Merry Model X-mas

Pedal To The Metal On Tesla Model 3

Last week, Tesla chief technical officer JB Straubel made a presentation to the engineering students at the University of Nevada – Las Vegas. Tesla is donating $1,000,000 to the school to endow a battery research program. It will also offer internships at the nearby Tesla GigaFactory to selected UNLV students.

It is common for Tesla leaders from Elon Musk on down to slip interesting tidbits of information into their public presentations. In this instance, Straubel dropped this piece of news in at the end of his hour long presentation.

“Most of the people inside of Tesla are no longer working on the S and the X, but they’re hard at work designing and inventing all the technologies to go into the Model 3,” Straubel said. “[I]t’s a completely new platform — different technology base — and aimed at building hundreds of thousands per year instead of tens of thousands per year.”

It is no exaggeration to say that the Tesla Model 3 will make or break the company. As far back as 2006, Elon Musk was outlining his master plan for Tesla Motors. It is presented in the form of a graph at the top of this page and has three components:

• Build an expensive, low-volume car.
• Use that money to build a medium-priced, medium-volume car.
• Use that money to build a lower-priced, high volume car.

The expensive, low volume car was the Tesla Roadster. That was followed by the less expensive Tesla Model S sedan and Model X SUV. The Model 3 is intended to be the moderately priced, high volume car that will move Tesla out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Everything it has done to date — its proprietary system of SuperCharger stations, its advancements in autonomous driving technology, and its commitment to building high quality cars — were all designed to make the Model 3 possible.

Tesla fully intends to build 500,000 Model 3 cars a year. It has already upgraded its paint shop so it can handle that many cars. The key to the whole puzzle is the GigaFactory. Without that massive battery making facility, which is scheduled to commence manufacturing operations in the first half of 2016, Tesla will simply not have access to enough batteries to supply a half million new

Source- http://gas2.org/2015/10/19/pedal-to-the-metal-on-tesla-model-3/

Alex Roy claims US coast-to-coast Tesla Autopilot record in 57 hours, 48 minutes

Rally race driver Alex Roy just completed a 2,700-mile sprint from California to New York behind the wheel of an Autopilot-enabled Tesla Model S in an impressive 57 hours and 48 minutes, spending most of that time hands-off. The announcement was made on Jalopnik founder Mike Spinelli's Instagram account, and data to back up the claim will be made available soon. Roy achieved this with the help of Carl Reese and Deena Mastracci, both of whom (along with Rod Hawk) held the prior record for the shortest charging time coast-to-coast in the same Model S.

Roy is best known in automotive circles for setting a coast-to-coast record in a gasoline-powered car in 2006, which he completed in an astounding (and, naturally, very illegal) 31 hours and 4 minutes. His car, a heavily modified BMW M5 sedan, carried radios, jammers, and all manner of equipment required to avoid the police and any potential traffic jams. Guinness World Records refused to honor the record, claiming that the group does not verify records that require lawbreaking.

This trip was, naturally, a fair bit slower than the ones before. A Tesla Model S has a range of just under 300 miles -- and it goes lower once air conditioning, traffic and speeding are taken into account. The fastest way to juice up a Tesla's battery is with the company's Supercharger network of high-speed EV chargers, but even that still takes a good deal of time -- Tesla's website states that a Supercharger can provide 170 miles of range in approximately 30 minutes. Thankfully, there are currently 534 Supercharger stations across the country, giving Roy the juice he needed to complete the sprint.

Roy is a staunch defender of both electric vehicles and the latest wave of semi-autonomous vehicles. Between frequent posts on Jalopnik, social media posts decrying the media's incorrect portrayal of self-driving-car technology and even his own TEDx talk, Roy is clearly very excited about the future ... so long as everybody gets their acts together.

While no company would have the chutzpah to outright endorse an individual breaking the law, the feat still remains an impressive one. At the least, his efforts should put to rest the notion (however foolish) that Tesla's Autopilot is inherently unsafe or even remotely dangerous.

Editors' note, October 13, 2015: This story has been updated to include the names of Roy's two co-pilots, who also deserve credit for the achievement as all three were integral parts of the attempt.

Tesla Autopilot Videos emerge, because nobody likes to listen

It hasn't been a week, but already, fail videos of Tesla's new Autopilot software are popping up on YouTube. This is not unexpected, as the automaker's founder, Elon Musk, admitted that it's still technically in a beta-testing phase. Still, it has the potential to send the tech-averse into a frenzy, especially when the media gets involved. The only problem with this is that it's not the car's fault as much as it is the driver's.

Tesla made explicit mention, both during its press conference and afterwards on its website, that the driver should remain in control of the vehicle at all times. Yes, there are several videos (CNET's included) showing plenty of hands-off driving, but that was under the supervision of Tesla employees. The automaker's website spells it out explicitly: "Tesla Autopilot functions like the systems that airplane pilots use when conditions are clear. The driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the car."

If you look at the two videos below, you'll see why it's important to keep your hands on the steering wheel. Towards the end of the first video, the vehicle makes a strange dive to the side of the road, but the owner had his hands on the wheel, so he caught the car before it hit the curb. In the second video, the car appears to dive into oncoming traffic, being saved only when the driver's hands return to the wheel.

This flagrant disregard for the rules is what will doom semi-autonomous driving before it truly takes off. An accident will occur, the media will jump all over it, and everybody will ask if the technology is truly ready for the road. Trouble is, everybody is calling this "autonomous driving" when it still requires plenty of human intervention. A mixture of increased expectations and lowered defenses results in the trouble you saw above. That's why the system is called Autopilot -- it's used when conditions are ideal, and there's still a human to step in when needed.

Thus far, the videos seem to have no affect on Musk's plan to expand Autopilot to markets outside the United States, as evidenced in this tweet from earlier this morning.