Speculation - M3 Suicide Doors (Tesla Style)

[palmer_md]

I don't think these small doors are a good idea.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

I wish they would just hold a survey to ask the buyers what they would prioritize.

 

[palmer_md]

I wish they would just hold a survey to ask the buyers what they would prioritize.

perhaps they did when the design started about five years ago.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

Outside of post Service Center surveys - I have never see a survey from Tesla asking about the X, the S or the III... I ordered my first car in January 2013. Has anyone else?

 

[Twiglett]

I love it - now with added stupid doors

 

[eloder]

I'm growing to hate the suicide doors on our i3 and I really hope the model 3 doesn't have them (the i3 is leased and the plan is to return it to the BMW dealer close to when we get our model 3). We have a one year old that rides in a rear facing car seat and the suicide doors on our i3 present two problems. First, you have to open the front door prior to opening the rear door on the same side and in tight parking spots you kind of get trapped between the two open doors and the adjacent cars when loading and unloading the kid. It's not impossible, but you have to do lots of things in the right order for things to work. If the rear door could open independently of the front door this would fix this problem, but dealing with rear facing car seats would still be a pain and presents the second problem we've encountered.. We have with a small rear facing car seat that detaches from a base, but we looked into getting a larger convertible car seat that can be either rear facing or front facing and while it would physically fit into the i3 in the rear facing configuration, it was nearly impossible to put the kid in there or take him out when the car seat was installed because of the geometry of the rear door. So we're going to be pretty limited in our choice of car seats until our son is old enough for a front facing seat.

That's probably the only argument I've seen so far that would still make "smart" suicide doors a bad idea--though I'm sure that the M3 being a significantly longer car and a suicide door that could essentially operate independently, could still work out in such a situation.

My thoughts exactly. Maybe people (us) have gotten too focused to the (claimed) .2 CD target? I'd imagine, and hope, that for Tesla the priorities are non-weird mobileness + functionality > arbitrary CD target.

The need for anything weird certainly drops away if the cd is higher than .2. The thing that substantiates the .2 cd goal the most, in my opinion, is Musk's statement that the M3 "won't look like anything else on the road".

 

[EcoHeliGuy]

The Model X design was based on women based research groups, Elon mentioned it at the prototype reveal. The Cd will be lower then the S, and that takes it pretty close the 0.2 without much effort. Will it be 0.2? That was never a public promise that I'm aware of.

 

[1208]

Actually they are going to be scissor doors.

 

[GoTslaGo]

No suicide doors, PLEASE!

Big reason we didn't even bother to test drive the BMW i3. Wife took one look and walked away. She said what are those?

I told her they were called suicide doors, and she said why would I want to drive a car with something called THAT!?

 

[raysspl]

More than likely not going to happen

 

[gregincal]

The Model X design was based on women based research groups, Elon mentioned it at the prototype reveal. The Cd will be lower then the S, and that takes it pretty close the 0.2 without much effort. Will it be 0.2? That was never a public promise that I'm aware of.

Why would it be less than the S? Given it's a shorter car it could be a bit higher. However, since it's a smaller car the CdA will likely be less than the S, and that's all that really matters.

 

[eloder]

Why would it be less than the S? Given it's a shorter car it could be a bit higher. However, since it's a smaller car the CdA will likely be less than the S, and that's all that really matters.

The S is still pretty monstrously wide, and like the MX they'll have to try and eke every last bit of efficiency in order to make the economics work at those price points.

 

[EcoHeliGuy]

Why would it be less than the S? Given it's a shorter car it could be a bit higher. However, since it's a smaller car the CdA will likely be less than the S, and that's all that really matters.

Because the Model S was 0.24 when first released.

The Model X was..... Wait for it ....... 0.24 when it was released.