Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Product manager here (nothing to do with transportation). It seems like the Tweet thread and some comments here are complaining about the design tradeoffs without considering the use case.

From what I see from comments in this thread, these trucks are meant for pretty specific short haul use cases, with consistent routes and perhaps the origin and destination points being owned by the same company as the truck (eg Pepsi, FedEx)

So for example, if this truck carries packages between two FedEx facilities in the NYC area, its chances of encountering a cash-only toll booth are zero, and the company can use electronic records systems that obviate the need to present paperwork (in fact, I bet FedEx does this already anyway.)

Likewise I believe many if not all weigh stations in this area are electronic as well.

So it may seem superficially that Tesla traded off one thing (driver comfort, by forcing them to get out of the cab more often) for another (energy efficiency due to aerodynamic design) but in reality it maybe that in these use cases, the driver won't be getting out of the cab anyway for reasons above, so it's basically "free mileage."

I can make similar guesses as to why some of the other complaints don't actually hurt anything, or maybe are worth it. Eg: let's say there are 3 times a year the driver has to get out of the cab to clean the mirrors. Maybe doing that 3x a year is well worth the increased energy efficiency of every single mile this truck drives in it's life.

This is the second comment on this thread that I've seen make this argument. It doesn't hold up. Very few of the complaints in this article have anything to do with long-haul drives. The center console seat is a baffling decision, and toll booths --- which happen on short-haul drives! --- are just one of the complaints.

I literally talked about the toll booth case in my post. I don't remember the last time I paid cash toll personally, and I used the specific example of the NYC region where they don't exist.

If you are going to operate the truck in a region with tons of cash toll booths then probably this one isn't for you.

Again: not the only complaint about the center console!

It's the one you brought up, so I responded to it :)

The two major complains about the center position that I recall from the Tweets are having to get out at toll booths and to present paperwork, and the inability to reach the mirrors to clean them. I address both in my post.

I don't recall the other complaints but even assuming they are legitimate minuses, at some point they would be legit tradeoffs vs fuel economy right?

The very first complaint about the center console is neither of those things (and the mirrors are actually about the shape of the cab, not the position of the seat; that makes sense, because the standard position of a driver's seat doesn't make it easy to clean the passengers-side mirror.)

I actually went back to re-read. I see the first complaint is about looking ahead / overtaking. Fair enough, I don't know the thought there.

Center seating is a better option for 99.99% of the time spent in the truck. And the vast majority (nearly all) of toll booths have toll tags. It's baffling that people think the 99.99% of a product's use should be dictated by the 30 seconds of paper handling that occurs a few times a day.

This is a funny argument. I spend less than a fraction of 1% of the time I wear a ski jacket operating the zipper, but if I had a jacket with a fussy zipper that required special attention to operate, I'd absolutely replace the jacket. Or never buy it.

I haven't been through a cash toll booth in the US in 25+ years.

Everything is transponder-based now, especially if you're a commercial truck

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