2015 Tesla Model S P85D First Test
motortrend.com
motortrend.com
A Model S can't make a single lap in anger around Mazda Raceway without the software putting it in limp mode to prevent heat build up from causing permanent damage. A half-day jaunt through twisty mountain roads is absolutely out of the question. It is a car that can drag race from a stop, hit a freeway on-ramp with some gusto, and give you carbon-free credentials the rest of the time.
No one shopping for an M3, 911, or AMG product who actually intends to use them for their performance is cross-shopping a Model S as a like-for-like option, but the press consistently paints the picture that Tesla is a gas-free alternative or even superior to current offerings. I don't intend to degrade what it is, because it is a marvel of modern business, politics, and a little engineering that this car exists. I simply feel gross when I see how much hype puts it up for the Model S being something it isn't.
You can't compare the Model S with gas-powered engines that had many decades to be refined. Considering everything, the Model S appears to have made a larger jump than any other car in recent history.
It's not designed to be raced on a track, but it does give you an edge in some situations where any other EV or most gas powered vehicles won't.
Well, there's nothing in a Model S that is earth shattering in terms of technology.
The batteries are used in laptops and model airplanes. That technology has been around for ages and continues to improve well outside of the automotive industry.
We've known how to make super high efficiency electric motors for, well, I am only guessing, a century [1]. Large electric motors that are over 90% efficient were built decades ago. With the shift to brushless Cobalt and Neodymium based motors we've been able to shrink them and increase their output power. Again, I'll use the example of the early pioneers in model airplane electric flight who were building high efficiency 2KW motors that fit in the palm of your hand decades ago. Switched reluctance drives have also been around for decades, they can deliver insane amounts of power in a very small volume with no magnets and really good efficiency. Control is more difficult.
If I had to guess I would suggest that the advances brought forth by Tesla have been in control and safety. Building a huge battery pack that is safe in a crash requires careful engineering. They had to figure that out. Of course, they build their own motors and have developed their own advanced control electronics for these motors. The rest is, if I dare say, standard automotive engineering work.
Again, not diminishing Tesla in any way. I am just countering the "walking on water" aura that seems to orbit around anything Tesla. They should be praised for what seems like flawless execution and laser-like market focus. They are building a fantastic world-class high-end electric car. And it is fantastic. Supernatural? No. A work of engineering art? Absolutely.
Of course the car or company is not supernatural. But there's a HUGE difference between saying "anyone could have done it" and ACTUALLY doing it. That's the key to understanding the reviews.
I am not sure anyone is reviewing the electric motors. They are not reviewing how efficient their motor is or even how small it is. They are reviewing the car as a whole.
I believe you can say similar things of any market leader. Rarely does someone change a market and invent great technology or are involved in engineering marvels. But they do solve the problem in such a way that is significantly gives them a lead.
Given enough funding, a team of capable engineers and a solid vision (both of which are present at Tesla and other companies) the expectation of results should be the norm, not the exception. We, as engineers, are trained to solve problems using the scientific process.
To use battery packs as an example, there are probably thousands of engineering teams around the world who could design excellent battery packs that could withstand the rigors of automotive use. Tesla (and others) don't happen to have the only 12 engineers in the world who can do that. The same could be said of motors, electronics, software, suspension systems, chassis systems, etc.
I --and this is just my own bias-- am not impressed by what I consider to have to be the normal result of posing a problem to a capable group of engineers. That is to be expected. If you can't expect that out of engineers there's something seriously flawed with the way we are trained.
Of course, there's a continuum of capabilities out there. There is such a thing as lousy engineers with no imagination and a lack of understanding of reality despite years of schooling. Hiring is important. A company forming a substandard team will produce substandard results.
The patent segue is that there really isn't a lot today that most of us would consider to be true invention. Most everything being patented are implementations, which is a tragedy.
What is hard in the context of an organization, despite money and possibly vision is to execute on a consistent basis, keep focus on a reasonable mission and do so on a timely manner and within a reasonable budget. A good comparison of a polar opposite to a company like Tesla is just about any government-run organization where money is never a problem yet they fail to deliver consistently on even the simplest projects.
Tesla doesn't walk on water, but they have been executing a vision in what appears to be a constant series of flawless moves. They have good people who obviously work well together, they seem to know very well where they are going and, of course, they have the drive and funding to make it happen. Larger car companies could very well have to try to push the same ideas forward while mired with unmotivated and inefficient teams that just can't get anything done at the same time scale. And then there's the organizations themselves getting in their own way, AKA, "The Innovators Dilemma" [1]. There's plenty of history on that last point.
To some extent Tesla doesn't have to be a super organization, they just have to keep to their mission and they will outplay everyone else who is still failing through good management while trying to sell 5.25in drives because that's what their customers tell them they want (a reference to the book).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
Yes, the weight is better distributed - but in the sharp turn on the curvy road, I am more worried about the inertia rather than the body roll.
Yes, many drivers won't ever drive them to a track; however, when you look at general attendance at public road courses, 911s (and less-so M3s) appear to be grossly overrepresented in proportion to their street popularity.
I wish we had better data to work with here.
If 2% of 911s and M3s were regularly driven on a track, I would expect tracks to be full of them.
I bet the percentage of people taking their car to the track is actually quite a bit higher if we're talking about, for example, used 911s. I don't know if that will hold true forever, though. There are a lot of super expensive parts on the newest cars.
Yeah, but how many of those folks exist? I can't count the number of times I'm stuck behind an M3, 911, or AMG on the uphill chicane entrance ramp I frequent in my Nissan Leaf wishing Mr. SlowPoke in his $80K car would give it some stick. Oh, they're trying as evidenced by them gunning it up the straight part, but as soon as that ramp goes anywhere but straight they're testing the throttle-lift oversteer. (The ramp goes to the Microsoft campus, so I get to test this theory frequently.)
People more often than not buy a car because of the badge on the back end, not because they're doing track days. They'll punch it in a straight line from a stoplight and that's about the extent of their performance testing. For that use case, the Tesla does just fine.
We're in the process of replacing our second car and that will end up being less than half the price of the Tesla. But if I were going to spend > 60k, I would buy a second Tesla without the slightest hesitation.
In 37k miles I've never experienced limp mode and don't know much about it. I regularly drive for over 2 hours at Midwest highway speeds.
Can you describe your half-day jaunt through the mountains in more detail? I'm having trouble figuring out how this is out of the question.
I agree with the other benefits you highlight, but the model s has a similar range to most gas vehicles. You could just as easily complain about the constant hassle to stop and charge your model s (and the fact that charging stations are less common than gas stations).
Imagine every few days having to take your cell phone to a special store to charge it. That's what we've been doing with cars and we just accept it as an inherent part of car ownership.
Fueling at home is extremely liberating, more than making up for the rare need to find a charger.
Road trips are a completely different issue. For me, trips over 200 miles happen once every few months, and I think I get out more than a lot of people do.
Having previously taken our S85 into the White Mountains for vacation, I can agree that it would be tough to get even 200 miles out of a single charge. The elevation changes, steep grades at highway speed, and especially the occasional strong winds will sap away the battery much faster than you'd want. We were able to get by just fine with a small amount of foresight and planning, but that is something many people don't want to deal with.
Granted, those factors would all hit an ICE just the same, but people are comfortable with the ability to pull over into even a tiny backroad town and find a gas station somewhere. That is a valid complaint.
I was easily able to pull .9 g's in my 911 (2012) [1] at least according to the g meter that it had (yes it has one and which measures forces in all direction) on a highway on ramp.
Not that I ever looked into it but I'm now seeing the 911 can pull 1.04 g's.
One other thing to note that is important. The size of the car matters not just the speed and the lateral g's. For example in the Porsche Macan S I have now the performance and ride is great. But the simple larger physical size makes it a completely different experience than driving the 911. [2] To quiet, to comfortable (but really nice not complaining..)
[1] Noting that I earned the money for this car by a traditional, what would be called here "lifestyle" business, not a hit the lottery internet VC funded win.
[2] For that matter a Mini Cooper S that I owned a few years before was more fun in many situations even though the tires and grip were way less and the acceleration palled in comparison to the 911. (But it was well over 1/4 the price and well worth it..)
I owned and tracked E46 M and E37 M Roadster. Sold the last one when I got my Model S. Now I will never go back to an Internal Combustion Engine. Yes, the Model S is not an M3 and won't last through a lap on any decent raceway. But it's not the goal. It's beyond adequate for everyday driving AND for fun through the mountain curves. It's got impeccably precise throttle response, unbelievable lateral grip and no body roll due to incredibly low center of gravity. The fact that it's fully charged every morning for nearly free, that the juice is free in the superchargers and that it's cargo volume and crash safety are out of its class, is just icing on top. The point is: for ALL uses (but tracking) this $70-120K car is better than anything in the $100-300K category.
My friends own 997 4S, E93 M, Viper, E39 M, F10 M, S6 and whatever the GTR Nizmo is (all US spec). Some of them are tracked, some are not. Half of them have deposits down for a Model S.
Another point: Juan Pablo Montoya owns one and uses it as his daily driver.
I've got a better comparison for you. Has the owner of [any given model year] BMW ever sued BMW because [any given model year plus 1] was that much better for the same price? We've gotten used to this with computers for years, it's frankly about time we got this pace of development with cars. I mean, real jealousy for the next year's generation of the same car. Tesla will create that. Who else is creating that?
The model S is no sports car but its rather capable and the low center of gravity helps negate its massive curb weight.
As far as the car not making it around MRLS, thats not true. Every year speed ventures puts on an EV day and there are certainly Model S in attendance: http://www.refuelraces.com/
"During a chat with Musk at the P85D's introduction, he mentioned that on average, Tesla implements about 20 modifications to the car per week. Not software, mind you, but actual hard parts. Per week."
I'm sure traditional car makers tweak hardware as well, but it seems Tesla's focus on software-esque hardware iteration is unique. Their willingness to push updates constantly breaks from the "mid-cycle" refresh and small year-over-year iterations commonplace amongst all established automakers.
And this:
"Lift the front trunk's lid (the frunk, they call it), and you're struck by how much all of this was anticipated back when the Model S was penned. What was a recessed cavity near the firewall becomes the new forward engine room with enough left to swallow a duffle bag and retain its terrific 5-star frontal crash performance."
This is not just a scrappy startup car maker just getting by with an acceptable but not brilliant first generation product. You get the feeling that Tesla is always three steps ahead yet are confident enough to reveal them one-at-a-time.
Traditional car makers do slipstream changes into their cars, but this is just crazy. Think of the service challenges, and the parts catalog challenges. Not to mention the cost of all those different parts.
"Oh, your's was made the fifth week of August, so you need a different bracket. We don't keep those in stock because they're all different. Here's a service loaner and we'll call you when it's done."
For instance, maybe a chip goes out of manufacturing, and they can no longer get it supplied, but a successor product from the same supplier meets all the same requirements.
Perhaps a bracket goes out of manufacture, but an almost identical bracket is sourced from a different supplier.
This would qualify as a hardware modification, but is a non-breaking change.
A good example is the company that changed the design of their guard-rail endcaps. They reduced the size by an inch, which allegedly resulted in 5 deaths (court cases are ongoing). They (again, allegedly) failed to test the change, and failed to report the design change to NHTSA and the various state highway departments that specified it's use.
Another example is the ignition switch in GM cars. The engineer changed the design, but did not issue a new part number for it. Externally, same shape & mounting points & connector pinouts. Internally, very different.
So while a design change in a part might be "like for like", it requires a full lifecycle of testing and documentation. And that's expensive, so auto makers try very hard to get their designs correct up front.
Tesla's processes will be weird in 50 years - if they're even around. but today, I'd imagine that kind of complexity is way way easier to manage if you're aware of it from the start. Rather than getting it right the first time, build the whole organization around coping with those little variations.
OTOH, i have no evidence they actually do that... Just seems possible for Tesla and very hard for GM.
I know there's this mythology that Elon will magically deliver a 25k electric that changes the world, but if anything, they've double-downed on the luxury market with that giant non-city friendly SUV and, more complexity and cost, with their driver assist stuff.
Meanwhile, the Leaf and Volt keep dropping in price. VW has moved into the market, as well as BMW. Oh, low price leaders like Kia haved move in as well. 2015 EVs are still pricey, but no where in the same league as Tesla.
At this point I'm finding it very hard to believe Musk will ever leave the profitable premium car market. A 25-30k Tesla would hurt the brand and he'd be competing with larger companies with the scale and know-how to get Joe Everyman on-board, and worse, coming to the low-end game very late.
Also, does buying cars have a future at all, or are we going to lease them or even just use them JIT via proxies like Uber? The depreciation of an electric car is very different from an ICE car, and so I think there's a need to reboot our perspective about what car-ownership means back to to first principles, just as Tesla has done.
Witness, for example, the $5 billion gigafactory they're building, of which Tesla is contributing $2 billion. This only could happen because they now have access too good financing (their recent convertible bond issuance) which could only happen because of the success of the Model S. And the other $3 billion being contributed by partners? That wouldn't have happened if they didn't have the credibility coming from making the Model S a success. And in any case, the gigafactory would make no sense to build if they truly intended to keep to the "luxury EV's for rich people" market because it's too much capacity for that segment.
I don't know that Tesla will ever compete in the $25-30k market as you state, or at least not for a while -- their stated goal is a $35k car for the Model 3, and I wouldn't be surprised if that goes up to $40k at release, but that's still worlds apart from an $80k car in terms of affordability. Especially factoring in consumers' savings from gas (NPV of $10 - 15k), that gets to the point where they can sell serious volume, even if it's on the high end of the "everyman's car" that a $20 - 25k car would be.
So far as I've been able to determine data total sales of Model S cars seem hard to come by. You'd think Tesla would be a bit more open. I'll go ahead and throw in my own estimate of about 30K to 40K Model S cars sold since the beginning of time. I could be wrong, but I doubt I am wrong by an order of magnitude.
In sharp contrast to this, once you are selling millions of cars per year ([1]Ford, 2013, 2.5MM; [2]Others) this idea of making twenty changes per week that actually make it out to the production line is simply impossible.
At volume supply pipelines have huge inertia. You can't make changes on a whim. Doing very simplistic math and assuming a JIT process, Ford receives 50,000 parts per week. Tesla, assuming 20K cars per year, receives 370. I am not trying to be dismissive, but that's the difference between a garage operation and a real industrial operation at scale. A constant flow of 50,000 parts per week needs to be planned months in advance with all sorts of tests and controls during the process. Changes require the same planning and effort. Imagine making a change that does not work well (for whatever reasons) and you have 50,000 parts per week descending on you. By the time you make a change tons (literally) of raw materials are being processed at some factory, container cargo ships are in the middle of the ocean on their way to your port and trucks are en-route to deliver your parts for the coming wees.
At a few hundred parts per week you can pretty much afford to experiment and throw out whole shipments if something goes wrong. Your supply pipeline is much shorter. You don't have dealers to feed and contractual obligations in terms of delivery. You don't have the same kind of output pipeline. Add to this perhaps having a lot of the small-scale manufacturing done in-house and, yes, it's a garage operation, an expensive one, but the scale simply doesn't compare to that of a high volume manufacturer.
I am not saying any of this to diminish Tesla. It's a neat company. Their cars are not for the masses. And that's OK. However, I really don't subscribe to the idea of Musk walking on water. Is he a great CEO? It sure looks that way. Nobody could dispute that for a minute. I am simply proposing that we do not ascribe supernatural powers to an organization that operates at a scale and within a framework that allows it to behave in a manner very different from that of larger volume producers.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/here-are-december-2013-big-eight-us-a...
The problem with it is that I don't see Tesla changing, or morphing into a "traditional" car company as it scales.
Yes Ford and the like are constrained by old business models and huge scale, but that's kind of the point. Tesla is not, and has the chance to scale and do things differently along the way.
I'm amazed at how they continue to grow (from roadster to model S), and consistently reveal products and technologies that seem genuinely very progressive and well though out. I'm also struck by their ability to address issues and controversies that like landmines, stand in the way of anyone trying to break into this very established marketplace.
I would love to have two horses in this game, Tesla and another to see how contrasting methodologies in the modern car market would play out.
The car is only 20% slower speeding up than it is slowing down. One wonders what they could do in 0-60 and 60-0 times if the tires were replaced with gears and the road with a geared track. It only takes 250' of track, less than a football field, to find out.
Put another way, this four-door sedan reaches 60 mph when it's made it to the 45-yard line of an american football field.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=GPNKAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA87&ots=m...
You actually want / need some tire flex to absorb the initial torque. This is especially true with electric motors, where 100% of the torque shows up instantly (gas engines have a torque curve)
Watch a NHRA funny car start in slow motion. The big fat back tires actually wrinkle up into themselves a lot, then spring back out[1].
The Drive Unit in the Model S was designed by Borg Warner and looks roughly similar to this cutaway of the Roadster's gearset: http://www.sae.org/dlymagazineimages/web/516/7953_8579.png
The issue is in the straight gear-to-gear interface where ~600NM of torque is transferred through a contact area measured in square centimeters. Modern metallurgy can produce some very strong alloys but any flaw means the gear teeth will wear at an incredible rate, leading to the widespread reports of noisy/failed Drive Units. I'd imagine that future designs will use a planetary gearset which spreads the force over more teeth/surface area, that type of gearset would look like this: http://www.rohloff.de/uploads/pics/planeten_start.en.jpg
[1]https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2014/11...
http://ca.autoblog.com/2014/09/29/porsche-918-spdyer-update-...
It is however listed as the fastest-accelerating sedan/non-supercar, a hair's breadth in front of the Audi RS7 and the Mercedes E63AMG's 3.2.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars...
I love the quote about 100 changes. Constant innovation. Do any of the hardware upgrades flow into the field? Is the chassis modular enough to bother upgrading?
They could do it, like Apple. But with this news and the opening of their patent sooner, I'm just wondering if they are not simply giving up on the mass market leaving it to generalist brands like Toyota, VW, ... IMO that would not be so bad, they risk to devaluate their brand significantly in the mass market if they fuck up there and fucking up there has a not much to do with technology. ( after all, brand like Toyota have Lexus counterpart just for the purpose of splitting luxury from mass market )
edit: as suggested s/specialist/generalist.
"Specialising in $0"=="someone with expertise in $0" is wired in my brain without any validation of $0.
Selling niche cars to rich people isn't exactly a challenge. Many of the other big makers could sell the same car but don't need to as they have established track records. The difficulty of breaking into the market was being able to differentiate yourself enough from existing marquees and it took an all electric to do that.
They're called "used Teslas".
I don't think they want to leave it to generalist brands, but they also recognize that they can't go it alone. Musk wants (or says he wants) to drive EV adoption above all else, and the Model 3 is as much about getting others to follow suit as it is about Tesla's growth.
Regarding the cost savings, a lot of it is supposed to come from the gigantic battery factory they've started building in Nevada. Batteries are still really expensive, which is why every cheap electric car has crappy range. If they can meet their price projections for batteries from the new factory, that will make up a big chunk of the difference in price right there.
There's no point in them making lower priced widgets until they can drastically scale up their production capacity (which is what they're trying to do with the Gigafactory, etc.).
Smaller car, cheaper materials, cheaper motor and battery, lower profit margin...
That may do the job
Just started using it, happy to be able to excise that bit of pervasive ignorance from my life.
That said, I can't wait to see their "everyman" offering, whenever that arrives. I could see them making it a sub-brand so that they could scale down the service to make it financially feasible (and so the rich could still feel like big shots when they say "I've got a Tesla" without people thinking they mean the everyman car).
I do hope they can maintain their level of service as well. I think they will. The S is already a fairly reliable car and electric cars are fundamentally more reliable that their gas counterparts and by the time the III comes out Tesla will have improved their QA further.
I can't afford either but if I am going to have a fantasy car I want the X
I love Teslas, but buy one because it is an amazing luxury car with an AWD option, not because it is the best financial decision.
EDIT Here is the link http://www.teslacost.com/ The creator has since updated the figures after HN members noticed some errors and the Honda Odyssey came out on top (unless you are able quantify safety, HOV access etc).
I make software money, I can afford gas just fine. I still bought a Nissan Leaf for a lot of reasons other than saving money on gas.
I've heard the explanation that regenerative braking in city driving recharges the battery, but surely it's still better to not brake at all, right? You must incur some loss recharging the battery from kinetic energy?
EVs have a different sort of performance profile. They're far more efficient at accelerating, they partially regenerate their energy when braking, but they use a lot of energy when cruising at highway speeds.
It consists of long-range radar, a single forward-looking
video camera, and 12 ultrasonic sensors to create a 16-foot
bubble around the car providing lane-keeping, full drogue-
chute emergency stopping, and autonomous following in stop-
and-go traffic. It has long-range radar, a single forward-
looking video camera, and 12 ultrasonic sensors that create a
16-foot bubble around the car to allow for lane-keeping, full
drogue-chute emergency stopping, and autonomous following in
stop-and-go traffic.
I do think cold weather operation has some trade-offs, but I don't think it's enough to impede sales in cold climates.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. Doesn't the Carnot equation imply that it's the difference between engine temperature and ambient that helps determine efficiency?
Eg, a 100° engine running in 100° ambient is inefficient, but a 100° running in 200° or in 0° will be equally efficient?
It's not necessarily true, but it happens to be true.
This would have helped, for example: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/coldweather.shtml
The Model S battery pack has an active heating and cooling system, so it avoids a lot of the problems that batteries have in the cold. The main trouble it has is that it needs to expend some energy to warm up the battery pack, meaning that you lose some range when starting cold. Secondary trouble is that cabin heating isn't free the way it is with gas cars, which also costs some range. If you're plugged in, you can mitigate these problems by telling the car to warm up in advance, which will heat both the cabin and the battery using mains electricity, saving the battery for driving. If you're not plugged in or just forget to heat the car in advance, everything still works, you'll just lose some range.
I think you mean Norway rather than Netherlands there, and Tesla is apparently hugely popular there. Whatever trouble it has in cold weather can't be too bad.
http://consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/02/winter-chills-li...
We have another one of a guy in Norway driving 233 miles on a single charge.
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/can-electric-car-handle-cold-...
And for extremes, a guy on the Tesla forums that drove around 163 miles on a 175 mile charge in -31 to -40F weather, including a cold soak for several hours.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/35144-Extreme-...
This is consistent with most reports about cold weather - you'll get around 200 miles on a charge, with much depending on whether your car is plugged in when idle (it needs to keep the battery pack warm, which uses up juice).
That's why Tesla increased max speed for the new model to 250 km/h?
> That makes me sad personally, but rationally autobahn driving is not a major component of any discussion.
'Rationally driving' is not a part of any discussion of a car in this class. Nobody needs such environmentally unfriendly cars like a Tesla S or the cars of the German brands...
a tiny microscopic minority
> I said that rationally, since only a very tiny minority of people in the world can experience driving on the autobahn,
The amount of people who can experience driving a Tesla is much much smaller.
> autobahn driving is most probably not very important point of discussions for majority of people in the world.
Well, here in Germany a lot of people use the Autobahn. I see lots of people from Germany, France, Poland, Denmark, Austria, ... using it.
I bet that a lot of people buying a Tesla in France will try it on the German Autobahn. They won't get very far with it, though.
Yeah, that's what I said.
>>The amount of people who can experience driving a Tesla is much much smaller.
So is the number of people who buy S-Klasse AMG...your point?
>>Well, here in Germany a lot of people use the Autobahn. I see lots of people from France, Poland, Denmark, Austria, ... using it
Yep, I am not German and I use it too(thank you for it). Even if you added all Germans, Austrians, British and Poles together it's still going to be "only" a couple hundred million people. And most of them are not interested in going that fast on the Autobahn. When I drive through Germany there's plenty of people driving in the fast lane going 200km/h or faster, but there is even more "regular" people in "regular" cars going at 130km/h.
In fact I don't know what (and even if) we are arguing about. Tesla is awesome. And I would love to take it on the autobahn.
Then again, the typical high-performance sedan doesn't have much range either at 250km/h. At that speed, a 3-series will burn through 30L/100km and they have a 60L tank. A 5-series has a 70L tank but I don't know how much fuel it goes through at 250. I don't expect significantly better efficiency though.