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Renewed interest in the Roadster, but....

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Maybe just me but I seem to be experiencing a lot more folks asking me about the Roadster, especially since Model 3 started to feature more prominently in the news and particularly in the last 2 weeks. Lots of people asking "Is that a Tesla?" and being very complimentary, kinda takes me back a few years to when I first got her.

But also in the last two weeks I've had the exact same exchange three times with different folks, each time along these lines:

"Is that the new Tesla?"
"No, it's the original one"
"Beautiful. What's it called?"
"It's just called a Tesla Roadster"
"Before the S and the X??"
"Yes, going on 7 years old now"
"Roadster, S then X....So why is the new one Model 3 and not Model 4?"
 
Maybe just me but I seem to be experiencing a lot more folks asking me about the Roadster, especially since Model 3 started to feature more prominently in the news and particularly in the last 2 weeks. Lots of people asking "Is that a Tesla?" and being very complimentary, kinda takes me back a few years to when I first got her.

But also in the last two weeks I've had the exact same exchange three times with different folks, each time along these lines:

"Is that the new Tesla?"
"No, it's the original one"
"Beautiful. What's it called?"
"It's just called a Tesla Roadster"
"Before the S and the X??"
"Yes, going on 7 years old now"
"Roadster, S then X....So why is the new one Model 3 and not Model 4?"
Elon's answer to the last question has been that it was originally called the Model E, but that Ford already claimed the name (and threatened to sue), so they killed SEX. (Or, words to that effect...) He's apologized for the model naming / numbering confusion.

I've had similar questions on a pretty steady rate over the past 2 1/2 years that I've owned the car. Also the craned necks of other drivers, and the random cell phone pictures. Smile and wave. Never gets old.
 
Thumbs up! Love it and glad I can capture with Blackvue. Interestingly, I find that most Model S drivers don't seem to notice the Roadster or at least they don't wave or acknowledge me, I was thinking it may be because they may not recognize the Roadster as a Tesla since most have never seen one in person.
upload_2017-8-10_17-30-31.jpeg
 
Thumbs up! Love it and glad I can capture with Blackvue. Interestingly, I find that most Model S drivers don't seem to notice the Roadster or at least they don't wave or acknowledge me, I was thinking it may be because they may not recognize the Roadster as a Tesla since most have never seen one in person.
View attachment 240891
I get less than 50% recognition from other Tesla owners, depending on how visible I am with traffic. One kind of freaked me out, momentarily. I was coming home after TMC Connect this year and a car coming towards me started flashing their lights. Short bit of panic - what was wrong??? - until I realized it was a Model S saying Hi!

If you're reading this, whoever you are... Hi back!
 
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Reactions: Mark77a and ViviV
Not nearly as confusing as Ford's Model A coming after its Model T. :)
Interesting trivia: Ford actually made a Model A in 1903 before the Model T. Try revived the letter for the 1928 model year.

My dad has two A's and a T, and I think I've got him talked into an X. Over got the Roadster and a reservation for the 3. We may have to borrow an S and spell out T3SLA with the cars. I wonder if we could come up with some additional words.
 
S&X are the same car, just different bodies. Just like 3&Y will be the same car, just different bodies.

No they aren't. X was originally supposed to borrow a lot of the platform from the S, but Elon went feature crazy and forced the engineers to barely use any of the Model S platform. This is why the X was so late and had so many initial production problems. He was going to make EXACTLY the same mistake with the upcoming cross over model Y (ie. not re-use much of the Model 3 platform), but this time, his management team got enough balls together to read him the riot act. He acknowledged this (not quite so colorfully) in the last 2Q conference call. Y will now indeed re-use much of the same platform as Model 3. Unless Elon sticks his fingers into the pie again (which is likely, actually).
 
Sorry to disagree folk.... S and X have the same chassis. The hubris around the X was all to do with the over clever gullwing (falcon?) doors, the auto open/close on the front doors etc.

The 3 and the Y will be very different ie not the same chassis. Mind you that will give them a load of options if they do decide to follow the Y with a new Roadster!
 
Sorry to disagree folk.... S and X have the same chassis. The hubris around the X was all to do with the over clever gullwing (falcon?) doors, the auto open/close on the front doors etc.

The 3 and the Y will be very different ie not the same chassis. Mind you that will give them a load of options if they do decide to follow the Y with a new Roadster!

First, I said platform, not chassis. Platform means things like AC, air filter, brake system, seats, etc. For instance, Elon decided a massive cabin air filter with bioweapon mode was needed in the X. That was a platform change in the X.

Second, did you even listen to the recent 2Q conference call? Elon explicitly said that Tesla is reversing course and Y will share much of the same platform as 3.
 
I accept your distinction of chassis and platform, although I'm not sure quite where platform becomes the whole car. My (6 month old) S has the same bioweapon AC as the X I understand, and the seats changed to adopt the heating/cooling again like the X. That suggests to me that they sensibly maximised the commonality, even as it required upgrading the S specification.

I missed the results call. They are sadly at a most awkward time for those of us on a different timezone. It makes sense to strive for wider user of the 3 base given the volume they hope to sell; i wonder whether we'll see similar upgrades then reversed into the e from the Y development.
 
Well, no one knows what Tesla will really end up doing. In the call, Elon was talking about advanced manufacturing technologies. Originally he had said a while back that the Y was going to be designed from the ground up for manufacturability (as in, even more so than the 3), but in the call be backtracked and said his management team convinced him that time to market for the Y was more important than completely redesigning how to build a car. So the Y will borrow many elements from the 3.

One innovation that might make it to the Y (and then presumably retrofitted into the 3, and presumably S and X) is the wiring harness. He kinda left that a possibility in the call. My current understanding (which could be completely wrong) is that the new wiring harness would be a modular ring bus and hub system. So imagine a wiring bus composed of just a (higher voltage) power cable, and a comm cable. These four wires or so (actually you could even run comms over the power wire, so could be as little as two wires) would run along the car and whenever something is needed, like a light or a switch, the wires would go into and out of a tiny hub which would decode the signal for the light or switch and then light up the light or sense the switch. Not sure how you would fuse such a system, maybe the tiny hubs have integral circuit breakers which can be reset by software (wouldn't that be cool).