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Tesla town hall meetings - Jan 26 & 27, 2009

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I believe that it is incorrect that Tesla Motors is providing any motor for the Smart. At the beginning of the meeting when Elon announced the deal he very specifically stated that they were providing the battery and the charger. I believe the 1.2 cost saving changes were being referred to the battery pack itself.
 
I believe that it is incorrect that Tesla Motors is providing any motor for the Smart. At the beginning of the meeting when Elon announced the deal he very specifically stated that they were providing the battery and the charger. I believe the 1.2 cost saving changes were being referred to the battery pack itself.

If so, the PlanetTesla report isn't helping:
Tesla Town Hall meeting with owners - News - PlanetTesla
"...secured a deal to supply drive trains for the SMARTe..."
(That was supposedly a direct quote from the meeting)
 
OK, here's a direct transcribed quote from my audio recording about powertrain 2.0. What I get from this is that these version numbers only pertain to the Roadster. And the Model S and Daimler work are different development paths and so don't fit into the 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 Roadster version timeline. You decide...

Elon Musk said:
I alluded to powertrain 2 and the question is when is that going to be introduced. Now I should emphasize that for powertrain 2 in the Roadster the primary emphasis is cost reduction, of course reliability, but cost reduction. Because we have to reduce the cost of the powertrain if we are to have the business make sense. That's part of the cost equation. But in the process of the cost reduction, we said let's also make some improvements here and there, and so we've iterated on the motor design, the battery pack ... And version 2 is probably an exaggeration. It's probably more like version 1.2. So I don't want to give the idea that version 2 is a huge step up. It's not.

The true version 2 would be what's in the Model S. And so if you compare it....(mumbling). The volumetric density of the pack is 40% better. The overall cooling effectiveness is quite a bit better. Energy per unit of volume, energy per unit of mass is higher. Cost is lower on the pack.

And a lot of the true next generation stuff is actually in the Daimler pack that we're developing there for the Smart. The motor and power electronics will be liquid cooled vs air cooled, which gives a higher continuous power rating. Those are probably the big ones.
 
Thanks for the transcript.

Clearly, Elon doesn't even know what to call all the different powertrains; no wonder we were all confused.

"...volumetric density of the pack is 40% better....The motor and power electronics will be liquid cooled vs air cooled, which gives a higher continuous power rating."

Sounds like an awesome track version of the Roadster. One of its few flaws will be remedied.
 
That was then, this is now.

Wasn't that guarantee some time before Elon plowed so much more of his own money into the company? Could it be that in an effort to avoid closing the company and paying off the depositors he put that cash into the company?

Wasn't it also before certain other expenses cropped up?

I'm not defending Elon Musk. He seems difficult to work with. In particular, it seems difficult to tell him "no". However, everyone who didn't tell him "no" on his upgrades shares responsibility for the cost overruns.

He does seem to put his money where his mouth is.
 
Actually that transcript did clear some things up.

The main source of confusion is that there are two different development paths both being called "2.0". That web site saying that the "Roadster Sport" and "Model S" will have the same drivetrain probably jumped to the wrong conclusion because they heard that the Roadster Sport will have a "2.0" drivetrain, and also heard that model S will have a "2.0" drivetrain, but it is two different "2.0s".

Now I am going to pick apart another confusing statement:
And a lot of the true next generation stuff is actually in the Daimler pack that we're developing there for the Smart. The motor and power electronics will be liquid cooled vs air cooled, which gives a higher continuous power rating.

When he says "higher continuous power rating" I do NOT take that to mean that the SMARTe motor will make more power than the Roadster powertrain, what I read into it now is that the "true 2.0" (liquid cooled eMotor) technology from the Model S program will make it into the SMARTe drivetrain program, and the (almost certainly smaller) SMARTe motor won't suffer from the same level of top speed fallback seen on the air cooled Roadster. In other words, the "true 2.0" water cooled motors will be able to substain closer to the peak rated power outputs for longer periods of time... But that is relative to that particular motor, not to the entire line of future Tesla motors. (Hopefully you are following me so far). In other words we know the current Roadster can't hold its' top speed for long periods of time. It may automatically back off from ~125MPH down to ~105MPH because the eMotor can start to overheat. For Tesla SMARTe it may have some lower limit (say 90MPH as a guesstimate, but it will be able to maintain that top speed and not have to fallback much if you try to hold top speed). For this reason the upcoming "Roadster Sport" is still not fully optimized as an autobahn or track car. It may still have to cut back on substained top speed. They are going to try to rectify that situation in Model S and SMARTe by switching to "true 2.0" water cooled eMotor.

Now back to 2009 Roadsters. Personally I am going to avoid calling any 2009s as "2.0 drivetrain". There will be efficiency/performance improvements in the "Sport" model, and perhaps some cost reduction technology in the base models, but it is still likely just minor/incremental compared to the "true 2.0" tech coming later in Model S and SMARTe.

Futher confusing things are plans to eventually put the "true 2.0" technology in some future version of the Roadster (say in 2-3 years), and make it a better autobahn/track car, but that is too far off to think about too much now.

For now I think we should probably just call the 2009s "1.5+" and sort out exactly what "+" means later.
 
The volumetric density of the pack is 40% better. The overall cooling effectiveness is quite a bit better. Energy per unit of volume, energy per unit of mass is higher. Cost is lower on the pack.

He first says volumetric density of the pack, then per unit of mass. I wonder if they are using new cells, or possibly just worked out a way to cram more into the volume of the ESS/pack, or some combination of both?
 
In light of recent events these words continue to haunt me:
Eberhard, the ousted cofounder, says Musk interfered with the design of the roadster, demanding changes that were costly and led to delays. These included installing electronic door latches, building a lightweight carbon-fiber body and lowering the doorsill by two inches. "It cost us $1.5 million to lower that doorsill," Eberhard says. "We would have been better off to have a simpler car shipping a year earlier." Musk says his design changes were not the cause of delays.
I'm sure they would have sold just as many cars without all these changes, and they could have been implemented as improvements to later models. How much more did all of these changes add to the cost of the vehicle? Seems like a terrible business decision that could lead to the downfall of Tesla and one that was totally unnecessary and avoidable.