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Tesla Roadster

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Re: Tesla Roadster

#611

Post by LoSboccacc »

grkvlt wrote: post #580
LoSboccacc wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one is a real car however, the other a rendering. I don't expect figures to change drastically from the brochure, but still.

The new Roadster is definitely real, not a render. They were driving them around, at speed, and showing off the acceleration, at the announcement!

Doesn’t mean much. They had to replace a lot of stuff between the presented and production model x, like the door hinges, because from prototype to reality there’s an abyss, especially for a car that’s supposed to sustain thise speeds.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#612

Post by pwaai » 

    1.9 seconds
That's what caught my attention the most. This is unheard of in a production car. I'm also generally very excited that Lamborghini is also experimenting with electric power.

We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5 second range....that is insane acceleration.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#613

Post by dkhenry »

jonknee wrote: post #572
dkhenry wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have been reading too many finance blogs. Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on. If they don't execute they will go out of business, and they will take my money as an investor with them. I'm OK with that and as long as they continue to have a path to profitability I am all on board. I want to see them burning money…

> Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on. In other words, their finances are a mess . Negative free cash flow of $1.4b in the most recent quarter with $3.5b in the bank is cutting it very close. They're going to have to raise a ton more capital or issue debt just to execute on the Model 3, let alone all the other stuff…

Spending money while building out your main product pipeline is perfectly acceptable to me. How many quarters of runway would you want them to hold on hand? If in six months when their cash on hand gets low they can issue a new round of funding and investors can decide if its worth pumping more money into the company or if they won't be able to turn a profit. This would be the exact behavior you get from any company in a high growth phase, the only difference is most of the time the only people who get a look at the books of these companies are the investment firms who lead crazy valuation rounds since the public doesn't have access to pre IPO startups.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#614

Post by Unklejoe »

sbko wrote: post #597
Unklejoe wrote: post #480

Has the 8 second quarter mile been confirmed to be done in stock trim (i.e., no special tires or other modifications)? The reason I ask is because that is EXTREMELY impressive. I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction. Even all wheel drive cars (GTRs, DSMs, EVOs, etc.) usually run 4 slicks once they get to that sp…

"I tune EFI systems on race cars as a hobby" How did you get into such hobby? I would be glad to do that as a hobby :)

Well, most of my friends happen to be "in to" cars, so I've spent a lot of time being around and talking about cars.

Since I'm "good with computers", I would always help them with their electrical issues, which eventually evolved into me tuning their cars and dealing with any other EFI related issues. Most tuners charge around $500, but I do it all for free, so that helps.

If you really want to get involved, seek out some car clubs in your area and check out some of the open source ECU projects (such as Speeduino). Usually, car hobbyist can be identified by a group of people standing in a parking lot staring at their cars. Most of them love to brag about their setup, so they're pretty receptive to people asking questions.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#615

Post by grkvlt »

dwaltrip wrote: post #194
dmead wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

acceleration rates. acceleration speeds is like, kinda sort grammatically incorrect.

It's grammatically correct, but conceptually incorrect (sorry, it's always fun to correct a correction :)

They're both incorrect, I think. Acceleration rate would be the rate of change of the rate of change of speed, or what is known as 'jerk' in engineering. I guess that would be the time that it takes to go from 0 to the '0-60 in 1.8s' acceleration? The correct term is simply 'acceleration' on its own.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#616

Post by DKnoll »

pwaai wrote: post #612

1.9 seconds That's what caught my attention the most. This is unheard of in a production car. I'm also generally very excited that Lamborghini is also experimenting with electric power. We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5 second range....that is insane acceleration.

The production Dodge Demon can do 0-60 in 2.1-2.3s. Good, yes, but not unheard of.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#617

Post by dsfyu404ed »

A lot of people seem to have an electric car fetish that is blinding them to the amount of work that went into the chassis and suspension design which is the real achievement here.

If you have 1000hp available at any speed not going at least reasonably fast would be an achievement.

Putting 1000hp to the ground at really low wheel speeds in a semi-production ready (let's not kid ourselves, nobody is going to be sending a $200k+ car off the line in high volumes) chassis is the interesting thing here.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#618

Post by barrkel »

adamcccc wrote: post #385
neya wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10,000 NM of torque. That's INSANE. I drive a car with 400NM torque and that thing scares the sh*t out of me when I accelerate. 10,000 NM? Isn't that something along the lines of a tram or a train (I'm not sure, I'm asking you guys). This is CRAZY. I'm getting one for sure.

My car has 1092nm of torque from about 1500rpm and it's mind-boggling... 10,000nm is hard to comprehend and surely more than enough to give the occupants some serious whiplash if not sat properly.

Wheels will lose traction, or the front of the car would lift, rather than whiplash.

Re: Tesla Roadster

#619

Post by bllguo »

grkvlt wrote: post #586

It's interesting that people are so quick to dismiss this as merely a rendering, with the videos being CGI. Is that because the videos are 'too good' perhaps, or it just looks too much like a racing game car on the X-box? You'd have to deliberately ignore the fact that there were real cars presented at the announcement, for instance. Also interesting is that because the acceleration is so fast, there were accusations…

Oh please. I should hope that people aren't so intoxicated on the Kool-Aid that when Tesla claims the Roadster outperforms the fastest production cars in the world, people want to dig deeper.

You're seriously implying that blindly accepting what they say is better?

Re: Tesla Roadster

#620

Post by dkhenry »

bilkoo wrote: post #554
dkhenry wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have been reading too many finance blogs. Their finances are far from a mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on hand and a roadmap to execute on. If they don't execute they will go out of business, and they will take my money as an investor with them. I'm OK with that and as long as they continue to have a path to profitability I am all on board. I want to see them burning money…

> struggling to produce their most important car ever Isn't this part of not executing the roadmap as planned? Put another way, how do you know if they are on the right trajectory to profitability? How much are they ahead/behind?

A three month delay on their first mass market car is hardly struggling. We get insight into where they are on that road map every three months. Come February they will have slipped even more, made up some of that delay or stayed three months behind. Right now they have more then enough money to get them to May of next year, if they miss again in Februrary and then can't raise more funds they need to change their plan.
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