Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #95

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…

Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi - a technology that's been around for over 20 years. There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986. It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been…

> Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi

Every single GM, but who is counting. And I bet other manufacturers as well.

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

#362

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

hwbehrens wrote: post #47

swiley wrote: post #12

6 years ahead electronics here means AI ASICs. I thought that was weird, I know Toyota cars have radar and I’m not sure about Teslas. IMO as an armchair observer the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this. Personally, if I were to buy another car (and hopefully I don’t have to any time soon) I’d want the processing electronics to be off the shelf not weird custom stuff that’s going to have all kinds of…

> the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this. 8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 1 forward-facing radar.[0] [0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Even with all that, it still ping-pongs with some regularity and has trouble with on- and off-ramps. And no top-down camera view, which even a Nissan Rogue has!

I'm not bitter, though. I knew what I was getting into when I dropped nearly 60K on this thing. But still, would like them to catch up in some areas they are lagging in.

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

#363

Post by Kirby64 » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

crocodiletears wrote: post #336

Kirby64 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's less a privacy concern, and more a durability concern. By way of example, I once found myself stranded at 3am about 45 miles from anyone I could get help from with a cracked radiator, no radiator cap, a gimp alternator, and no cell reception. I was too poor to afford a tow, had work the next day, and was in no position to get the vehicle properly fixed in a timely manner. The answer to the problem was a…

Pretty sure most vehicles (even Tesla's) will let you drive them in some sort of limp mode even with coolant or battery issues. Not sure how that's any different.

Anything beyond that (e.g. motor or battery problems) aren't going to be fixed like that no matter what EV you buy. Also, those pretty much all can't be hot-serviced on the side of the road anyways on modern cars since everything is more compact, less accessible, etc.

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

#364

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #149

aguyfromnb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m upset about this because it’s (IMO) more of a marketing thing (and maybe a way to have some leverage over 3rd party repair shops) and not really a technical improvement. The number of "tech people" that think Tesla has some chip building advantage over the likes of companies like NVIDIA is astonishing. Tesla's marketing compares their chip to older NVIDIA boards. NVIDIA has better tech available off-the-shelf:…

Where you're defining better as faster, however, it uses enormously more energy, which impacts overall driving range. It doesn't need to be faster past a certain point. They've already got enough bandwidth to run the entire set of self driving neural networks in duplicate at production speed on the current FSD hardware version 3 computer. There is a point of diminishing returns wrt speed and I think we're quickly app…

Does Tesla really care that much about efficiency? Sentry mode chews through about 1 mile of range for every single hour it is active. My doorbell camera takes significantly less power to do motion detection than my Model 3 does.

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

#365

Post by ehnto » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

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…

You can buy a car for one focus or another though. I think it is fair to assume technology is the main focus of buying a Tesla.

In the 90s there were a myriad of pragmatic sports cars built, with the focus on performance over fine details.

Door gaps has been a funny development, it's important aesthetically of course, but I think unfairly it has become a shorthand for a car's overall build quality.

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

#366

Post by solotronics » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

I actually like having discrete control units for different components in cars. Recently I upgraded the suspension control computer in my sports car to a much more advanced aftermarket one that calculates and controls each shock absorber dynamically. This wouldn't be possible with a "monolithic" control unit like the Tesla has.

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

#367

Post by NotSammyHagar » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 5:59 AM UTC

dontdoitpls wrote: post #69

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…

The power of marketing is incredible. No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.

Tesla has never done commercials, they don't do ads in magazines, they don't pay people at football games to talk them up. They have a website, they make blog posts. Imagine if Ford never paid for those endless car ads. Or your local chevy dealer stopped advertising all the time. Tesla doesn't do marketing in the sense that they don't pay for ads.

Imagine if they did, what their sales would be.

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

#368

Post by NotSammyHagar » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #217

ameister14 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the article: "This is the takeaway from Nikkei Business Publications' teardown of the Model 3, the most affordable car in the U.S. automaker's all-electric lineup, starting at about $33,000."

Looking at very low mileage 2019 Teslas for sale on Autotrader, in the $40-50K range is about right. The cheapest used 2019 model 3 in the whole US is more than $33K. And the only 2020 examples are much more expensive. You can argue forever about technicalities, but $33K is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In fact, I would say if you are comparing brand new 2020 cars, $50K+ for the model 3 is more realistic, and y…

they have a 35k model available by special order. But you have to go out of your way to specifically ask for it. https://www.motortrend.com/news/the-35k-tesla-model-3-is-fin...

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

#369

Post by NotSammyHagar » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #328

C14L wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, Tesla costumers constantly poll as the most satisfied of all new car owners. Maybe there are more important things than bumps in the paint? Just guessing, I don't own a car.

> And yet, Tesla costumers constantly poll as the most satisfied of all new car owners. I wonder what the demographics are exactly of people who buy Model 3's, is it their first $40k+ vehicle? One thing is abundantly clear, the people who are super excited about "new" tech in Teslas aren't following motor news. People seem to have no clue whatsoever that a lot of the tech you can get in a Tesla exists in other cars a…

What is the marketing and hype that tesla is doing? they don't have paid ads. The make announcements and blog posts. Meanwhile, every other legacy car company pays millions a year in paid ads, my local dealers must spend 100k plus a year. What car has the web browser like my tesla that lets me use tesla-waze? What car has the apps that tesla does? Sure, there are some cars with a few things. No electric car until this year has the features that my 2012 tesla model s 85 has, including range but also including all the tech. 6 years ahead, some specifics:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Tesla-teardown-...

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

#370

Post by gbronner » Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 6:13 AM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #169

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…

> Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. I'm not in the US but people in my region comment how all US vehicles have poor panel quality. I've spoken to paint shop employees and garage mechanics who say the panels of US cars have gaps that are embarrassingly large. In the mind of a buyer that makes you question overall quality. And never buy a white car either they rust because the panels d…

I've bought two white cars from the southewest and used them in the northeast.

One had body panels that were mostly plastic, and lasted 18 years. The other is five years old. Neither shows any sign of rust.