Unveiling on Oct 17th

[gearchruncher]

An airplane would be awesome. But as an aircraft designer...

You can get 120 shaft horsepower out of a 300 lb engine for 5 hours with 240lbs of fuel. So 550 lbs gets you 90 KW of power for 5 hours. That's 450 KWh in 550 lbs.

The current 90KWh batteries weigh about 1200 lbs, so you'd need 6,000 lbs of batteries to go for 5 hours (assuming the electric motor is 100% efficient)

The plane you put all of this in weighs 1,500 lbs today (airframe, motor, fuel, people).

So the reason this would be awesome? It means Tesla has increased battery density by 10X. It also means to supercharge at the end, you'd need a 500+KW charger..

 

[aesculus]

This article claims that Tesla is close to introducing a new feature, "Tesla Vision", that will in some unspecified way provide the driver with a clearer view of what a new Autopilot CPU is perceiving. It speculates this is what Elon says will be announced on Oct. 17th.

Tesla is about to increase its lead in semi-autonomous driving w/ ‘Tesla Vision’: computer vision based on NVIDIA’s parallel computing

But wouldn't this Osborne them big time unless they also simultaneously announced an upgrade to the current cars?

 

[outie]

But wouldn't this Osborne them big time unless they also simultaneously announced an upgrade to the current cars?

Why? Those cars have already been delivered and paid for.

 

[mhan00]

They put the price up from $2500 to 3000 3-6 months back. I doubt they'd do it again so soon. Given the bad-press about the deaths I imagine they won't put the price up anymore for a year or so - not until it's been a bit more proven as helping.
My personal issue with AP is that the 2 fatal crashes (Mr Brown, the Chinese man hitting the street cleaner) are because people believe AP to be flawless. If they didn't have AP these people would be concentrating on the road.
At the moment the safety improvements it seeing things you don't see and saving your life is balanced with people paying less attention to the road and not taking evasive action to really obvious obstructions. It's also total BS for Elon to claim an improved level of safety over the status quo based - stating "1 death per 100m miles" based on 1 datapoint (especially when it turns out it was 2 as the Chinese one had happened 6 months earlier). As somebody who works with statistics 1 datapoint shows a very poor understanding of probability and statistical analysis. It sits uneasily with the fact Tesla has a financial benefit to oversell AP - infinite margin as 1 car with AP costs the same as all cars (and that's $3000 x 10,000+ cars).

You absolutely can't say that without AP those drivers would have been laying attention to the road. There are no shortage of drivers who don't have AP or any driver assistance tools at all who drive distracted. Plenty of people text, do makeup, fiddle with their radio, turn to yell at their kids, rubber neck when passing anything vaguely interesting, etc.

 

[gearchruncher]

Outie, the question is for people like me that have an order in but don't have their cars yet. Mine won't be here until December. I can just refuse delivery and re-order if the change is worth $2,500, and now they have a car in inventory that is less capable than one ordered today, so it needs to be sold at a discount. This will be equally true for every car that someone takes delivery of on Monday forward. My car isn't even in production yet- are they really going to announce that a change is happening in the future but doesn't apply to a car that is 8 weeks out? That would tank sales for the quarter.

So it's pretty silly for them to announce a future feature if it isn't already in cars that have been delivered. Which is exactly what they did with AP 1.0, telling everyone that it's been in the last few weeks of deliveries, so that nobody with an open order had reason to cancel. Only people that already took their cars a week before the announcement got shorted.

 

[MassModel3]

So I guess we will be able to see P140D at same weight, 0-60 in under 1.8 secs. More like a catapult launch.

Except that back on Sep 16 EM twitted this: Glad you like it! I think we will probably stop at 100 kWh on battery size.

 

[thegruf]

too early for AP2.0 since the recent separation from Mobileye.imho.
increased computing power not enough to warrant a "product announcement"
bikes/trucks/taxis/semis not going to happen as they are maxxed out on M3 and would anyway be a Major announcement.

I'm going for something charging related.

 

[JeffK]

too early for AP2.0 since the recent separation from Mobileye.imho.
increased computing power not enough to warrant a "product announcement"
bikes/trucks/taxis/semis not going to happen as they are maxxed out on M3 and would anyway be a Major announcement.

I'm going for something charging related.

They've been working on it for years. It's not like development was started after the MobilEye breakup ... matter of fact it was one of the causes of the breakup in the first place.

 

[outie]

Outie, the question is for people like me that have an order in but don't have their cars yet. Mine won't be here until December. I can just refuse delivery and re-order if the change is worth $2,500, and now they have a car in inventory that is less capable than one ordered today, so it needs to be sold at a discount. This will be equally true for every car that someone takes delivery of on Monday forward. My car isn't even in production yet- are they really going to announce that a change is happening in the future but doesn't apply to a car that is 8 weeks out? That would tank sales for the quarter.

So it's pretty silly for them to announce a future feature if it isn't already in cars that have been delivered. Which is exactly what they did with AP 1.0, telling everyone that it's been in the last few weeks of deliveries, so that nobody with an open order had reason to cancel. Only people that already took their cars a week before the announcement got shorted.

For those new cars, they typically* install the new hardware before the official announcement. So after the announcement they won't risk losing current sales. Of course, YMMV.

 

[thegruf]

They've been working on it for years. It's not like development was started after the MobilEye breakup ... matter of fact it was one of the causes of the breakup in the first place.

don't disagree with that at all.
In fact the breakup with Mobileye will have incentivised Tesla to move even faster to remove their Mobileye dependency.

Still think it is too soon though..Easter 2017 maybe, with enough time to refine prior to M3 launch.
Happy to be proved wrong

 

[malcolm]

Except that back on Sep 16 EM twitted this: Glad you like it! I think we will probably stop at 100 kWh on battery size.

But "probably" isn't "definitely"

However, I think you're right. Reengineering the S battery pack to take 21700s would take staff away from other tasks at a time where no other manufacturer is pushing Tesla on range.

Sure it would be nice and it will happen in a few years' time but a slightly higher capacity battery announcement this month isn't going to have the same impact as AP 2.0, or Tesla Glass/Vision.

 

[JeffK]

don't disagree with that at all.
In fact the breakup with Mobileye will have incentivised Tesla to move even faster to remove their Mobileye dependency.

Still think it is too soon though..Easter 2017 maybe, with enough time to refine prior to M3 launch.
Happy to be proved wrong

Early august Elon said “What we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind …it’ll come sooner than people think.”

"It blows me away the progress we are making. And if it blows me away, it’s really going to blow away other people too when they see it for the first time."

Note the use of the present tense

 

[p1l0t3]

What about a bladeless airplane propellers ?
Would using Dyson fan like propellers be efficient ?
And using S skateboard you build the cabin around and propellers in place of wheels. ?

An airplane would be awesome. But as an aircraft designer...

You can get 120 shaft horsepower out of a 300 lb engine for 5 hours with 240lbs of fuel. So 550 lbs gets you 90 KW of power for 5 hours. That's 450 KWh in 550 lbs.

The current 90KWh batteries weigh about 1200 lbs, so you'd need 6,000 lbs of batteries to go for 5 hours (assuming the electric motor is 100% efficient)

The plane you put all of this in weighs 1,500 lbs today (airframe, motor, fuel, people).

So the reason this would be awesome? It means Tesla has increased battery density by 10X. It also means to supercharge at the end, you'd need a 500+KW charger..

 

[thegruf]

Early august Elon said “What we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind …it’ll come sooner than people think.”

"It blows me away the progress we are making. And if it blows me away, it’s really going to blow away other people too when they see it for the first time."

Note the use of the present tense

Best go and make myself a rice paper hat to eat then

Bring it on

 

[HumanGenome]

Hype hype hype!

 

[Evil.Labrat]

My guess is an autonomous electric lawn mower because I need one to get one step closer to being a gas-free household, and I'm allergic to grass clippings, so that's where the autonomous part comes into play.

 

[phaduman]

Back in 2014, when AP1.0 was announced, the vision was painted as...
"The Autopilot hardware opens up some exciting long term possibilities. Imagine having your car check your calendar in the morning (a feature introduced in Software v6.0), calculate travel time to your first appointment based on real time traffic data, automatically open the garage door with Homelink, carefully back out of a tight garage, and pull up to your door ready for your commute. Of course, it could also warm or cool your car to your preferences and select your favorite morning news stream."

I think the part in "red" which they announced as summon, has one issue. If the car is plugged in, it cannot do the rest of the stuff (can open garage, but cannot pull out and be ready at the door"...so the story is incomplete without a wireless or robotic charger. EM doesn't like wireless as there is inefficiency. So, the snake charger it is. Wall mounted. And let's put a price for it. $2K. Value/tag-line? "Never say - never forgot to plug it in". Or, "it completes the picture" painted back in Oct 2014.

 

[systemcrashed]

How about an ad-on battery pack that can be installed into the trunk of existing Model S and Xs?

 

[phaduman]

How about an ad-on battery pack that can be installed into the trunk of existing Model S and Xs?

Taking that further, how about "mobile superchargers" that are outfitted to the AAA tow-trucks. So now, anyone stranded with a zero charge, can get on-road help. "The supercharger will come to you". It takes longer for a tow-truck to fix a flat than to give a 20-min "fill" to get to next charger.

Very useful in my opinion for teslas to go to more remote/adverture places

 

[shokunin]

Taking that further, how about "mobile superchargers" that are outfitted to the AAA tow-trucks. So now, anyone stranded with a zero charge, can get on-road help. "The supercharger will come to you". It takes longer for a tow-truck to fix a flat than to give a 20-min "fill" to get to next charger.

Very useful in my opinion for teslas to go to more remote/adverture places

AAA already has roadside assistance trucks with generators and EV charging. Not a supercharger but will get you off the highway.