would purchase such a car (if this were the 1970s I would not be making the same statement).
and BTW, a Prius meets all the criteria you described. They actually have a lot more "go" in the power-train than they give the driver access to since they're trying to put a lower bound on fuel economy. They have about the same passing power at low speed as an 80s pickup, but the 80s pickup will be a lot faster off the line (gearing and flat torque curve) and be worse at highway speed (bad aero) Nobody notices this stuff because very few people actually floor it.
FWIW they give most economy cars a really tall 1st gear to make it harder to peel out from a stop (e.g taking a right turn into traffic in the rain) and I expect the bolt to be no exception. Consequently they're very slow off the line.
Direct-drive electric vehicles, just like standard-transmission ICE vehicles, have none of this nonsense, which leads to part of the "legendary torque" association (the other part being the flat torque curve).
So being alarmed at the ability of a vehicle without a clutch or stick-shift to activate traction control when flooring at low speeds is not a cause for concern, nor is it damning of the Bolt's design, nor is it damning of FWD electric vehicles as a class.
I agree. Furthermore, using an electric motor negates the "packaging" and efficiency advantages of front wheel drive, so it is kind of hard to see why they would... and yet Nissan Leaf (best selling electric car so far) is front wheel drive.
There is also "power-on oversteer" which will occur in a RWD car without suitable control if the road conditions are bad enough, eg. on ice. "Power-on understeer" occurs in FWD cars. The appropriate solution here for both FWD and RWD is electronic stability control (which is pretty much standard at least where I live (Australia)), and particularly easy to implement with electric drive.
In fact out of all the non-Tesla EVs the only one I don't find ugly is the Fiat 500e which is only sold in CA (and now Oregon) as a compliance car and its own CEO hates it. It is a nice little EV though.
All of this also ignores the coming autonomous cars which I think are going to be here sooner than people realize (maybe this is the big part 2 of the model 3 reveal). When that happens I'm not confident the existing car companies will be able to compete - they're desperately trying to acquire the necessary tech now, but it's a little late.
Personally, I love my Volt. I only use gasoline on rare occasions -- a couple of out-of-state trips per year -- but don't have to make long stops (30 minutes is long for me) at charging stations along the way. And I think it's a pretty cool looking car. But then, I'm over 30, so what do I know about cool?
All this leads up to; when you see significant numbers of electric cars on the road you'll see roadside businesses start to cater to them. That model isn't bad, customer parks, plugs in the car and goes in for snax and coffee. 20 minutes later the smart phone dings saying the car is good go. That's different than having stand around a gas station for 20 minutes.
I've traveled with lots of friends who are the same way, and a few people who make much longer stops like the ones you describe.
Who is more representative of "most people"? I have no idea. But I wouldn't want to stop for 15 minutes every 80 miles, or 30 minutes every 170 miles.
I think most people will find the stops to be more than they're used to, but not onerous. You'll probably hit 4-5 chargers in a day of driving. If you can time it right, two of those will coincide with meal breaks, so you're looking at 2-3 where you hit the bathroom, grab a snack, and maybe have to wait a bit on the car.
If you make big trips once or twice a year then it can easily be a net win over a gas car. The gas car wins on long trips, but requires ~15 minutes/month at gas stations even when you're just local. In my year of Tesla ownership, I'd say I've lost about two hours total waiting for a charge, and gained about that much not going to gas stations.
oh, I agree. I just don't see it as a win over a plug-in hybrid with a gas generator, yet. In ~6 months of ownership of a Volt, I've been to the gas station about 4 times (all on a trip to/from another state) at 5-10 minutes per stop, and have never lost time waiting for a charge.
The supercharger network is a nice step, and combined with electric vehicles with a 200+ mile range, we're a step closer to electric vehicles becoming the norm. But there are still obstacles to be overcome -- still some inconveniences that are better solved by other technologies.
Edit: I just looked up the specs. The PHEV version (at least the UK one) apparently drops the third row seats. I can't figure out the available cargo space. Everything I find says it's 436L, which is about 15ft^3, but there's no way it could possibly be that small. In any case, all I can say is: no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame.
I think it depends very much what you grew up with. My wife and I both grew up in families when 8-9 hour drives with only a quick stop for lunch as a vacation was the norm from basically when we where born, and neither one of us thought anything about it.
Our daughter on the other hand spent the first several years of her life basically never going anywhere by car (as we didn't have one) and she absolutely hates spending more than an hour at a time in cars.
I think what bothers me is that they don't look like normal cars. Their shape is closer to a toaster than a sports car, they have small little plastic looking wheels, and smiling face headlight and bumper styling.
I absolutely think cars should move away from what they are now toward something more like an appliance, but I won't enjoy it.
But who am I to talk anyway, my current car is terrible.
The Tesla Model 3 looks better than either, from what I've seen, but doesn't stand out from anything else from similar priced cars from BMW, Audi, Lexus, or Mercedes. It's all very subjective however.
I like the 1st gen volt though. It's sort of chunky-yet-handsome from certain angles, esp rear 3/4.
(IMO of course).
It's kind of shocking how tied up to a specific roofline profile Tesla is, in order to meet range/price expectations. They'll likely never be able to put out an estate car without sacrifising range or making it obscenely expensive.
Also, wtf is up with everyone comparing the model 3 to A4/c-class/3-series? Current best estimates I can find put the model 3 at 5-10 inches shorter than either of those, and with a smaller interior (obvious just from looking at pictures, the model 3 interior roof profile is a lot less "square" than ze Germans, again for aero reasons). I think Mazda 3, but with a smaller trunk, is a better comparison. (Yes, I know the model 3 has a "frunk" to compensate.) I also think Tesla are being deliberately secretive with the external dimensions, to keep people thinking it's bigger than it actually is.
[1] http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--uaROKJL5...
Additionally, I'm sure that aesthetics will actually make a big difference to any potential buyer and so do matter a lot, so I think you are right to voice a subjective opinion on how it looks.
Me too. I rather like the Fiat 500e better than the Tesla for styling. I'm going to put down the deposit for a Tesla Model 3, though.
Full autonomy is very challenging. More standardization among the manufacturers is needed, like the recent braking standard they've announced, but also that includes local governments to stop doing crazy things like different sign shapes, colors, fonts, messages, even vertical vs horizontal traffic lights. There's a lot of work to be done by more than just the car manufacturers.
Remember: there are already 100% fully autonomous vehicles roaming real roads in Silicon Valley. 5 years is a very long time to shrink and improve sensors, learn from real-world driving experiences, and beef up the software.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-drivin...
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/13/us/google-self-driving-car-pul...
There's a huge difference between mostly working (especially on a highway) and truly autonomous door-to-door.
You also don't seem to have addressed my point that there are cars on the road right now with no driver behind the wheel. We are long past the point of mostly working and very close to the point of autonomous door-to-door in favorable cities.
I think autonomy will be partial, conditional, and thus not door to door autonomous for at least a decade.
I sooner expect Alphabet to sell this tech to a big 10 auto manufacturer, or to Apple, for the same reasons as Boston Dynamics: where's the cashflow? If it's not up for sale in 5 years, I'll expect it's the real deal and we'll see door to door in another 10 years.
I'm seeing someone DDoSing autonomous taxis by booking a ton of them to an address with known bad routing...
This looks ugly too. I'm undecided on the model 3.
The one thing that the Bolt raises more so than the 3 is that it will invalidate the pricing this year for any EV that gets under 100 mile range and wants to charge near 30k. When this car reaches the lot people are going to question how the other manufacturers think they can justify near 30k or 50k in the case of BMW pricing for sub 100 miles. Even Chevy might have some issues with range extender Volt which has 50 EV miles. I can imagine some shoppers thinking, it gives up 150EV miles for a gas engine?
Then finally when the 3 is available in quantity the other manufacturers better have 200 mile range EVs of their own or severely discounted lower range EV. Most will use EVs to up their fleet fuel mileage but some may find a real market there. Granted even all those reservations for the 3 look nice but 300k isn't squat when up against numbers of all cars just sold in the US let alone world wide
Sure -- I think the Volt is targeting a different use case, of people whose daily commutes are less than 40-50 total miles but who occasionally make long trips.
It's basically the perfect car for me (I bought a 2013 Volt off-lease a few months ago.) I'm a stay-at-home dad, my wife works from home, and most of the driving I do is to locations within a 5-mile radius (family, church, the grocery store, and a handful of restaurants.) Two or three times per year, we travel out of state, at which point I'm glad for the ~340 mile combined range and would be disappointed with having to stop every 200 miles and sit for 30+ minutes waiting for a full charge.
But for someone who regularly travels 50-200 miles per day, the Bolt or 3 or other EVs in that class might be a much better option.
I understand there's a push for "hey, I'm different, I'm electric!" but I know quite a few people who would be in a market for a new Leaf but they won't buy it because of the looks, it's almost like it's impossible to put electric motor and batteries into a shape that looks like a conventional car.
Perhaps one day we'll be able to order totally custom cars and have robots build them for us at a reasonable price. Now that's what I'd call progress.
http://news.boldride.com/2014/02/man-builds-electric-c3-corv...
It makes such a huge difference, I just don't see how CCS catches up(not to mention that there's no long term planning around it).
Tesla might say yes. They want EVs to win, not just their particular brand. They're already giving away the juice. My guess is they'd just ask the other companies to shoulder their share of the bill.
I wouldn't be real shocked if the Model 3 has to pay to charge. Not only because of the electricity cost, to keep the stations available.
http://i.imgur.com/Ktg8h3W.png
So the fact that Tesla has no good answer to remote charging for most of the US hasn't stopped it from selling cars outside of California. You're more likely to have a non-Tesla quick charger on any given route than a Supercharger, and if you own a non-Tesla EV/hybrid, you'll probably be able to use it "out of the box", where a Tesla will need a $450 plug adapter. If I want to drive west, I won't run into a Tesla Supercharger for about 250 miles -- outside the Model 3's range -- but I'll pass 9 quick chargers from other operators on the way.
Long-term to reach millions of EV unit sales a year, car makers -might- need a better answer to charging away from home, if other technology and social changes don't obviate the need. In those coming years, Blink/Chargepoint/etc have lots of time to continue expanding their networks -- including adding more quick chargers, more plug types, and more reliability -- and can likely do it faster than Tesla or any other single company can on their own.
Also now you've got a bunch of chargers installed and you don't know which ones are 45kW, 60kW and 100kW. With Superchargers you know that you'll have 120kW chargers at each location.
(at which point you can easily make a 100kW map or whatever)
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcharging_st...
An app that shows charging stations while highlighting the ones that will be fastest is a really obvious thing to provide, especially while the stations are a bit sparse. So I would expect it to get easier to find stations as we go forward, not harder.
(I agree that Supercharger=fast charging is an advantage, I just don't think it is really a big deal)
This statement is exaggerated beyond all connection to reality. Yes, there are holes, but coverage outside of California is still quite good for the most part. If you live in or need to travel to Arkansas or West Texas or North Dakota then you're going to have trouble, but the vast majority of the population is covered at this point.
Non-Tesla chargers vastly outnumber Tesla chargers, but the speed just isn't adequate. Most of them are far too slow for long trips. The fast DC chargers that are out there are just barely adequate. You'll top out at maybe 150MPH of charging, while Tesla's can hit 360MPH.
1. https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_l...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/US_popul...
Approximately thirds of the US population lives east of the Mississippi. In that region, the holes in the Supercharger network are around western Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Pennsylvania, and northern Maine, all lightly populated with the exception of Memphis.
I don't understand your hypothetical. Why would the Supercharger network be relevant at all to a 120 mile trip? Superchargers are for making trips beyond the range of a single charge, not for trips to the next city over which you can easily make on one charge.
^ There's a range calculator on the Model S webpage. If you drop the temperature and turn on the heater, even the 90 kWh battery doesn't have 240 miles range.
But we were talking about "most people," not "a tiny tiny proportion of the population that just happens to have the worst case scenario."
If a car sucks for even one of those trips, I'm going to be hesitant to buy it, and if there are two or three circumstances where it would suck, I'm crossing it off of my list. If I can come up with one trip where I'm going to need to sit there for two hours waiting for my car to charge, then the supercharger network, while not being actually useless on the whole, is not particularly convenient for me and therefore not really a strong selling point.
But I can buy a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt for a couple grand less than the cheap Tesla (counting the same tax incentives), and it works for every trip. With the gas generator, it has a range of over 300 miles, and can refill about 280-290 miles of range at an ordinary gas station in 5 minutes. So I can spend a similar amount of money for a much more convenient experience by going with a hybrid and ignoring the superchargers entirely.
Point being, the argument that the supercharger network covers "almost everyone" is flawed. There are a lot of people for whom it still misses at least some of their trips, where other types of EVs perform better, and missing some trips is far more relevant than you seem to give it credit for.
Again, it's not like spending $thousands to avoid the occasional $50 delivery charge for plywood. It's spending basically the same amount on a different type of technology to avoid the occasional flight, car rental, or extra stress on the grandparents. The supercharger network will need to be much more dense before it gets to the point of being a major factor in Tesla's favor.
That's exactly why the Supercharger network is such a big deal. Its existence moves a huge segment of the population from "almost everything" to "everything."
Yes, there's still a group of people where it doesn't do that. I totally accept that. But the person I'm replying to thinks that the Supercharger network doesn't matter outside of California because it's "so sparse as to be useless for most people." Which is far, far from the truth.
The network matters, but it's only a strong selling point for those it moves from "almost" to "everything", and I think that's actually a fairly small segment of the population.
Here's an example that I've actually done twice in the last two years: Denver, CO to Austin, TX. That's about a 900 mile trip, and a long but tolerable day -- from Denver south to Raton, NM and then southeast through Amarillo, south to Lubbock, and then southeast again. To stay on the supercharger network I'd have to go all the way over to Oklahoma City (on either I-40 or I-70 to I-35), adding 150+ miles to the trip, not to mention longer and more frequent stops that would likely necessitate adding an extra half-day of travel time each way.
My brother lives in Chicago. His trips to Indianapolis would be covered, but not his trips to Denver.
Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge population center, with great supercharger coverage leaving north or south, but not east or west. If you're heading to Atlanta, Memphis, or St. Louis the supercharger network is going to be really inconvenient.
And while the majority of the US population does live in major cities connected by interstates, the majority of the US population has at least one close friend or family member they'd like to visit, who isn't connected by one of the supercharger-served routes. If you made graphs not just of population centers, but of close personal connections, your "graph of graphs" would have quite a few connections that aren't covered by the network. (While truck traffic and passenger traffic are not identical, figure 2.8 of https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/bottlenecks/chap2.cfm suggests quite a few heavily-trafficked routes that aren't covered by the supercharger network.)
It's not my intent to be overly negative. I'm just being realistic, presenting the analysis I did myself about 6 months ago after my old car got wrecked in a hit-and-run. The majority of the time, I'd be happy with a Tesla and the supercharger network, but a couple times a year it would be a massive inconvenience. This is an area where the difference between 95% and 100% is huge. Tesla/superchargers are getting there, but it'll be several years before the infrastructure is in place for a pure electric plugin with a 200 mile range becomes a truly viable vehicle for the majority of people.
What's the basis for this statement? I mean, sure, if you live in a poorly covered area like Texas, or in an area that has good coverage but is near the edge like Chicago, you're likely to have places to go that aren't covered. But that's not where most people live.
Freight and car traffic are so different that I really see no point in even bringing up that map.
Note that I'm not in any way disbelieving your personal situation. If you live in Dallas and you ever go anywhere that isn't north or south then clearly the network is not suitable for you. I'm not trying to argue otherwise. I'm just arguing that most of the country isn't like Texas.
I know people who live all over the country. I see their vacation photos on facebook. And even those who live in pretty well-served areas (like NYC or Boston) don't make 100% of their out-of-town trips along the covered interstates -- sometimes they go visit a cousin in Cleveland, and NYC to Cleveland via I-80 isn't covered by the network. Even NYC to Buffalo is questionably covered.
> "that's not where most people live"
The Metro Statistical Areas of NYC, LA, DC, Philly, Miami, and Boston account for about 56 million people combined. Dallas, Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta are poorly covered and account for 29m. Of the next 10 MSAs on the list (populations in the 3m-4m range), 5 of them are pretty well covered in all directions and 5 have significant gaps. If you account for the whole top 50 MSAs, I only see another 6 that are well-covered along all major travel routes -- bringing the total population in those well-covered areas to around 85m. The US population is around 320m total.
My contention is that the majority of the US population lives in areas that are not well covered, and that even those who live in well-covered areas will on average have at least one trip they'd like to take that isn't served by the network.
Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying the network "sucks" or is "useless" like a previous poster. I'm saying that it's not yet built out to the point where it's suitable for the majority of the population for 100% of trips. It's suitable for the majority of the population for 80-90% of trips, maybe, but not 100%. Those who live in well-covered cities and make all of their trips on well-covered routes are actually in a distinct minority, perhaps one that is well represented on Hacker News, but a minority nonetheless. Which means there will be some market penetration by the Model 3, and other pure-electric vehicles with a ~200 mile range and the ability to recharge quickly, but we're still several years away from the transition from "this is a good solution for some people" to "this is a good solution for almost everyone". Right now, plug-in hybrids are a viable solution for a much larger slice of the population.
"I'm sorry Jane, would you mind terribly unhooking the clothes dryer and pulling it away from the wall so I can charge up my car while we visit."
Compare to: "I'm sorry Jane, would you mind terribly if I place a tank full of volatile and carcinogenic liquid next to your house?"
Gas cars have their own problems, we're just used to them by now. EVs aren't perfect, and there are many legitimate scenarios where they aren't (yet) practical, but their problems get exaggerated beyond belief.
I think the point is most people don't want to plan all of their activities around the needs of their car.
I understand that there are people where this is not the case, and that some of the people commenting on this thread are in that group. I just don't think that it's the common case anymore.
Only reason at all I bought a Tesla is there's a Supercharger about 60mi from my house on that route. I can do the trip in good weather without the Supercharger. However with cold it becomes necessary.
Other fast charging? Forget about it. All the CHAdeMO along the route(there is only two) are 40kw which would take me 3x longer to charge. Also the tend to be non-functional regualrly and only have 1-2 slots vs 8 for the Supercharger.
The reason I started the parent thread is exactly this, once you own an EV with 120kw charging it changes everything for long trips.
Yeah, it seemed at least three years ago driving from DC to Boston in the winter was pretty much impossible... and that's one of the most traveled routes in the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the...
There's a lot of people I talk to who the only driving they do is from home to work to the grocery store. These are the ones insisting very loudly that range isn't an issue with EVs and there's no convincing them otherwise, its only a theoretical problem for them.
And three years is a long time. Here's what the Supercharger situation looked like then:
http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_AFED015E-139C-420B-A040-FE...
Here's what it looks like today:
http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_A922B393-0F4B-4E07-9CEA-50...
You'll notice a slight increase in the availability of chargers along that corridor.
In my experience, the people insisting very loudly than range isn't an issue with EVs are all Tesla owners who have taken their cars on 1,000 mile road trips, while the people who insist that Superchargers are worthless and long trips in EVs are terrible are all working from partial information, speculation, and imagination.
I'm not going to say that EVs are always perfect, but for many people, the charging experience can overall be a a point in favor, not against. It's not like traditional cars are perfect in this regard, we've just become used to them.
I totally agree that if you park on the street, it's not going to work well for you right now. Eventually we'll get to the point where charging is plentiful even for street parking, but that's going to be a very long time.
The OP's point stands, for the target market. dangrossman, to some extent myself, and others like us, are not the target market. And that's okay. This is the Zen of new tech that drags in a significant logistical tail along with it. For those whom the tech works, great, for all others...wait.
We are still years away from the days when EV's are soccer-mom-mainstream. In the early days of motor cars, people (mostly men) planned their trips around known fueling and maintenance garages, and we are in a similar phase right now with EV's. Be happy with your internal combustion/diesel/hybrid vehicle until the EV industry works out the infrastructure and products so you can drive to your grandparents without planning the trip, and be happy there are millions of customers in the intervening years willing to shell out the R&D bucks ahead of you to make that eventuality possible.
The really interesting options EV's open up are in fuel sourcing. The power generation/storage tech is approachable enough that individuals or small groups can source their own if desired, and with software-mediated assistance, even perform small-scale "load balancing". We've barely scratched the surface in these directions.
I suspect the Supercharger network was initially only meant to address a marketing point: an EV couldn't drive cross-country in a roughly comparable time span as an ICE. This was an extreme form of the range anxiety played upon by detractors. The Supercharger stations went a long ways towards defusing that sales objection for the target market. Turn back the pages of history and you'll find exactly the same marketing stunt was performed for ICE's. People planned expeditions across the country on rutted dirt and mud tracks that were only charitably called roads, and staged fuel in advance like mountain climbers staged base camps with supplies, at extraordinary cost and effort. If my suspicion is correct, then the Supercharger network not being near most routes means it was never meant to really serve most routes, only sufficiently enough routes to serve its key initial purpose to TSLA. If that purpose happened to fit some small target market, then TSLA is happy to take that market (and any adjacencies they can take for a marginal cost of adding a Supercharger station here or there), but I don't think TSLA plans on the Supercharger network becoming the way to recharge.
The closest analogy I can think of for the net is Google Fiber. I don't think GOOG plans on GF becoming the way to access the net, they are just pointing/prodding the way forward.
That leaves me wondering though, if the non-TSLA charging networks have built their charging stations to be easily upgrade-able to higher voltages and amperages in the future; the ones I've casually inspected don't seem to lead to some conduit or similar infrastructure that can easily swap for bigger buss bars or similar. Ripping and replacing all that pavement and underground infrastructure to bring in more current has got to be murder on the capital budget. Someone must have made the calculation and figured out that the adoption rate is too slow to build in that expand-ability up-front.
Why not charge market rate, exactly the same as if you charged it at home? Then you wouldn't get people charging up at the supercharger purely for cost reasons, and who would complain about being able to fill up your car for $5?
Edit: I thought Musk said that model 3 supercharger access would be free, but perhaps he just said that there would be access and didn't say it would be free? The introduction of the 3 would be a good time to start charging for supercharger access. Free access could be considered a perk of the high end models, and model 3 users are probably more price conscious and likely to abuse free access to chargers.
So when they charged $2000, what happened if you didn't pay the $2000? No access to supercharging, or paid access to supercharging?
Charging a flat rate is even worse than giving it away, IMO. Many people have the mindset that if they had to pay for it, they're going to make sure they get full value for their dollars.
So you got to drive a car for a testdrive/hour/week? How is maintenance? How are charging times? How does it compare to a normal car during its lifecycle? How much is the battery worth after 1000 charge cycles? How much will the car be worth when I want to sell it?
With a normal car, I have an idea that I can fuel it 1000 times and it will still work, albeit the maintenance of which I have a general idea as well. How does translate to an EV car?
I still have so many questions.
Also, I hope it can't be "benchmark-optimized" like in web browsers.
I don't think crash test safety can be "benchmark-optimized" per se; outside companies do the testing and the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. However, there may be vehicle incidents that would not be covered by safety or crash tests. The safety dollars go to mitigating incidents with the highest rate of fatalities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_motor_vehicle_...
Disclaimer: I work for GM, but not on this product. Any opinions are my own.
It is really great that Tesla has prioritized safety.
They do have a few things going for them that other OEMs don't:
* Only two models in production, both of which are on the same architecture. (soon to be three)
* No history of failure:
- GM's X-frame
- Really bad seatbelts: Nearly everyone until the 1980s
- Chevy Corvair (Thanks Nader!) [1]
- Pintos catching on fire
- Audi 5000 unintended acceleration in the 1980s
- Pontiac Fieros catching on fire
- Ford Explorers rolling over
- GM's key switch issue
- Toyota's unintended acceleration
Tesla has learned all of those lessons and that's great. Most other OEMs have also learned those lessons, and that's great too!
1. Nader has been credited with pushing for consumer safety generally and vehicle safety specifically.
Disclaimer: again, all opinions are solely my own.
In 2005 Renault achieved the first-ever Euro NCAP five-star rating across all the models in its range. Even the smallest hatchback Clio.
Ford did this with the 2015 Ford F-150: http://blog.caranddriver.com/iihs-2015-ford-f-150-crash-test...
"""[…] the SuperCrew’s body cage remained “largely intact” with a “low risk of injuries,” the group said. The smaller F-150 SuperCab pickup (pictured at top) scored “marginal” due to “significant intrusion” of the passenger cabin, as the dashboard and steering wheel came “dangerously close” to the dummy’s chest. Since the A-pillars buckled and other body components “seriously compromised the driver’s survival space,” the IIHS rated this F-150’s structure as “poor,” which is below “marginal” and the group’s worst rating."""
Nitpick: Proofs are not in the pudding, unless you placed them there. The manner of speaking is "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". That way it actually makes some sense, too.
That's all theoretical. In my Leaf, I can't be bothered, I just drive it. I do try to keep it under 65mph, 'cuz boy howdy does the range drop if you're hot footin'it.
Chevrolet Volt was same as Opel Ampera, for example (but it had so bad sales that it was discontinued).
So, you can't really buy any new Chevrolet badged cars in Europe.
http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/owners-area/important-customer-in...
The Chevrolets sold in Europe were almost exclusively made in South Korea. American cars and car brands have a rather lousy quality reputation in Europe.
I feel like there's a pretty major hidden cost in hybrids in that you now have to maintain the gasoline engine (and potentially entire drivetrain) as well as the electric one. You kind of get the worst of both worlds there -- plus you have a weight penalty of course.
I have very little use for >200 mile/day drives, so getting an electric that can handle my 99% driving case sounds better to me than getting a Volt which I'll still need to semi-regularly fill up and maintain.