
Changes to Models S and X allow them to travel longer without larger batteries - azhenley
https://www.tesla.com/blog/longest-range-electric-vehicle-now-goes-even-farther
======
jonknee
They're re-introducing the lower cost model, interesting move right before
quarterly earnings get announced. I have to assume this means sales have been
poor.

> In addition to our Long Range and Performance variants, we’re also re-
> introducing a lower entry price for Model S and Model X by bringing back our
> Standard Range option

~~~
TaylorAlexander
In the autonomy presentation yesterday they said they could create more
robotaxis if they ship smaller batteries. So I wouldn’t assume it means sales
are poor. They’re focused now on building out a self driving fleet of customer
cars, which they plan to activate as taxis in the future.

~~~
jacquesm
> In the autonomy presentation yesterday they said they could create more
> robotaxis if they ship smaller batteries.

More? The challenge is not to ship more of them, the challenge is to ship
_one_.

~~~
grecy
> _The challenge is not to ship more of them, the challenge is to ship one._

Of course, if you believe what Elon said two days ago, the fascinating thing
is that every Tesla shipping _right now_ is already a robotaxi, it just needs
a fee software OTA update at some point.

So in that regard the more Teslas they can get on the road in the next ~2
years, the more robotaxis there will be at "Autonomy Launch" (...whenever that
happens to be)

------
olliej
So it sounds like the range increase is for new cars? (Other comments made it
sound like a software update to existing cars)

I still wish there was more focus on range over acceleration, obviously
electric motors don't suffer from general efficiency impact as ICEs do (an ICE
with superior acceleration seems to take an efficiency hit at all speeds), but
how much of that "faster acceleration" impacts efficiency over the course of
driving a few hundred miles.

~~~
mikeash
Range and acceleration mostly go hand in hand. Much of the constraint on
acceleration is how much power you can pull from the battery pack, and that
gets better with larger batteries. It’s not like a normal car where high
acceleration means a big, inefficient engine.

~~~
olliej
Agreed, that was why I noted the efficiency model for an electric engine is
superior to ICE. I'd just rather "normal"-ish acceleration in traffic with
range improvements over high max acceleration. I'm sure you could also reduce
engine weight if you don't have to rely on extreme acceleration.

~~~
natch
You don’t have to floor the pedal. The tradeoff is decided by the driver.
Accelerate less aggressively, get better range.

------
Animats
This is good. It's Tesla focusing on making better cars. More range is good.
Faster charging is good. Those are real things. Yesterday's claims about Tesla
operating a million self-driving taxis by 2020 were, well, not taken too
seriously.

The new stuff is all at the high end, though. The $35,000 Model 3 is still
absent from the product line.

~~~
oblio
2020 is in 8 months. They currently produce about 400k cars per year...

~~~
grecy
Also note the new Gigafactory in China is going up at a lightning pace, and
very likely will be churning out 10k Model 3's a week by the end of 2019.

So that factory alone will put ~ 500k Model 3's on the road by the end of
2020.

~~~
oblio
I certainly hope so. So far I'm not impressed with Tesla's manufacturing
"prowess".

------
DeonPenny
The competition just got more stiff. They are selling audi etrons for the same
price with 200 mile ranges, and tesla is about to break 400.

------
jamilbk
Question for Tesla owners: Is the recharge time ever a problem? Have you ever
felt regret from not being able to just pull up to a gas station, refuel, and
be on your way?

Part of me drools with child-like giddiness at the prospect of owning one, but
part of me hesitates at the thought of taking roadtrips in one.

~~~
sjwright
Question for ICE owners: Is having to regularly visit a fuel station ever a
problem? Have you ever felt regret from not being able to wake up every
morning with a "full tank" in the car?

Point is, it's not a compromise, it's replacing one set of compromises with
another. Yes, you are limited to driving for 4-5 hours before taking a 30-45
minute break (assuming your route has fast chargers) but that's fairly
consistent with the needs of humans anyway. (Muscles, stomachs, bladders etc.)

[Not an EV owner.]

~~~
magicalhippo
> Is having to regularly visit a fuel station ever a problem? Have you ever
> felt regret from not being able to wake up every morning with a "full tank"
> in the car?

We just got an EV, and my gf loves this aspect.

She was terrible at remembering to fill gas before coming home, so would very
often find herself in a situation where she had to fill up before getting on
her way. Quite often this coincided with when she was already running a bit
late in the morning, causing a lot of additional stress.

With the EV, plugging it in is a quick and natural part of parking in the
garage and so the car is always ready to go in the morning.

~~~
tialaramex
Also, if you forget and then realise, there's no way that five minutes before
bed you'll put proper clothes on, drive out to a fuel station, fill it up and
drive home. Not going to happen. But popping down to plug the EV into the
mains is something you might actually remember then go and do, like putting
that cheese back in the fridge or running the dishwasher.

------
gibolt
It has been 7 years since initial release. Super excited that it got an
update, right when competitors are somewhat catching up. Only took them that
long to almost compete.

~~~
wil421
I always thought one of the big 3 US or German companies were betting on Tesla
to fail. Once they failed they’d scoop up their tech at a discount. After the
Model S’s success I think they all realized they need to play catch up.

Meanwhile Japan is still going down the Hydrogen path...

~~~
gibolt
I don't think they were hoping to buy, I think they were hoping they wouldn't
have to compete.

~~~
imtringued
They can't "compete" because the batteries in EVs cost more than entire ICEs.

------
baoha
It's funny how they put CA EV Rebate in the 'after savings' part. This rebate
has income cap at $300k/household. If I made less than that, I would think
really hard before purchasing a $90k car.

------
magicbuzz
For metric folks, this equates to nearly 600km.

That's about as much as I want to drive in the space of a single day.
Conceivably however, automated driving could mean doing longer distances. And
at a cost much less than an airfare - just a lot more in time.

~~~
m3kw9
If you factor in 4-5 hours in overhead in order to take a flight, you can go a
lot of places for a lot less and just slightly longer ride. I’m guessing 1/10
of the price for NY to Miami if you take 2-3 people

~~~
dannyw
Depreciation matters.

~~~
jfoster
Depreciation for any given trip will never be anywhere near the price of a
plane ticket or two, though.

~~~
jonknee
Why not? These are really expensive cars (especially Model S and X). An
$80,000 car that has a life of 500,000 miles is $.16 a mile. This hypothetical
NY to Miami trip is 1,300 miles one way. If you do no driving in Miami that's
2600 miles or $416 in depreciation if all miles counted the same (they don't,
the first miles depreciate things a lot more). You can easily get a plane
ticket for that, two if you look around.

~~~
thehappypm
I flew Providence to Miami for $25 each way last year on Frontier. Even
factoring in the cost of parking at the airport and the extra hour of driving
time from Boston, I spent less than $100. So, yeah, flying can be super cheap.

------
CarVac
So they added the Switched Reluctance Motor technology used in the Model 3 for
the front motor, improving efficiency.

~~~
TD-Linux
It's a permanent magnet motor. It's an IPM design so some amount of the torque
comes from reluctance, but the majority of the efficiency is from the
permanent magnets providing the field rather than having to burn energy
through the induction motor's copper bars to provide it.

~~~
pitaj
Which is interesting. I wonder what the math looks like, since induction
motors (without the heavy magnets) tend to be lighter. I can see why they'd
avoid a rotor-coiled motor, since that comes with lifetime constraints.

~~~
baybal2
Induction motors are worse at regeneration at low speeds, but as poster below
said, their advantage is that they can be powered down and not impede
coasting.

I think they hope to be able to match power requirements of highway cruising
using a PM motor, so they don't take losses spinning AC motor way below its
power rating.

------
melling
“Beginning today, Model S and Model X now come with an all-new drivetrain
design that increases each vehicle’s range substantially, achieving a landmark
370 miles and 325 miles on the EPA cycle for Model S and Model X Long Range,
respectively. Using the same 100 kWh battery pack”

~~~
martinpw
What were the corresponding ranges before? The article does not say (just
states >10% increase)

~~~
gniv
335 and 295

------
clouddrover
> _Model S and Model X are now capable of achieving 200 kW on V3 Superchargers
> and 145 kW on V2 Superchargers. Together, these improvements enable our
> customers to recharge their miles 50% faster._

What does that mean exactly? I'm sure there are sections of the charge curve
where it is 50% faster, but you need to consider the entire charge curve to
get a better sense of the improvement.

The Tesla Model 3's charge times were improved by the combination of battery
preconditioning and the faster V3 Supercharger. A charge that used to take 60
minutes can now be done in 40 minutes:

[https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-
action-...](https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-action-first-
look/)

I'd call that 33% faster charging. So is the Model S and Model X charge time
improvement across the entire charge curve or just sections of it?

~~~
zaroth
Interestingly, the charge rate across the _entire_ curve sounds like an
important metric but in practice it is nearly irrelevant.

If you drive an ICE car, you are used to filling your tank. Because once
you've gone through the trouble of driving to a gas station and pulling out
your credit card and unscrewing the cap, well you might as well top it off,
right? Life is different with electric.

You might know, for example, that most Teslas operate day-to-day with their
max battery charge limit set around 80% or below (it extends battery life).
Charging at night is entirely effortless, so you put the charge into the
battery that you'll need for the next day, or like me, you set it to give you
4x your daily commute and totally forget about it. Only before a particularly
long road trip do you pop open the app and slide up the charge limit.

For Superchargers, the model is a bit different because this is charging
that's happening on-demand while you wait in the car or are off getting a bite
or whatever, during your trip. The best measure is to examine the portion of
the curve that actual drivers spend actually charging their cars at an actual
Supercharger. So here we have it;

"V3 Supercharging will ultimately cut the amount of time customers spend
charging by an average of 50%, as modeled on our fleet data."

So this is truly an average of 50% faster, for actual Tesla drivers. ICE-age
drivers who love to hate Tesla will insist you have to integrate the charge-
rate curve, but as usual they will be entirely missing the point.

Tesla could spend an atrocious amount of time and money improving charging
speed from 90 to 100%. That might be how you charge your phone, but it's
actually not how Tesla drivers charge their cars (or how the onboard guidance
computer will plan to charge your car when it sets the route for you), and
would have almost zero benefit for the Fleet. Charging en-route is most
efficiently done to boost the battery up to 70-80% and then you get going
again.

Supercharger deployment, at least in the USA, is modeled such that there are
almost no trips where you would benefit from, or need to, fully charge at a
Supercharger, versus making two charging stops which would add up to less time
charging, and driving out of your way to the charger, overall.

~~~
clouddrover
None of these justifications answer the question I've asked. Read the link
I've provided. The Tesla Model 3 can get to 90% state of charge in 40 minutes
in ideal conditions. How many minutes will it now take the Model S and Model X
to do the same?

The amount of time spent at a charger to get decent range matters. Read this
article for an example of someone who likes his Tesla Model 3 but is getting
frustrated with the amount of time he's spending at chargers:

[https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/mobility/20...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/mobility/2019/03/05/fun-
and-frustration-tesla-model-3-owner/3052876002/)

~~~
greglindahl
I generally don’t charge to 90% when I supercharge, are you saying I’m doing
it wrong? Seriously, the point of supercharging is to do the minimum, not 90%.

~~~
clouddrover
Do you have any information on the new charge curves of the Model S and Model
X? That's the information I'm after.

~~~
greglindahl
You are saying a lot more than just that, so it’s no surprise that the answers
you’re getting are not what you expect.

~~~
clouddrover
Good grief.

------
ninju
For those that skipped the bottom paragraphs

>so as a thank you, all existing Model S and Model X owners who wish to
purchase a new Model S or Model X Performance car _will get the Ludicrous Mode
upgrade, a $20,000 value, at no additional charge._

Are they having trouble trying to get repeat business?

~~~
azhenley
Their cars are so good that there is no need to replace them!

------
NoblePublius
Former Model S, now Model 3 owner here. I can confirm this change won’t mean
much for Model S or X sales as the interiors of the S and X remain stuck in
2011.

------
azhenley
They also announced on Twitter: "As a thank you to our Tesla owners, all
existing Model S and Model X owners who wish to purchase a new Model S or
Model X Performance car will get the Ludicrous Mode upgrade, a $20,000 value,
at no additional charge"

[https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1120852649400623105](https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1120852649400623105)

~~~
alasdair_
> Ludicrous Mode upgrade, a $20,000 value

I have a P85D. When Ludicrous Mode was announced, they offered it for $5000 as
an upgrade.

I have no idea why it now supposedly costs $20,000.

Source: [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-drops-price-
of-p85d-ludicrou...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-drops-price-
of-p85d-ludicrous-upgrade-will-not-have-the-same-performance-as-
ludicrous-p90d/)

~~~
justinclift
That $US20k seems to be purely marketing bullshit, aimed to sucker US buyers.
:(

Easy seen as such too. Compare the "Ludicrous Mode" for the Model X on the US
website (US$20k) to the same thing on the Australian website (AUS$8.5k):

[https://www.tesla.com/modelx/design?redirect=no#battery](https://www.tesla.com/modelx/design?redirect=no#battery)

[https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/modelx/design?redirect=no#batter...](https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/modelx/design?redirect=no#battery)

Note - you need to select "Performance" on the right side, for Ludicrous Mode
to be shown.

Ludicrous mode is "20% faster acceleration" for both. So it very much seems
like the extra cost on the US buyers is to match this marketing update.

That thing where Larry Ellison (Oracle) is now on the board of Tesla. This is
the kind of crap he'd very much applaud. :(

[https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/modelx/design?redirect=no#batter...](https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/modelx/design?redirect=no#battery)

~~~
lazyjones
> _That $US20k seems to be purely marketing bullshit, aimed to sucker US
> buyers. :(_

Why is this a problem? In all luxury cars there are some options priced much
higher than the actual cost (e.g. fancy wheels). They exist to bolster the car
maker's margins and help sell the lower end versions at lower prices, so you
and the average buyers profit. Nobody actually needs Ludicrous, so pricing it
like this is in no way immoral.

~~~
alasdair_
>Why is this a problem?

It's a problem because they are claiming it's a "$20,000 value" when it was
sold for $5000 in the recent past and even right now, it costs far less than
$20K in other countries.

I'm a huge Tesla fan (I have an S and an X already) but every time they
distort the truth in such an obvious manner, it significantly erodes my trust
in them. Case in point: I _really_ like the 2020 Roadster's specs but
Tesla/Musk have stretched the truth one too many times for me to put down the
$50K deposit until it ships and I've let others find the first bugs.

------
num3ric
3 miles short of Montreal-NYC!

------
ProfessorLayton
This is a nice upgrade for the Model S, however, I'm really curious what
Tesla's design refresh roadmap looks like for their older models. The Model S
has remained mostly the same since 2012, and while the design is pretty good,
very few companies can get away without a major design refresh for 7+ years.

~~~
ddoolin
Does the 2016 refresh not count?

~~~
rootusrootus
Not to me. I judge Tesla on the same metrics as any other car company. The
Model S is getting long in the tooth.

~~~
greglindahl
As long as I can smoke that Maserati at a stoplight on Sand Hill Road, not a
problem.

~~~
saiya-jin
People in the luxury goods category expect much, much more than just straight
line performance. Handling the corners or interior aesthetics and quality
isn't something I would choose Tesla for for example.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I love how this is (was) down-voted but this is exactly kind of comment people
on HN would use to poo poo the various ~700hp straight line rockets that FCA
sells (which you can get with arguably better interiors than any Tesla). "It's
not a true luxury car because it's only good in a straight line" is a
perfectly valid (and widely held) opinion but if you invoke it against Tesla
that's not ok.

------
mrb
" _Paired with the new more efficient drivetrain design, Model S and Model X
are now capable of achieving 200 kW on V3 Superchargers_ "

Not sure how this has anything to do with the new drivetrain, because last
month they already announced " _[a V3 supercharger] supports peak rates of up
to 250kW per car_ " (presumably without the new drivetrain as it had not been
announced yet -
[https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging](https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging))

Also why did Tesla claimed 250 kW in the blog post last month, but now lowered
their figure to 200 kW ? I'm so confused.

Edit: found some answers: " _Model 3s will be able to take full advantage of
the new Supercharger capacity [250 kW] thanks to the car’s newer battery
chemistry_ ". So the Model 3 can charge at up to 250 kW, while Model S and X
are currently limited to 200 kW. Source:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18253618/tesla-
supercharge...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18253618/tesla-
supercharger-250kw-v3-specs-location)

~~~
CarVac
Paired with, not as a result of.

The lower charge speed of 200 vs 250 is likely cell limited compared to the
2170 cells in the 3.

~~~
mrb
Ah, yes.

------
gkfasdfasdf
Can't wait to see new 0-60 numbers w/ludicrous

~~~
xxpor
Theyre quoting 3 sec on the website

~~~
goshx
2.4s with ludicrous mode on the website. 3s is the performance without
ludicrous.

------
alkonaut
I'm wondering what types of range extension methods could be easily added to
an EV. Scenario: I'm going to drive 900km/560mi and it's -10 outside (I do
this multiple times per year). I want a cosy room temperature inside the
cabin.

\- How can I ensure I waste as little range as possible on heating, so that I
don't risk having to make e.g. 2 stops instead of one?

\- More critically, if I get stuck in traffic for several hours because of an
accident, I need some way to ensure I don't freeze to death in my EV as I'm
standing still and the battery runs out.

It seems these two things should be solvable with a single solution: a plug-in
space heater to be used in emergencies and for maximizing cold weather range.
The space heater could be e.g. a kerosene burner or similar. But for best
effect it should of course "plug in" to the car vents.

Is this a thing? Or is heating the passenger compartment such a trivial use of
energy anyway if the car is insulated, that it doesn't make a difference? In a
concrete scenario: If I drive a model 3 and have 100km battery left, and I
have 20km to my planned charging stop half way through my journey. Suddenly
traffic stands still because of an accident and it's freezing outside. How
long will the "100km" charge maintain the 30K temperature difference while
still having 20km left?

~~~
dqpb
How is this problem specific to EV's?

~~~
razorunreal
Internal combustion engines throw off heat whether you want them to or not,
plus the total amount of energy stored in a gas tank is vastly greater than a
battery, so wasting some of it as heat is less likely to strand you. EVs only
get similar range by being much more efficient, and efficiency means less
energy lost to heat.

~~~
hwillis
Depending on the car and the temperature you'd much rather be stranded in a
Tesla (or another EV that works as well at low temperatures). A Tesla can run
its heater on full blast for well over 12 hours. In ICE cars that don't have
resistive heaters, the heat output is much lower at idle- think a civic or
corolla. It can be risky to fall asleep in cars like this because you need to
warm up the engine regularly or the cabin will become quite cold.

~~~
terryf
Having slept in quite cold temperatures in cars during longer trips quite a
lot of times, just having the car idle over-night has _always_ been enough to
keep the cabin warm enough to not even need a blanket. Not talking about
luxury cars with huge engines either. It also uses very little fuel. After 8
hours, you can see that the fuel gauge has moved, but only very slightly. I'm
pretty sure a ICE car with a full tank can idle for several days before
running out of fuel.

------
occamschainsaw
As a bit of a tangent but a note, this is a fantastic article. When I read it
in a paper [1] by Alan Kay, I always assumed that most manufacturers would
release a full battery that was twice longer than their current size (probably
a little bit shorter because it would require a big recharge) in order to
support these new models. [1] -
[http://www.arxiv.org/abs/1509.0852](http://www.arxiv.org/abs/1509.0852)

~~~
josh2600
It’s been a while since I’ve read a paper abstract that made me feel
completely out of my depth. Can you give a little more context here?

~~~
occamschainsaw
I am sorry about this, just wanted to have some fun. I posted the title in the
hn comment generator[1] and copied one of the comments here. Guess it passed
the Turing test.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694578)

------
sidcool
What is super cool about Tesla is their laser sharp focus on creating a good
electric vehicle. From the autonomy announcement and then this one, they are
creating tools purpose built for cars, like new chips for self driving,
battery tech etc. They have done so much in so little time, we have come to
expect more from them. There is only so much a car company can innovate, Tesla
has gone beyond it.

Edit: I am a Tesla fanboy but I don't condone their false advertising around
FSD.

~~~
dforrestwilson
If you believe that they are doing false advertising around FSD, could they
also be doing false advertising about this?

~~~
gutnor
Unlikely about battery capacity and range. Tesla have consistently delivered
in that side of things. The core of their car business is solid.

Their problem on the production side is not surprising. Missing deadlines and
production targets is business as usual for "startups" (between quotes because
they are massive, however still very much a new and small player in that
field) "We will deliver million of widget in 2 years for $20" really means "we
will deliver 100K widget in 5 years for $40" with the enthousiasm you expect
of a company at that stage.

Every claim around autonomous driving have been bullshit and they have doubled
down on their bullshit instead of owning up. The grandiose announcement,
Trumpish tweeting and technical presentation that carefully avoid talking
about the current technical issue they must have solved ? That smells like
they are trippling down. They avoid false advertising by kicking the can down
the road further. eg: they aggressively talk down LIDAR because their current
car do not have it but they are bound by their claim that every car is fully
autonomous ready.

~~~
Isinlor
Independent researchers have already proven Musk to be 100% right about LIDAR.

Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object
Detection for Autonomous Driving
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07179](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07179)

3D object detection is an essential task in autonomous driving. Recent
techniques excel with highly accurate detection rates, provided the 3D input
data is obtained from precise but expensive LiDAR technology. Approaches based
on cheaper monocular or stereo imagery data have, until now, resulted in
drastically lower accuracies --- a gap that is commonly attributed to poor
image-based depth estimation. However, in this paper we argue that data
representation (rather than its quality) accounts for the majority of the
difference. Taking the inner workings of convolutional neural networks into
consideration, we propose to convert image-based depth maps to pseudo-LiDAR
representations --- essentially mimicking LiDAR signal. With this
representation we can apply different existing LiDAR-based detection
algorithms. On the popular KITTI benchmark, our approach achieves impressive
improvements over the existing state-of-the-art in image-based performance ---
raising the detection accuracy of objects within 30m range from the previous
state-of-the-art of 22% to an unprecedented 74%. At the time of submission our
algorithm holds the highest entry on the KITTI 3D object detection leaderboard
for stereo image based approaches.

Karpathy was also pointing to:

Depth from Videos in the Wild: Unsupervised Monocular Depth Learning from
Unknown Cameras
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04998](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04998)

We present a novel method for simultaneous learning of depth, egomotion,
object motion, and camera intrinsics from monocular videos, using only
consistency across neighboring video frames as supervision signal. Similarly
to prior work, our method learns by applying differentiable warping to frames
and comparing the result to adjacent ones, but it provides several
improvements: We address occlusions geometrically and differentiably, directly
using the depth maps as predicted during training. We introduce randomized
layer normalization, a novel powerful regularizer, and we account for object
motion relative to the scene. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the
first to learn the camera intrinsic parameters, including lens distortion,
from video in an unsupervised manner, thereby allowing us to extract accurate
depth and motion from arbitrary videos of unknown origin at scale. We evaluate
our results on the Cityscapes, KITTI and EuRoC datasets, establishing new
state of the art on depth prediction and odometry, and demonstrate
qualitatively that depth prediction can be learned from a collection of
YouTube videos.

Tesla has also advantage of having radars and is able to do supervised
learning of depth estimates for moving objects from video.

I was also skeptical of Tesla self-driving capability, because they had some
stupid ideas, like ignoring radar data based on GPS tagging from fleet
behavior. But lack of LIDAR will not be the issue. Not even close.

It seems like they are focusing on building proper pipeline for training
neural networks. The question is whether neural networks as a technology can
handle self driving. Reasoning based on "human brain can do it, so artificial
neural networks can do it" is wrong. Natural neural networks and artificial
neural networks, besides name share only very, very rough low level conceptual
ideas. Moreover, our ANN architectures are probably missing most of what
brains do on high level. So, I think this is still an open question - can ANN
do it? If not, then nobody will have full self driving capability widely
deployed any time soon. Because, even tough neural networks are not perfect,
everything else is super brittle in comparison.

LIDAR and hires maps are technologies that give working short-term solution,
are sort of local minimum. LIDAR is super expensive and already proven to be
not necessary. While, hires maps are super brittle and too capital intensive
to be widely deployed.

But if neural networks are sufficient Tesla will leave everyone in dust. There
will be literally no competition. They do not need to learn electric cars
manufacturing in order to deploy their technology widely, they are doing that
already. They will not need to backtrack on LIDAR and hires maps solutions.
Also, their decision to deploy self driving hardware to every car means that
they have access to stupidly big amount of real world data from all varieties
of environments all around the world.

BTW - Extrapolating based what Tesla was doing before Karpathy joined is
probably misguided. I was afraid that he will get lost in a big corporation,
but he seems to be doing great job there. In my opinion technology that build
with his supervision will be significantly better than what Tesla was doing
before. But Karpathy is not a magician.

So, Tesla has the biggest potential and the big question is: Are neural
networks sufficient for self driving?

~~~
navigatesol
> _Independent researchers have already proven Musk to be 100% right about
> LIDAR._

Well, you better let all the other smart people doing this work know! They're
all doomed!

Why do you think it's one or the other-neural nets and LIDAR-, and not both?
The more sensors the better.

~~~
Isinlor
Look at the dates of the papers I linked. The quote:

Approaches based on cheaper monocular or stereo imagery data have, until now,
resulted in drastically lower accuracies --- a gap that is commonly attributed
to poor image-based depth estimation. However, in this paper we argue that
data representation (rather than its quality) accounts for the majority of the
difference.

Is from December 2018. Your knowledge of what smart people think is currently
outdated, because the new results are so recent.

I also agree that Musk was making claims about no need for LIDAR based on his
intuition. He could have been terribly wrong, because it was just his
intuition. But he is not wrong.

BTW - Smart people were wrong about AI many times. They were wrong about ANN
being dead end in eighties, they were wrong about symbolic AI. They were also
wrong about necessity of LIDAR. In a year of two they will update their
believes as more evidence will be piling up.

------
hellllllllooo
Given the huge amount of truth stretching in the autonomy anouncment yesterday
anyone here with relevant battery experience want to weigh in on this?

Yesterday completely burned through some of the goodwill and trust I had for
Tesla to the point that I am sceptical of anything they announce now. Is this
real?

~~~
CarVac
The room was there to improve. Nothing about this is particularly implausible.

------
asaph
I wonder why the Model 3 isn't getting the new drivetrain.

~~~
CarVac
It already has the new motor technology. The S and X used to have induction
motors front and back, while they now have a switched reluctance motor in the
front.

~~~
zaroth
Indeed, the efficiency advances started in the Model 3 design stage and have
now been adapted for use in the X/S.

------
viburnum
Tesla’s cars are not especially energy efficient:

[https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/30/what-are-the-most-
effic...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/30/what-are-the-most-efficient-
electric-cars/)

~~~
NotSammyHagar
The model X tesla before this upgrade was much more efficient than the latest
tesla killers from europe. This article [1] showed the audi e-tron is 23% less
efficient than a model x (the family truckster huge suv tesla), and the i-pace
is 26% less efficient. That is before the 10% performance. Tesla has excellent
efficiency, much better than these german cars.

The hundai is also a great, efficient car too. 1\.
[https://electrek.co/2019/02/21/tesla-efficiency-range-
test-a...](https://electrek.co/2019/02/21/tesla-efficiency-range-test-audi-e-
tron-jaguar-i-pace/)

~~~
Brakenshire
That test doesn’t take into account increased battery buffers on the IPace or
eTron, so it’s strange to call it an efficiency test.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Okay, well another way to think of it is that tesla has proven their choices
for amount of usable battery to offer succeeds with half a million + cars on
the road and billions of miles driven. Their battery warranty is excellent and
time proven. My S is 4 years old and approaching 50k miles and no appreciable
degredation. If an S and an etron has about 85kwh there's something to compare
there.

Comparing to these other 2 companies, they are being way more conservative, or
more likely they don't have as good a battery managment system and they are
afraid of big costs down the line if the batteries do degrade. Either way,
Tesla has a time tested much better system that provides much longer range
with similar overall battery capacities.

It's not that audi can't do better. Just at this time Audi & Jaguar suffer
tremendously in comparison.

~~~
Brakenshire
Yes, that’s a fair way of looking at it. Will be interesting to see what
happens with the MEB cars, you’d think there would be a lot of effort there to
work on a really solid thermal management system, and much easier to
extrapolate data from one model to another.

------
Cyclone_
Those are great numbers, I'm really looking forward to the rivian though. It
will have 410 miles for the SUV
[https://www.autonews.com/article/20181127/OEM04/181129763/ri...](https://www.autonews.com/article/20181127/OEM04/181129763/rivian-
begins-to-build-out-portfolio-with-electric-r1s-suv)

~~~
leesec
Rivian has yet to make a single Truck. It is vaporware until they have more
than just numbers.

~~~
Cyclone_
Are Tesla owners really this sensitive? I mean they do have prototypes out
there, it's not like they're making up what the mileage is, they clearly have
demoed that it works, it's just about producing the vehicles now.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> it's just about producing the vehicles now.

That is the hardest part, and all that matters. Anyone can make one concept
car. Not everyone can make hundreds of thousands of them per year.

~~~
FireBeyond
> Not everyone can make hundreds of thousands of them per year.

Neither can Tesla.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Tesla's global sales since 2012 totaled over 532,000 units at the end of
> 2018, of which, over 245,000 were delivered in 2018, up almost 138% from
> 2017. Year over year Tesla U.S. vehicle sales from 2017 to 2018 increased by
> 280% from 48,000 to 182,400.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc).

> Our best estimate is that Tesla has manufactured 239,844 Model 3s so far—or
> 21,231 in the current quarter—and is now building approximately 5,884 a
> week. Those figures, and the charts below, represent Bloomberg’s latest
> estimates and will automatically update to reflect changes in the data.
> (Last update: April 23rd, 2019)

Assuming a conservative build rate of 5k units per week, that's 260k Model 3
units being built per year. This does not include S and X units.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-
tracker/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)

~~~
FireBeyond
That _IS_ my bad. I remembered the 5k rate, but for some reason I thought it
was _per month_.

Duly corrected!

------
7e
The longest range electric vehicle, at 380 miles EPA, remains Hyundai's fuel
cell SUV.

~~~
tgtweak
Technically it's a hybrid. Just not an internal combustion hybrid.

~~~
7e
No, it runs only on hydrogen (to EV direct drive).
[https://m.hyundaiusa.com/nexo/](https://m.hyundaiusa.com/nexo/). Zero
emissions, refuels in five minutes at one of California's 40 stations. Soon
all hydrogen production will be renewable from solar and wind electrolysis.
Exciting times.

~~~
mikeash
How much does that fill up cost? That, and the relative scarcity of filling
stations, seem to make hydrogen vehicles supremely unattractive.

~~~
selectodude
It's like $8 per gallon of gasoline distance equivalent last I checked.

------
jac_no_k
This "continuous deployment" for cars must be a logistical nightmare. To do
repairs for a given vehicle, keeping track of what parts are backward
compatible would be challenging. What if it's a compatibility breaking change?
Then keeping inventory for older cars would become problematic.

Unless they do design with maximum compatibility. Then it gets interesting as
upgrades are possible.

While B.EV cars maintenance is low, my car 7 months into ownership revealed
bad battery cells that needed replacing. If the car was say five years old,
would this replacement have been possible?

~~~
cperciva
Is it any worse than what other manufacturers deal with? The 2019 Honda Accord
shares some parts with the 2018 Honda Accord which shares some parts with the
2017 model... when something breaks in my Honda the first question is "do they
still make/use this part or did they change it in newer models?"

~~~
AceJohnny2
Gee, I hope they have some kind of system to track that. Maybe software even?

~~~
axaxs
You jest, but years ago I worked for one of the largest auto parts places. You
have no idea how many times you'd input year, make, model, and trim, just to
be presented with multiple choice questions. Nobody knew how big their drums
were, in inches, or the number of blades on their fan, the length of their
belts, etc. Apparently a lot of mixing and matching happens. Some folks
legitimately had to give us a prior year for us to find the right part.

~~~
nevi-me
The dealerships use VIN numbers, which end up getting you the exact part you
want, even if the same car model of the same year has different parts. I
suppose some of the retailers don't have this privilege.

~~~
gonzo
"Vehicle Identification Number numbers"?

~~~
hunter2_
Just like PIN number, ATM machine, CAC card, and "is that a work PC or
personal?"

It's a very typical construction, for whatever reason.

~~~
TeMPOraL
At least you use LED as a noun. In Poland, I constantly hear people saying
"LED diode". I keep correcting this and "PIN number" indiscriminately.

~~~
braythwayt
See also, “-gate” for scandals.

~~~
throw0101a
Mitchell & Webb on "Watergategate"

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9JgxhXW5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9JgxhXW5w)

------
codeulike
Compare to the Audi e-Tron, which has a fairly massive 95kWH battery but only
scores 204 miles of EPA range. They claim they're only using 88% of the
battery capacity so that charging is faster and battery longevity is
preserved, but thats a really weird engineering decision that belies the fact
they have made a terribly inefficient (and perhaps rapidly degrading?) battery
pack/drivetrain.

Meanwhile the base Model S, for $4k more, has 285 miles of EPA range, and
charges faster when below 50%, although not as fast as the e-Tron when above
50%.

The smaller Kia Niro EV (if you can get one, they aren't making many because
they can't source the batteries) squeezes 258 miles of range from a 65 kWH
battery. Much better, but terribly production constrained. It won What Car of
the Year in the UK but they can only deliver 900 to the UK for the whole of
2019. Not sure what the global Kia production rate is, but presumably far far
less than Tesla which has sustained 4000+ Model 3's per week since last
October (although not yet delivering to the RHD countries like the UK, alas)

Turns out making EVs is harder than everyone thought. We were told the
traditional automakers would just wade in and obliterate Tesla, who were just
putting 'wheels on batteries'. That hasn't happened.

~~~
Shivetya
A few observations, before I derail

I do not want to dismiss the efforts of Audi or Jaguar but I think their
initial focus was being good examples for their respective brands with regards
to their packaging. Their interior quality of a different generation and
caliber than Tesla. The EV part was an important concern but secondary. They
can still rack up significant ZEV credits in California letting them off the
hook of buying them from others.

Tesla needs to refresh the S and X to improve interior fit and finish but also
concentrate on making them quieter, an issue I have with my 3. without the
drone of a motor every sound stands out and EVs tend to ride on stiffer,
noisier, tires.

As for difficulty, other than i3 and Tesla cars I do not believe any other EV
was a clean sheet design. Even the Leaf appears based on traditional cars. the
Bolt is simply a spark when a new motor cradle and battery back pushed under
it. The Hyundai/Kia models are all adaptions. Not 100% sure about the iPace
but Jaguar even contracted out assembly.

\--

The manufacturing difficulty is probably secondary to the seismic shift
crossing the auto industry and associated industries. EVs don't need the large
established dealership base and their included maintenance facilities.
Secondary market means little use for parts stores and their suppliers. Gas
stations will be right out with most charging done at destination points.
Manufacturing of the autos themselves will implode the number of employees and
that will lead to union difficulty in some countries; where they sit on boards
and can stymie the move to EVs and loss of production jobs.

The Kia Niro EV numbers you mention are not EPA which was 258. I mention this
because your other numbers were EPA.

~~~
ajuc
> EVs don't need the large established dealership base and their included
> maintenance facilities

I never understood that. Why does power source matter in the context of
dealership base and maintenance? EVs still break.

~~~
quanticle
They break at much much lower rates, because they have many fewer parts. EVs
don't have the pistons, valves, belts, fans, compressors, alternators, spark
plugs, etc that gasoline engines have. There's probably order of magnitude
fewer parts to break.

Having seen the interior of an automatic gearbox, the surprising thing to me
is that conventional automobiles are as reliable as they are.

~~~
logifail
> EVs don't have the pistons, valves, belts, fans, compressors, alternators,
> spark plugs, etc that gasoline engines have. There's probably order of
> magnitude fewer parts to break.

If you buy a new ICE powered vehicle, how many of any of the parts you mention
would one expect to replace in - for instance - the first three years of the
vehicles' life?

Our experience is that the first few years of a ICE vehicle's life involves
changing oil and oil filters and most likely not a whole lot else:

[https://owners.vwmodels.ca/maintenance/timeline/](https://owners.vwmodels.ca/maintenance/timeline/)

~~~
prolepunk
The average age of the vehicle on the road in the US is about 10 years. Not
everyone buys brand new cars, and after a few years things start to break.

Although from my experience things not related to drivetrain break:

* Suspension

* Brakes

* Steering rack.

As these components handle the most peak force.

~~~
mjamesaustin
Brakes in an EV pretty much never need to be replaced, because most of the
braking is regenerative and doesn't wear the pads at all.

~~~
logifail
If you live in a place with a decent winter, and hence a decent quantity of
salt on the roads, you may have to replace your brakes due to corrosion long
before the pads "wear out".

Does this kind of stuff not happen to EVs?

[http://www.safercar.gov/staticfiles/safercar/pdf/EA11-001_cl...](http://www.safercar.gov/staticfiles/safercar/pdf/EA11-001_closing_rpt.pdf)

