"We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall…
Sounds plausible I Guess but I wonder how Tesla in this crash description circumvented Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and the bodily damage the driver should have incurred on negative G's.
Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
281–290 of 408 posts
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous how much emphasis the media placed on the fire while ignoring the extreme speed and consequently minor injuries involved in the crash.
The standard that the media holds Tesla to will still be a picnic compared to how the media will treat the first self-driving cars. Far safer than human-driven will not be nearly enough; the first high-profile accident will be wall-to-wall "Are Self-Driving Cars Really Ready For Prime Time?"
Remember the unintended acceleration crock?
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's entirely fair. I didn't look at it that way. What do we consider affordable? I haven't had the time to do this, but you could take US Census data (average/median income per zip code), derive a formula for percentrage of income someone can spend on transportation, and thereby determine what affordable is. A Model S is definitely a luxury item at this time; on the other hand, if it was self-driving, and could ro…
Maybe we're looking at Tesla wrong. They're not selling luxury cars; they're bootstrapping a mobility company by selling to the wealthy. I would agree with this statement 100%.
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#284Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look what they did to Toyota over the Sudden Unrequested Acceleration that never was. $1.6bn fine! EDIT: By they I mean the Media. I guess I should add some substance. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/nesc-toyota-stu... NASA's Toyota Study Released by Dept. of Transportation 02.08.11 WASHINGTON -- The results of a ten-month study by 30 NASA engineers of possible electronic causes of unintended acceleratio…
I don't know what to believe about this. Wasn't it just all over the news that an embedded software engineer found all sorts of code quality problems with Toyota and could even demonstrate unintended acceleration via various bugs?
http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0083/
It sounds like a proper mess. How curious that much is revealed that the NASA people didn't speak of. Maybe because it was ostensibly an investigation at the behest of NIHIST to demonstrate that they hadn't let Toyota off the hook.
It is also somewhat disturbing that these are not Toyota parts but parts sourced from NEC.
I'm still not convinced that Toyota deliberately hid their knowledge of system failure. A software update would have been much simpler than the millions of physical modifications they chose to make, including fetching customers cars on transporters because they owners were too scared to drive them.
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we see your calculation and reasoning or did you make the numbers up?
Footprint is 2×5 m. Sheet volume is 2×5×0.002 = 0.02 m³. Titanium density is 4507 kg/m³. That gives 90 kg. Without the aluminium deflector. Normal Tesla Model S curb weight is 2108 kg according to Wikipedia. Extra 90 kg is 4.2% mass increase => 4.2% more kinetic energy at the same speed => more energy consumption to accelerate. It also means, that the same force applied to the heavier Model S will accelerate it slowe…
I'm still skeptical about the actual energy usage. If the % more kinetic energy applies equally to battery energy usage.
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we're looking at Tesla wrong. They're not selling luxury cars; they're bootstrapping a mobility company by selling to the wealthy. I would agree with this statement 100%.
It's the best strategy also because it makes sense to them to produce a car that has a controlled demand, since they're essentially limited by battery production. It also showcases the quality of the brand, associating it with reliability and luxury -- and it's a sedan, which has a smaller power requirement than other luxurious classes.
Model S vs the new Corvette Stingray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VOqW...
If you need more power than that, you might as well bolt a turbine engine on your car.
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most normal cars survive "normal" crashes just fine, don't they? Tesla buyers tend to be sports car buyers who want to drive fast. Whether this means we should expect accidents with more force or that Tesla should anticipate this and design accordingly is debatable.
Do you have a citation for that claim?
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you promise not to kill me, I promise to give you a single 15 minute or 5 mile test drive somewhere in the southern NH area, or possibly in some other area that I happen to road trip through.
As a fellow NH-ite, who would almost certainly have bought one already if he still lived in California: how does the battery do on -15˚ mornings?
Most people charge every night so you always have an 80% full battery whenever you want to go somewhere. If you left it unplugged on a very cold night, you could lose maybe as much as 20 or 30 miles off the rated range due to the car using electricity to run the battery heating system to prevent any damage to the battery.
There are a lot of variables, the most important of which are how far you plan to drive, whether you pre-warm the car while it is on AC power, and how you drive it.
The standard 80% charge for the 85kWh battery is about 230 miles. That range translates to an average consumption of 290 Watt hours per mile. If you jumped into the car on a cold morning and just started driving, you would probably be consuming upwards of 400 to maybe even 500 Wh per mile for the first 15 to 20 miles as both the battery and cabin were heated. After that, things would taper down and you could easily hit 300 Wh per mile for the rest of your trip. A bunch of starting and stopping such as running errands would make that worse because it would take longer to heat due to the cool-downs when parked.
If you had it plugged in overnight and in the morning, you used the smartphone app to turn on the cabin heater though, it would use your AC power to not only heat the cabin but also start warming up the battery. Then, when you actually started driving, you would already be at that 300 Wh or so average.
We have never had any issues with not having enough charge to go somewhere, even on the occasions where we forgot to plug it in overnight. Our typical daily errand trips can be between 15 and 40 miles.
Re: Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard that the media holds Tesla to will still be a picnic compared to how the media will treat the first self-driving cars. Far safer than human-driven will not be nearly enough; the first high-profile accident will be wall-to-wall "Are Self-Driving Cars Really Ready For Prime Time?"
Tesla was handled with kid gloves compared to Toyota. Remember the unintended acceleration crock?