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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#291

Post by jazzyjackson »

Kirby64 wrote: post #260
jazzyjackson wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive a plug in Prius -- it has an EV range of 40 km and a gas range of 800 km, I enjoy having a silent EV most of my in town driving, but if I want to do a day trip with 6 hours of driving in a day I don't have to plan where I'm going to park it. It's still pretty computerized of course, lane keep assist and radar cruise control. I also have wanted an EV truck that's more old fashioned -- it's not like you need AS…

Unless you want a box that costs way too much money, the Bollinger B1 just seems silly. It's the Hummer H1 of EVs... in fact it's so heavy it legally isn't mandated to have airbags. If that old-school minimalist aesthetic really appeals to you, more power to you... but it definitely doesn't seem to be meant for the majority of folks.

I mean even more than that I would love something like the 70s vw bugs -- simple to maintain and cheap to build, but the market for a back to basics small EV seems to be even more niche than Hummer H1s !

If you ask me, Bollinger is competing with Mercedes G wagons and Lamborghini LM002 in creating a status symbol, like the Tesla Roadster did -- at small volumes you have to pick an audience that will be happy to pay up.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#292

Post by rrss »

_ea1k wrote: post #243
rrss wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was so bad, why did tesla claim for years that all their cars were shipping with sufficient onboard capability for eventual "full self driving?"

They didn't. They had been saying for years that it would require a computer upgrade that could be done with a service visit, and that the service visit would be free for people who purchased the "FSD" option.

They absolutely did, and then changed the story when they announced they were building HW3.

> All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

> Oct 19, 2016

> To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software

^ this refers to the nvidia thing 'onepremise says was too bad for the job.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13340938/tesla-autopilot...

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#293

Post by Kirby64 »

yellowapple wrote: post #283
Kirby64 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper? It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market has spoken and folks want more infotainment/screens/AI/whatever, so it seems that type of vehicle is definitely going to become less and less common.

Has the market really spoken, though? If it's literally impossible to buy an EV that doesn't have all these gimmicky screens and AI features in 'em, then there's no way for the market to actually speak .

That might be the case in the EV space, but the ICE space is pretty well documented. All the major car brands are striving to increase the infotainment segment of their cars more and more. Compare a 2020 Camry to a 2008 one.

You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#294

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

yellowapple wrote: post #285
oftenwrong wrote: post #197

I am a bit skeptical. Remember when Tesla ventured outside of the typical automotive supply chain to obtain large screens in their cars? https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Exactly. And unlike this AI module thingamabob, a touchscreen doesn't have the power to fatally slam me into a wall at 70MPH going down the 101. I'd rather wait for the likes of Toyota to do things right with automotive-grade components and automotive-grade programming and automotive-grade testing than trust my life to whatever hackery Tesla wants to brogrammer into its ASICs. The article's probably right about some…

You'd rather wait for Toyota of all people? Toyota is infamous for the bad quality of their software/firmware. Not that I'd expect much better from other established car makers.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#295

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

Don't look at my GMC then. Panel gaps are bad. Paint so thin you can see through it. Rattles and squeaks everywhere. And the electronics are of course garbage.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#296

Post by Tilian »

Kirby64 wrote: post #278
crocodiletears wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down. If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating…

If you really want to remove the 'big corp spying on you' aspect of Teslas, you can always pull the SIM card or ask for the non-SIM version. It's apparently an off-menu option, but you can request one without a SIM card, so effectively all the cell network stuff is disabled. Then, if you are worried about updates bricking something... just don't update it and never connect it to the WiFi? Seems like that gets you mos…

It's still a big pile of black-box systems where it's unclear what kind of data they collect and where they send it to whenever you connect it to a network. Never connecting it at all does defeat most of the points people like about Teslas.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#297

Post by kenhwang »

SEJeff wrote: post #145
wil421 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories. Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.

It isn't just production, but is also the chemistry. Tesla has the lowest amount of cobalt and nickel in their batteries of any battery manufacturer in the world. It makes their batteries cheaper, but also use less rare earth minerals (which are difficult to get ahold of at their scales). Tesla isn't sharing their chemistry, which is demonstrably better than anything LG Chem or Samsung, etc has been able to come up w…

No one _wants_ Tesla's chemistry. Tesla is the only automaker using the NCA chemistry. Sure, they're improving NCA quite admirably, but every other automaker would rather use and develop NMC.

Traditional automakers would rather have batteries that don't easily overheat or catch fire when damaged (NMC) than cheaper batteries (NCA).

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#298

Post by sliken »

KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

Did you personally see this? Or are you just repeating what you saw somewhere. I gave my model 3 a close look before I bought it and found none of the mentioned problems.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#299

Post by matahwoosh »

taylodl wrote: post #264
soygul wrote: post #18

Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...

I would argue this is Tesla's real business - battery production. I don't believe they intend to stay in the auto market forever. They're in the market to create demand for quality electric cars, goad the traditional auto makers into making them, and then selling those traditional auto makers the batteries they need to make them work well. I believe that is Tesla's long-term business plan.

Batteries are a commodity, so I doubt Tesla would want to reduce themselves to an OEM and shrink their margins. Their energy business might eventually be bigger than their automotive one, but either way I think they will continue selling vertically integrated products.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#300

Post by Kirby64 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #291
Kirby64 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want a box that costs way too much money, the Bollinger B1 just seems silly. It's the Hummer H1 of EVs... in fact it's so heavy it legally isn't mandated to have airbags. If that old-school minimalist aesthetic really appeals to you, more power to you... but it definitely doesn't seem to be meant for the majority of folks.

I mean even more than that I would love something like the 70s vw bugs -- simple to maintain and cheap to build, but the market for a back to basics small EV seems to be even more niche than Hummer H1s ! If you ask me, Bollinger is competing with Mercedes G wagons and Lamborghini LM002 in creating a status symbol, like the Tesla Roadster did -- at small volumes you have to pick an audience that will be happy to pay u…

Sure, low volume status symbols are a thing. But neither the G wagon nor the Lambo Urus are what anyone would consider low-maintenance/easily maintainable vehicles though.

As for simple to maintain... isn't that the appeal of EVs already? Unless you have to do maintenance on the battery or motor... but that isn't going to change any time soon. 400V isn't anything to mess around with.

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