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Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

tesla.com

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Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#371

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #330
quanticle wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They break at much much lower rates, because they have many fewer parts. EVs don't have the pistons, valves, belts, fans, compressors, alternators, spark plugs, etc that gasoline engines have. There's probably order of magnitude fewer parts to break. Having seen the interior of an automatic gearbox, the surprising thing to me is that conventional automobiles are as reliable as they are.

I hate to break it to you but very few vehicles are going to the dealer for engine/trans related work. Dealerships mostly only see vehicles that are new enough to be under warranty or recently out of it and major power-train stuff doesn't often break in that time period. It's stuff like steering and suspension wear items, the occasional window motor, trunk latches that won't pop, HVAC and stuff like that they make mo…

My parents both decided they trust the dealership's mechanics more than anyone else's, and have their vehicles serviced there. The family pickup, a Ford F-150, is expected to last ~18 years (makes me sad, because that's a long time to go without Bluetooth) and went out of "warranty" a few years back. The truck has yet to need major work on it, but my dad intends to get it worked on at the dealership.

Mind you, we also live within walking distance of both dealerships, and personally know my mom's mechanic. As is always the case, your mileage may vary.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#372

Post by throw0101a »

walrus01 wrote: post #35
mecameron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a 2013 Model S recently that had its wheels swapped with a 2016 Model S by a third party before sale (I didn't care for the 21" wheels that were on the 2013, and the buyer of the 2016 wanted them). Shortly after driving away from the dealer, the tire pressure sensor system reported faults. After bringing it in to Tesla they said the newer tires and older car were not compatible, but they could easily downgra…

I'd bet that the TPMS (tire pressure monitor/sensor) in the wheels is an off the shelf component purchased from a top-10 supplier in the automotive industry, and the problem was as simple as not having the TPMS programmed for the car. This is the same problem you can encounter if you replace all four TPMS in most any medium to high end car manufactured after about 2006, and the tire shop forgets to use their handheld…

> ... * and the problem was as simple as not having the TPMS programmed for the car.*

This is fairly common for those people who put on winter tires with 'winter rims'. Many people don't bother with TPMS devices for cost reasons, and just live with the low pressure "warnings" for the colder months.

* https://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-trials-of-installing-...

Of course having lower pressure means worse gas mileage, so one can end up recouping some of the cost of the sensors by being properly inflated.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#373

Post by Retric »

alkonaut wrote: post #363
Retric wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Range is range, your space heater idea is just a less useful plug in hybrid. Spending less money on batteries to add another system that you use a few times a year results in a generally less useful car.

It depends on the relative cost of "N hours of heating in the form of more batteries" vs "cost of a burner heater capable of N hours of heating". If the costs are even nearly comparable (if they aren't 10x apart) then I agree with you there is no point. The heater also can't be as complex as a plug-in-hybrid, requiring expensive serveice etc. It needs to be cheap, dumb, optional (so you only waste the cargo space on…

1,000$ of batteries = 1kw of resistance heating for ~8 hours and that’s improving over time.

Now, I am not sure how much reserve heating you want, but it’s much closer than 10x cost wise.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#374

Post by base698 »

quanticle wrote: post #271
ajuc wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVs don't need the large established dealership base and their included maintenance facilities I never understood that. Why does power source matter in the context of dealership base and maintenance? EVs still break.

They break at much much lower rates, because they have many fewer parts. EVs don't have the pistons, valves, belts, fans, compressors, alternators, spark plugs, etc that gasoline engines have. There's probably order of magnitude fewer parts to break. Having seen the interior of an automatic gearbox, the surprising thing to me is that conventional automobiles are as reliable as they are.

> They break at much much lower rates, because they have many fewer parts.

I don't really believe this is true. This is Tesla marketing spin. At one point every vehicle produced was having the drive unit replaced. There have been issues with water ingress and seat problems. Scour the Tesla motors forums.

Also, since it's the car is an iPhone model there aren't any aftermarket repairs. Seems to me to worse in every way despite the original spin on maintenance.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#375

Post by dsfyu404ed »

georgerobinson wrote: post #295
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less wear on brakes due to regenerative braking. No clutch, which is another wear item. No regular fluid / plug changes like ICE engines (and far fewer moving parts to go wrong generally). Essentially all you're left with are wipers and tyres, which don't really require a specialist / main dealer.

Clutches will last 80,000 miles on most cars unless driven unsympathetically by either dumping the clutch or riding it frequently. Fluid and spark plugs are some of the cheapest maintenance you can do on ICE cars. Timing belts, aux belts, water pumps, bearings are much more expensive wear items and I'd be much more concerned about those personally. You should however be changing your brake fluid every 2 years regardl…

>spark plugs are some of the cheapest maintenance you can do on ICE cars.

Let me introduce you to the transverse mounted V6...

>You should however be changing your brake fluid every 2 years regardless of whether or not you have regenerative braking. Brake fluid degrades over time as water gets absorbed.

Yeah you should replace it every now and then but two years is BS though. In many states the fluid never gets touched until the brake lines rust out which can be a decade or more. Brake fluid is one of those things that people really harp on (cynically I think this is because harping on anything that's safety related tends to earn internet points) but unless you're driving on a track or riding the brake down a mountain you would probably never notice if your brake fluid was 1/3rd water.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#376

Post by Brakenshire »

alkonaut wrote: post #323

I'm wondering what types of range extension methods could be easily added to an EV. Scenario: I'm going to drive 900km/560mi and it's -10 outside (I do this multiple times per year). I want a cosy room temperature inside the cabin. - How can I ensure I waste as little range as possible on heating, so that I don't risk having to make e.g. 2 stops instead of one? - More critically, if I get stuck in traffic for several…

Heating is relatively significant, it can take 10-20% off the range in theory. EV’s can solve this problem in a variety of ways:

i) Preheating the cabin from mains electicity, either predictively or through user command.

ii) Using heat pumps to scavenge and move heat around different parts of the car. If you’re early in a road trip you would have enough power in the battery to heat the car for a day or more. If you’re later in the trip there will be a lot of heat in the batteries and motors which can be shifted into the cabin. Similarly heat pumps can be used in reverse to scavenge heat from the cabin and frame to keep the batteries warm if the car is left outside for a long time without being plugged in. Batteries don’t like dropping beneath a certain temperature range.

iii) Simply increasing heat insulation. It’s not difficult to insulate better, it’s just it hasn’t been needed, because there’s so much wasted heat energy in internal combustion vehicles. A human is a 100W space heater, I’d imagine you could quite easily design a cabin for a small car to hold temperature even in the absence of any other heat source.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#377

Post by fooqux »

alkonaut wrote: post #362
fooqux wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other ways to survive in the case of an emergency. Blankets, food, candles and whatnot should be in your emergency kit regardless of what you're driving. Besides, how is this different than a gasoline-powered vehicle? In your situation, you'd still be reducing your range by X% in order to survive N hours in case something happens- your gas tank is not infinite, after all. I suppose you could make the case t…

> Besides, how is this different than a gasoline-powered vehicle? My gas car has a 700mi range so its simply not an issue as I tend to not drive that long on a day trip. I have the X% fuel spare for N hours of emergency heating so long as I do say The same would be true for battery cars once the range is enough. And the problem of course would exist for an ICE car with a shorter range.

Doing a few simple searches online, most gasoline cars do not have anything close to that kind of range, unless you're "hyper-miling" or something. What the hell do you drive?

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#378

Post by Isinlor »

navigatesol wrote: post #348
Isinlor wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent researchers have already proven Musk to be 100% right about LIDAR. Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07179 3D object detection is an essential task in autonomous driving. Recent techniques excel with highly accurate detection rates, provided the 3D input data is obtained from precise but expensive LiDAR tech…

> Independent researchers have already proven Musk to be 100% right about LIDAR. Well, you better let all the other smart people doing this work know! They're all doomed! Why do you think it's one or the other-neural nets and LIDAR-, and not both? The more sensors the better.

Look at the dates of the papers I linked. The quote:

Approaches based on cheaper monocular or stereo imagery data have, until now, resulted in drastically lower accuracies --- a gap that is commonly attributed to poor image-based depth estimation. However, in this paper we argue that data representation (rather than its quality) accounts for the majority of the difference.

Is from December 2018. Your knowledge of what smart people think is currently outdated, because the new results are so recent.

I also agree that Musk was making claims about no need for LIDAR based on his intuition. He could have been terribly wrong, because it was just his intuition. But he is not wrong.

BTW - Smart people were wrong about AI many times. They were wrong about ANN being dead end in eighties, they were wrong about symbolic AI. They were also wrong about necessity of LIDAR. In a year of two they will update their believes as more evidence will be piling up.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#379

Post by bluGill »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #212
jdavis703 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, let’s kill off people [0] from air pollution so car maintenance can be simpler. 0: http://www.prevenzione.ulss20.verona.it/docs/Sisp/Inquinamen...

The problem isn't electronics itself. The problem is a frankly evil combination of artificial technical and legal barriers that prevent you (or your local car repair shop) from being able to do fixes and checkups yourself. In a nicer world, you'd have standardized interfaces and tools released to facilitate repairs of the complicated systems in cars.

OBDII has been legally standardized on all cars for years. However it only covers basics, every engine is different on details and so you can't get far on the standard alone.

Re: Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries

#380

Post by notawaytothink »

dqpb wrote: post #359
alkonaut wrote: post #323

I'm wondering what types of range extension methods could be easily added to an EV. Scenario: I'm going to drive 900km/560mi and it's -10 outside (I do this multiple times per year). I want a cosy room temperature inside the cabin. - How can I ensure I waste as little range as possible on heating, so that I don't risk having to make e.g. 2 stops instead of one? - More critically, if I get stuck in traffic for several…

How is this problem specific to EV's?

There is waste heat produced by the engine of a traditional vehicle, which is used for heating. The EV doesn't have this advantage.
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