Tesla Roadster: Tesla unveils 'fastest production car ever'

[shirt]

B17NNS said:

WestyCarl said:

Fair play to Mr. Musk.

He made enough money with paypal to be able retire to a desert island. Instead he decided to make rockets that land on boats, the fastest accelerating 4 seater car, super tunnels, the largest battery factory in the world and now the fastest accelerating lorry the fastest accelerating sports car. Now doubt I have missed some of his other minor achievements along the way......

Indeed. He strikes me as the type that doesn't look at technology and think what can we do with it. He comes up with massively ambitious ideas and then sets to inventing the technology to make them happen.

"Why don't we re-use rockets?"
"You can't really land a rocket Elon."
"I want mine to land. On drone ships"

The stuff SpaceX is doing now whilst ground breaking is just a means to an end. His goal is Mars.

He’s the 21st century Howard Hughes.

[jamoor]

I love the way people keep bleating on about character and Soul much the same way steam trains are more characterful than a shinkansen. However we all know which one 99.9% of people will take to get to work in the morning.

[PhantomPH]

ash73 said:

PhantomPH said:

Acceleration on-board: https://youtu.be/aXWfL-1ieuE?t=56m11s

Crikey, not smoke & mirrors then.

I'm predicting there will be new road traffic regulations to limit acceleration, about 1.9 seconds after someone in a high vis jacket sees that clip.

It does make you wonder about rolling acceleration and how 'not calibrated' most road users are to deal with another vehicle suddenly going from (say) 30mph to 60mph one second later. Even in my experience of driving averagely quick cars, it's the fact that you can be in a completely different place to the other road users' expectations, quite quickly - that's what catches them out.

Obviously there is a duty of car from both the driver of the Tesla and the driver of the other car, but can you imagine someone checking their mirror before pulling out to overtake someone; everything looks good, Tesla is way behind; look back ahead and pull out...followed by a big noise and a Tesla rolling into the ditch across the road from you. That split second of checking the mirror then adjusting focus back to forwards, could be enough for Mr Tesla to hoof his Roadster and be coming past you at one hell of a closing speed.

Like I say tho - the driver of the Tesla needs to be aware and adjust his road behaviour accordingly.

[anonymous-user]

ash73 said:

Max_Torque said:

to do >200mph means there must be gearbox between the motor and the wheels! (maybe only 2 speeds)

That's going to feel a bit clunky.

why? Just sandwich an epicyclic between two motors, just a something like Prius or Ampera already do!

[anonymous-user]

Evanivitch said:

Max_Torque said:

The "interesting" bit about this new car is not the acceleration, but the fact it's the first EV that also claims a high top speed, which means it almost certainly now has a gearbox!

(with fixed gear EV's you have a trade off been accel and top speed, a typical SPM has a CPSR of around 3 to 1, so if the car can do 120mph, then peak power arrives at 40mph. But to do >200mph means there must be gearbox between the motor and the wheels! (maybe only 2 speeds)

Doesn't the dual motor Model S just utilise motors with different gearing? Possible we'll see this again?

I thought about that, and it has merits for a relatively small range of speeds (rear torque bais at low speeds for accel, then moves to FWD at high speed)
However, for the speed range we are talking about here, it would require a clutch to actively disconnect the "fast" motor once a certain road speed had been reached (a-la 918) to prevent the motor being over sped. For a car that needs to make peak power at less than 60mph (to ace the 0-60 sprint) but also at say 220mph, you'd going to need a proper gearbox!

[Jex]

RumbleOfThunder said:

Ariel = 0-60mph in 2.4 secs
Tesla = 0-60mph in 1.9 secs
Ariel = top speed 160mph
Tesla = top speed 250+mph

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

[RumbleOfThunder]

Jex said:

RumbleOfThunder said:

Ariel = 0-60mph in 2.4 secs
Tesla = 0-60mph in 1.9 secs
Ariel = top speed 160mph
Tesla = top speed 250+mph

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

Not sure on that chap. There's plenty of videos out there showing 911's running mid to low 2's on road rubber. I can see sub 2 seconds with gear changes removed and the seamless delivery of an EV.

[AnotherClarkey]

Jex said:

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

Motor Trend have tested the Model S at 2.3s 0-60 on road tyres.

[Evanivitch]

Jex said:

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

Or lots of weight

[Ultra Sound Guy]

Jex said:

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

If you mean downforce as opposed to weight how do you get anything other than zero at 0 MPH?

[otolith]

Jex said:

For any car to have a 0-60 time of less than 2.7 seconds you need downforce (= 0 at 0 mph) or sticky tyres not suitable for road use, otherwise the car is just burning rubber. I wonder which Tesla and Ariel will use.

You do need sticky tyres to get a coefficient of friction > 1.

You can get sticky tyres suitable for road use.

The Model S will do < 2.7 seconds on all season tyres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pCrA7F_Ghc

[otolith]

Evanivitch said:

Or lots of weight

The m cancels out!

[Jex]

otolith said:

You do need sticky tyres to get a coefficient of friction > 1.

You can get sticky tyres suitable for road use.

The Model S will do < 2.7 seconds on all season tyres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pCrA7F_Ghc

Didn't know that - thanks

[DonkeyApple]

Tuna said:

DonkeyApple said:

Yup. Any lorry destined for a city centre will need to be electric at a near point in the future.

It also makes sense for buses to also be electric.

Minicabs and taxis will all be pushed to electric and private ICE cars will be legislated out.

It's interesting that despite there being many obvious drivers for the change to occur, and no requirements for the machine to be anything other than utilitarian, that no-one has gone for this space yet. It suggests to me the practicalities and economics of a daily workhorse are not as simple as some would suggest.

I think electric lorries and buses are well on their way. The industry needs the new generation of cheaper batteries from China to really kick start it properly but plenty of European cities have enacted the legislation to ensure it has to happen regardless of the economics.

I think it's similar with regards to minicabs and taxis, the impending legislation meansbit has to happen. Hybrids being the stopgap permitted ice solution to bridge the time gap.

And the writing is on the wall for private pure ICE. They are taxing the non compliant ones, then they'll ban them all and eventually they'll ban hybrids.

I'm assuming that lorries for some time will pull their trailers to outside the emission free city zones and then hand over the trailer to EVs to deliver inside the zone. That seems the only logical way as not every lorry operator has thebmeans to finance EVs but also not the widened logistics of running two fleet types etc.

[DonkeyApple]

WitnessProtection said:

In the event finances catch up with them and the company fails, surely someone else would want to step in and acquire them? I can't see Tesla failing being the death knell for EVs, especially with the likes of Apple and Alphabet involved. I think the genie is out of the bottle in that regard.

Of the two vehicles, I think the truck has far more potential to be seriously disruptive.

Someone might want to but it's whether they can afford to. It would be next to impossible to fire it up again with investors willing to pump billions in as it would have just been proven a flawed investment model. As you suggest it would need to be someone like Apple who have their own cash and in no need of raising externally.

Even if Telsa did fail to get the 3 revenues in before the investors dried up the mainstream car manufacturers all seem well down the road to deliver far more EV product than Tesla ever can and they are doing so online with global legislation which is a far safer route to follow than that of the evangelical.

[otolith]

Jex said:

otolith said:

You do need sticky tyres to get a coefficient of friction > 1.

You can get sticky tyres suitable for road use.

The Model S will do < 2.7 seconds on all season tyres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pCrA7F_Ghc

Didn't know that - thanks

0-60 in under 2 seconds would require the car to pull 1.37g. Obviously, as you point out, the most you can manage with simple friction is 1g. There are cars without downforce which will pull around 1.2g laterally on street tyres - I would imagine that in acceleration, using the electronics to extract every last bit of grip, and with the stickiest road legal tyres they can get, Tesla's claim is achievable.

[SpeckledJim]

cay said:

havoc said:

I suspect that's where your maths falls down.

Truck engines major on torque not bhp - electric motors already deliver that.

e.g. a typical modern Class-1 HGV engine puts out <3,000Nm of torque and maybe 500-600bhp, whereas the P100 is just shy of 1,000Nm.

So you'll only need 3x the torque, and arguably only 2x the bhp. So if you were to take 3x P85 powertrains and mate them together, you'd have enough motive force for a typical 40t HGV.


On that basis, it becomes a lot less of a stretch...

Torque / Power isn't the issue, you are having to move 40,000 KG instead of 2000 KG for a Model S.

I got those figures from a site which had some very in depth calculations.

Current trucks do around 5MPG - versus 50MPG for a diesel car, same comparison.

You aren't making much sense. What's wrong with triple the oomph of a P85 in an HGV, if that's the same or more than a normal ICE HGV?

It won't be as fast as a P85, granted, but it'll be as fast as a normal HGV.

[thelawnet1]

rscott said:

Probably see about the same drop in range as you'd see in a conventional ICE supercar.

No not really, the ICE is most efficient at a certain RPM, which could give quite a high speed depending on gearing. Whereas an electric car simply gets less efficient anything above 18mph.

This is for a Tesla Roadster:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/GYcvN.jpg

18mph 130Wh/mile
60mph 250Wh/mile
120mph 655Wh/mile

An ICE will be most efficient around 55mph, but potentially a little higher.

Electric cars drain their batteries VERY quickly at motorway speeds. The old Roadster set the world distance record for a single charge in 2009 at an average speed of 25mph.

[Nik da Greek]

Don't really understand why Musk thinks haulage firms will be investing in unproven technology at two and half times the price of the equivalent, proven I.C.E. vehicle and getting half the range into the bargain? Does not sound like economic business sense to my understanding.

Why do all AV manufacturers have to pollute their brand with bks no-one in their right mind wants? Even early forays like Insights or that silly VW thing were blighted by looking bloody ridiculous and it seems written in statue now that all EVs since must look, like futuristic, bruv. Do the collective "we" as road users really want roadtrains of autonomous electric trucks?

Not flat-earth ostriching but, really, why? Does no-one ever stop to ask "just because we can do it, does that mean we should do it?"

[Solocle]

The figures given are phenomenal. As with any hypercar, there's going to be costs to owning (I imagine the tyres go quickly). Perhaps you need some kind of home supercharger for this beast...
However, given it's packing 200kWh of batteries, it's going to be pretty heavy. Very low CoG as a result... it might have sublime handling, but that remains to be seen. But, to those complaining about running down the batteries, any hypercar kept at full pelt will run out of petrol faster than a fuel tank made of colanders. But, it'll do that speed. And the acceleration... pulling √2 g's is crazy.