There is a Tesla Showroom 2 blocks from my office. M3h. Cool cars though. An exec who toured their facilities was NOT impressed with their assembly and manufacturing efforts. Not lean.. Not very innovative. Cool car though.
There is a Tesla Showroom 2 blocks from my office. M3h. Cool cars though. An exec who toured their facilities was NOT impressed with their assembly and manufacturing efforts. Not lean.. Not very innovative. Cool car though.
Can you disable the stability and traction on these yet? I got to rip a p85d on track a while back and it seemed really good but really neutered. If i had the coin, id have one. Hand of God acceleration with no sound is weird and awesome.
Fueled by Caffeine wrote: An exec who toured their facilities was NOT impressed with their assembly and manufacturing efforts. Not lean.. Not very innovative.
I had the opposite impression based on this video. Looks pretty innovative to me? Not sure how lean, but it's still a relatively low volume car.
Tyler H wrote:Fueled by Caffeine wrote: An exec who toured their facilities was NOT impressed with their assembly and manufacturing efforts. Not lean.. Not very innovative.I had the opposite impression based on this video. Looks pretty innovative to me? Not sure how lean, but it's still a relatively low volume car. WIRED Tesla Model S assembly
Then you haven't seen how the big boys do it. If you watch that video again, everywhere you see a person 'doing' something, or driving a forklift/cart has been completely automated. I've been to GM's Orion plant...one guy hands stuff to the robots, the robots stamp, weld, assemble, convey to paint, laser analyze for imperfections and pull out any 'corrections', car continues on (again no person has touched it), all the way to engine joining (subframe bolts) and interior kit which is now highly automated and only requires a few human interactions and finally wheels and tires and then someone drives it through the test mechanisms and out the door and onto a waiting car carrier. And this is in one plant, assembling 2 different makes and 4 different models of cars...on the same assembly line, producing 400 finished cars in one 8 hour shift all with a system that is 100% self-diagnostic and anticipates issues to self-correct...
Think about that for a moment, if GM wanted/needed to run that plan 24/7 it could build as many cars as Tesla does in a year...in one plant...in around 45 days...
I'm not discounting Tesla's technology or vision, it's just amusing when people think they're innovative in the manufacturing sense...GM, Ford, Chrysler literally bankroll and develop technologies which they turn into OEM suppliers to help the industry.
oldtin wrote: That's pretty cool. What I was getting at is run 300 miles, take a ten minute break and go another 300 miles. I don't think it's ready for that. More like run 300 miles. Take a 3-4 hour break and go another 300. I think they will get there fairly soon.
so ive decided that if i get a tesla i will put a good sized generator in the trunk and just call it a hybrid. Run the generator charging the batteries while you drive then when the generator is out of gas you still have 300 miles until the batteries are dead. That would get you pretty far. 
edizzle89 wrote:oldtin wrote: That's pretty cool. What I was getting at is run 300 miles, take a ten minute break and go another 300 miles. I don't think it's ready for that. More like run 300 miles. Take a 3-4 hour break and go another 300. I think they will get there fairly soon.so ive decided that if i get a tesla i will put a good sized generator in the trunk and just call it a hybrid. Run the generator charging the batteries while you drive then when the generator is out of gas you still have 300 miles until the batteries are dead. That would get you pretty far.
They have that, it's called a Volt...oldtin's right on though, not yet, but it's coming, and not just from Tesla 
oldtin wrote:Chris_V wrote:Most of the miles driven in this country are accumulated this way - ORT trucking - not to mention the tens if not hundreds of thousands of territory sales people prowling the highways.oldtin wrote: That's pretty cool. What I was getting at is run 300 miles, take a ten minute break and go another 300 miles. I don't think it's ready for that. More like run 300 miles. Take a 3-4 hour break and go another 300.99.9% of drivers don't do that regularly. Why should we carry around loads of extra batteries (or fuel) for something we don't do most of the time? it's wasteful. If you could fill up your car with gas at home, i'd bet you'd never put more than a couple gallons in it on a daily basis, either.
OTR trucking is a different use case, and territory sales peopel are a VERY small part of the 200 million drivers in teh US. Sorry.
It isn't about carrying more batteries or capacity - in my mind it's speed of recharge. It's cool that some early adopters and status symbol folks are helping advance the way. Just saying I'm not personally ready for it until I have the freedom provided by a dino-juice powered vehicle. If I want to do a 1,000 mile road trip in a day - I'll want a vehicle that can accommodate it. I think EVs will get there. It's closer every year. It's not there now.
80% of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. That's 160 MILLION drivers that 100 mile range EVs are perfect for RIGHT NOW! Over 60% of households have 2 or more cars RIGHT NOW. That means that over 120 million EVs could be sold today and fit right into our daily pattern with zero changes to our way of life, other than remembering to plug in when we get home. If people would just look at their day to day usage rationally instead of the incessant harping that they need 1000 miles of range at the drop of a hat, we'd ALL be better off. Sorry, but your use case is NOT anywhere NEAR normal. It'd be like saying Miatas, Golfs, and the like should never be built because they can't tow as much as an F150, and everybody has the potential to need to carry as much as an F150 can.
Now, to head off the inevitable, 120-160 million EVs can't be made and sold overnight (and in fact would take, at max capacity if all manufacturers switched over to 100% EV production tomorrow, over 30 years of production and sales to fill) so worring about what our current grid could handle is also a moot point, as it will be easy to ramp up the grid to match demand as no one can make enough EVs fast enough to fill that many potential sales in the next 50 years.
80% of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. That's 160 MILLION drivers that 100 mile range EVs are perfect for RIGHT NOW! Over 60% of households have 2 or more cars RIGHT NOW. That means that over 120 million EVs could be sold today and fit right into our daily pattern with zero changes to our way of life, other than remembering to plug in when we get home. If people would just look at their day to day usage rationally instead of the incessant harping that they need 1000 miles of range at the drop of a hat, we'd ALL be better off.
Bravo.
And sad to say, you are right that the ideal time to embrace this reality is already behind us. 
In reply to Vigo: My approach to vehicles is there is no one vehicle that will do everything.. 90% of the time an EV will work just fine.. on occasion a truck works best and for those long trips, a solid fun car that is comfortable.
Can some admin edit the title so it's "Ludicrous" instead of "Ludicous"? It's killing me every time I see it.
No offense OP.
Vigo wrote:80% of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. That's 160 MILLION drivers that 100 mile range EVs are perfect for RIGHT NOW! Over 60% of households have 2 or more cars RIGHT NOW. That means that over 120 million EVs could be sold today and fit right into our daily pattern with zero changes to our way of life, other than remembering to plug in when we get home. If people would just look at their day to day usage rationally instead of the incessant harping that they need 1000 miles of range at the drop of a hat, we'd ALL be better off.Bravo. And sad to say, you are right that the ideal time to embrace this reality is already behind us.
it is one of the reasons I am probably going to sell my saab for a 1st gen insight. My commute is all of 12 miles (one way) and at the rate I rack up miles and it's efficiency, I would have to refuel it once a month
In reply to mad_machine:
When you sell the SAAB, let me know. Thanks.
Chris_V wrote: 80% of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. That's 160 MILLION drivers that 100 mile range EVs are perfect for RIGHT NOW! Over 60% of households have 2 or more cars RIGHT NOW. That means that over 120 million EVs could be sold today and fit right into our daily pattern with zero changes to our way of life, other than remembering to plug in when we get home.
Do the math on the KWh required to do the daily maintenance charging if even half of those people had EVs.
It would work just fine but we'd need megawatt-range powerplants pretty much at every gas station.
worring about what our current grid could handle is also a moot point, as it will be easy to ramp up the grid to match demand as no one can make enough EVs fast enough to fill that many potential sales in the next 50 years.
Our power grid that has been so ignored that a tree falling down in Cleveland can take out the entire northeast portion of the US and parts of Canada? Hah.
We need to un-berk our power grid NOW, even before adding EVs to the mix. This is not a situation where demand will stimulate change. This is a situation where increased demand will screw everybody if it comes before it can be handled.
I do agree with you that EVs are coming and WILL happen. But we have some major changes we need to make to our infrastructure for it to work. Changes that take time measured in decades, not days. It's like the joke about widening a road for increased traffic - by the time the road actually gets widened, traffic has increased enough that it wasn't enough and it needs widened again.
Knurled wrote: ...Do the math on the KWh required to do the daily maintenance charging if even half of those people had EVs....
This. Every summer in California we get notices/warnings/blackouts. Now figure if even 20% of the population's got a KWh-sucking car online charging. Even if everyone switched to an EV overnight, we'd still be sitting in exactly the same traffic jam as now, just silently.
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