Model S range and interior update imminent?

[sillydriver]

It has nothing to do with ego.

It had to do with Mobile Eye demanding that all the info gleaned from Mobile Eye hardware be Mobile Eye intellectual property.

What you say sounds quite reasonable, although I don't know the facts. I'll throw in a separate complementary theory, which is merely an inference on my part. It's that MobilEye, realizing the extreme difficulty and very long development time for anything like full self driving, decided to focus its software and hardware development on all the ancillary vision-based functions now appearing in high-end cars including A8s and Range Rovers, not on true self-driving. These other functions, ranging from blind spot warnings to synthesized camera views to emergency braking to self-parking to trailer backing to highway super-cruise, suffice to immediately give it (and now Intel) a market consisting of a multi-camera chipset into every reasonably high-end car. Devoting that chipset to self driving wouldn't have given MobilEye significantly more revenue, and trying to focus on developing full self driving to the exclusion of having developed these other near-term things would have taken all that low-hanging-fruit revenue away.

So I suspect that Tesla and MobilEye were going in different development directions, which caused Tesla to take development in-house because of its monomaniacal (that word again) focus on full self driving.

But the problems are 1) that FSD is really hard, which I think we all know, but also 2) that these other functions are becoming competitive check-off items in high-end cars. It's (2) that's the new realization for me after buying a fancy Rover, which I spoke about earlier.

Frankly, after Tesla reported its last quarter I'm not sure what my advice to the company (as if I'm qualified to give it any) would be. I thought they should spend some effort upgrading the MS interior, but now it feels like they should focus all attention on trying to ramp the M3.

 

[DÆrik]

So new information on this. It appears that all 75Ds (both S and X) show February delivery, while the 100Ds still show December. I also confirmed with my OA that they cannot sell inventory cars anymore. What I take from this is that they are changing something drastic with only the 75s, and not the 100's. That would rule out a major change to the cars, but not the battery. I'm guessing a capacity bump (85?). I'm sure we'll know more next Thursday night (11/16).

I am working with several OA to find cars for a few friends and they CAN and are more than willing to sell inventory cars. I received an email with several quotes of cars that are inventory cars and are cars listed on my website, www.teslainventory.com . Maybe try talking with a different OA.

* I don't think all inventory cars are available, but those that I have listed on my site (and what is listed on www.Tesla.com) are currently available.

While 75D are delayed until ~February and 100D are by end of the year. February is what the 100D will be at soon since at the beginning of every quarter, cars are made for overseas deliveries. Perhaps they are working on batching the cars to make the line more efficient and that is the delay of the 75?

Thanks Erik

 

[Burnt Toast]

I am working with several OA to find cars for a few friends and they CAN and are more than willing to sell inventory cars. I received an email with several quotes of cars that are inventory cars and are cars listed on my website, www.teslainventory.com . Maybe try talking with a different OA.

* I don't think all inventory cars are available, but those that I have listed on my site (and what is listed on www.Tesla.com) are currently available.

While 75D are delayed until ~February and 100D are by end of the year. February is what the 100D will be at soon since at the beginning of every quarter, cars are made for overseas deliveries. Perhaps they are working on batching the cars to make the line more efficient and that is the delay of the 75?

Thanks Erik

More likely is that the 75 is EOL.

 

[Bebop]

And yet, if you're shelling out $80,000+ for a car, wouldn't you expect all of those things (plus most any other niggling details besides) to have already been thought through and taken care of, so that they're a complete non-issue to begin with?

Is it really that hard/too much expect?


.

No I don’t expect those things because I don’t use those things.

What I expect is more quality control and not having to “plan out” service visits buying the car. It’s literally part of the Tesla car buying process.

EX: “Wow car didn’t come with what is the standard equipment headlamps, now I gotta schedule to make an appointment to swap them out and take time out of my day to fix a mistake that wasn’t mine that shouldn’t have been made in the first place”. STANDARD EQUIPMENT.

 

[Bebop]

you miss the point.....its adds to the whole luxury idea of paying 1/2 as much for a car WITH THE SAME TECH AS THE S MODEL...and even better tech in wipers/screen resolution and screem refreshrate. The 3 is better/newer/higher tech not only software wise but in harware as well. Even the headlights seem to perform way way better then the s headlights...and i bet homelink actually works on the 3.

I bet the 3 has rain sensing wipers active day 1.

 

[Burnt Toast]

I bet the 3 has rain sensing wipers active day 1.

How much do you want to bet?

 

[TaoJones]

How much do you want to bet?

Drat - beat me to it!

 

[FutureShock]

No I don’t expect those things because I don’t use those things.

What I expect is more quality control and not having to “plan out” service visits buying the car. It’s literally part of the Tesla car buying process.

EX: “Wow car didn’t come with what is the standard equipment headlamps, now I gotta schedule to make an appointment to swap them out and take time out of my day to fix a mistake that wasn’t mine that shouldn’t have been made in the first place”. STANDARD EQUIPMENT.

It's not really an 'either-or' type of thing.

Having an interior worthy of an $80–120K level luxury car AND having good quality control are BOTH things that Tesla gets judged on, and needs to be doing well at.


.

 

[Mark_T]

EX: “Wow car didn’t come with what is the standard equipment headlamps, now I gotta schedule to make an appointment to swap them out and take time out of my day to fix a mistake that wasn’t mine that shouldn’t have been made in the first place”. STANDARD EQUIPMENT.

This is the flip-side of the advantage of continuous updates vs the traditional 'model year' approach.

... and yes I agree it shouldn't be as haphazard as it appears to be, but as long as they do make good on these slips I'd be willing to cut them a little slack on the point.

It isn't easy allowing continuous change on a flow process like this and in part at least it is why the traditional manufacturers don't do it...

 

[unbelievable]

More likely is that the 75 is EOL.

My thoughts exactly. All 75D orders are on hold at the moment with Feb (US) and early March (UK) delivery showing on mytesla account pages. If this is due to an imminent update, it isn't effecting 100D deliveries. That rules out design refresh, so maybe a slight battery bump may be on the cards, helping to further differentiate between the S and the 3.

A nice lineup would be for the 3 to be 50 and 75 and the S to be 100 and 125, a possibility if they were to upgrade all battery packs from 18650 to 2170. This seems an impossibility at the moment however, due to the 2170 battery production line being in the 8th circle of hell.

Hopefully, something will be revealed on the 16th.

 

[wdolson]

It could be the new 85 or 90 coming out. For economy of production they are going to want to standardize on the new battery module for the 100 and smaller pack. Using 14 modules of the new module gives a battery around 89 KWH.

 

[sillydriver]

A nice lineup would be for the 3 to be 50 and 75 and the S to be 100 and 125, a possibility if they were to upgrade all battery packs from 18650 to 2170. This seems an impossibility at the moment however, due to the 2170 battery production line being in the 8th circle of hell.

It could be the new 85 or 90 coming out. For economy of production they are going to want to standardize on the new battery module for the 100 and smaller pack. Using 14 modules of the new module gives a battery around 89 KWH.

I haven't been following this as closely as I should, so this might be a stupid question: but if production of 2170 modules is what is mostly responsible for holding up the M3 (or so I've heard), wouldn't they want to devote all the 2170 modules to the M3 ramp until the bottleneck is fixed?

 

[SucreTease]

This seems an impossibility at the moment however, due to the 2170 battery production line being in the 8th circle of hell.

It isn’t battery production that is the bottleneck. It is the production of battery modules, which is the assembly of many battery cells into a subunit of the pack. That implies that they can produce batteries faster than they can assemble them into packs.

 

[unbelievable]

It isn’t battery production that is the bottleneck. It is the production of battery modules, which assembly of many battery cells into a subunit of the pack. That implies that they can produce batteries faster than they can assemble them into packs.

I meant battery packs. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[unbelievable]

I haven't been following this as closely as I should, so this might be a stupid question: but if production of 2170 modules is what is mostly responsible for holding up the M3 (or so I've heard), wouldn't they want to devote all the 2170 modules to the M3 ramp until the bottleneck is fixed?

Yep. That’s why I said it was an impossibility at the moment.

 

[Burnt Toast]

I haven't been following this as closely as I should, so this might be a stupid question: but if production of 2170 modules is what is mostly responsible for holding up the M3 (or so I've heard), wouldn't they want to devote all the 2170 modules to the M3 ramp until the bottleneck is fixed?

I would be willing to bet the 18650 and 2170 batteries are on completely different lines. (Are the 18650s even in the Gigafactory?) They aren't going to add 2170s to the S and X in the short term, as I think the extra height might require a chassis redesign, so as others have said, I think they might just be creating new 18650 packs minus a couple of modules from the 100, down to a 90 or 85kw battery. Probably the units that were field tested in Europe earlier this year.

 

[unbelievable]

I would be willing to bet the 18650 and 2170 batteries are on completely different lines. (Are the 18650s even in the Gigafactory?) They aren't going to add 2170s to the S and X in the short term, as I think the extra height might require a chassis redesign, so as others have said, I think they might just be creating new 18650 packs minus a couple of modules from the 100, down to a 90 or 85kw battery. Probably the units that were field tested in Europe earlier this year.

Do you not think they could accommodate the extra 5mm height in a newly designed battery pack so it could fit the current chassis? Even if it was their intention to make all the cars use similar 2170 battery packs, I think the production issues will force them to delay. As you say, I think we’re currently looking at a possible bump up to an 18650 85kw pack.

Elon has previously denied that the S and X will use 2170 packs but I think they would be crazy not to standardise production at some point.

I hadn’t heard about 85/90 packs being tested in Europe, but will have a look now.

 

[smac]

It could be the new 85 or 90 coming out. For economy of production they are going to want to standardize on the new battery module for the 100 and smaller pack. Using 14 modules of the new module gives a battery around 89 KWH.

I agree.

Just like they did when they got rid of the old 60 modules, and for a while had a common module design across the line up. That seemed to make far more sense from a logistics POV.

 

[Peewee]

Why the hell would they discontinue the 75D now? They just gave it an upgrade, which made them change thousands of cars on the road, just for customer satisfaction. If they were going to introduce an 85D (or something similar) now, than why would they have done the performance upgrade for the 75's?

 

[SucreTease]

Elon has previously denied that the S and X will use 2170 packs but I think they would be crazy not to standardise production at some point.

He did not deny that the S and X will use them. He merely said, earlier this year (Elon Musk on Twitter):

No plans to change cell form factor for X and S

That was a factual statement at that time. It does not preclude changes of plans in the future (now present).