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Elon "About to end range anxiety"

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I was told on my factory tour that they don't allow non-employees in the areas where the packs/batteries/modules/etc are assembled for safety and insurance concerns (as I specifically asked about this)... so not sure how someone would have come to the conclusion that there are better cells, personally.

If the E+ packs had more cells or higher capacity cells, pack voltage would reflect this upon discharge, and at 2 rated miles my P85D (E-DUAL-MTR pack) had basically the same supercharge voltage as my P85 (2013 D-pack) had when I charged at ~5 rated miles. (Closest available data for comparison)
 
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I was told on my factory tour that they don't allow non-employees in the areas where the packs/batteries/modules/etc are assembled for safety and insurance concerns... so not sure how someone would have come to the conclusion that there are better cells, personally.

They saw E packs for the first time (never mind that E packs and F packs have been discussed here for months), went home and got out their jump to conclusion mat.

jump_to_conclusions.jpg
 
First of all your other post doesn't link to that interview, it links to another TMC post here (which appears to be a mistake).

But you still can't explain why Tesla would sit on 10% extra battery capacity for 3 months while being criticized by P85D owners over range so much that they ultimately had to write a blog post about it. A blog post that promised a software upgrade that implemented a complicated scheme of turning motors off in order to increase range. A complicated scheme that coincidentally promised 10% more range which brings the P85D roughly into equivalence with the P85. Then once the software update with torque sleep was available, there are still owners that aren't sure they're seeing the improvement. One of tweaks of the torque sleep functionality caused P85D's in range mode to start losing power, which took them a week to fix while customers were concerned their cars weren't safe to drive. They did all that while sitting on the fact that the cars had 10% more battery capacity that they could have activated by just pushing a software update to make it available. A change that would have been immediately obvious and absolutely would have resolved the range disparity between a P85 and a P85D. I have yet to see a good business reason for them to do that.

I think people put too much importance on the battery pack revisions. Any number of tiny changes could trigger a new revision identifier. Even the tiniest change should trigger that change. It could be something as simple as a change in suppliers for a part. It could be improved wiring to allow even faster supercharging. It could be improved wiring to support the performance of the P85D. It could be improvements to the battery cooling system to allow the newer vehicles to pull large amounts of power for longer. It could be a new contractor design that's less likely to fail. There are many reasons to make improvements in the pack and bump the revision. The vast majority of which would not require telling customers anything and are thus in my opinion far more likely.

For what it's worth there's an F pack revision already.

Yes, there was a mistake in my link, I fixed it, and the link to the interview works now.

I thought about the "sitting" part before posting. I see two reasons to do this. One is to minimize outcry from the owners who just miss the upgrade, just because reasonable people will less likely to engage in the outcry after passage of time. The other reason, which I mentioned in my post, could be similar to the reason that TM included autopilot hardware before it was reveled to the public. The development and validating software can be completed after the hardware is available for the installation. So your belief that they "sat on the 10% more capacity" it is not a foregone conclusion imo, they simply did not have required software ready for release.

I agree with you that battery pack revisions could be triggered by multitude of things, but it is very interesting that this analyst specifically mentioned transition from the 4th generation of the battery pack (rev D) to the 5th generation (rev E) in conjunction with implication of increased range (capacity). BTW, this analyst also issued a new note today, again, although in more cryptic way, alluding to the improvement in battery.

Do not get me wrong, I am far to insist that this increased battery capacity in Rev. E packs is a sure thing, I just do not buy your arguments for shooting it down.:smile:

The fact that there is rev F pack out does not prove anything either way. I just find both the interview and the note very intriguing...
 
Unless it is a minimal increase in capacity (or none, as I suspect) that would be hard to detect using voltage vs SoC alone, then I can pretty much guarantee (with 99.9% certainty) that the pack I have on my P85D has the same capacity as my P85.

The upper and lower charging voltages match with the SoC % nearly perfectly. A 10% increase in capacity is impossible with this being the case.
 
I exactly know and have a proof. Dont want to write myself. If someone can call me via skype or chat whatsapp I can provide picture and this guy can describe here in good english
my skype is malikmrz

I spoke with Malik and because his written English isn't as good as his spoken English, I'll try to relay his thoughts.
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tesla 127w_km.jpg


So the above picture shows him getting great range by driving very economically. Basically what he thinks fits the idea of the announcement is that there will be a new ECO mode that will drive your car in a more economical way.

So basically you could set an "Average Speed" of say 65. Now let's say you're approaching a hill. The car might know this based on GPS data or perhaps you've driven this way before, and it could either speed up when the cost of doing so (energy-wise) is cheap (maybe you're on a flat grade, or going downhill) OR it could accelerate up the hill in a more sedate manner than the cruise control currently does (as it aggressively tries to hold your set speed).

Likewise, going downhill, the car might use less regen and go a little faster if it knows it can use that speed on the flat (or inclined) road ahead. Basically a cruise control that drives like a hyper-miler, which would extend your range. This could fit the idea of eliminating range anxiety as someone could engage this when needed and the car will do it's darnedest to make sure you get the range you need.
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The above is my attempt at relaying his thoughts. I don't know if that's what's going to be announced, but it does fit the bill. I've also personally thought, for a while now, that the cruise control should already be doing this. On long trips I tend not to use the CC and try to manually keep my usage around 0 because it's too aggressive with the braking and acceleration.

Hope I did your idea justice :)
 
Yes, there was a mistake in my link, I fixed it, and the link to the interview works now.

I thought about the "sitting" part before posting. I see two reasons to do this. One is to minimize outcry from the owners who just miss the upgrade, just because reasonable people will less likely to engage in the outcry after passage of time. The other reason, which I mentioned in my post, could be similar to the reason that TM included autopilot hardware before it was reveled to the public. The development and validating software can be completed after the hardware is available for the installation. So your belief that they "sat on the 10% more capacity" it is not a foregone conclusion imo, they simply did not have required software ready for release.

I agree with you that battery pack revisions could be triggered by multitude of things, but it is very interesting that this analyst specifically mentioned transition from the 4th generation of the battery pack (rev D) to the 5th generation (rev E) in conjunction with implication of increased range (capacity). BTW, this analyst also issued a new note today, again, although in more cryptic way, alluding to the improvement in battery.

Do not get me wrong, I am far to insist that this increased battery capacity in Rev. E packs is a sure thing, I just do not buy your arguments for shooting it down.:smile:

The fact that there is rev F pack out does not prove anything either way. I just find both the interview and the note very intriguing...
Per your referenced link: Based on our recent tour of TSLA's primary production facility, we believe TSLA has made significantly more progress as it relates to battery cell production and optimization
I can't help but wonder why Tesla would be sharing this information with this analyst while at the same time being so incredibly secretive about it to everyone else (as wk057 pointed out). There's also the question of whether battery technology advances are referring to the Model S batteries, anticipated Gigafactory batteries, or Aluminum-Air batteries.
 
I spoke with Malik and because his written English isn't as good as his spoken English, I'll try to relay his thoughts.
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So basically you could set an "Average Speed" of say 65. Now let's say you're approaching a hill. The car might know this based on GPS data or perhaps you've driven this way before, and it could either speed up when the cost of doing so (energy-wise) is cheap (maybe you're on a flat grade, or going downhill) OR it could accelerate up the hill in a more sedate manner than the cruise control currently does (as it aggressively tries to hold your set speed).

Likewise, going downhill, the car might use less regen and go a little faster if it knows it can use that speed on the flat (or inclined) road ahead. Basically a cruise control that drives like a hyper-miler, which would extend your range. This could fit the idea of eliminating range anxiety as someone could engage this when needed and the car will do it's darnedest to make sure you get the range you need.
----------------

The above is my attempt at relaying his thoughts. I don't know if that's what's going to be announced, but it does fit the bill. I've also personally thought, for a while now, that the cruise control should already be doing this. On long trips I tend not to use the CC and try to manually keep my usage around 0 because it's too aggressive with the braking and acceleration.

Hope I did your idea justice :)

Thanks, on behalf of all of us, for reaching out. I think that "eco" mode cruise would be a welcome feature for many owners. But I still believe what Mr. Musk is targeting (and SHOULD be targeting) are the potential buyers of the car. And, by and large, they see changing driving behavior as a barrier to buying the car. So, saying "hey, look at this, the car now helps you double range by driving 20 up hills and 80 down hills" is just too radical for most drivers. It's only after owning the car for a while that you become an EV geek and open up to some of these techniques. If this announcement is totally targeted at EV geeks, it will do nothing to help Tesla's mission.
 
I thought about the "sitting" part before posting. I see two reasons to do this. One is to minimize outcry from the owners who just miss the upgrade, just because reasonable people will less likely to engage in the outcry after passage of time.

I'm not sure how effective this would be. Though in my personal opinion I think missing out on 10% more battery is trivial compared to missing out on the autopilot hardware. On an 85D the vehicle with the best efficiency (supposedly) that's all of 27 miles. That just wouldn't make a significant difference in how I use the car.

The other reason, which I mentioned in my post, could be similar to the reason that TM included autopilot hardware before it was reveled to the public.

Sure they did this but the time from delivery to announcement was relatively short. I think the first delivery with autopilot hardware was September 21st or 22nd. The D event was October 9th. That's all of 18 days. Tesla delivered those cars with the functionality they had software ready for enabled. So they didn't make much of an attempt to hide.

The development and validating software can be completed after the hardware is available for the installation. So your belief that they "sat on the 10% more capacity" it is not a foregone conclusion imo, they simply did not have required software ready for release.

I'm having a hard time believing that higher capacity cells have taken this long to have software ready for. The software seems to me like it'd be a very trivial part of this functionality. The new battery hardware would be the hard bit. While autopilot the sensors are trivial to add, writing the software to interpret and control the cars based on that input is not trivial. So I don't think you can use autopilot of an example.

I agree with you that battery pack revisions could be triggered by multitude of things, but it is very interesting that this analyst specifically mentioned transition from the 4th generation of the battery pack (rev D) to the 5th generation (rev E) in conjunction with implication of increased range (capacity). BTW, this analyst also issued a new note today, again, although in more cryptic way, alluding to the improvement in battery.

Well I'm not inclined to believe analysts. Before the D event there were analysts convinced that Tesla was announcing self driving cars. And we all know how that went.

Do not get me wrong, I am far to insist that this increased battery capacity in Rev. E packs is a sure thing, I just do not buy your arguments for shooting it down.:smile:

Guess we'll find out tomorrow morning.

The fact that there is rev F pack out does not prove anything either way. I just find both the interview and the note very intriguing...

Of course not. But I'd be far more inclined to believe that a newer and hardly deployed pack has increased capacity than packs that lots of people have do.
 
The above is my attempt at relaying his thoughts. I don't know if that's what's going to be announced, but it does fit the bill. I've also personally thought, for a while now, that the cruise control should already be doing this. On long trips I tend not to use the CC and try to manually keep my usage around 0 because it's too aggressive with the braking and acceleration.

I've had some thoughts about TACC since getting it and I'm pretty certain that TACC will be getting better. Jerome said that TACC was better at driving than we are. But based on observing TACC's behavior it just doesn't seem like that can be true. TACC as it currently exists maintains following distance. If traffic is moving 63 and your cruise is set to 65 and a car moves out of your lane and the car ahead of you now is still moving 63 TACC (even if it can see that car) will speed up to 65 to close that distance. It throws away energy just to get you closer to another car. So one might think that in these scenarios that you should just increase the following distance. But once you do that then when someone moves in front of you it'll brake just to get your following distance back as quickly as it possibly can. All of this can be improved. It's almost like the car needs two settings for TACC. Your preferred following distance and how aggressive you want the car to be at maintaining that distance.

This is of course a little different than what he's talking about since he isn't talking about TACC but generally how the cruise maintains the speed. But the idea is largely the same but talking about just instead of adjusting how aggressive the car is in maintaining following distance he's talking about adjusting how aggressive the car is in maintaining the cruise speed. If you think of my 2nd adjustment not as how agressive to maintain the following distance but rather as an adjustment on how much to prioritize efficiency over prioritizing speed/following distance you could combine this into a single setting.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't see some sort of improvement along these lines as Autopilot continues to roll out. But I'm not sure that this press conference is really about this.
 
I wonder if anyone's having a range anxiety party tomorrow. Btw will it be live streamed?
Party for everyone. Tesla rented out restaurants all over the world, there will be an individual invitation for everyone.
Each of the restaurants is 1.1x the range of your car away from where you live and there's no charging on the way.
Alternatively they invite you to listen to the press conference instead :tongue::biggrin: