RE: Tesla Roadster: 'Quickest car in the world'

[Ares]

Blackpuddin said:

unpc said:

Now that performance of EVs has almost totally eclipsed that of ICE powered stuff I would be good if manufacturers of ICE powered stuff gave up on the crazy bhp arms race and focused on making stuff involving to drive again.

Perhaps it would be even more interesting if EV manufacturers had a look at giving their vehicles more aural character. A whine overlaid by tyre and suspension noise is not massively inspiring. You'd think that in the pantheon of engineering challenges this would be a relatively easy one to sort out.

and yet even piping in a car's actual exhaust note is deemed heresy. What aural character could an EV manufacturer employ?

[WojaWabbit]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

To you and I, yes, it is about the experiences. Not for the majority of V10 Lambo or Porsche GT3 owners though, who are more interested in posing, or contemplating the financial gains of flipping the next limited edition. The masses certainly don't give two hoots about experiences. Fun to them would be going spectacularly fast in a straight line for a second or two, then crawling round town while the instagrammers go nuts.

It's a changing world.

[Fast Bug]

AW111 said:

Fast Bug said:

Wouldn't Tesla be better off getting the Model 3 out the door and resolving build quality issues first?

That's a different issue & a different department.
This is an R&D exercise - I doubt the R&D engineers have anything much to do with production and build issues, so why not have them woek on the next model?

Yes it's a different department, but they'll be hovering up budget which could (and indeed would) be better spent elsewhere. At this point in time Tesla are in prime position to get product in to the market place and gain market share and brand loyalty. In the next 2 or 3 years MB have their EQ range out, BMW will have more i product, Skoda will have the electric Octavia etc and Tesla will be left trying to shift a poorly built product and refunding lots of Model 3 deposits whilst showing yet another product they can't deliver on time

[jhonn]

Dave Hedgehog said:

jhonn said:

I remember people saying something similar when the Lotus Carlton came out in 1990, cries of 'It's too fast' 'Ban it!' etc - as I recall there was no increase in accidents or deaths.

because they only sold 17 and they spent half their initial lives broken down like every other vauxhall of that era

lol - about 950 over three years actually- and how many $200k cars do you think he'll sell over here?

High performance has always been available - for a price, the Tesla isn't really that different in that regard.

[unpc]

Blackpuddin said:

Perhaps it would be even more interesting if EV manufacturers had a look at giving their vehicles more aural character. A whine overlaid by tyre and suspension noise is not massively inspiring. You'd think that in the pantheon of engineering challenges this would be a relatively easy one to sort out.

I expect that will come. FWIW I quite liked the sound of the Nio EP9. I'd also expect EV manufacturers to be able to make one handle and be involving to drive in the near future too as it should be relatively easy with torque vectoring at each wheel.

[98elise]

kambites said:

suffolk009 said:

As somebody pointed out, that impressive range will not be available if you do a couple of launches.

I think it'll take rather than than "a couple of launches" to deplete a 200kwh battery.

Yup, that's a huge amount of energy, and of course any acceleration is then countered with regeneration.

[HighwayStar]

Wills2 said:

I'd still rather have a 200k Ferrari or Porsche GT3 on the drive, very fast is fast enough, I'd want noise and visual drama.

This... Noise and drama...from the moment you turn the key, feeling, hearing a proper engine.
I was over at Canary Warf a few weeks ago and had my first close up look at a couple of Teslas. The Model S, bar the massive tablet screen, is an impressive bit of kit. A well built, quality car. The X too though an SUV type would never be my sort of thing. Now if I was well wedged and needed a family car, personally I would see the S as a no brainer.. I don't like big cars so one that cost a few pounds a month to run and got the job done, like an appliance, would suit me fine. Money saved running a big V8 barge would go on a proper noisy 2 seater. With a real engine.
The Roaster is impressive, no denying it but 1.9secs 0-60 and sub 9 sec 1/4 mile stuff just isn't where it's at for me. Straight line performance, like motorway driving does nothing for me. It wouldn't make me want to get up at 6am on a Sunday morning and hit my favour roads before breakfast. Doing that in silence, all efficiency but no drama... it wouldn't be worth getting out of bed for.

[downhillmalins]

Wooo its really quick.

I'd rather take a "slow" V12 that makes me smile at any speed I'm driving.

[ChocolateFrog]

There's a Michelin executive crying into his cereal this morning. 0 - 100 in 4.2 seconds for something that will top the scales around the 2 tonne Mark, forget charging stations you'll need pitstops every 500 miles.

I've never understood the hype around Musk as a showman. His public speaking is terrible. He gets incredibly nervous, which makes it painful to listen to.

[Arsecati]

Yeah, but will it go round corners?

[Salamura]

Max_Torque said:

You "suspect", really? Well guess what, you are wrong, because if you build an EV capable of huge acceleration then, guess what, it can do huge deccel as well (emachines don't care which way they spin, or which way the current is flowing through them). So, at the end of you 1/4mile, you lift off and recover most of the KE you put into the car to accelerate it. All you loose is the energy lost to drag, and as the run is only 1/4 mile, that's really pretty small.

This is "fact" and if you watch the launch night drive videos you can see the demo fleet doing 1/4 after 1/4 after quarter all night long.


(the tricky bit is actually the thermal management of the batteries and motors during such repetitive high load runs (you'll notice the circuit for the demo lap included driving a decent distance over to the acceleration lane, well that's not be accident, or for health and safety, that's simply to allow the powertrain to cool after each run)

So you truly believe that you could do 600 miles in quarter mile sprints on one charge? You're better off believing in something more realistic, such as father Christmas...

Edited by Salamura on Friday 17th November 13:14

[Todd Bonzalez]

ChocolateFrog said:

I've never understood the hype around Musk as a showman. His public speaking is terrible. He gets incredibly nervous, which makes it painful to listen to.

Also giving him personally full credit for a vehicle lol. Modern world is absolutely insane.

[NJJ]

Ares said:

and yet even piping in a car's actual exhaust note is deemed heresy. What aural character could an EV manufacturer employ?

I suspect as time goes on all EVs will allow you to customise the interior and possibly the exterior noise to an extent to the engine noise of your liking. 250 GTO V12? Lamborghini Performante V10? Whatever you want, you will be able to download and integrate the sound.

Jaguar's concept electric E-Type should have offered this facility to match the platform to the traditional straight-six noise of the original.

[donteatpeople]

Gandahar said:

Yeah but if most cars go electric we will not have enough capacity to charge them all in the UK unless we go fusion.

There's been a lot of silly newspaper headlines about how much extra capacity we'd need but the National Grid don't seem to share the same panic as the journalists.

http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-bus...

[Burwood]

Todd Bonzalez said:

ChocolateFrog said:

I've never understood the hype around Musk as a showman. His public speaking is terrible. He gets incredibly nervous, which makes it painful to listen to.

Also giving him personally full credit for a vehicle lol. Modern world is absolutely insane.

It interesting how the market cheers the man on, when all the while Teslar is borrowing money and raising capital, a lot of which just went to his £1B bonus.
Beggars belief

[vz-r_dave]

Its fantastic but I much prefer and am much more excited for the Aston/RB and AMG hypercars. I could care less how fast an EV is in a straight line, they have ZERO soul. Just another white good only difference it accelerates extremely quickly

[ARFUR_DAILY]

unpc said:

Now that performance of EVs has almost totally eclipsed that of ICE powered stuff I would be good if manufacturers of ICE powered stuff gave up on the crazy bhp arms race and focused on making stuff involving to drive again.

Well said, that man!!!!

250K gets you a lot of nice stuff - early 70s 911 RSR, for example, half a Lancia Stratos. I love this Tesla, I think it looks great and I'd like to experience 0-60 in 1.9 secs, but only once. Love what you're doing Tesla, but I'll take one of the cheap ones to get me from A to B (it if's ever delivered), and wheel out the RSR out every now and then for a bit of fun - whilst it doubles in value every 5 -10 years.

[Ares]

jhonn said:

Dave Hedgehog said:

jhonn said:

I remember people saying something similar when the Lotus Carlton came out in 1990, cries of 'It's too fast' 'Ban it!' etc - as I recall there was no increase in accidents or deaths.

because they only sold 17 and they spent half their initial lives broken down like every other vauxhall of that era

lol - about 950 over three years actually- and how many $200k cars do you think he'll sell over here?

High performance has always been available - for a price, the Tesla isn't really that different in that regard.

True - but this is a significant game changer, far bigger than the Lotus Carlton was.

And at $200k, he'll shift more than 950, if he can make them.

[otolith]

It's not my kind of sports car, too big, too heavy, performance a long way beyond what you can really use, not to mention expensive, but then so are the established player in that market. What's a Veyron actually for? But that's pretty irrelevant. There is an existing niche for that kind of car, and Tesla have just planted a very impressive flag in it.

As for how it will handle - with that amount of power and weight the steering is going to have to be seriously assisted, so there may not be an enormous amount of feel. But it should have a lower centre of gravity than a comparable ICE vehicle.

I think it's great. I don't want one, but I'd be interested in something closer to a (proper, ground up, not batteries where the engine was) electric Elise type car.

[George Smiley]

Dave Hedgehog said:

even an old fossil like me is excited by this thing, chiron performance at 1/10th of the price

vid of the insane performance

https://twitter.com/tesla/status/93140956964067737...

No fun or noise though.