Pencils down in 6 weeks - Model 3 design work nearly finished

[Discoducky]

That stuff's going to be done already and probably by the end of this year.

Really? Can you build a development schedule for an automobile? Guessing no since it is not possible to finish these engineering tasks that quickly. But if you can I'm sure Tesla would love to have you on the team

 

[JeffK]

Really? Can you build a development schedule for an automobile? Guessing no since it is not possible to finish these engineering tasks that quickly. But if you can I'm sure Tesla would love to have you on the team

You seem to forget the internal target date for volume production capability is July 1st 2017. Design will be done at the end of June this year. Ramping up production takes time however, volume production is NOT needed for ride dynamics or crash testing. Engineering prototypes with the nearly finalized drivetrain were used at launch at the end of March this year.

You are not giving them enough credit and why in the world would you complete your design and try to be production capable when you haven't finished other testing yet? What you're saying makes no sense.

 

[Garlan Garner]

You seem to forget the internal target date for volume production capability is July 1st 2017. Design will be done at the end of June this year. Ramping up production takes time however, volume production is NOT needed for ride dynamics or crash testing. Engineering prototypes with the nearly finalized drivetrain were used at launch at the end of March this year.

You are not giving them enough credit and why in the world would you complete your design and try to be production capable when you haven't finished other testing yet? What you're saying makes no sense.

Whats going on?
Who cares who knows the most? We just received some great news today. Lets enjoy it.

 

[cronosx]

I'm amazed that Tesla can adjust the opening of the MX's falcon wing doors. I assumed that the opening of a door is mechanical. Maybe its software based.

Of course it's not only mechanical! Else you can't "adjust" nothing. ( sure, you can stop all of this in mid-track, but it's pretty limitative ). There are motors on every bending part, it's like a robot. wich is an extemely hard thing to control, just imagine it's all free to move and you can manually adjust all, you can reach a certain position in many many ways, first you can move the upper motor, then the middle motor, or move only the upper, or little the upper, then the middle then the upper, of course you can do it at the same time but just with different speed.
And this is pretty hard to do and to not collide in the car itself. but then, you have sensors, and this sensor are placed on the moving part, wich means they measure something wich is changing while you move! the angle, the height, the distance.. all is changing!
It's pretty hard to do.

 

[JeffK]

Of course it's not only mechanical! Else you can't "adjust" nothing. ( sure, you can stop all of this in mid-track, but it's pretty limitative ). There are motors on every bending part, it's like a robot. wich is an extemely hard thing to control, just imagine it's all free to move and you can manually adjust all, you can reach a certain position in many many ways, first you can move the upper motor, then the middle motor, or move only the upper, or little the upper, then the middle then the upper, of course you can do it at the same time but just with different speed.
And this is pretty hard to do and to not collide in the car itself. but then, you have sensors, and this sensor are placed on the moving part, wich means they measure something wich is changing while you move! the angle, the height, the distance.. all is changing!
It's pretty hard to do.

The moving and adjustment part is actually pretty easy. I think they were having some software issues with interpreting data from the new sensors that see through metal and determining the appropriate action based on those readings.

 

[ModelNforNerd]

Whats going on?
Who cares who knows the most? We just received some great news today. Lets enjoy it.

Exactly.The 2 driveable prototypes we saw March 31st were further along than any of us had hoped. They weren't chicken wire and duct tape holding Model S parts inside a Model 3 frame...they literally had the expected Model 3 Production drivetrain and battery.

After Elon's impromptu Twitter mini-conferences, we came to find out that the car is mostly complete, other than the interior, some possible aero tweaks, and maybe the trunk opening.

I'm optimistic that pencils will be down in 6 weeks. I think we should all be optimistic about it.

 

[JeffK]

I loved Elon's face after the pencils down fully autonomous comment. (Priceless)

 

[Garlan Garner]

Of course it's not only mechanical! Else you can't "adjust" nothing. ( sure, you can stop all of this in mid-track, but it's pretty limitative ). There are motors on every bending part, it's like a robot. wich is an extemely hard thing to control, just imagine it's all free to move and you can manually adjust all, you can reach a certain position in many many ways, first you can move the upper motor, then the middle motor, or move only the upper, or little the upper, then the middle then the upper, of course you can do it at the same time but just with different speed.
And this is pretty hard to do and to not collide in the car itself. but then, you have sensors, and this sensor are placed on the moving part, wich means they measure something wich is changing while you move! the angle, the height, the distance.. all is changing!
It's pretty hard to do.

I agree, however I thought that items such as automatic doors had their opening and closing routine on a burned eprom or something. I didn't think it would be controlled by caned messages (or something of the kind) from a controller. Don't get me wrong...I fully agree that Every motor and sensor should be controlled from a programmable entity. I think its great. That allows for a ton of future flexibility and adjustments via software.

I'm impressed.

 

[deonb]

I agree, however I thought that items such as automatic doors had their opening and closing routine on a burned eprom or something. I didn't think it would be controlled by caned messages (or something of the kind) from a controller. Don't get me wrong...I fully agree that Every motor and sensor should be controlled from a programmable entity. I think its great. That allows for a ton of future flexibility and adjustments via software.

I'm impressed.

It probably is an EPROM, since the motor controller would need to be realtime and thus it's the easiest to drive it from a small MCU rather than a CPU.

However, Telsa still update these EPROMS (technically EEPROMS) over the air. They've done that for acceleration & regen curves as well, and no way these are done on a CPU or general purpose O/S.

It's actually pretty simple to do. I have a whole bunch of devices where the EEPROM is remotely updatable through some or other proxy chip.

 

[cronosx]

Yes, it's impressive, but in truth.. the world is now impressive, not only this.

About the eprom or similar, that doesn't make sense in the modern era, maybe some time ago when using a can-open or similar to connect to every motor was 'hard', but now it the opposite, centralized the cpu is really cheap and allow you an higher degree of freedom. If you "store" this in an eprom or simiilar you'll need more cpus, it's like having a pc and buy another pc to use the "calculator" program, of course you can do it with the standard cpu wich is never at 100% so it's a no problem.

 

[Garlan Garner]

It probably is an EPROM, since the motor controller would need to be realtime and thus it's the easiest to drive it from a small MCU rather than a CPU.

However, Telsa still update these EPROMS (technically EEPROMS) over the air. They've done that for acceleration & regen curves as well, and no way these are done on a CPU or general purpose O/S.

It's actually pretty simple to do. I have a whole bunch of devices where the EEPROM is remotely updatable through some or other proxy chip.

My point was - I'm surprised that a process as simple as the opening of a door would be programmable. Tesla seems to control things with can messages. Watch the EVtv episodes on YouTube.

They are mimicking/hijacking can messages to control things on the Tesla such as acceleration, braking and such. I'm not going to get into a discussion about who technically knows more.

 

[cronosx]

It probably is an EPROM, since the motor controller would need to be realtime and thus it's the easiest to drive it from a small MCU rather than a CPU.

However, Telsa still update these EPROMS (technically EEPROMS) over the air. They've done that for acceleration & regen curves as well, and no way these are done on a CPU or general purpose O/S.

It's actually pretty simple to do. I have a whole bunch of devices where the EEPROM is remotely updatable through some or other proxy chip.

Now.. i don't think so.
Of course you have cpu dedicated to the graphic interface or similar, and of course you want a dedicated cpu for the inverter, but for all the rest it doesn't have sense to have a cpu for controlling the brake, one cpu for controlling the wipers etc

Maybe i'm wrong.. but i don't think so

 

[ummgood]

Yes, it's impressive, but in truth.. the world is now impressive, not only this.

About the eprom or similar, that doesn't make sense in the modern era, maybe some time ago when using a can-open or similar to connect to every motor was 'hard', but now it the opposite, centralized the cpu is really cheap and allow you an higher degree of freedom. If you "store" this in an eprom or simiilar you'll need more cpus, it's like having a pc and buy another pc to use the "calculator" program, of course you can do it with the standard cpu wich is never at 100% so it's a no problem.

The Model S has dozens of low cost 8 bit and 32 bit MCU's that run on flash. I know this because my company has multiple chips in the car.

 

[ecarfan]

I loved Elon's face after the pencils down fully autonomous comment. (Priceless)

(After posting this I realized that I am referring to a different comment than you are, sorry. At what time point in the video of the Code conference interview is the statement you are referring to?)

Are you referring to his eye roll when he said "It's really obvious" after his "We're going to do the obvious thing" statement?

I can't decide if that eye roll means it is or is not obvious. I can interpret it either way, but lean towards it literally being obvious, which to me means that the Tesla event he references will be to announce a significantly higher level of autonomous driving than is currently available from Tesla.

 

[ummgood]

Are you referring to his eye roll when he said "It's really obvious" after his "We're going to do the obvious thing" statement?

I can't decide if that eye roll means it is or is not obvious. I can interpret it either way, but lean towards it literally being obvious, which to me means that the Tesla event he references will be to announce a significantly higher level of autonomous driving than is currently available from Tesla.

I think the eye roll in combination with his statement that autonomous driving would be ready in 1 to 2 years puts it right in line with the release of the Model 3. Plus he stated that the problem is "already solved"

 

[Garlan Garner]

Pencils down....but not pens. LOL

 

[tomas]

(After posting this I realized that I am referring to a different comment than you are, sorry. At what time point in the video of the Code conference interview is the statement you are referring to?)

Are you referring to his eye roll when he said "It's really obvious" after his "We're going to do the obvious thing" statement?

I can't decide if that eye roll means it is or is not obvious. I can interpret it either way, but lean towards it literally being obvious, which to me means that the Tesla event he references will be to announce a significantly higher level of autonomous driving than is currently available from Tesla.

Right. Agree he doesn't want to hold technology back from 3 but I predict it will be tested first on S/X well in advance of availability as paid option on 3. The 3 may have everything, but not for 35k.

 

[JeffK]

meh the embedding doesn't hold the link
forward to 1:14:14

 

[Trev Page]

Keep in mind they're designing the car and the factory tooling at the same time. They need 9-10 months to build the tooling and outfit the factory. The plan is to have that done and test parts off the line in April 2017.

Elon's comments (rant) at the shareholder meeting about efficiencies of manufacturing point to a possible radical rethink of how they will build this car. Sounds like a lot more automation is in the plans.

I'm very curious to see if they actually implement this and will be watching for videos of the build-out in the next few months, assuming of course they actually release some like they did for the factory expansion in November 2014:

 

[RangerRick]

As for how long it takes the manufacturing pipeline ready, there is a bright side: Tesla is more vertically integrated than most automakers and it's clear that they will continue that trend to be able to more tightly control things.

Comments from the reveal said the drivetrain was basically done so hopefully they're already far into or past steps 4-7 on anything for the base of the car that needs external manufacturing; so really then it's more the design/interior elements that are still being finalized. Admittedly, those things could definitely hold things up, but the things he said in the Code interview made it clear they know they need to not throw too much in that hasn't been vetted in S/X and I'm sure that's a big part of the plan to actually meet their deadlines.

Fingers crossed, anyways.

They're well aware that this is a whole other level to hit mass-market with the 3. While Elon Time is surely aspirational, they seem to at least be conscious of it and are pushing to meet things as much as possible, even if still not quite making them yet... Will they hit the July 2017 goal? Probably not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was *too* far off...