
Review of the Model S 85 - Artemis2
http://shiftinglanes.com/2015/01/tesla-model-s-review/
======
gbog
Here in Beijing there are special "un-official" taxi services that have
Teslas. I was once in one of them, one the way to the airport. I was very
silent, and looked a bit futuristic (all meters are actually screens) and
kitsch ala eigthies: The whole car looks fat, plasticly cheap. I would not
trust the door knob to always work for instance, and the seat are not giving
this confident feeling, compared to normal European cars. It is also slightly
ugly. But obviously that's just the diff between Europe and US on cars, and
Tesla has nothing to do with it (but if Tesla wants to get market share in
Europe, they have to make another model, or license their techno to someone
else.)

~~~
easytiger
> the whole car looks fat, plasticly cheap.

That's every American car

~~~
justin66
BMW, Mercedes, and Jaguar (among others) are all struggling right now to find
a new design direction. The most recent push to really change things, Chris
Bangle's tenure at BMW, didn't really lead to a decisive new direction. A lot
of people WANT boring shit.

~~~
easytiger
Oh sorry the design aesthetic of the S is fine. Though when i see one I can't
work out which of the large saloon car it is.

I mean the cheap plasticy build quality, mainly the interior. It doesn't look
nor feel like a luxury car inside.

------
graycat
Sure: As I remember from my college physics course in electricity and
magnetism (E&M), a series wound electric motor has, with the simple
mathematical model, infinite torque at _stall_ , that is, not yet rotating.
The torque falls off from infinity quickly as the motor starts to rotate.

So, yes, the Tesla can get some fantastic acceleration from a standing start.

Also, yes, as used in some ocean going ships, it can be good to use _Diesel-
electric_ with no transmission. That is, the Diesel engine drives an electric
generator, and the electric power from the generator drives the electric motor
to drive the propellers and move the ship. In this case the motor-generator
combination provides essentially an ideal transmission -- "Look, Ma, no
gears!".

Tesla has done better on both power and range than I expected. Good for Tesla.

But I would still be concerned about battery charging time -- there's no royal
road shortcut to the energy that 4600 pound car needs, even if the braking
captures kinetic energy. Or, driving at highway speeds requires pushing air
out of the way and, then, putting a lot of velocity, thus, kinetic energy,
into that air. Also will want A/C or heat for the car, and that's more energy.

So, the batteries need to store a lot of energy. Then to charge the batteries,
also need a lot of energy. Do some simple arithmetic and can discover that
charging via 100 A at 240 V in the garage of a house will result in hours of
recharging time. Okay then use a _charging station_ : For a full charge in
just a few minutes, that will be one heck of a powerful electrical connection.
And, that charging current has to pass through the batteries which
traditionally heats the batteries.

Next worry: How long with the batteries last, and how much does it cost to
replace them?

So, mostly I'd be concerned about recharging time. For a trip to Grandma's 900
miles away, with a range per charge of 200 miles, charging time will be an
issue.

But Tesla's done better than I expected.

~~~
easytiger
In europe, practically everyone would fly the 900 miles or take the train.

~~~
graycat
In the US, 900 miles was just from where I was in DC, north to Pennsylvania,
west to Ohio, across Ohio to Indiana, south to the town Fort Wayne in NE
Indiana, west to Warsaw, IN, and then south 15 miles to the farm of the family
of my girlfriend and, later, wife. So, before we were married, I drove the 900
miles often, commonly mostly at 90+ MPH, and after we were married drove it
usually at least once a year, at Christmas.

When we went for Christmas, we were carrying way too much stuff to fly or take
a train! And when we got there, we stayed for a few days and still wanted our
car to get around, to restaurants, movies, friends, more shopping, etc.

In Europe, they think that a car engine with 3.0 liters of displacement is
large. The engine I was using had either 5.7 liters of displacement or, in two
cases, 6.5 liters of displacement.

US and Europe do some things in different ways!

That part of Indiana is sparsely populated. So, from the farm, the nearest
airport with much in service is at Fort Wayne about 50 miles away.

Let's see: The 6.5 liter car I used most often had a 2.56 rear axle ratio and
at 90+ MPH got about 18 MPG. Gas cost about $0.25 a gallon. Then the cost of
gas for the 900 miles was

    
    
         900 * 0.25 / 18 = 12.50
    

dollars, $25 round trip. Heck just the taxi fare from the Fort Wayne airport
to the farm would have been about that. To use a plane or train, round trip,
would have meant four long taxi trips, total cost much more than the gasoline
for driving my car.

For trains, actually at one time the US had one heck of a rail network with
relatively good passenger service. Mostly the rails are still in the ground.
Actually the little cross road town three miles from the farm did have a rail
line and a station -- not used by passengers, if at all, in years. Sure, at
one time could have caught a train at that station and, with lots of
transfers, gone to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc. Lots of transfers
and then waiting between trains.

In simple terms, in the US, by about 1955 or so, cars put the passenger trains
out of business. The US still has one heck of a good freight rail network.

While Indiana is sparsely populated, keep going west to Iowa, Nebraska, South
Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, etc., and we're talking miles and miles and
miles of hardly a person in sight.

In the US, there's density enough for trains to have a shot between, say,
Richmond, VA north to DC, Baltimore, Newark, NYC, Greenwich, Stamford,
Hartford, and Boston. And we do have such trains; spent a lot of money on the
trains; our VP Biden spent a lot of time on those trains between Baltimore and
DC; but those trains lose money. And parallel to those tracks we have
airplanes -- maybe they make money, but the TSA has made airplanes a little
less comfortable than either an unanesthetized root canal procedure or a
barbed wire enema. "Open wide, look at the birdie, and then grab your ankles
and back up to the officer .... Have a pleasant trip."

"Next time it's my car; even for 2000 miles."

In the US there are lots of other efforts to spend big bucks to have trains
across the Midwest, north and south along the west coast, e.g., LA to SF and
maybe up to Seattle, maybe between Houston and Dallas in TX, etc. Lots of
efforts. For decades.

For commuters to NYC, NY has trains north to Poughkeepsie and NE to Greenwich,
Stamford, Hartford, or some such. At least the one to Poughkeepsie has been
losing money, and now when register a car in that area have to pay a special
tax to support the trains.

How do we pay for roads, bridges, etc. for cars? We're supposed to be covering
that out of gasoline taxes, which are not trivial. The result is called the
_Highway Trust Fund_ ; it may have a stack of IOUs from _loans_ for other
purposes.

I live 70 miles north of the Wall Street area which is at the southern tip of
Manhattan in NYC and for a while worked in that area. I found that except in
the worst of the rush hour, my car was, door to door, faster than the trains.
And I was not using a high performance car.

Apparently the NYC subways work well -- I can believe that. But Baltimore put
in a subway, and while I was at Johns Hopkins University there in Baltimore,
once was in a lecture that analyzed the _welfare economics_ of the Baltimore
subway; _welfare economics_ is where add up all the costs and all the benefits
and see for what projects the total of the benefits is greater than the total
of the costs. The lecture reported the totals of the costs and the benefits,
and the costs were higher than the benefits. So, from the point of view of
_welfare economics_ , the _optimal_ decision, given that the subway
construction was done, was just to brick up the entrances and f'get about it.
Or, if there were some really good _benefits_ for that subway, adding up the
_value_ of the benefits still didn't have the benefits exceed the costs.
That's what happened in that case; just why I don't know.

Drawing from several decades of recent history, broadly, passenger trains
don't work very well in the US. There are lots and lots and lots of people who
very much want passenger trains to work well here, but the _golden age_ of US
passenger trains was from, say, 1930 to 1955 or so. E.g., there are several
Hollywood movies, _North by Northwest_ , _The Sting_ , that show something
about what train travel was like then. Basically in the US, the long
distances, low population density, Interstate highway system (Ike regarded as
crucial for military logistics for US national security), etc. shot the
passenger trains between the eyes. One biggie reason: People already owned a
car, say, just to get to the grocery store, the coin laundry (people commonly
had cars before they had washer/driers at home), schools, friends, etc.

Another factor was that trains had a bad reputation because at one time they
were seen as exploitative monopolies. To push back, we got the Interstate
Commerce Commission (ICC) with a lot of economic regulation of the trains. If
a road needed a bridge over some train tracks, then maybe the train company
was asked to pay for it. The unions saw the train companies as soft targets
and, with the help of Congress, took advantage. So, by 1955 or so, many people
in the US regarded passenger trains as something they would like never to see
again.

So, for the 900 miles to Grandma's for Christmas, with lots of luggage,
presents, camera equipment, and on and on, and the desire for a car when get
there, the cost was really just the direct marginal operating cost, so I and
nearly everyone else with a car took their car. E.g., when I drove that 900
miles, it was less than five miles from my apartment to an Interstate highway,
and then I was on Interstate highways or similar for all but the last 15 miles
where the traffic was very light and the roads fine.

Yes, people have thought of the idea of having a car drive onto a special car
of a train and then let the train do the driving while the people sat in the
car, listened to the radio, now watched a movie on a laptop with a DVD,
talked, etc. Didn't work -- not enough people came.

Since the 1950s, the US has had a _love affair_ with cars.

Europe and the US have some significant differences.

Actually, for shorter distances, there are good intercity bus lines in the US.
Typically can get to/from a smaller city easier on bus than train or plane.

As I recall, all of Germany is smaller than just the smaller US state of
Oregon.

There are a lot of places in the world where distances are large and
population density low; we will see what they do about passenger
transportation -- Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, most of Africa, most of Canada,
most of South America, much of South Asia around, say, Afghanistan, etc.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Great info, well stated. I have two quibbles:

1) $0.25 gas ended circa 1973 if not before.

2) Your area estimate of Germany ended in 1990. Today's Germany is
significantly larger than Oregon. The former West Germany was about the size
of Oregon.

~~~
graycat
> 1) $0.25 gas ended circa 1973 if not before.

The car I was driving was either a 1967 Pontiac Firebird with a 4 speed manual
transmission and a 400 cubic inch engine or a 1969 Camaro with a Turbo 400
three speed automatic transmission, a 396 cubic inch engine, and a 2.56 rear
axle ratio.

> 2)

Sorry about the area of Germany -- I was drawing just from memory from a
remark in some history video. I should have looked up the area.

I should also add detail to the welfare economics cost/benefit analysis of the
Baltimore subway system: The analysis counted the construction cost as $0. The
only costs considered were the direct marginal operating costs and the on-
going maintenance costs. Still the cost/benefit analysis failed. Net, in the
US it is just super tough to make passenger trains pay.

------
wdewind
> This means that you don’t have to touch the accelerator during stop and go
> traffic because it will do it for you. Soon Model S owners will be able to
> change lanes by only tapping on the turn signal stalks. No, they do not have
> to buy a new Model S to get this feature, they can simply connect their car
> to a wi-fi connection and get firmware updates.

As someone who grew up in NYC and never learned to drive that is not only
really cool but immensely appealing.

~~~
robmcm
I got adaptive cruise control in an Audi A3 last year and was amazed to find
out it was first introduced in the mid 90s!

That being said it feels very futuristic having a radar in your car and makes
driving on the motorway a lot more pleasant. However I now seem to spend the
brain cycles I was using on judging speed imagining up bugs that could cause
me to accelerate into the car in front :/

~~~
cjrp
Does it work if you're following a motorbike? I'm not sure how wide a vehicle
it needs to get a decent radar return.

Edit: Just looking at a Honda manual online[1], it says: "ACC may not
recognize motorcycles or other small vehicles ahead of your vehicle". That's
more than a little worrying.

[1]
[https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/om/JA0606/JA0606O00...](https://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/om/JA0606/JA0606O00237A.pdf)

~~~
robmcm
Mine tracks bikes well, I think it also uses a camera mounted above the rear
view mirror.

It also uses that camera to dip the headlights, which is often tricked by two
lights close together (reflectors on bollards or traffic cones). It's also has
to wait to see the headlights, where as I can tell they are coming a short
time before.

~~~
xanderstrike
And it doesn't dim the lights for bicycles/motorcycles. Audis are the bane of
my existence. If you can turn that feature off and manually control the
brights I implore you to do so.

------
dice
I don't know about "brutally quick". Anyone who's driven an M3, S4, or any
similar performance sedan isn't going to be blown away by the speed of the
Model S. It's fast, but it isn't mind-blowing.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Well, there's always the Tesla P85D, which they briefly mention in the
article. That's the real performance version. It's quite a bit faster at 0-60
mph than the M3, roughly 3.2 seconds vs 3.9 seconds.

And the Tesla is quiet. Here's a great video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QERGldfZA5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QERGldfZA5A)

I don't know how well a Tesla corners compared to German or Italian
competition.

~~~
feld
It feels pretty great in corners because the suspension keeps the car level. I
don't have experience driving many other higher end cars to compare it to,
though.

