7 ms·

Colin Chapman, "guy who made lotus" had the maxim "Simplify, then add lightness" had similar guidance. Take everything out of the race car, then if something b

by cduzz 3y ago

Colin Chapman, "guy who made lotus" had the maxim "Simplify, then add lightness" had similar guidance. Take everything out of the race car, then if something breaks add the last thing you took out back in. I imagine he'd get frustrated at a car still running on the victory lap.... "Darn, the wheels are still on we made the wheel hubs too strong." The problem here is safety. Making a race car that disintegrates as it crosses the finish line is best for winning a race, but probably isn't terribly robust in an accident. I don't think Musk is trying to make "barely safe enough" cars, but he is exploring a bunch of design limits. I think the CT specifically is an engineering sample or beta program for the model 2, designed to have low uptake and validate a bunch of _really_ big changes to "normal car" architecture. When some of those gambles turn out to be bad after 2 years, they'll have to fix thousands of dud trucks not millions of model 2s.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
I have no intention whatsoever of spending 6 figures on a car or truck to be Musk's guinea pig and I cannot fathom who would.
- open592 3y ago
  I’ve never seen a car get the same amount of attention at this price point. There is certainly a slice of the population who is excited by the idea of people stopping and taking a picture of their car. The slice is not big, but it’s enough to satisfy Tesla.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    I think it's more likely that it's enough to satisfy Musk. Tesla as a company is probably hurt much more by selling the Cybertruck than if they hadn't made it and had focused on a normal car.
    - cduzz 3y ago
      The CT's weirdness isn't just the silly exterior. I suspect they don't want to sell a lot of them because each one they sell is a potential liability. These new cars are 100% drive by wire; they're all in on their dry cell battery tech, it's 100% 48v for the "normal" electronics like power steering and HVAC and instrument cluster, etc. They want to sell the CT to the weirdos who're willing to put up with whatever the heck the truck dishes out. They want paying beta testers to put miles on these things, get them more tested than they can with an internal testing program. Only once the tech is more proven will it be "safe" to mass produce a "normal" car with all the same tech. The goal is to catch all the "nissan leaf lizard chemistry" or "bolt self immolation" bugs on the people willing to buy a CT.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    clearly not, if they're shutting down production of the car and cutting 10% of staff this is a meme car for a person that effectively doesn't exist: a survivalist tech bro. not saying that person can't be found -somewhere-, possibly in a Neil Stephenson book, but even at the insanely inflated prices of the Cybertruck that's not enough to stake a multi-year production effort.
- Mawr 3y ago
  With FSD being tested on public roads you're his guinea pig whether you want to or not.
- kelipso 3y ago
  Was thinking the same thing, and it's one thing to be a guinea pig yourself, and another to bring these things into the road and risk everyone's lives too.
CptFribble 3y ago
Cars are not software, and it's ethically and morally wrong to test them in production. Musk is playing games he doesn't understand, and wagering other people's lives to do it. He should at minimum understand that he has many, many fans who trust that he knows what he's doing, and will not expect Tesla's products to be cutting corners on safety and testing because "simpler is better" and "move fast and break things." There are ways to find optimizations without removing a bunch of stuff and just shipping it like that to the general public: it's called engineering. If Musk really wants to find ways to optimize the concept of a car further, he'll have to give up on point #4 and accept that it's going to take a lot of test cycles to figure out what works and what doesn't. Rushing out half-baked concepts that are likely missing key safety features because "let's see what happens" is exactly the kind of braindead approach to engineering management that is keeping me approximately 10,000 miles from anything Musk is in charge of.
- generalizations 3y ago
  #4 is the feedback loop that enables rapid improvement. Long as the experiments aren't life-threatening, are you really proposing that they only test new ideas in fake limited artificial environments, rather than in real-world environments where they can encounter the full scope of possible failure modes?
  - RaftPeople 3y ago
    > Long as the experiments aren't life-threatening, are you really proposing that they only test new ideas in fake limited artificial environments, rather than in real-world environments where they can encounter the full scope of possible failure modes? Are people good at reliably determining which experiments are life-threatening? Especially when those people are under pressure to move fast?
  - eropple 3y ago
    When it comes to multi-ton death machines, selling something you don't know is safe is the same thing as selling something you know isn't safe.
MitziMoto 3y ago
This seems like a misunderstanding of Chapman's quote. I don't think he implied a compromise on safety or reliability, just speed and handling.
- cduzz 3y ago
  Early race cars were not paragons of safety. I don't think I'd go so far as to say that Chapman intentionally made his cars less safe to make them faster, but I also don't know that he'd have spent any weight budget to make them safer than the regulations required. IE "if it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish lines" -- that's okay VS "If it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish line, then it bursts into flame and kills the driver" -- that's probably no okay. But there's a lot of grey area between the two, and that's where winning teams won (and occasionally lost drivers / spectators). Old time car racing was blood sport. https://petrolicious.com/articles/lotus-f1-cars-were-so-fragile-that-drivers-feared-for-their-safety https://petrolicious.com/articles/lotus-f1-cars-were-so-frag...
  - qwebfdzsh 3y ago
    > Early race cars were not paragons of safety They were death traps, racing drivers were way more cautious back in those days because any slightly severe accident was likely to result in death or severe injuries. Reliability was garbage too so basically just crossing the finish line was a great result.
    - duck 3y ago
      I can assure you that they weren't more cautious back then, but rather they just knew the dangers and accepted them.
      - cduzz 3y ago
        I think having recently been through WW2 where "reasonable things" included tasks like "hey let's disarm this unexploded bomb by chilling it in liquid oxygen." fundamentally altered people's risk calculus for a generation or two. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/08/secondworldwar.obituaries https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/08/secondworldwar...
dghughes 3y ago
Hagerty has a video on Bugatti and mentions Bugatti buying Lotus. At the time they just made the EB110 two years earlier that weighed 4,100 pounds. Talk about a difference! Colin Chapman was rolling in his grave. It's worth a watch just for the sheer bonkers life of Ettore Bugatti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2sUknP5Pg&t=964s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2sUknP5Pg&t=964s
agumonkey 3y ago
Musk also enjoyed success in spacex context, which is similar to high performance race, and not very long term uncontrolled conditions as mainstream cars.

by cduzz 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

I have no intention whatsoever of spending 6 figures on a car or truck to be Musk's guinea pig and I cannot fathom who would.

open592 3y ago
I’ve never seen a car get the same amount of attention at this price point. There is certainly a slice of the population who is excited by the idea of people stopping and taking a picture of their car. The slice is not big, but it’s enough to satisfy Tesla.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  I think it's more likely that it's enough to satisfy Musk. Tesla as a company is probably hurt much more by selling the Cybertruck than if they hadn't made it and had focused on a normal car.
  - cduzz 3y ago
    The CT's weirdness isn't just the silly exterior. I suspect they don't want to sell a lot of them because each one they sell is a potential liability. These new cars are 100% drive by wire; they're all in on their dry cell battery tech, it's 100% 48v for the "normal" electronics like power steering and HVAC and instrument cluster, etc. They want to sell the CT to the weirdos who're willing to put up with whatever the heck the truck dishes out. They want paying beta testers to put miles on these things, get them more tested than they can with an internal testing program. Only once the tech is more proven will it be "safe" to mass produce a "normal" car with all the same tech. The goal is to catch all the "nissan leaf lizard chemistry" or "bolt self immolation" bugs on the people willing to buy a CT.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  clearly not, if they're shutting down production of the car and cutting 10% of staff this is a meme car for a person that effectively doesn't exist: a survivalist tech bro. not saying that person can't be found -somewhere-, possibly in a Neil Stephenson book, but even at the insanely inflated prices of the Cybertruck that's not enough to stake a multi-year production effort.
Mawr 3y ago
With FSD being tested on public roads you're his guinea pig whether you want to or not.
kelipso 3y ago
Was thinking the same thing, and it's one thing to be a guinea pig yourself, and another to bring these things into the road and risk everyone's lives too.

CptFribble 3y ago

Cars are not software, and it's ethically and morally wrong to test them in production. Musk is playing games he doesn't understand, and wagering other people's lives to do it. He should at minimum understand that he has many, many fans who trust that he knows what he's doing, and will not expect Tesla's products to be cutting corners on safety and testing because "simpler is better" and "move fast and break things." There are ways to find optimizations without removing a bunch of stuff and just shipping it like that to the general public: it's called engineering. If Musk really wants to find ways to optimize the concept of a car further, he'll have to give up on point #4 and accept that it's going to take a lot of test cycles to figure out what works and what doesn't. Rushing out half-baked concepts that are likely missing key safety features because "let's see what happens" is exactly the kind of braindead approach to engineering management that is keeping me approximately 10,000 miles from anything Musk is in charge of.

generalizations 3y ago
#4 is the feedback loop that enables rapid improvement. Long as the experiments aren't life-threatening, are you really proposing that they only test new ideas in fake limited artificial environments, rather than in real-world environments where they can encounter the full scope of possible failure modes?
- RaftPeople 3y ago
  > Long as the experiments aren't life-threatening, are you really proposing that they only test new ideas in fake limited artificial environments, rather than in real-world environments where they can encounter the full scope of possible failure modes? Are people good at reliably determining which experiments are life-threatening? Especially when those people are under pressure to move fast?
- eropple 3y ago
  When it comes to multi-ton death machines, selling something you don't know is safe is the same thing as selling something you know isn't safe.

MitziMoto 3y ago

This seems like a misunderstanding of Chapman's quote. I don't think he implied a compromise on safety or reliability, just speed and handling.

cduzz 3y ago
Early race cars were not paragons of safety. I don't think I'd go so far as to say that Chapman intentionally made his cars less safe to make them faster, but I also don't know that he'd have spent any weight budget to make them safer than the regulations required. IE "if it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish lines" -- that's okay VS "If it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish line, then it bursts into flame and kills the driver" -- that's probably no okay. But there's a lot of grey area between the two, and that's where winning teams won (and occasionally lost drivers / spectators). Old time car racing was blood sport. https://petrolicious.com/articles/lotus-f1-cars-were-so-fragile-that-drivers-feared-for-their-safety https://petrolicious.com/articles/lotus-f1-cars-were-so-frag...
- qwebfdzsh 3y ago
  > Early race cars were not paragons of safety They were death traps, racing drivers were way more cautious back in those days because any slightly severe accident was likely to result in death or severe injuries. Reliability was garbage too so basically just crossing the finish line was a great result.
  - duck 3y ago
    I can assure you that they weren't more cautious back then, but rather they just knew the dangers and accepted them.
    - cduzz 3y ago
      I think having recently been through WW2 where "reasonable things" included tasks like "hey let's disarm this unexploded bomb by chilling it in liquid oxygen." fundamentally altered people's risk calculus for a generation or two. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/08/secondworldwar.obituaries https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/08/secondworldwar...

dghughes 3y ago

Hagerty has a video on Bugatti and mentions Bugatti buying Lotus. At the time they just made the EB110 two years earlier that weighed 4,100 pounds. Talk about a difference! Colin Chapman was rolling in his grave. It's worth a watch just for the sheer bonkers life of Ettore Bugatti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2sUknP5Pg&t=964s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2sUknP5Pg&t=964s

agumonkey 3y ago

Musk also enjoyed success in spacex context, which is similar to high performance race, and not very long term uncontrolled conditions as mainstream cars.