Those who may have investigated the possibility of owning a Tesla may already know that a firmware upgrade is usually an overnight job--it takes hours to upgrade the firmware, and considering that your very life is at stake w.r.t. the integrity of that software, upgrades are not simple 5 min download-over-3G jobs.
Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
191–200 of 241 posts
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#192I've never believed that Tesla had a viable product. In fact, Electric vehicles make very little sense and are far less "green" than most consumers perceive them to be. It's sad that people tend to believe whatever marketers tell them... Check out this article... By far the most comprehensive analysis on "green" cars so far. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732412850457834...
"If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime ..." Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years. Why would anyone use a ridiculously low number unless they were just trying to prove a point they already made up their mind on?
> Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years.
Did you read the rest of the article?
Quote: "To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much."
Electric cars have a shorter effective range than "the average car" and due to charging time are less suitable for long trips (or for purchase in places where long trips are the norm) so they're likely to get driven less. And the range gets shorter as time goes on so even if they're comparable in the first year they won't be in later years.
Anyway, the article gave TWO data points. He said "IF a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime..." gave some conclusions, and then went on to talk about a better-case scenario of the car being driven 90,000 miles. Can you at least accept these as a bracket? The conclusion he reached from considering these two hypothetical data points was that electric cars might be worse than non-electrics in terms of CO2 impact or they might be better, but were unlikely to be a vast improvement and in any case the term "zero emissions" is a misnomer.
When doing a cost-benefit analysis at the end, Lomborgh used his optimistic estimate - 90,000 miles - to conclude that the government would be spending $7,500 in subsidies to save $44 (in the US) or $48 (in Europe) worth of carbon.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple had a backlash when they reduced the price of the iPhone by $100 [1]. I'd think the backlash here would be even stronger. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/06/technology/iphone_price/
people confuse pretentious for rich. The Apple phone debacle was because of the former, not the later. There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc.
"There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc."
Ah, the people who go to bottle clubs on the "salary" of your average parents' basement-dwelling Multilevel Marketing hustler :p
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#194When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly. It's great that they're selling lots of cars, but "exceeded the target" is a wholly artificial accomplishment.
"When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly"
Something tells me that you find yourself failing to meet expectations a lot.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was never really verified. I'm sure after the 486s were fabbed for a while, intel's defect rate got low enough that they started turning good ones into SX's. By the time the P5 came along, they stopped playing these games all together and started rating by clock speed alone.
> By the time the P5 came along, they stopped playing these games all together and started rating by clock speed alone. Weren't the original Celerons P-II chips with half the L2 cache disabled or something? I also seem to remember they were arbitrarily limited to uni-processor functionality, and some modders found you could drill a portion of the chip to make them work on dual and quad CPU mainboards. If that's corre…
In the late nineties I had a "dual-celly" workstation. They were all the rage then (especially if you visited Hard OCP and/or arstechnica back then). IIRC, there was a special adapter that sat between the CPU and the socket which did something to enable SMP.
I also recall some folks doing something with graphite to re-enable disabled traces. Can't remember if it was related to Celerons or not.
Similar examples would be the Promise Ultra66 -> UltraRAID conversion with a simple resistor and flashing of firmware. Of course that game is still being played to this day with graphics cards.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you be sure? A bunch of rich Valley workers getting $10,000 rebates on luxury cars is the "most" efficient use of tax money? (barney54 was right: There's another $2,500 free from California.) I know you're exaggerating for effect, but when has such a scheme ever worked to bring a new technology mainstream? The government didn't need to give you a tax credit to buy a PC. I suspect it would be much more efficie…
> it would be much more efficient to ramp up gasoline or carbon taxes, offset with lower payroll taxes Maybe, but you are comparing "it would be better to do this optimal thing which hasn't actually happened and may be politically hard to make happen" to "this thing that actually did happen was worthwhile". Both can be true.
No, I'm responding to jonknee, who made the "most efficient" claim.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#197"but range will be software limited to 40 kWh" DRM in my car that will leave me stranded by the side of the road. Wow, this is a new low even for DRM. No thank you. Tesla, you were kinda cool.
I don't think you can call any artificial technological limitation "digital rights management."
"DRM" has generally referred to limitations that prevent you from transferring media from one device to another, preventing both illegal and legal uses of that media. The obvious alternative is to let people transfer the media freely. People hate DRM because it's an annoyance that doesn't prevent people from pirating things, but interferes with legitimate uses.
In this case, however, there's no media involved. Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious that allowing anyone to modify the battery controller software willy-nilly would be a bad idea, unless you like watching cars explode. The complaint seems to be mostly that Tesla is disabling functionality the car has, but in software. However, the only obvious alternatives are to charge everyone more to be able to manufacture and stock a greater number of models, or to eliminate the 40-Wh battery option entirely. Out of these three options, it seems obvious that the one that Tesla chose is the best for the consumer.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#198> The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh. > ...all 60 kWh cars have been and will be built with Supercharger hardware included. Tesla is taking a slight cost risk that ultimately all customers will want to buy the Supercharger upgrade and receive unlimited, free long distance travel for life. I am assuming that the supercharger hardware…
Isn't this what CPU makers have been doing for years?
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#199"Tesla Motors announced today that sales of its Model S vehicle exceeded the target provided in the mid-February shareholder letter" - So that means they had a great last 6 weeks of the quarter. That means sales actually went up substantially after the NY Times huff foo. That means it made tremendous sense to continually go after the NY Times as it must have been apparent sales were rising on a week over week basis s…
Be careful not to mix sales with reservations and deliveries. Tesla has a backlog of about 15000 vehicles, and it will take them all of 2013 to produce those cars. You can reserve one, but the actual sale will not happen until the car has been manufactured. The backlog dates back to before the NYT article, so you cannot determine the effect of the NYT article based on the sales numbers of this press release. You may…
Well you are right (after making me go back and re-read it) "vehicle deliveries (sales)" So this is really a hat tip to the production/delivery team vs a sentiment on orders and demand.
Re: Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it successfully brings electric cars into the main stream it will be the most efficient use of $7,500 the government ever paid.
On the other hand, if the subsidy makes the subsidized industries lazy and encourages political competition - lobbying for bigger subsidies - rather than technological competition in this and other industries, leaving us stuck subsidizing inefficient dead-end technologies rather than moving on to new ideas from better smaller firms that didn't have the clout to get subsidized, then it will NOT be the most efficient u…
You got the logic right, but flipped the actors. The state isn't subsidizing electric cars, it's subsidizing oil and internal combustion engine cars. Nobody ever paid for the pollution and damage caused. The result is that we have been basing transportation on burning dead dinosaurs for over 100 years yet, and there has not been a single new car company in the US for that same period (until Tesla).
If you are looking for a very rough approximation of what a gasoline car needs to cost, scroll down to where someone explains the pricing in Norway.