Irrelevant and off topic, like most of your rambling post. Clearly you don't like the Roadster, don't want it, and don't think Tesla should build it. So why are you even participating in this thread? The fact is Tesla see's a market for this product, clearly a good number of prospective buyers do as well, that's all that really matters. The Roadster isn't for you, apparently none of Tesla's products are. I don't see that changing any time soon.
You get me wrong. I've been pushing faster electric cars for years. Pushing the boundery of the "possible" is what drives me. I have been pushing for bigger batteries in S&X, and I am disappointed they couldn't put 2170's in them sooner to help bring down purchase cost. As if, Tesla does that would cell cost. No signs of that with Model 3. Just with the Semi, exceedingly so. Just, I am not wooing fanboy declaring every word out of Tesla for absolute gospel. Something's up with the roadset. It looks like a $100K car, and the battery, as with the semi where it's unusually cheap, seems needlessly big. It's either a severe sign of weakness, or something amazing to come to battery technology. I hope and kind of expect the latter. I know a thing or two too many about electric cars (justt from being a fanboy) and racing cars (fanboy geting involved in the actual thing) to declare the Roadster the best thing since the invention of the wheel. I like progress, a faster way to accelerate. But if itt's 200kWh in 2170 cells as now seen in the Model 3, I cannot talk it up. It'll be a very heavy car and still offer warming chimes and dotted lines around the race track. Cheapest batteries on Earth, not racing batteries in any sense of the imagination.
Nobody is. I happen to like the Roadster, a lot, as it is, as do many others. That's a far cry from "declaring every word out of Tesla for absolute gospel." Your claim has no basis in fact. Yes, it's a beautiful car with performance rivaling and surpassing almost everything on the planet, at a lower cost. I think it looks far better than most overly designed hypercars at any price. In fact it is not, it's the right size to provide the performance and range. You may not care about range but it is in fact one of the main concerns of the buying public regarding EV's. 600+ miles of range destroys that concern completely. It's neither, it's leveraging the technology they have and creating a halo product with high margins. As Elon said it's laying the smackdown on ICE in general. It's not a race car, but with that large a pack it may not be stressed to the point of overheating on the track. Same may be true of the 3 motors, which are likely PM like the Model 3 and the Semi, so easier cooling of the rotors.
I don’t think that is correct. Please provide a source to support your statement. And those “gear heads” represent a tiny fraction of the car buying market and will have no significant influence on the adoption of EVs by the general public. [speculation] I suspect that Tesla has incorporated a new cooling system into the new Roadster so that it can do some laps at Nürburgring or wherever without overheating and losing power, but I do not expect the new Roadster to be capable of dozens and dozens of full power laps on a track. I don’t think that is particularly important to Elon. But I could be wrong...
What you may be missing is that these are (mostly) the same thing. Low cost high density packs mean that charging to 75% with less advanced charging technology takes the same time as charging to 100% with updated charging technology. Charging to "full" is currently a bad idea for a number of reasons. Getting 50% more kWh under the vehicle for the same price means that taper doesn't exist, because one never has to charge to "full." On top of that, it's not one or the other. Work on both fronts can occur simultaneously.
True Tesla doesn't sponsor any race teams, but there are Teslas used in Formula E. Just because Tesla has never done anything with racing doesn't mean that isn't part of the plan. Elon wants the world to think that Tesla makes vehicles that are better than ICE in every way. He's not going to take Tesla into a new arena unless he is sure Tesla can be better. He's not going to build a race car until he can make one that's better than an ICE race car. The Roadster may not be the car for that, but it will be a step in that direction.
My bad. I have read about Teslas entered in Formula E. Car magazine reviews don't sell cars so much to the general public, but getting the automotive press on your side is important for the standing of the brand in the automotive industry. It's kind of like most serious president candidates write a book before running. Almost nobody reads the book, but it gives them cred in certain circles they need support from. It's part of playing the game.
Even the track focused NextEV NIO EP9 BEV supercar with plenty of peak power, seems to lose most of it through a Nurburgring lap. With so many horsepower, hitting 300kph on the main straight should be a matter of a few seconds out of the previous corner. But acceleration is quite subdued by then. Still a good lap time, the car is well designed for what it is. In normal use BEV's don't need a lot of cooling, allowing for a slick body with little in terms of air intakes. But when they really open it up, they need a lot of it, perhaps more than most companies are prepared to put in. BEV makers focus on 0-60mph, other supercars focus on lap times and emotion.
So far, Tesla seems to have only expressed interest in kWh cost. Density would likely follow automatically as part of that pursuit, power and discharge are going to be sufficient due to the scale of the packs. Still, charging speed has been meh. The Model 3 exhibits, depite the larger cell form factor, pretty decent speeds, 108kW peak, 81kWh or so pack? Of course we don't know if that's subject to futture throttling, but a slight bit of hope can be gotten from it that more is to come.
Pack is 75 kWh per owners manual, so 108kW is 1.44 C. A semi that gets 1.6 kWh/mile 800kWh pack semi would need 1.6 C to recharge 400 miles in 30 minutes, only an 11% bump in charge rate.
What to believe, owners manual or EPA docs? New Tesla Model 3 details revealed by EPA: ~80 kWh battery pack, 258 hp, and more 334 miles from 75kWh for a 1700+kg car with a 0.23 drag factor...not very likely. 310 makes it more realistic, but 334 is the figure people see when full. I hope true progress is coming for new Teslas, as the Germans are not going to settle for the 1.17C peak seen in the current flag ship Teslas. Or the 1.34C seen in Model 3. The market already has 2.2C cars. Affordable cars.
78,2kWh usable, 80,5kWh total. It's not shocking - Prius Prime and Ioniq use less per km (although they're 4 seaters). Tesla has always been laser focused on one factor about batteries: $/kWh. Everything else is secondary. Not enough power? Lower $/kWh, add in more kWh and get more total power output / faster charging. Not enough cycle life? Lower $/kWh, add in more kWh and reduce the number of cycles per cell for a given distance. Etc. Sure, that'll probably change eventually, but it is the recipe needed to make EVs affordable, while maintaining profitable margins.
With crappy range. You're obsessed with charge speed, the rest of the world is obsessed with range. Guess who Tesla is targeting?
Hi, where are those numbers from (for future reference)? Electek's article on the EPA docs New Tesla Model 3 details revealed by EPA: ~80 kWh battery pack, 258 hp, and more contained the following: "A manufacturer comment attached also says that the capacity is 78 kWh. Update: Tesla says that those numbers were for the EPA’s tests and our calculations doesn’t represent pack capacity."
Had TM3LR really been 75kWh int he same way the S/X75 is 75kWh, it would have been a lot harder to achieve. Prius and Ioniq are considerably lighter cars and city performance is a big part of the EPA cycle as far as I'm aware. I don't really diferentiate such cars for the number of seatbelts they place on the 2nd row. Are they take much narrower? Might be. That sid, Model 3 of course is not a small car by any stretch of the imagination. And for that reason, expectations of world beatting economy were not delivered upon, and while only a 75kWh batttery would fit at most, it got 80.5kWh... I have to disagree on this point. Tesla has been selling its world beating cheap cells at very high markups thusfar. Model 3 is not an exception, considering the upcharge for the long range one. If a Bolt owner wants a spare 63kWh battery, it's only $15K and change. How much would a Model 3 batttery be, if you could get one? Someone on here may know the resale price of a 60kWh S/X pack? Tesla's marginal profits do seem to hinge largely around the battery component of their cost/price equation. They need to get some profit from somewhere of course, as they've spent a lot on tech developments which current owners have not seen any fruits of, but may see later through upgrades (providing their car is still compatible). At one point, the marginal cost of a (albeit RWD?) Model S was offered to be only $30K. This cost ought to be dropping as production rate increases and more cars cover the largely shared development cost of computers and software. Tesla is making more marginal profit per unit than most car makers I'm sure. So cell development focused at cost is not so much about the sale price, but about having a weapon against other car makers. As long as they can repsond by making packs bigger, they'll have an edge, theoretically. And this might be what's happening with Semi and Roadster. After 5+ years of near zero tangible cell improvement, and this includes 2170's disappointing density (presuming stated 75kWh for 4416 cells of true 21x70mm size, it's actually an outright fail), the next step in batteries could be revolution rather than evolution. And certainly enough competitors have alluded to be bringing this around that time frame. So, why not? A long awaited big battery advancement by anyone would really help electric cars beat fossil cars for range, likely diminish overheating issues, cost, etc. And since we know a 30-40kWh can suffice for many users, an eGolf might end up cheaper than the bottom of the range fossil version. I'm all for that of course. If Tesla is tthe first to bring such tech, I'll be all the happier. As long as they don't just reduce the cost for Semi buyers. They promised to cut prices when costs would drop, and this has only partially be seen in S and X. With such a battery breakthrough, the $35K Model 3 ought to get a 120kWh battery or so, and max out today's superchargers.
Why did Tesla even mention the battery capacity for the new Roadster, when mentioning the range would have been sufficient? I thought they took that tactic when M3 was introduced, and it made a lot of sense.
Crappy for some, sufficient for others. I'm dying for Hyundai to build an estate car with three of those Ioniq packs crammed in there. No frunk necessary. 3x31kWh=93kWh, very much Tesla territory. Charge rate would be 200kW without any adjustment to the pack available for sale today in a car cheaper than Model 3, with pretty decent features. And guess what, it would not need to cost a whle lot. Even if they made is as expensive as 3x an Ioniq Electric (having just 4 wheels), it would be cheaper than an S100. Really, such an estate could be built and priced around $50-55K, no-problem. I'm sure they'll do such cars eventually, but legacy car makers are in no hurry at all.
From the outside, it could be seen as a last straw of a dying company. And articles coming out are in that tone also. Understandably. Big, big promised, and no accountability for the next 3 years. Plus or minus a few standard Tesla deviations. Just a few selected specs mentioned, too little for anything but speculation. They could just shut up about the Semi and Tesla, and just develop them. Deposits cannot be touched. Seems mostly a marketing operation to me. Needlessly waking up the competition of what they're doing. Unless we think they are just a charity wanting to promote clean transportation even if it kills them.
Range is based on 'normal' driving. This is a more performance car, so energy capacity is a useful gauge of usability for a particular driving stye. If they only said range, opponents would say things like "Sure, at 55 MPH with no headwind, no A/C, no heater, daylight (no headlights), with a jockey in front seat. Range and capacity let's people think, "Ok, I only get 40% rated range on my P100DL, so this will get me at least double that range." Unfortunately, Tesla detractors will then claim that saying the pack size is a bad thing. Why should they not mention the battery size?