Ok this has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. Directional wheels. These are normally swept spoke wheels. Where one side of the car seems to have the spokes ‘dig into the ground’ or get ‘swept back by the ground’. Fan bladed spokes, like the 21” Model S wheels, also get this they tend to ‘blow in’ or ‘blow out’. For example the 21” Tesla wheels would require 2 wheels (a left hand, and right hand version) for the car to look the same from both driver and passenger side. Almost every picture I can find of the side of the Model S with 21” wheels, where they are not motion blurred, is from the drivers side. Think of the wheels as a fan. When you drive forward they will blow out from the car. Do the right side wheels do the same. Or are all 4 wheels identical and the passenger side blows in towards the car? From a lot of the pictures I have looked at I can’t seem to make a conclusion. On the options page it appears that both sides of the car blow outwards. Most of the still photos are of the drivers side, and almost all of those blow outwards too. But I have also seen a picture where the drivers side wheels blow in. And with pictures being flipped left to right a lot of what I have seen may actually be the passenger side and the photo just flipped. Anyone know if the 21” rims will be a single wheel, or will there be a left and right side? The 19” and 19” aero look laterally symmetrical so not problems there.
It's a single wheel. So if that's going to bother you, then you're stuck with the 19" wheels. Frankly, nobody will notice.
I was bothered by the lack of mirror symmetry on the 21" rims, too. Not that it really matters to me -- given road conditions where I drive, I'm in for the 19" (which I liked far better in person than I had expected.)
No offence intended Mycroft: I've noticed a fair number of posts where someone states something as fact but turns out that it's just their assumption. There's a fair number of newbies around who will just wrongly assume these stated comments are correct if they come from a longer-term member. I haven't seen the Model S with directional wheels either, but based on Roadster experience I would more likely assume they are going that way.
IMHO they would have to, since if you are doing a fan wheel you actually would want to extract the hot air from the rotors and undercarriage and not put more air in there............ So only having "one sided" fan wheels would not really make any sense........ IMHO
I like people who can admit when they made a mistake ( I struggle with that sometimes), although it was not that you shouldn't have said anything. I think that Nigel just means that we all need to be clearer on if we are stating a known fact or if it just an opinion.
Yep, while it's a fact that all the current cars have identical wheels, it's not a fact that the production cars will be the same. I stated it as a fact when I should have said it was a speculation. I may be proved wrong, but I do believe the final wheels will be identical.
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Clearly it's time for Tesla to throw more scraps to the forums so that we have something new to obsess about. Good thing the Model X reveal is coming up!
I thought it was settled that the wheels were mirror images. As far as obsessing and beating dead horses, we can start another thread on the interior or my favorite, charging with wind power.
you can get good look on the tesla website Model S Design Studio | Tesla Motors. they look to be mirrored there...
El Supreme.... Like it was stated before go with the 19's. I personally like the 21's because of the styling. For me it does not matter which direction they are going in.
Sorry guys, but I've got pictures from the factory tour as well as the South Florida store and all 4 rims are identical. Those photos are computer generated and in some case flipped. Look at still shots of the S (with driver visible) during the factory event and you'll see that the rims are identicle.
I would expect the wheels in the "design studio" to be more accurate than the betas. All the pics on the Tesla website show mirrored directional wheels; Tesla would be pretty stupid to be touting the design studio if it wasn't accurate, and they saw how much attention the pricing and option page received.... P.S. The car in Florida is the same one that was used for the factory event so not surprising the pics are the same.