Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

asia.nikkei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 460 posts

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

#411

Post by abc_lisper »

rootusrootus wrote: post #359
abc_lisper wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was skeptical of Tesla, I didn't buy it when all my friends got it. The car seemed bland inside, devoid of any fashion/art/decor etc. The panel gaps .. ughh.. I test drove it 3 times. Hated it the first time in 2018. Late 2019, I used auto-pilot on 880 and 101. I was sold. There isn't a car available now that can drive on Autopilot with that confidence. I don't let it drive on auto over 30mph, and under it is where…

I live in a rainy area of the country. Periodically my car annoys me to the point of cursing, because the auto wipers are extremely stupid. And because there is only one non-touch/voice control for them, you're kinda stuck. I also wish it would not refuse to unlock about 10% of the time. I may just get the fob.

Agreed. The wipers could be better. I haven’t encountered the unlocking problem though. What did Tesla say?

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

#412

Post by Kirby64 »

Marsymars wrote: post #375
Kirby64 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mazda is currently purging touchscreens from their vehicle lineup, which is, IMO, the correct approach to in-car UX. I feel strongly enough about it that I'd support a regulatory approach for eliminating touchscreens in cars.

Keyword being touchscreen. Mazda isn't going away from a 6"+ screen, you're just going to have to use a knob to navigate on it.

Regardless of your preference on in-car UX, screens displaying most of the info are here to stay.

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

#413

Post by KaiserPro »

JPKab wrote: post #347
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…

I'm not a Tesla owner. In fact, I find the company's hype driven marketing annoying. That being said, your info is out of date. The fit and finish isn't an issue anymore.

unless they've changed the stock in the showroom in the last 2 months, then this is a false assertion.

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

#414

Post by rootusrootus »

SEJeff wrote: post #408
rootusrootus wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does your doorbell camera have one or eight cameras? The Model 3 has eight cameras. You’re comparing apples to orangutans.

You're fanboying for Tesla. The car is pulling as much juice as a gaming rig. The doorbell uses like three orders of magnitude less power.

And what do I get for all that power it's consuming? It routinely misses cars and people literally inches away. Sometimes it records, sometimes it doesn't. And lately my car has decided 90% of the time not to turn on the dashcam, though sentry mode activates pretty reliably. It's half-assed. Tesla needs fans to hold them accountable instead of white-knighting for them.

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

#415

Post by rootusrootus »

abc_lisper wrote: post #411
rootusrootus wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a rainy area of the country. Periodically my car annoys me to the point of cursing, because the auto wipers are extremely stupid. And because there is only one non-touch/voice control for them, you're kinda stuck. I also wish it would not refuse to unlock about 10% of the time. I may just get the fob.

Agreed. The wipers could be better. I haven’t encountered the unlocking problem though. What did Tesla say?

I haven't bothered asking Tesla to explain the unreliable unlocking, since it seems to happen to almost everyone else periodically, and some people quite a lot. I just take the phone out of my pocket and hold the door handle open for a while until it figures it out. After 10 or 15 seconds I usually just take out my wallet and use the RFID.

I also started using sentry mode even in my garage, which helps tremendously, because it seems like the root cause is the car going to sleep.

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

#416

Post by SEJeff »

rootusrootus wrote: post #414
SEJeff wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your doorbell camera have one or eight cameras? The Model 3 has eight cameras. You’re comparing apples to orangutans.

You're fanboying for Tesla. The car is pulling as much juice as a gaming rig. The doorbell uses like three orders of magnitude less power. And what do I get for all that power it's consuming? It routinely misses cars and people literally inches away. Sometimes it records, sometimes it doesn't. And lately my car has decided 90% of the time not to turn on the dashcam, though sentry mode activates pretty reliably. It's…

You sidestepped my questions. Does your doorbell have one or eight cameras? Even if tesla did it as efficiently as your camera, it would be, at a minimum, eight times more energy. If they do anything fancy with a neural network (which they almost certainly do), they it might be another 2x the power. Then you have 10x the power which is one order of magnitude.

Quit making false comparisons to your crappy doorbell. It is very different and they're designed for very different things. They don't work the same.

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

#417

Post by matt-attack »

ehnto wrote: post #365
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.

People like tangible, easily understood, and (typically) one-dimensional metrics for assessing product quality. Look at: Mega-pixels for cameras back in the day, and sheet thread-count. Neither of those things is telling the whole story nor are they even directly related to quality. But people latch on to them because they’re a single number, and easy to compare.

No one understands what’s actually inside a car and what physically distinguishes a good car from a bad one, so they latch onto the one parameter they can actually see and touch and understand: body panel alignment and paint quality.

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

#418

Post by rasz »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #374
cma wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Mobileye?

tesla used mobileye early, then intel bought mobileye so t doesn't use them anymore

Tesla doesnt use mobileye after their unauthorized firmware modifications cut drivers head. Mobileye was the party backing out of the deal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobileye-ends-partnership-with-...

" Mobileye NV said it would no longer provide its computer chips and algorithms to Tesla after a current contract ends due to disagreements about how the technology was deployed. Mobileye provides core technology for Tesla’s Autopilot system, which allows cars to drive themselves in limited conditions."

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

#419

Post by rasz »

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

all this and they still routinely rear end parked cars

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

#420

Post by Kirby64 »

deadbunny wrote: post #303
shakestheclown wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 and Y are vegan leather. The others had a cloth option, but for the new ones the leather will be vegan.

"vegan leather" So, plastic.

Yes, polyurethane, which according to testing, performs better than real leather in the rubbing/scratching tests. Durability in general is superior on actual 'premium' leatherette/vegan leather offerings.

Sure, you can make crap leatherette material that is way too hot and sticky and feels like cheap vinyl, but that's not what this is.

Post reply on HN