7 ms·

"Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult. But also makes it impossible to reach out of the window to pass the paperwor

"Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult. But also makes it impossible to reach out of the window to pass the paperwork or to talk with the guy in the gatehouse when you enter a port or a factory or, say, a tollbooth." This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms.

raldi 4y ago
Worst as in most salient or least?
function_seven 4y ago
My guess is that they needed to get the drag coefficient down, and did so by first raking the windshield back, then pinching the cab horizontally to get some more gains. That narrowing of the cab then led to the center-seat arrangement? Bonus being that you don't need to configure a LHD and RHD version of this truck for different markets.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eastbound 4y ago
  Different markets can’t be addressed with the same truck anyway. Lights are different, mandatory equipment is different, EU trucks are limited cabin-inclusive, US trucks are cabin-exclusive, etc.
  - adwww 4y ago
    Lots and lots of LHD trucks serve the UK making daily cross channel trips, or even just based here full time from Dutch / Eastern European shipping firms.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The UK was until very recently part of the same market, with no reason to change all their truck design rules after Brexit. The US/Europe scenario is not the same.
- three_seagrass 4y ago
  LHD/RHD swamp doesn't really matter given that the truck is probably too long for UK. They would still need to swap out headlights anyways.
  - potatochup 4y ago
    It's possible to have that same hardware headlight and control distribution patterns/behavior in software
  - zizee 4y ago
    UK is not the only country to drive on the left of the road, including Australia, India, Indonesia, and Japan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic
    - debesyla 4y ago
      ...and it's unlikely that Tesla truck would be a popular choice in these countries.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      It may be too big also for Japan, so maybe fine only for Australia?
- MBCook 4y ago
  Efficiency seemed like the reason for the tilted windshield too.
- kelnos 4y ago
  This truck still appears to have a passenger seat on the right side, though, despite the driver being in the middle? So presumably they'd still have to reconfigure it for RHD.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
As in, the most damning, or the least relevant?
- jjulius 4y ago
  Most damning. The driver being able to easily lean out the window to talk to people as it passes tolls, inspection points, hell, weigh stations, is important. That all of these engineers and designers massively overlooked such a vital component of truck driving out of Tesla's own hubris is hilariously embarrassing, IMO.
  - simondotau 4y ago
    We can only assume they overlooked it. The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say. And like most things, it's going to be a series of trade-offs. Perhaps they decided that in a big picture analysis, the disadvantages are fewer than the advantages.
    - Alupis 4y ago
      If you want industry buy-in, you generally need the industry to be on-board with what you are doing. Building some product in a dark warehouse, then thrusting it onto the industry is a recipe for rejection and failure.
    - jjulius 4y ago
      >The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say. Thank you for quickly dismissing the opinion of someone who has experience driving semi-trucks and currently works adjacent to that industry, interacting with truck drivers on a daily basis. I see a massive, massive flaw in this design based on my own experience but, "Nope, shut up, you haven't driven the new one, your opinion is invalid". Got it.
      - 4y ago
three_seagrass 4y ago
I dunno. I get annoyed just having to unbuckle and get out of my seat for parking tickets that are out of reach. I can't imagine having to do repeatedly do this while maneuvering a big rig around a stockyard. Or did you mean it was one of the most valid criticisms?
belval 4y ago
Indeed, I wonder if they will be able to address this fast enough because it does seem serious. Same goes for the mirrors that are out of reach of the driver for easy cleaning. It could be a pain point. I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck. Being aerodynamic seems like a good way to increase the range.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Mirrors this big can have sweepers, like the windshield.
  - danparsonson 4y ago
    Which can still freeze or gunk up, especially when regularly travelling tens of thousands of kilometres.
- labcomputer 4y ago
  > I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck. I got that impression, too, but in more ways. 1. The interior shots I've seen show blind spot cameras (on the tablets that he doesn't like). That seems like it would address the problem with visibility from the center driver position, and probably goes a long way to addressing the mirror-cleaning issue he mentioned. 2. Why couldn't Tesla just have a little wiper-fluid squirter on each mirror to clean it off remotely? (and do we know they don't already have that?) 3. Tesla already coats their glass roofs with something that blocks lots of IR and UV, but little visible light (and makes the roof of older Teslas a very strange color when viewed from outside). I would assume they are aware of the HVAC issue and apply a similar treatment to the Semi windscreen. Tesla has been testing these things for like 5 years now, and the Semis have been seen at Pepsi warehouses for about a year. It seems unlikely that Pepsi would take delivery of a truck with such obviously fatal flaws after a year of acceptance tests... so I bet there are mitigations for most or all of the issues identified.
pastor_bob 4y ago
Do these front windows even roll down? Might be a moot point
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
KaiserPro 4y ago
Its not a problem in the states, but in the EU/country with cyclists, you'll never see the 20/30 of them that are sneaking down the inside of you at a junction.
- feifan 4y ago
  The displays have downward-facing cameras covering what looks like the blind spots next to the cab
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    A narrowing tool fixing what bending tool has screwed up...
    - feifan 4y ago
      I understand and partly agree with your sentiment, but "offsetting" technologies/components are all over the place. E.g. combustion engines also need mufflers, catalytic converters, etc.
- eecc 4y ago
  Look, here in the EU we have plenty cyclists getting killed daily by trucks of the current “benchmark” design. Just the other week https://www.adnkronos.com/e-morto-davide-rebellin-ex-ciclista-travolto-da-un-camion_5nzXFXYAzlpyK41gvAkWOH/amp.html https://www.adnkronos.com/e-morto-davide-rebellin-ex-ciclist... so meh, these arguments about dead spots are just pearl clutching. The truck has more cameras than a bank, it’ll probably do better than what we have today
ortusdux 4y ago
I wonder how this cab design would affect interactions with the police. I did not realize that you enter via a corridor behind the driver seat. US officers do not respond well to people getting out of the vehicle during stops.
- mediaman 4y ago
  True, but I don't think police are as worried about long-haul truckers behaving well, versus someone in a civilian car. The trucker needs to keep their CDL, and they do trucking professionally.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    I can assure you from personal experience there are plenty of truckers that don't act that way (they are minority but a sizeable one).
    - mediaman 4y ago
      Fair enough, from customer complaints I've probably hired one or two of them for deliveries...
- LegitShady 4y ago
  ya maybe we should check with the police before doing anything. Or not.
- avree 4y ago
  It's still got windows. Why would someone need to leave the vehicle to interact with police? I must be missing something.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
It's almost as if Musk and his "designers" have never seen a weigh/inspection station.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
I highly doubt it, but unless it's some crafty scheme to sell the same cabs to both the UK/Australia/Japan and the USA without modification. Doubt it though, the simplest explanation in this case is probably design ignorance.
lamontcg 4y ago
> This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms. Weird that so many people can't figure out what was meant here. I know the literal English is ambiguous but it should be obvious what was the intended reading.
newsclues 4y ago
Good, we can go paperless and minimize human contact and viral exposure with digital paperwork and authorization systems and intercoms. No need to roll down the windows and let the climate controlled air get dirty and hot/cold.
- greedo 4y ago
  You do realize that there are literally thousands of weigh stations in the US that would need to be upgraded? They're run individually by the states, who will have minimal incentive to cooperate.
MisterTea 4y ago
I'd say one of the worst things about this truck is you cant bail out of the thing as the door is behind the seat. Ever see that video where the tow truck driver bails out after the truck he is towing slides off the icy road and down a steep hill and takes the tow truck with it? You don't have time to walk around the seat. The driver sitting in the middle makes it clear no on at Tesla ever drove a truck. I have and the driver sitting in the middle does will not help with visibility. You want to be able to stick your head out and look right down the side of the truck. This is important as you cant see everything from the mirrors and in addition they can be broken, missing, iced up, fogged, etc. Same with cameras in case you thought they are solutions.
rightbyte 4y ago
Ye. Looking around the corner when cornering is the main problem with centre seat. Not opening gates with a keypad.
bamboozled 4y ago
It's because in the future, you won't talk to anyone, it will be Teslsa botz doing everything! Duh?
meragrin_ 4y ago
> "Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult. > This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms. Seems like it would be a feature if the driver couldn't see over cars and trucks. Maybe they would actually keep to a safer distance.

raldi 4y ago

Worst as in most salient or least?

function_seven 4y ago

My guess is that they needed to get the drag coefficient down, and did so by first raking the windshield back, then pinching the cab horizontally to get some more gains. That narrowing of the cab then led to the center-seat arrangement? Bonus being that you don't need to configure a LHD and RHD version of this truck for different markets.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eastbound 4y ago
Different markets can’t be addressed with the same truck anyway. Lights are different, mandatory equipment is different, EU trucks are limited cabin-inclusive, US trucks are cabin-exclusive, etc.
- adwww 4y ago
  Lots and lots of LHD trucks serve the UK making daily cross channel trips, or even just based here full time from Dutch / Eastern European shipping firms.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The UK was until very recently part of the same market, with no reason to change all their truck design rules after Brexit. The US/Europe scenario is not the same.
three_seagrass 4y ago
LHD/RHD swamp doesn't really matter given that the truck is probably too long for UK. They would still need to swap out headlights anyways.
- potatochup 4y ago
  It's possible to have that same hardware headlight and control distribution patterns/behavior in software
- zizee 4y ago
  UK is not the only country to drive on the left of the road, including Australia, India, Indonesia, and Japan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic
  - debesyla 4y ago
    ...and it's unlikely that Tesla truck would be a popular choice in these countries.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    It may be too big also for Japan, so maybe fine only for Australia?
MBCook 4y ago
Efficiency seemed like the reason for the tilted windshield too.
kelnos 4y ago
This truck still appears to have a passenger seat on the right side, though, despite the driver being in the middle? So presumably they'd still have to reconfigure it for RHD.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

As in, the most damning, or the least relevant?

jjulius 4y ago
Most damning. The driver being able to easily lean out the window to talk to people as it passes tolls, inspection points, hell, weigh stations, is important. That all of these engineers and designers massively overlooked such a vital component of truck driving out of Tesla's own hubris is hilariously embarrassing, IMO.
- simondotau 4y ago
  We can only assume they overlooked it. The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say. And like most things, it's going to be a series of trade-offs. Perhaps they decided that in a big picture analysis, the disadvantages are fewer than the advantages.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    If you want industry buy-in, you generally need the industry to be on-board with what you are doing. Building some product in a dark warehouse, then thrusting it onto the industry is a recipe for rejection and failure.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say. Thank you for quickly dismissing the opinion of someone who has experience driving semi-trucks and currently works adjacent to that industry, interacting with truck drivers on a daily basis. I see a massive, massive flaw in this design based on my own experience but, "Nope, shut up, you haven't driven the new one, your opinion is invalid". Got it.
    - 4y ago

three_seagrass 4y ago

I dunno. I get annoyed just having to unbuckle and get out of my seat for parking tickets that are out of reach. I can't imagine having to do repeatedly do this while maneuvering a big rig around a stockyard. Or did you mean it was one of the most valid criticisms?

belval 4y ago

Indeed, I wonder if they will be able to address this fast enough because it does seem serious. Same goes for the mirrors that are out of reach of the driver for easy cleaning. It could be a pain point. I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck. Being aerodynamic seems like a good way to increase the range.

nine_k 4y ago
Mirrors this big can have sweepers, like the windshield.
- danparsonson 4y ago
  Which can still freeze or gunk up, especially when regularly travelling tens of thousands of kilometres.
labcomputer 4y ago
> I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck. I got that impression, too, but in more ways. 1. The interior shots I've seen show blind spot cameras (on the tablets that he doesn't like). That seems like it would address the problem with visibility from the center driver position, and probably goes a long way to addressing the mirror-cleaning issue he mentioned. 2. Why couldn't Tesla just have a little wiper-fluid squirter on each mirror to clean it off remotely? (and do we know they don't already have that?) 3. Tesla already coats their glass roofs with something that blocks lots of IR and UV, but little visible light (and makes the roof of older Teslas a very strange color when viewed from outside). I would assume they are aware of the HVAC issue and apply a similar treatment to the Semi windscreen. Tesla has been testing these things for like 5 years now, and the Semis have been seen at Pepsi warehouses for about a year. It seems unlikely that Pepsi would take delivery of a truck with such obviously fatal flaws after a year of acceptance tests... so I bet there are mitigations for most or all of the issues identified.

pastor_bob 4y ago

Do these front windows even roll down? Might be a moot point

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

KaiserPro 4y ago

Its not a problem in the states, but in the EU/country with cyclists, you'll never see the 20/30 of them that are sneaking down the inside of you at a junction.

feifan 4y ago
The displays have downward-facing cameras covering what looks like the blind spots next to the cab
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  A narrowing tool fixing what bending tool has screwed up...
  - feifan 4y ago
    I understand and partly agree with your sentiment, but "offsetting" technologies/components are all over the place. E.g. combustion engines also need mufflers, catalytic converters, etc.
eecc 4y ago
Look, here in the EU we have plenty cyclists getting killed daily by trucks of the current “benchmark” design. Just the other week https://www.adnkronos.com/e-morto-davide-rebellin-ex-ciclista-travolto-da-un-camion_5nzXFXYAzlpyK41gvAkWOH/amp.html https://www.adnkronos.com/e-morto-davide-rebellin-ex-ciclist... so meh, these arguments about dead spots are just pearl clutching. The truck has more cameras than a bank, it’ll probably do better than what we have today

ortusdux 4y ago

I wonder how this cab design would affect interactions with the police. I did not realize that you enter via a corridor behind the driver seat. US officers do not respond well to people getting out of the vehicle during stops.

mediaman 4y ago
True, but I don't think police are as worried about long-haul truckers behaving well, versus someone in a civilian car. The trucker needs to keep their CDL, and they do trucking professionally.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  I can assure you from personal experience there are plenty of truckers that don't act that way (they are minority but a sizeable one).
  - mediaman 4y ago
    Fair enough, from customer complaints I've probably hired one or two of them for deliveries...
LegitShady 4y ago
ya maybe we should check with the police before doing anything. Or not.
avree 4y ago
It's still got windows. Why would someone need to leave the vehicle to interact with police? I must be missing something.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

It's almost as if Musk and his "designers" have never seen a weigh/inspection station.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

I highly doubt it, but unless it's some crafty scheme to sell the same cabs to both the UK/Australia/Japan and the USA without modification. Doubt it though, the simplest explanation in this case is probably design ignorance.

lamontcg 4y ago

> This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms. Weird that so many people can't figure out what was meant here. I know the literal English is ambiguous but it should be obvious what was the intended reading.

newsclues 4y ago

Good, we can go paperless and minimize human contact and viral exposure with digital paperwork and authorization systems and intercoms. No need to roll down the windows and let the climate controlled air get dirty and hot/cold.

greedo 4y ago
You do realize that there are literally thousands of weigh stations in the US that would need to be upgraded? They're run individually by the states, who will have minimal incentive to cooperate.

MisterTea 4y ago

I'd say one of the worst things about this truck is you cant bail out of the thing as the door is behind the seat. Ever see that video where the tow truck driver bails out after the truck he is towing slides off the icy road and down a steep hill and takes the tow truck with it? You don't have time to walk around the seat. The driver sitting in the middle makes it clear no on at Tesla ever drove a truck. I have and the driver sitting in the middle does will not help with visibility. You want to be able to stick your head out and look right down the side of the truck. This is important as you cant see everything from the mirrors and in addition they can be broken, missing, iced up, fogged, etc. Same with cameras in case you thought they are solutions.

rightbyte 4y ago

Ye. Looking around the corner when cornering is the main problem with centre seat. Not opening gates with a keypad.

bamboozled 4y ago

It's because in the future, you won't talk to anyone, it will be Teslsa botz doing everything! Duh?

meragrin_ 4y ago

> "Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult. > This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms. Seems like it would be a feature if the driver couldn't see over cars and trucks. Maybe they would actually keep to a safer distance.