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Musk Says Tesla Cars Will Go 620 Miles per Charge in 2 Years, Autonomous in 3
- 36erhefg 11y agoJust recently 550 miles were broken with a Tesla S, driving at an average speed of 21 mph. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/3lc8hu/tesla_model_s_85d_shatters_500_mile_mark_5503/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/3lc8hu/tesla_m... My observation, based on the driver's comments and the Tesla efficiency chart, is that you could go close to 500 miles at 30 mph, which is almost a reasonable speed. Note the context that the title comes with. Tesla cars will break 620 miles when driving slowly (under 30 mph), not 620 miles using the EPA rating which is commonly used when addressing this issue.
- adenadel 11y agoIn the article they mentioned a previous record setting drive: "As readers might recall, a new record was established last month by one enthusiastic Model S owner, who drove a painful 24-miles-per hour to make it a stunning 452.8 miles on a single charge. (The car is advertised as having a 265-mile range.) Musk didn’t elaborate on whether someone would need to drive just as slowly to reach 620 miles in 2017. We’d guess that’s not what he had in mind, though."
- stephengoodwin 11y ago452.8 miles / 24 mph = 18.87 hours of driving at slow speeds That's commitment.
- dragontamer 11y agoThat's why they are getting AIs to drive that!
- Filligree 11y agoIf I could sit back and read, or sleep in the back, then I'd consider that.
- vectorjohn 11y agoEveryone seems to be missing that it doesn't have to be in one shot.
- greggyb 11y agoThese efficiency runs are in one shot, because the largest impact to total range comes from acceleration.
- ksherlock 11y agoStraight from the horse's mouth: "1000 kilometers... hmm. Well, it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers. As it is, the record right now for model s is 800 kilometers (496 miles). That's the furthest that anyone has driven a model s. ... Now, in order to do that, they did drive at a relatively slow speed, so, you know, we're talking, I think they drive at 40 or 50 kilometers an hour (25-30mph) or something like that. But I think, my guess, we could probably break a thousand kilometers within a year or two. ... 5 to 10% a year" It seems, to me, slow driving ("circumstances") is what he had in mind.
- larrys 11y agoReminds me of a joke that goes something like this. "If you never have sex (or maybe it was "if you cutoff your testicles"?) you will live an extra 10 years. And the punchline is "you call that living?". Why in the world does it matter at all if you can drive many miles at an unrealistic average speed? You call that driving?
- ctdonath 11y agoOnce it can be done, refinements & improvements may be added to achieve it in comfort & style.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ck2 11y agoWind resistance is the mpg/battery killer. Same thing on a bicycle, over 25mph is much much harder than under because of air making a wall.
- JeremyNT 11y agoAn interesting thought experiment: when we have AI driven electric vehicles used to transport goods (and thus no human labor costs in the equation), will driving behaviors for some types of shipments be optimized for fuel economy at the expense of slower speeds? Will some trucks be driving the minimum speed limit on highways to save electricity?
- codyb 11y agoThat'd be interesting and it seems to make sense. Since business's optimize for cost and AI driven trucks don't need breaks and won't have limits on driving for extended periods of time (presumably) it seems it'd make sense to optimize for electricity use and delivery times. I don't see why they wouldn't drive as slow as they needed if that would produce greater profits for the shippers while not reducing the end consumer experience with late deliveries.
- aetherson 11y agoSeems unlikely. The cost of electricity is pretty low, while the cost of utilizing your truck is probably much higher.
- elihu 11y agoI also wonder if we're going to see an increase in traffic due to zero-occupant traffic. Supposing that the car of the future can drive itself home when I'm at work and pick me up at the end of day, will that mean that there's going to be a lot of cars on the road just transporting themselves and nothing else? This might be particularly common in cases where a single car is shared by multiple people.
- wrsh07 11y agoIn bigger cities, if you compare this to cars looking for parking spaces, I think you'll actually see a net decrease in traffic.
- chx 11y agoI think individual car ownership will disappear. You will commission a car to get from point A to point B (with the options of lower costs if you are willing to pick up passengers en route) and then the car will go on and do other trips. Your own car just sits there almost all the time, that's really inefficient and expensive.
- mtgx 11y agoI wish he didn't do this. He should stop comparing "record-breaking" numbers with each other, and instead focus on what "normal driving" would get you. He's only going to encourage other auto makers to be highly misleading about their numbers, too. I was hoping Tesla would keep that in check. Oh well.
- watty 11y agoDid you read the article? > Musk didn’t elaborate on whether someone would need to drive just as slowly to reach 620 miles in 2017. We’d guess that’s not what he had in mind, though. He is saying that by 2017 he believes Tesla cars will be able to drive 620 miles under normal driving conditions.
- yclept 11y agoThey'd guess c:
- davmre 11y agoNo, he didn't say that at all. "We’d guess that’s not what he had in mind" is Techcrunch editorializing. Musk himself didn't say what he had in mind. Given that 620 miles is roughly triple a Tesla's current everyday range and it's unlikely that battery performance will triple in the next two years, it seems a lot more plausible that he's thinking of extending the current hypermiling techniques -- add a special software mode, tuck in a few extra battery packs around the edges, etc. -- than about some fundamental innovation that would yield 620 miles from typical driving habits. If he really meant the latter, he could have said so, but keeping it vague allows him to make an ambitious-sounding prediction that is, strictly speaking, still pretty straightforward for Tesla engineers to fulfill.
- dsfyu404ed 11y agoNormal driving conditions for a 500mi trip are substantially different than those for five 100mi trips. Generally speaking, people going 500+mi (highway driving) all at once aren't doing so at 55mph or 65mph unless they're towing/hauling something. A reasonable speed to go 500+mi is 70-90mph. Nobody going that far wants to sit in a car any longer than they have to. A lower speed is reasonable for a trip of less distance.
- Animats 11y agoGo 620 miles how? Different battery technology? More batteries? Reduced chassis weight? Lighter powertrain designed for a lower top speed? A new 2x battery technology seems unlikely. There's nothing that good coming on line within three years. Panasonic is already setting up Tesla's battery cell plant, so that decision has been made. (Panasonic makes the cells, Tesla packages them; many of the employees at Tesla's "superfactory" work for Panasonic.)
- watty 11y agoProbably both, as well as improved efficiency.
- encoderer 11y agoSoftware improvements certainly can play a part.
- masklinn 11y agoSoftware is not magic, there's a specific amount of energy stored in a battery and you won't software more out of it, sorry.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 11y agoYou could say the same about gasoline, yet MPG varies widely across vehicles. On my EV, I can drastically change the battery's range (from 80 to 120 predicted miles) based on driving behavior, much of which could be "shaped" by software. "Softwareing" 50% more distance out of that stored energy matters.
- prodmerc 11y agoThat's because petrol has ~20 times more energy per KG than Lithium Ion cells, and engines are only ~30% efficient at converting it into movement (vs electric motors at 90%). There's more potential for various optimization in an internal combustion engine. EVs have been designed from the get go with most of the possible software optimizations...
- jewel 11y agoThis seems possible by simply doubling the battery size, along with modest improvements to efficiency. Sure, it'd add another 1200 pounds, but that's still lighter than a pickup truck. With a price drop due to the gigafactory, they might even be able to do it for the same cost of the current models. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could chime in about whether or not that'd be possible. It seems like there could be enough room for another layer of batteries, with only a modest change to the shape of the car.
- Someone 11y agohttp://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/max-load-model-s http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/max-load-model-s indicates that the weight of (passengers + cargo) in the model S should not exceed 962 pounds. So adding 1200 pounds of battery to the model S to get that range is out of the question. Even if you could, if you add 1200 pounds, power usage will go up. So, you will have to change the design of the car to accommodate the larger battery weight. It is unlikely that you can do that without adding further weight, increasing power usage further, or tremendously increasing the price of the car.
- VLM 11y agoHistorically this is the rocket equation, which led to multi-stage rockets. I'm not sure we'll see multi-stage electric cars anytime soon. Although with progress in autonomous vehicles, some kind of first stage or trailer could drop off and drive itself back home...
- gizmo686 11y agoAt that point, you do not even need rocket style staging. Instead, when you are low, have a battery car meet you and dock while you are driving along the highway. Once you are recharged, the battery car can go back to the charging station, or to another customer. Of course, I do not forsee this being a cost effective approach, even without the regularty hurdles of highway speed docking.
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- rhino369 11y agoAutonomous in 3 years sounds impossible. Though I guess that depends on what definition of autonomous you use.
- therobot24 11y agoI would think it's more or less highway driving.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoAs others have said, it's going to be more than three years before I trust it on a snowpacked highway, still less one with ice.
- therobot24 11y agoCar companies already travel all over the US to test varying parts of the vehicle, with individual teams ending up in places like death valley, alaska, or north carolina's tail of the dragon. Why would they not do the same for autonomous testing?
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoSure, they would. But they've done most of the initial development on dry roads. Snow driving is rather a different beast, and has had less development and testing time (because the first step is to get it to work at all, in the best conditions). Sure, they'll test it on snow. And I'll probably trust it on snow, eventually. But I'll trust it on snow later than I'll trust it on dry roads.
- sgk284 11y agoIt sounds aggressive, but most of the hurdles at this point are regulatory and insurance related (at least during fair weather conditions). Uber is aiming to have autonomous cars within two years and Google is actively testing local autonomous commuter cars, so it seems feasible. Also note that current Tesla cars (assuming you are in the beta program) can drive themselves on highways today.
- bigdubs 11y agoSort of naive question; where are we getting the raw materials for all these batteries?
- greglindahl 11y agoTesla has announced 2 big lithium contracts, one with a mine in Mexico, and one with a mine in Nevada. http://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Tesla+%28TSLA%29+Enters+Lithium+Supply+Contract+with+Rare+Earth+Minerals+and+Bacanora+Minerals/10850689.html http://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Tesla+%28TSLA%29... http://www.rgj.com/story/money/economy/reno-rebirth/2015/09/16/tesla-secures-lithium-deal-nevada-pure-energy-minerals/72345888/ http://www.rgj.com/story/money/economy/reno-rebirth/2015/09/...
- reportingsjr 11y agoLithium is mined in a variety of places like Australia, Chile, Argentina, China, etc[0]. Not a whole lot of lithium production in the US, although there are significant lithium reserves in the US. I would assume Tesla/Panasonic gets their lithium from all of these places. Very recently Tesla agreed to start buying lithium in Nevada[1] which is also where the new battery factory will be. [0] http://www.thestreet.com/story/12758999/1/2013-top-8-lithium-producing-countries.html http://www.thestreet.com/story/12758999/1/2013-top-8-lithium... [1] http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/tesla-lithium-gigafactory-nevada/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/tesla-lithium-gigafactory-neva...
- thelollies 11y agoThe title reminded me of Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field".
- 36erhefg 11y agoWho is distorting the reality here. The journalist or the source? Watch the video and then look at the title.
- ben174 11y agoIs he trying to cannibalize current sales? I've got a Model X reserved but I'm almost ready to bail when I hear things like this are so just a couple years away.
- 36erhefg 11y agoOf course not. The range given in the title comes with the context(which is not explicitly given). The average speed to obtain that mileage is very low. Watch the video, this question is addressed in the last few minutes. Transcript: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299634 On a side note; you are basing your expensive decision on an arguably click-bait title!?
- balls187 11y agoMy understanding is the Tesla vehicles are a platform, and that even if you purchase a X now, you'd be able to upgrade the various components for autonomous driving and extended range.
- tdylan 11y agoI doubt that it'll be only a few years, Musk has a pretty bad track record on timing (great track record on results though).
- johnward 11y agoI think Elon is still talking about hypermileage not production numbers.
- onion2k 11y agoAutonomous within 3 years ... So Elon is planning to massively disrupt the legal and insurance industries? Both those will need a lot of changes before anyone can drive down the road in a privately owned fully autonomous car.
- 3pt14159 11y agoWell there are 200 countries. And once Norway starts to show plummeting casualty rates every major country will soon follow. We'll need to start short selling car insurance companies soon.
- tibbon 11y agoIf only every country followed things that Norway tried that worked out well in measurable ways (universal health care for one...) By this flow, the US will be the last country with them.
- Strom 11y agoSelling short? More like a good time to buy! In my country, car insurence is mandatory and I don't see it being removed with autonomous cars. So the income for insurance companies remains similar. Crashes will be reduced however, so the expenses for the insurance companies will go down and thus profit margins will go up.
- dsfyu404ed 11y agocrashes aren't really an expense. If someone causes $3000 worth of claim their rate will be increased such that by the time it's back to it's pre-claim level the difference between the pre-claim rate and increased will be approximately the amount paid. Don't believe me? Run the numbers. It's medical stuff that actually costs the insurance companies money. Look at modern cars. The engineers aren't the ones drooling over 10+ airbags. Setting of 10 explosions close to people in a safe way is a PITA and the hardware takes up precious weight and space that could be used for something else. Consumers aren't demanding cars that get crushed like a tin can totaled out when you get rear ended at 10mph or back into a pole. The "safety at the cost of all else" designs that have been creeping into cars do keep people out of the (expensive) hospital but at a highly increased cost of ownership and with sacrificed performance in other areas (including efficiency). The first I in IIHS doesn't stand for consumer. That's not who they're trying to protect.
- cornholio 11y agoWho cares ? Make battery swap the standard option, build enough swap stations, and sell me a cheaper car without battery. I want to pay for "battery as a service", I don't need to own a battery, I don't want to charge it, just bill me by the KWh used (which should better be competitive to gas).
- goatforce5 11y agoPeople didn't use the battery swap stations: http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/ http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/ (Although the business model didn't work as you describe it.) It seems as though, for now, the supercharger network is good enough.
- cornholio 11y agoYeah, I know the story. The result shouldn't surprise anyone, the swap approach works only if there are enough swap stations so that buying a battery-less car makes sense. As long as all Teslas come pre-equipped with a very expensive battery, it makes little economic sense to let it depreciate while you are paying to use another battery.
- alexkcd 11y agoThese stations don't get used much because Tesla sells a battery with every car they make. If the cars came without the battery, there would be a lot of demand, but would also require the infrastructure to be in place to support long range travel. It's a classic chicken and egg problem. What Tesla discovered is that bootstrapping the battery swap infrastructure off of battery owners doesn't work, since owners are reluctant to pay for swapping out their battery over recharging the one they own.
- ghaff 11y agoSee also Better Place: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Better-Place-Battery-Swapping-EV-Startup-Stays-Alive http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Better-Place-Bat... (Although, arguably, it was also launched too early from a technology perspective.)
- nsxwolf 11y agoHaving trouble accepting Elon Musk’s claim that Teslas will be capable of fully autonomous driving in 3 years. One of the difficulties I am having is that I’m not aware of another advanced technology that just popped into the consumer market overnight like we’ve been told to expect with self driving cars. There’s always a gradual evolution of a technology over time. There’s very little of that evolution seen with this technology. There’s self-parallel parking cars, there’s autopilot-style cruise control systems, but we’re going to instantly leap from that to fully autonomous driving? It's like aliens visiting and giving us some far-future tech overnight.
- jjoonathan 11y agoI thought fully autonomous cars had already existed long enough to have racked up statistically meaningful (and impressive) track records?
- aetherson 11y agoThey have, but there's a big list of caveats that go with that. Google's cars are very clearly extremely safe on dry highways in good visibility when humans are ready to take over if there is construction on the highway and so on and so forth. That's where they've got hundreds of thousands of miles. The cars may well be substantially better than that right now, but they don't have a million miles of experience in more challenging conditions.
- ghaff 11y agoProvided the roads are also very well-mapped. Google (as well as some auto manufacturers) have made impressive progress. I'm actually encouraged that full autonomy (as in I can legally read a book) on a subset of limited access highways in appropriate weather conditions is something we might see within 10 years on a mainstream luxury car. I am sadly far more skeptical about the general case.
- redwood 11y ago
- cpprototypes 11y agoThe recent oil price changes made me wonder if the future of cars will be EV or continue to be ICE. It's not because of the current low price of oil. It's what caused it, which is fracking. Fracking has been known for a long time. But it suddenly became viable when oil was at $100+. And it was so successful it crashed the global price of oil. When oil reaches $100 again, what other new technologies will be viable? What about $200, $300? This could easily happen due to decreasing oil reserves and increasing demand for a carbon tax due to climate change. Many assume that the path from here is EV. But at $200, $300, the technologies to make oil may become viable. There are technologies right now (I think Audi demonstrated something last year) to take CO2 from the air and combine with hydrogen to make oil. This kind of technology also goes very well with renewable power like wind and solar. The big issue with wind and solar is storing excess electric generation. Most think batteries are the solution. But what about just making oil instead? All of this works directly with the huge current infrastructure and investment in oil and cars. It even provides a much easier solution to reducing climate change than EV. Just create a government regulation that requires all gas to be at least 10% from carbon neutral source. They already did it with ethanol (E10). And if more CO2 reduction is required, they can just keep increasing the percentage mix. When all of these technologies are viable, gas will probably be very expensive. I don't know what the number will be, but let's imagine it's $10 per gallon. That's very expensive, but is it enough for everyone to throw away their cars and buy EV? Is it enough to pay the premium for EV?
- jjoonathan 11y ago> It even provides a much easier solution to reducing climate change than EV. Just create a government regulation that requires all gas to be at least 10% from carbon neutral source. Poe's law.
- cpprototypes 11y agoIt's laughable to think about this now. But nature doesn't care about liberal/conservative or democrat/republication. The effects of climate change are already happening (California drought). As the effects become more obvious and clear, and the younger generation replaces the old, the political climate can change quickly. EV is simply not a general solution. People keep their cars for a long time and there's no way that infrastructure can change fast enough (for example, all the urban areas with apartments and no personal garages). Nature won't wait for us to upgrade and change our infrastructure to be EV friendly. So what if there's a way to keep the current system but reduce CO2 at the same time? Fracking was once laughed at as not economically viable. Then it suddenly was. Technologies to make oil is now laughed at. Will it still be when oil is at $200 or $300?
- phragg 11y agophragg says $TSLA will be >$500 per share when autonomous hits.
- nostromo 11y agoI'm surprised he said this publicly. Why rush out to buy a Tesla today when you can get a far better Tesla in 2 or 3 years?
- JTon 11y agoYeah, good point. How awesome would it be if cars were modular and upgradable like tower PCs. Buy today, because you you can incrementally upgrade tomorrow
- 36erhefg 11y agoThis is what he actually said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299634
- njharman 11y agoMany people, esp people who can afford to lease a ~100k car, get a new one every 3years.
- brento 11y agoI would love a fully autonomous car, however I would want to see multiple layers of security in place to prevent hacking. The last thing I want is to end up dead because a hacker thought it would be funny to steer my car into a ditch.
- chx 11y agoHonestly, the car itself should be offline. Right now it seems easier to create a self driving car than secure software.
- sixQuarks 11y agoI know Elon Musk gets a lot of flak for throwing out unreasonable predictions, but I watched this interview a couple of days ago and didn't think much about the claim because it was an off-the-cuff guess instigated by the interviewer. It wasn't like Elon made a special announcement to tell the world about this. The press picks up anything he says and makes it into a big "announcement". I saw several headlines that made it seem like an official announcement. I guess he should be more careful when he's thinking out loud.
- mikeyouse 11y agoYeah, the context was linked above, it was really just off-the-cuff; He was asked about 1,000km range: 1,000 kilometers... hmm... Well, it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers. As it is, the record right now for Model S is 800 kilometers (496 miles). That's the furthest that anyone has driven a Model S. Now, in order to do that, they did drive at a relatively slow speed, so, you know, we're talking, I think they drive at 40 or 50 kilometers an hour (25-30mph) or something like that. But I think, my guess, we could probably break a thousand kilometers within a year or two.. 5% - 10% per year.
- masklinn 11y agoIIRC they drove not only at a low speed but on ~0 grade road and with all conveniences disabled (no AC, just fans).
- dang 11y agoWe changed the URL from http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/elon-musk-says-tesla-cars-will-reach-620-miles-on-a-single-charge-within-a-year-or-two-have-fully-autonomous-cars-in-three-years/#.bc3qki:KVt4 http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/elon-musk-says-tesla-cars-w... to the video it summarizes.
- Tobu 11y agoThe video was taken down, TechCrunch now embeds this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc
- codeulike 11y agoTesla expect batteries (and hence real-world range) to improve by about 5% a year. This 620mile thing he's talking about is the record distance for driving slowly on a single charge, which is of academic interest only.
- mizchief2 11y agoJust make them go 200mi while running heat, ac, and radio and make them under $30k. That's all we want.
- koops 11y ago"I hope civilization will be around in 20 years." And that's from an extraordinarily well-informed person.
- trvlngwlbry 11y agoThis stood out to me, too. On the one hand, hearing him say it is a little unnerving. On the other, it's oddly comforting to know that he truly believes we're in a race against the clock to save civilization, and that someone like him is doing everything they can to prevent the end of it (at least on the environmental front; he's probably nervous about other dangers, too, that he'd have less control over, e.g. geopolitics). Seeing that reaction from him helps explain in my mind how he's been able to accomplish as much as he has. It really feels like he's a man on a mission and that he's going to run through walls to accomplish it. Other comments have compared him to a politician. I think that's laughable. He has a consistent track record of 'doing.' Politicians have not earned that reputation.
- frame_perfect 11y agoIt's crazy to think how much further back we'd be without him
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoCrazy, my lack of a driver's license might outlive the need for one after all. I'd been thinking of finally getting one these last few years (the Netherlands is very forgiving to non-drivers particularly if you work in the city you live as I do). Although I can't help but express a bit of skepticism on the 3 year timeframe, that seems overly optimistic.