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Tesla Model Y, Tesla Transit, & Tesla Gigafactories -- More Info

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Falcon doors on the Y? Well, that kills my hopes for buying a Tesla for the rest of the decade. It's way too rainy in Oregon for falcon doors.
Don't knock'em unless you've tried them. Today was my first rainy day with FWDs. They did better than our old vehicle at keeping rain out, because the door protects you from above, where the rain is coming from. In driving rain it would probably get in, but it also does with regular doors.
 
I am guessing 12 to 20 Falcon Wing Doors on this bus, and no driver. This type of purpose-built bus is at least $250 - $500k these days, something that seems well within reason for Tesla to build. This could start as a private service in between city bus and taxi and probably end up replacing the city bus in many if not all conditions eventually -- nobody likes the bus, and most would likely pay a bit more for travel in a private compartment, and with autonomous driving and mapping your stop will probably be much closer to your home if not right to the door.

Now about the Gigafactory, I was a bit anxious at some of the graphics at the Grand Opening event. Things seemed really crammed together. I sure hope that's just a case of the Marketing Dept. coming up with something on their own like with the Supercharger maps ;)
Stuff's gotta be able to be serviced, and possibly even replaced. But I'm sure they've got it covered :D
 
Sorry, I was responding to an earlier post by someone else and didn't see yours.

So if the vehicle had FWDS only on the curb side, the passengers on the non-curb side of the vehicle would have to move in front of the curb side passengers to enter and exit. That seems sub-optimal.

In all existing buses, trains, airplanes, people are already doing rows of forward facing seats, and getting in/out of those rows by moving in front of other passengers. That's the not the biggest space inefficiency. The worst inefficiency is the center isle. With the FWD opening up along the entire curb side, it eliminates the need for passengers to move to the front/back of the bus, thus eliminating the center isle. It improves the current design without much drawback.
 
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In all existing buses, trains, airplanes, people are already doing rows of forward facing seats, and getting in/out of those rows by moving in front of other passengers. That's the not the biggest space inefficiency. The worst inefficiency is the center isle. With the FWD opening up along the entire curb side, it eliminates the need for passengers to move to the front/back of the bus, thus eliminating the center isle. It improves the current design without much drawback.

That's true, but the center isle balances access from the seating areas. With double seats in each side of the isle (in current buses), the window seat passenger only needs to climb over isle seat to exit. With a single row of (4-5?) seats, the passengers on the far end need to inconvenience everyone else in that row to get out to the curb.

Win in one area, but lose in another.

Also, since you couldn't move within the transport vehicle when the doors are closed, the whole vehicle can become a trap if the FWDs fail to open due to malfunction or accident.
 
That's true, but the center isle balances access from the seating areas. With double seats in each side of the isle (in current buses), the window seat passenger only needs to climb over isle seat to exit. With a single row of (4-5?) seats, the passengers on the far end need to inconvenience everyone else in that row to get out to the curb.

Win in one area, but lose in another.

Also, since you couldn't move within the transport vehicle when the doors are closed, the whole vehicle can become a trap if the FWDs fail to open due to malfunction or accident.

Good point about the ease of entry/exit. Many trains and airplanes have 3 people across, which seems to be the current limit, usually you don't see 4 across. I wonder how many seats Tesla is planning to put in each row.

I also wonder if Tesla may have other tricks up its sleeve. For instance, the bus should know where each passenger is going to, and it knows which route, and can plan which passenger will exit 1st. It can possibly make intelligent seating arrangement so as to minimize passengers from having to get past other passengers to exit. It may also be able to move the seats forward/backward enough to make entry/exit easier. This would normally not be a very good idea if when passengers from 2 adjacent rows both want to exit, but if the bus can intelligently assign seating, then it can also arrange it to minimize the chance of this scenario, maybe putting the people existing together into the same row.

It's not a simple problem for sure, but if you think about it, there does appear to be a lot that can be improved if you have the kind of data and AI that Tesla is aiming for.

Also regarding safety, I assume the top of the bus, as well as the traffic side window can still serve as emergency exit with manual opening windows if necessary. Normal buses have motor operated doors but can be manually opened in emergencies. I don't see why FWD can't be designed similarly.