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bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
Does anyone know if there might be regulatory reasons... say, needing to complete a certain amount of miles on public roads prior to launch or somesuch for some approval or number or other?
Of course it could be just to add confusion. I think the latest mule shots are probably the same car with different rims. I haven't looked at it in much detail, but some minor things in the camo suggest that.
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Even if that were true, which I don't necessarily think it is, there will always (well, to a limit) be the next round of mule shots.
Zapped
Model S - PURE EV
Having worked in an assembly plant for many years, I can make a few observations about the mule(s) recently seen:
- The body shape is unlikely to change. The body is produced using a stamping plant; stamping dies are incredibly expensive and time consuming to change.
- It's very close to production. Most modern car makers use some form of the "Toyota Production System," (see also book of the same title) - the vehicle design should be largely finalized 9 months to a year before production. Even software changes should be minimized (except for something clearly related to safety). To ignore these principles is risky due to the possibility of unusual major problems coming out in production that you didn't take/have time to adequately test.
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
True, but perhaps this explains the delays. Elon decided that the car needed to be different, thus the long postponement. He has said multiple times that the production car will be better than the concept car. That could just mean features, but I took that as overall looks too. Also, I'm not saying that the general shape is going to change, but it will look like a different vehicle than the prototype. Sort of like when most new cars come-out.....the general shape is still the same, but it looks like a different car.
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
The prototype vehicle body panels were not made in a stamping plant using a stamping die. Some of us are contending that those body panels are being reused. The dies are made once the final design is 'fine tuned' with one-off panels. I'm sure the dies have been made. I'm not convinced we've been seeing panels made from those production dies on the road.
While I agree in principle, Tesla updates software all the time. It's highly unlikely that they've shut down or minimized software changes for the X, while releasing new versions for the S.
Cameras instead of mirrors would be the only thing making sense to me in this regard.
I agree that the production version/dies etc. are very likely to be ready and tested by now,
but the question remains whether we have seen those or some earlier prototypes put
back the roads again to confuse us.
The Tesla Illuminati?
Does anyone really think that Tesla would put a bunch of time and money into putting old prototypes onto the road for the express purpose of confusing web forums and news reporters?
Sure sounds like a conspiracy theory to me - especially when Tesla is under fire for profitability and using every dollar they can lay their hands on to expand and drive forward to the mass market car.
For myself, I'm convinced that the cars you are seeing are new build Beta cars, and are actually being tested rather than driven around to leak.
I won't put the possibility of misleading body panels completely out of the question, but I think even that is unlikely and I expect that the exterior contour we have seen is what the final car will have.
Small details (or even largish ones, like the mirrors) might be different, but the basic car will be the same. (Also not buying the transparent A pillars someone was pushing in another thread.)
Now where's the next leak? I'm getting impatient waiting here...
Walter
The transparent pillars, I think, were one example of successful community analysis. It started from sigurdi's observation something was amiss there, I put some publicity and additional energy into it, and soon we have a bunch of ideas out there... and I think by now a consensus it probably is exposed A pillar only, not a screen. But it did give us a chance to discuss Jaguar's concept and to hash out other possibilities it might be, and exposed some other ideas to explore like the charging port question and certain body panel observations.
Sometimes these things turn out to be nothing, other times a keen observation combined with crowd-sourced arm-chair analytics can produce something useful. When you put lots of eyes and brains onto something, it can be much more useful than staring at an official silence around an organization or a product. Besides, it's fun.
Sometimes these things turn out to be nothing, other times a keen observation combined with crowd-sourced arm-chair analytics can produce something useful. When you put lots of eyes and brains onto something, it can be much more useful than staring at an official silence around an organization or a product. Besides, it's fun.
Oh, how many man-hours have been wasted so far on this forum! We could have probably cured cancer by now if only Tesla announced the final design and all these man-hours were re-directed. I hope Elon is happy knowing that the cure for cancer is delayed because of his secrecy.
Crowd-sourcing cancer cure research is, actually, an interesting idea.
I mean, if you can crowd-source looking for the E.T...
I don't know about cancer specifically, but there are crowd sourced projects for medical applications along the lines of SETI@home - the main one I know of off the top of my head is about protein folding (called something like Folding@home.)
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
There is crowd-sourcing of data for most known medical conditions at http://www.patientlikeme.com - here's the one for lung cancer, as an example: Lung Cancer symptoms, treatments & patient forums | PatientsLikeMe
Happy surfing! It's an amazing site, full of self-reported data on symptoms, treatment, and effectiveness.
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... and the forum goes quiet, as each person is off researching their own personal health issue(s).
Happy surfing! It's an amazing site, full of self-reported data on symptoms, treatment, and effectiveness.
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... and the forum goes quiet, as each person is off researching their own personal health issue(s).
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Absolutely. They haven't unveiled the final product and they have a test mule driving around without camouflage? No way they would do that if the final product is going to look like that. It will be quite different. If I'm right, I'll be sure to gloat. If I'm wrong, I will disappear from this thread :biggrin:
I know part of that is in jest, but let's make it more interesting shall we.
Which parts will be different, you think? All of you?
Here is my list of what I expect to be different from the latest black mule in production Model X:
- Nose/front bumper will be new/without camo
- Interior, dash included will be new (on seen mules rear is hidden and front lifted from Model S)
- Lights and exterior chrome trim will be finalized, added/without camo
- More outside cameras (at least as option)
- Whatever is happening in the rear spoiler area, will be more refined
- Without camo, the full extent of the glass roof is visible
What I don't expect to be much different:
- Shape (other than nose)
- Falcon wings/sides
- Rear
Now, these are speculative of course. As we get more data, I'm happy to refine. And I'll be here when the truth is revealed, right or wrong, because that's pay day - then we'll know.
Trev Page
Member
Beating a dead horse again?? Look, Model X mules driving around are the real deal. The exterior is as you see it. It's the interior that matters and that's where they spent all their time. Just because Elon says it will better than the show prototypes doesn't mean it will look all that different. All one has to do is go and look at pictures of the Model S prototypes and mule pictures and compare. Sheesh
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