EcoHeliGuy
Member
In your picture, it apears there is a small strip between the FWD and the rear glass. Is that body metal or glass? And if it doesn't move. Wouldn't extra sensors outboard each side of this strip help a lot?
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In your picture, it apears there is a small strip between the FWD and the rear glass. Is that body metal or glass? And if it doesn't move. Wouldn't extra sensors outboard each side of this strip help a lot?
Skotty
2014 S P85 | 2023 F-150L
Since supposedly Tesla developed sensors that work behind facing material for the doors, we don't really know how many sensors they have, do we? It looks like there is one on the center top of the car, but is there any way to know how many there are in the doors? I haven't seen anything definitive on that.
Mark Z
Active Member
It doesn't move. It doesn't sound like metal when tapped and it has a different reflective quality than the see-through glass. Reflections in the glass have no distortions while the strip material does distort slightly.
The material in the strips should be the same as the center. With a strip on the front and back, having four extra sensors would make sense to prevent Falcon Wing Door openings with low hanging clearance. Those sensors would be more visible than the almost hidden center sensor.
An easier fix might be for Tesla Motors to replace the center sensor with one with a wider coverage area.
Mark Z
Active Member
The Service Center replaced both of my Falcon Wing Door sensors last week. On the invoice, they show a quantity of two. I would assume there is one per door.
While on the subject, they also installed a number of parts including spacers, holders, carriers, foam holders and foam tape to correct a problem where the Falcon Wing Doors would not open OUT if the sun had heated up the side of the door where the sensor is located. The door would open up, but fail to swing out. The new method of sensor installation apparently adds space between the heated metal and the sensor.
Until the replacement, the work around when the sun was heating the door was to use the switch at the door pillar to override the sensors after the door opened partially.
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Then it's a massive failure. Tesla's entire pitch about the FWDs was that they were not only cooler than sliding or regular doors, but also more useful with no loss of convenience. If parents or drivers need to tell their kids/passengers to stay in the car while they exit the car and then slowly monitor the doors while they open, it just sends the message the doors are more trouble than they're worth. That's not even considering the complexity of the doors themselves and the fact that they'll be more likely to fail over traditional doors or sliders due to that complexity. Tesla might have effed up badly here.
Mark Z
Active Member
The driver would only need to exit the vehicle where there is unknown low ceiling clearances. One quick look would be wise and the passengers in the Falcon Wing Door area have windows above them as well to be on the lookout and remind the driver. In parking structures, extra caution will be necessary. It is similar with Model S and the rear hatch hitting a low beam (yes, I have done that - the carbon fiber spoiler saved the day).
95% of my parking stops are in outdoor parking lots where the Falcon Wing Doors can be raised high without concern.
(Tesla Motors should consider putting a "Low Clearance" warning on the touchscreen with the door opening buttons when the center sensor has recently encountered unacceptable ceiling heights or low beams.)
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systemcrashed
Please Reboot
@Mark Z this is a great idea!, and can be done to existing cars without much hassle (only software rewrite). top sensor can be continuously monitoring and when it detects an unacceptable min.height it can relay either an on screen message to the driver or require a second push of the latch maybe after an audible alert within a specified amount of time.
Mark Z
Active Member
Thanks for the positive feedback. I just got off the phone with Tesla Motors with the suggestion and they appreciated it. I only call in when an idea is very important, and this one could save someone a lot of frustration and the Service Centers from time consuming repairs.
(One other suggestion that I phoned in years ago was acted on quickly. I requested that our recent charge locations could be deleted from the "Recents" or "Chargers" navigation list. The reason? Because I didn't want my home address stored in the Model S loaner car for all to see. Next software release, we had edit capability for those lists!)
EcoHeliGuy
Member
What I like about your idea is that it can be Geofence aware. A lot of model X's drive under a garage door before parking. No need for the warning at home.
Added benefit, what if the Model X door sensor could earn of low clearance while towing. When the Model X is in Tow haul mode, it defaults to a 9ft clearance warning. But you could adjust the height in the settings for any trailer.
Blastphemy
Member
If the sensor had detected the OP's obstruction above, wouldn't it have stopped the doors? Even with a "low clearance" warning available, the sensor would first have sense the obstruction, right? Which in the case of the OP, apparently didn't happen. So I'm not sure it would have made any difference in FoxXxy's particular situation.
systemcrashed
Please Reboot
I think it would help if it recognized upon entering the garage that there were low beams overhead and prior to opening the FWDs asked for confirmation on the screen that it is clear of those detected beams. obviously, if the door is opened anyway it would collide unless a low clearance mode is automatically enabled. Mark Z's idea can be implemented in a software update to existing vehicles. Adding an additional sensor would also solve this but existing Model Xs would need updated parts.
From what I can tell, there are two semi- or fully-blind spots on either side of the roof. I went out, and using the door control pop-up on the 17" as a guide, I held a board over different areas of the roof. Near the center, the roof-mounted proximity sensor seems to sense the obstacle fairly well, as would be expected. As I began to pull the board off-center, it quickly lost its reading (again, according to the simplistic readout on the 17"). Since, as far as I could test, there is only that single rooftop sensor and the door side sensors, the "blind spot" is anything generally above the windows of the FWD to the outside of the articulating hinge. This is corroborated by the three different intercepts noted in this thread.
The danger zones taper as distance increases from the roof and from the top of the articulating hinge. The roof mounted sensor seems to detect in a conical (or other nonlinear shape). And as the door sides begin to turn horizontal, the internal sensors become active to overhead surroundings.
My guesstimate of the "danger zones" are the areas enclosed in red.
The danger zones taper as distance increases from the roof and from the top of the articulating hinge. The roof mounted sensor seems to detect in a conical (or other nonlinear shape). And as the door sides begin to turn horizontal, the internal sensors become active to overhead surroundings.
My guesstimate of the "danger zones" are the areas enclosed in red.
SoccerMan94043
Member
I really want/need an X, but seeing posts like this makes me think I'll wait a couple more years in production and stick with the S in the mean time. I assume/hope that Tesla will continue to engineer/iterate the FWD sensors/operation and they will get more reliable as time goes by.
In the mean time OP - very sorry to see what happened to your car. Hope it gets fixed quickly and without too much hassle.
In the mean time OP - very sorry to see what happened to your car. Hope it gets fixed quickly and without too much hassle.
Well there is that zone between the red zones
Just don't park under a red quadrilateral and you will be fine.
Mark Z
Active Member
The idea is for the top sensor to gather data while driving. I'll let the software engineers calculate the distance they wish to store to determine the Overhead Clearance Warning.
The last one-half car length of top sensor distance data could be used to help limit the distance the rear hatch would open. That would work only when driving forward into a parking spot. It would have helped prevent a scratch on my X spoiler the other day.
Skotty
2014 S P85 | 2023 F-150L
Possibly they were far too conservative with where they put the sensors. As a first stab, here is where I would put them (possibly adding 1 more right smack dab in the center of the door if it was a significant blind spot).
Well, maybe that's because I have done a poor job explaining my diagram! What I was trying to say is that if something is in the red zone, but nothing is in the middle non-red enclosure, the doors might open. If anything is in the middle, between the red zones, the doors won't open. I'm having a hard time testing this very well, but I do know if I hold a wrapped board over the door right above the articulating seam, the door opens and hits it. It's too hard to model all scenarios, so I was trying to generalize, just saying that those might be the blind spots.
edited to note: I don't really know where the hidden sensors are. Also, most X owners on this forum are complaining about weird sensitivity issues with their proximity sensors unrelated to the doors (bumper sensors). So it's possible this is all related to that, and there aren't really blind spots. I was just postulating and doing my best to say - if something's in that zone, maybe think twice.. for now.
