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Had a great day here today at Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel.
Despite not having a reservation for a test drive, I managed to get one anyway.
There are 4 cars in Hong Kong now, all used by TM Engineering, just about 24/7. Using them for this event was apparently a struggle between sales and engineering. Thank you, engineering, for letting us try the RHD MS!
I managed to gauge as much (via stealthy interrogation technique!), that orders right now are more than 400, but less than 1000.
TM HK are facing lots of challenges here, in good old traditional and conservative Honkers.
Customs took their ~two week delay for just being ... customs, and TD was the administrative nightmare one would expect from HK.
With that many orders already finalized, I can understand how TM must get it right the first time already.
Superchargers are an issue on several fronts. Getting the spots, having enough electricity available, and much more. Strangely enough (or predictably?), there isn't a huge interest in getting superchargers installed in existing car parks. It's seem like a number of locked spots which then cannot be used for ICE parking! And when other EV brands are all pushing THEIR standard as well, it's ... confusing for the shopping mall owners as well.
More later
Despite not having a reservation for a test drive, I managed to get one anyway.
There are 4 cars in Hong Kong now, all used by TM Engineering, just about 24/7. Using them for this event was apparently a struggle between sales and engineering. Thank you, engineering, for letting us try the RHD MS!
I managed to gauge as much (via stealthy interrogation technique!), that orders right now are more than 400, but less than 1000.
TM HK are facing lots of challenges here, in good old traditional and conservative Honkers.
Customs took their ~two week delay for just being ... customs, and TD was the administrative nightmare one would expect from HK.
With that many orders already finalized, I can understand how TM must get it right the first time already.
Superchargers are an issue on several fronts. Getting the spots, having enough electricity available, and much more. Strangely enough (or predictably?), there isn't a huge interest in getting superchargers installed in existing car parks. It's seem like a number of locked spots which then cannot be used for ICE parking! And when other EV brands are all pushing THEIR standard as well, it's ... confusing for the shopping mall owners as well.
More later
... "not a huge interest" in my post above meaning from the shopping mall side of the table. I thought it was a prestige option to be awarded the possibility to offer supercharging.
Its probably a catch-22 of seeing cars on the road and actual demand, rather than believing in orders only, and cars soon to come.
Tesla staff are working 8 days a week (just about), and often don't have time to check news. It's a startup operation, not just TM as a whole, but also the whole Model S setup.
Its probably a catch-22 of seeing cars on the road and actual demand, rather than believing in orders only, and cars soon to come.
Tesla staff are working 8 days a week (just about), and often don't have time to check news. It's a startup operation, not just TM as a whole, but also the whole Model S setup.
NoMorePetrol
Member
lx3h
Charged.hk's Director of Education
Great photos DITB, I knew you will be reporting it!! Wish there is more. I am actually thinking about making a video for my blog and YouTube channel, but not sure if TM allows this. Derek is going to booked me in for 25th after 5pm. I'm hoping that the weather is good by then.
I brought my GoPro and a suction cup mount, and they were all excited for me to use it, no problem. We mounted it on the sunroof (remember NOT to open it then!), and ... I am yet to edit it, file is over 3 GB (and I will spare you for the full length and a baby crying way through the video) - maybe I can edit it tonight already so you can see it. If you plan to duplicate the procedure, don't use the foot-long flexible arm, just the suction cup and mount the camera straight on it (there is some vibration in the movie, because the flexible arm is not designed to that many g forces I guess
).If you don't have a GoPro or similar, I suggest you bring at least one passenger to make video or photos for you, as you will be busy driving, and the rep will be busy making sure the car can still be used for the next test driver. Making video from the back seat with a smartphone isn't all that bad either.
More info as it comes to mind: Turn signal arm for the RHD is on the LEFT, lower left actually, with the slightly shorter cruise control arm middle/left. Again, I activated cruise control instead of turn signal, something to get used to ("Thank you", Mercedes, for this silly design. Worlds best car? Well, I'm not a comedy TV host Claremy Jerkson clone, as we all know he's a big Merc fan ... each to their own). Only saving grace (for me) is that I have mainly driven LHD cars, so this saves me from engaging the wipers by mistake every time I want to make a turn.
Also, mentioning wipers, about the LHD/RHD, to me it seems the wipers are mirrored as well, to ensure best vision from the drivers side (as the upper left hand side of the window is the largest area not covered by the wipers.
Video to come, watch this space ...
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Regarding sign-up and attendance - so typical for this type of events, and where you don't even have to pay anything, is that a lot of people tend to not show up, and not even bother to cancel ahead.
Today, there were TWO test cars, both P85+ (grey TESLA and red TESLA EV regs), and there were - zero 0 nil no-shows. This is a good sign of the interest of the HK market into Tesla Motors and the model S.
I only got a test drive by chance because there happened to be a break. I probably took someones lunch break (thanks, guys!), even though I assured them I was perfectly happy just to see the car.
I had tireless chats with several staff, none of whom I had seen before, though I emailed with some of them. More info will be forthcoming here as I remember it, although I think I might already have said enough. Anyway, TM employees don't tend to frequent the forums a lot, as they don't really have time (working ~8 days a week), and if they do, they are bound and mouth and hands anyway, so although they would love to come here and supply us with more info - to often can't.
And to an extent, it's good. There are issues, as are discussed here in the forums at length, but it's more complicated than as it may seem. There is nothing Tesla Motors want more than deliver all cars as soon as they can, on the other hand, they just don't want to release information which isn't final, because they are still working on it. An example is super chargers, I'll go update the Supercharger thread later on with more info from today.
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You are welcome!
I don't have too much experience in editing video - but one thing I know is that it takes TIME to get it right, especially not dragging it on too long.
As for this video, the real time element is important, as we want to see the speed and acceleration. Otherwise, I would have used a higher speed, to make it less boring. For that reason, the cut I made is about 7 minutes, so I left it at that:
For those not sufficiently patient to watch a full 7 minute video, here is exactly the same video, at 4X speed (so 1:35)
Some notes of interest:
- The GoPro is quite wide angled. Before you accuse me of speeding, keep that in mind. Also, as I used a one foot flexible arm (shouldn't have), the videos are a bit shaky, which gives a false impression of high speed.
- Those demo cars are P85+, but limited to 65 mph (just over 100 km/h). One of the downsides of the high acceleration rates is ironically that the acceleration lasts for such a short time! You cannot have both
- In the real time video there is no fiddling with the time/speed. Disclaimer: If you are police of government watching, the speed is adjusted to 150%.
- At the beginning of the drive, you see me engaging the cruise control, instead of the turn signal arm. Both are on the left side of the steering wheel, turn signal left/down, while cruise control is left/middle
- There was a motorcycle policeman patiently waiting for us at the return point of the route. He wasn't hiding too well, and on the way back, the Tesla rep turned on the rear camera. Later you see him passing us - no fish in the net this time. Note that the route going out had road construction limited to 50 km/h, the rest of the roads didn't have any speed limit signs.
- Towards the end of the drive, inside the hotel compound, I did indeed activate the wipers. This is not from using the wrong control arm, but because I must have hit the end of the turn signal arm, where a twist-button enables the wipers.
- The very first clip in the video, is actually from the end of the video - backwards! When the handles pop out, it's from locking the car after the test drive. It made more sense that way in the final edit, to have it at the beginning (check people moving backwards until getting into the car hehe).
- YouTube stabilisation filter is used to try to get rid of some of that shaking from using the flexible arm mount - seems to be working quite well but takes a bit extra time to process (full time video still processing stabilisation as I write this).
- Camera is a GoPro HERO 3+ Black edition, using the free GoPro video editor. Music from audionautix.com, Creative Commons, thank you Jason Shaw
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Yes, the test cars have Google maps. Nothing has been released since they are still working on it. As far as I know, engineering is not only testing wall chargers, but also the coverage in Hong Kong of the maps. Especially in denser areas there seem to be some problems with accuracy and GPS/Google performance. I am not really sure how switching from Google to a downloaded database could help - maybe the problem lies more in loading data real time at all times and places, rather than the accuracy? If the map database is on a disk in the car, and updates automatically, while still boasting real time traffic via 3G, it might not be a bad thing. I can imagine the frustration if the map doesn't display simply because it cannot get the data.This is half my guesses - what the problem(s) seem(s) to be, and what the final solution will be, remains to be seen.
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Build quality was great, and all the test cars have carbon fibre instrument panels - I would have liked to see the piano black installed in the car, rather than just on a small sample board, just to see if I should have forked out 6500 extra for carbon. It's also a question of fingerprints, as this shows clearly on the piano black, while hardly at all on the carbon fibre.
I didn't hear any squeaky sounds or feel anything not working as I would expect. Still no good friends with the Merc style layout of steering wheel control arms, but I guess I will get used to it quickly.
NoMorePetrol
Member
Hehe, I had that for a while, there's even a small hole in it now. Doing all I can to promote the name. I have a line of apparel now, as it's called in the US. I believe Wai (from Tesla, recently moved from the US to HK) and myself are the only people in HK with that particular T-shirt. In fact, the whole family was wearing Tesla gear, even the toddler who has a grey and a red baby Tesla romper suit. The grey one says "0 Emissions" then further down "almost"
MangroveMike
Member
lx3h
Charged.hk's Director of Education
You can get one of ours (not used very much), I can get more next time I go to the USA (which won't be until second half of June).You can also order it online, as well as see the entire selection:Shop Tesla Gear Apparel
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