
Tesla ‘Easter Egg’ Makes the Fast-Accelerating Model S Even Faster - Desustorm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/tesla-easter-egg-makes-the-world-s-fastest-car-even-faster
======
Someone1234
It wouldn't surprise me if they legislate maximum acceleration in the next ten
years.

Zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds is fun, no doubt about it, but it is fun on a
racetrack. You can go on YouTube right now and find dozens of people utilising
Tesla's existing "ludicrous mode" on public streets.

And here's the thing, if people want to endanger their own lives that's fine.
But they aren't just endangering their own lives, they're also endangering
both other road users and pedestrians (when they eventually lose control).

I don't think anything has been done about this yet because Teslas are still
pretty uncommon, and the features which unlock "ludicrous mode" are even more
uncommon (like 1% of 1%). But once electric vehicles are the norm and the body
count racks up, we'll see legislative action.

As an aside you could tie maximum acceleration into road conditions, including
lowing it if the road is icy or wet, or increasing it on surfaces that provide
superior grip (like freeways).

~~~
Viper007Bond
Most jurisdictions call unsafely accelerating reckless driving or street
racing. I own a car that will legitimately do 200 MPH but existing laws cover
it too.

~~~
wavefunction
Top speed is a different beast altogether than acceleration, and I doubt you
drive 200mph on public streets.

~~~
beachstartup
certainly not 200mph, but he i'm betting he breaks the speed limit. should we
ban cars that go above 65mph?

on second thought, never mind, i probably know your answer.

"ban everything dangerous until there's no possible way anyone can get hurt"
is not what freedom is.

~~~
RubyPinch
should people have freedom to drive however they want, on roads used by plenty
of other people too?

that seems like a good way to increase road fatalities

~~~
beachstartup
it's already illegal to do what you're describing. let me repeat that, for
effect: already. illegal. it's against the law. you will literally be arrested
and go to jail if you do that.

but don't let that stop you from passing 20 more laws, and then banning people
from driving altogether after you realize that, as it turns out, criminals
don't follow the law.

which is already happening, just look at the autonomous driving effort. which
i'm sure makes you very happy. soon, nobody will drive, we will all be living
in a perfect harmonious utopia of robotic sentience.

~~~
RubyPinch
what are you arguing against then? no body even came near the topic of banning
cars, other than you?

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antirez
Is Tesla so fast compared to the price _because_ is an electric car or this is
totally unrelated and was just designed to have such an acceleration, without
help from the fact it's an electric car? Thanks.

EDIT: Thank you for the replies!

~~~
gravypod
The reason why an EV would outperform most motors is mutli-fold

    
    
      1. No cold starting. The engine is on as soon as you push power in.
      2. Equal torque at all speeds 
      3. The lack of a need for a transmission. All "gears" can be controlled by how much power you're feeding
    

The EV is more like a solid state transistor verses a relay. They do similar
things, they're good for different applications, but the transistor has some
nice features that makes it better in some key aspects (like raw performance).

~~~
jaredraby
It's not equal torque at all rpm.

~~~
gravypod
Effectively it's more equal then an ICE.

Also if you can get someone who has a lot of experience with motor control
they can get you going pretty quickly. I'm assuming what's in the Tesla is a
brush-less DC motor and there are a few things you can do (especially since
you're on some serious batteries in the Tesla) to push some serious torque at
the startup curve. You're probably only running a modulated power start for a
few seconds. After the first few seconds you're shoving the full amperage into
the motor.

~~~
CarVac
Teslas have AC induction motors.

~~~
gravypod
If they do that then they can also take advantage of mutli-phase power that
they could modulate to change the speed thereby running it at a higher torque
at lower speeds.

------
ada1981
I've imagined Elon, still connected to childhood sci-fi dystopian futures,
would most certainly include some secret "God Mode" backdoor that only he
knows...

So, in a future where Tesla's are all over the roadways,and the earth falls
under alien attack or some other crisis -- he could easily escape by speaking
to any nearby Tesla, which would give him full access (maybe even unlocking
faster speeds ;). Perhaps even having some sort of transponder to send the
nearest Tesla's to his rescue, should that be required.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In the future where aliens land on Earth and start a ground assault[0], Elon
can take all the Teslas left by fleeing civilians and use them as remotely
controlled (soon to be autonomous) weapons to fight the invasion, all from the
safety of his volcano lair. ;).

\--

[0] - Why ground assault instead of orbital bombardment? Well, there aren't
many alien vessels left in orbit after a massive onslaught of Falcon 9s and
BFRs ;).

~~~
jonkiddy
If I remember correctly, there is a scene in the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez
where autonomous cars are used similarly.

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simon_acca
Does anyone have an idea of what they did/could have done in terms of software
to allow a performance improvement?

~~~
stevendhansen
I have a guess: the limit in these designs isn't typically the motor, but
instead the power semiconductors in the inverter (the motor has a much longer
thermal time constant than the power devices). Therefore the limit is the
junction temperature of the power devices. Most high performance drives have
some kind of junction temperature estimation algorithm (it is difficult or
impossible to put a sensor right at the junction without changing the
electrical properties of the semiconductor). When the estimated temperature
gets too high, they will start pulling back the current to protect the power
devices from overheating. The more accurate the model, the closer they can
push the devices to the limit without failure.

I'd bet they have been slowly improving their junction temp. estimation model
and are now able to push the power semiconductors a little bit closer to their
temperature limit, allowing them to produce more current (or the same current
for a longer duration) before pulling back.

------
Desustorm
Not sure I agree with the terminology of the article (fast rather than
quickest accelerating), but I thought this quote was special:

> Speeds like this offer more Gs than Earth, so the rate of acceleration is
> faster than falling. It can feel difficult to support your head and
> shoulders if you don’t lean back on the headrest.

~~~
venomsnake
At 2.6-sh second mark your car accelerates with more than 9.8m/s^2 to get to
60.

But even lower accelerations will glue you to the seat because gravity
acceleration affects every part of your body. Where as the car grabs you by
the butt and yanks you forward.

So - I think he has probably some vague idea of Newtonian physics but just
didn't manage to produce coherent sentence.

~~~
jonsen
How is more than one g accelleration possible? There is one g making the
friction between the tyre and the road.

~~~
jackmott
Cars can do more than 1G even without downforce. Sports car street tires
commonly ~1.2g, race tires commonly ~1.5g+

High school friction is wrong.

Source: various of my cars (in the past, I just have lame hybrids now) and a g
meter

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> High school friction is wrong.

No, it's at least mostly correct. High school friction says

    
    
        F = mu * W
    

Where F is the output force, mu is the coefficient of friction, and W is the
normal force (typically equal to the weight).

If it's failed you, it's failed in failing to mention that the tire-road
interface can have a coefficient of friction greater than one, and in failing
to mention that the normal force can be increased with aerodynamic downforce.

~~~
jackmott
High school physics tends to claim that the coefficient can't be greater than
one.

Source: note all the people here who thought it couldn't be greater than one.

~~~
hx87
How is that due to high school physics rather than naive intuition?

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pascalxus
That's incredible. I don't think anyone will say electric cars are slow again!

------
obi1kenobi
dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973264)

------
jaimex2
Calling it now, to unlock the easter egg you have to set your volume to 11.

~~~
wlll
Pish, it will surely be unlocked when maintaining exactly 88mph for a certain
time :)

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WordyMcWordface
It also depends on how you define "Worlds fastest car" While there is no doubt
this is a fast car and that time is a stonking 0-60 time. I am lead to believe
it can't complete a full flat out lap of the Nurburgring as constant high
speed/full throttle use heats up the battery to the point where performance
has to be limited.

So while it will be great to "hoon about" in and should be a win at the
traffic light gran prix there are probably much better track day cars.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> It also depends on how you define "Worlds fastest car"

... and here they defined it so the P100D is the fastest. Welcome to the
tautology club.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia has three cars above the P100D on its quickest 0-60 list:
the Porsche 918, the LaFerrari, and the Bugatti Veyron.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_car...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars_by_acceleration)

Note also that Tesla has also been called a bit "optimistic" with their 0-60
times as compared to other manufacturers (e.g. by Top Gear when testing P90D
against Audi RS6 this year).

~~~
mikeash
Wikipedia still shows the old 0-60 time for the P100D. At 2.4 seconds, it will
be ahead of the Veyron, even with the LaFerrari, and behind the 918.

And Tesla only compares with cars currently in production. The LaFerrari and
918 are not.

Definitely some definitional tweaking to get the "right answer," but not quite
a tautology.

~~~
FireBeyond
"the old 0-60 time"

The _current_ 0-60 time, you mean. Especially with this:

"And Tesla only compares with cars currently in production."

considering this is only a teaser tweet, there's a slight hint of irony there.
"Currently in production" is also very different from "fastest production
cars". Very selective.

This happened last time Tesla announced something like this - people fell over
themselves to install it in the Wikipedia page for fastest production cars.
Even though it was: 1) not yet available, 2) not verified, and 3) described
even by Tesla themselves as an "expected result". i.e. a press release.

When that didn't work, they took to the page to add a new column to the list
of accepted results, to add, effectively "manufacturer projected results",
with the end result looking entirely silly and forced - a top 20 chart with
Tesla being the only one to have a result in a "not real, not yet" column.

~~~
mikeash
One of the meanings of "old" is "former or previous."

And I see no irony. The teaser tweet is stated using the future tense. It
_will be_ the fastest car in production once it comes, unless some other car
maker has a big surprise between now and then.

As for the Wikipedia stuff, I offer no defense of it, but I'm not surprised.
Wikipedia suffers from plenty of fanboyism.

~~~
FireBeyond
"We don't compare against cars not currently in production. Our car, not
currently in production, is faster."

But it's not the biggest thing in the world. :)

~~~
mikeash
Replace "is" with "will be" and the strangeness goes away.

There's also the weird aspect that the car itself has been sold for months,
they'll just become faster once the update hits.

------
return0
right-left-brake-right-left-gas-left-gas-right-brake-right-left-gas-brake-
brake-left

~~~
hellweaver666
Is it still called the "gas" pedal on an electric car?

~~~
cynix
Some people call it the "go" pedal :)

~~~
return0
A for acceleration , B for brake. We 'll keep ↑ and ↓ for flying cars

------
ralfd
I guess the title is right if you don't have access to the German Autobahn...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF36JhHRm4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF36JhHRm4I)

------
Shivetya
At what battery percentage? Let alone, why? I want range, range, and more
range. I could not give a damn about how fast I get to the next stop light or
supercharger. Brag when you get 500 miles a charge, even fifty miles more
range is more impressive than a tenth of a second off your acceleration "with
a full charge"

~~~
cynix
> I want range, range, and more range. I could not give a damn about how fast
> I get to the next stop light or supercharger.

You're not the target audience for their top-of-the-line P100D. It's aimed at
people who would otherwise buy Bugatti Veyrons, Ferraris, etc., and range
probably doesn't even come up in their decision making process. The Veyron has
a range of 50 miles at top speed, for example.

~~~
vacri
> _The Veyron has a range of 50 miles at top speed, for example._

That top speed being 250mph. Who drives 50 miles at 250mph? And where do they
do it?

And, more importantly, they can refill in the blink of an eye and travel 50
more.

~~~
lorenzhs
Well, if you have to refuel every eight minutes, then the time to fill up
becomes quite relevant. Not to mention that the main problem will be tyres, as
those likely won't do a whole lot of miles at such speeds. Qoute: " _In
testing Michelin had run the Veyron’s massive meats on its tire dyno at 270
mph — the fastest it can spin — for 20 seconds, then at 250 mph for 20
seconds. It repeated that cycle two more times. Then the tires exploded._ "
[http://www.motortrend.com/news/bugatti-veyron-grand-sport-
vi...](http://www.motortrend.com/news/bugatti-veyron-grand-sport-vitesse/)

~~~
mikeash
The tires also cost tens of thousands of dollars. The wheels need to be
replaced fairly frequently as well, and they also cost tens of thousands of
dollars. Supposedly there are Veyron owners who ship their car to a
destination and then follow along in their private jet because that's cheaper
than driving the car there. The P100D isn't cheap, but the Veyron is a whole
different category of expensive.

~~~
BMFX
There's a lot of cars that are like that. Cost in Fuel, Miles and general
depreciation. Just ship it. Its not that crazy.

Also if anyone wants to see someone do a full on heavy run of the Veyron check
out Ben on Goldrush 2015? He ran his I think to 255mph if memory serves me
right...

~~~
mikeash
What's crazy about the Veyron isn't that it's cheaper to ship it than to drive
it. It's that it's cheaper to ship it _and fly there on your private jet_ than
to drive it. Your car needs to be pretty expensive to operate for that to be a
net win.

Maybe there are still "a lot" of cars like that in the realm of million-dollar
supercars. But I think it qualifies as crazy when the context is a family
sedan that's fairly cheap to operate.

