Gone Electric... Xav's Tesla thread

[amwphotos]

Well done for only loosing $675 million dollars, not delivering on the model 3, and firing a car off course into an asteroid belt.

 

Forgive me for thinking Elon Musk is  something of a media tart chancer while Bill Gates is eradicating Polio.

[Ryeman]

26 minutes ago, Ryeman said:

Tesla does better than expected -

https://www.marke****ch.com/story/tesla-fourth-quarter-resultsits-all-about-model-3-production-live-blog-2018-02-07

 

.....and

https://electrek.co/2018/02/07/tesla-tsla-q4-2017-earnings/

[Xavier]

10 minutes ago, amwphotos said:

Well done for only loosing $675 million dollars, not delivering on the model 3, and firing a car off course into an asteroid belt.

 

Forgive me for thinking Elon Musk is  something of a media tart chancer while Bill Gates is eradicating Polio.

One does what one can with the resources available and the experience at hand.

They needed to put a small load, why not try to make it a bit of a media stunt. It's a double-edged sword. It could have gone horrible wrong.

A media tart chancer? Well, he's singlehandedly giving our kids and our kids' kids a chance to breathe, so it's not all bad. For all the potential negative views one can have on what he's achieving (or not), he's also demonstrating ambition, drive and I honestly believe he is inspiring so many people.

 

Had someone tested an o-ring a little more at lower than expected temperatures, an awful lot of money and the lives of 7 amazing people would have been saved just over 22 years ago...

 

The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success

[Xavier]

Another small project I'm working on - OpenEVSE. My car's now being used as a test car for the charger. All pretty cool stuff.

 

and:

 

[vrskeith]

https://twitter.com/marycmccormack/status/1007831286176571394

[Xavier]

13 hours ago, vrskeith said:

https://twitter.com/marycmccormack/status/1007831286176571394

I did read about it. It's nothing to worry about. What I do find alarming is that as soon as there's anything to do with a Tesla, it seems to spread like wildfire (pun intended) when it happens many times more with other vehicles and it never even makes local news...

 

If ever there was to be a massive failure causing a lithium cell fire, then at least it's not explosive. She comments about how fortunate her daughters weren't in the car. Well, if they were, she'd have had ample time to get them out. Cells might burn ferociously once started, but unlike petrol cars, won't cause an unpredictable explosion causing much more damage and potential injury.

 

There's quite a lot going on with Tesla at the moment, and the media seems to have them in their sights, predominantly on the negative angle. Here's an interesting article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/29/1767826/-The-War-on-Tesla-Musk-and-the-Fight-for-the-Future

[Xavier]

Oh, and not sure if anyone here went to Fully Charged Live at Silverstone?

An absolutely awesome weekend, and my highlight was by far being a taxi driver for two days, ferrying people from the car park to the entrance round the perimiter road.

https://onehome.org.uk/cars-travel/18-electric-hybrid-cars/91-fully-charged-live-2018

 

 

[KenONeill]

@Xavier - Other than an Uber, which other car has decided that another vehicle is an empty piece of road?

[Xavier]

51 minutes ago, KenONeill said:

@Xavier - Other than an Uber, which other car has decided that another vehicle is an empty piece of road?

@KenONeill, I presume you're referring to the BBC thing with Thatcham?

 

Unfortunately, the BBC didn't report the whole story factually and only presenting part of the facts, editing out the warning sounds, giving a worse impression than reality. Also, in reality, the moving car in front would have pulled out to overtake way sooner than leaving it really last-minute giving the Tesla hardly any time to react. Had a human been driving, I'm not sure the response would have been any better - a human might have swerved to avoid the dummy in a reactionary thing but wouldn't have checked mirrors / ensured no other car was overtaking him which would have caused another issue.

 

The car did "see" see the stationary dummy vehicle and did the warning beeps then activated emergency braking, but didn't stop in time to avoid the dummy:

 

In the example, a human would have been alerted to this, and reacted, taking over to avoid. As the human did nothing, AEB was engaged. AEB's purpose isn't to completely avoid collisions, it's to minimise the collisions - this is clearly detailed in the car's manual.

 

I'm not saying the Tesla AP system is foolproof - it isn't. It's advertised as a driver assistance where human driver is still in control and should be prepared to take over. There was the case last year where the car DID see an immobile accident one car up and applied emergency braking before the driver did. Statistically, the technology in use today, when used appropriately, massively reduces RTIs.

[Ryeman]

What a Tesla sees -

https://electrek.co/2018/06/18/what-tesla-autopilot-see-understand/

[RobClubley]

Fascinating!

[Ryeman]

Comparative depreciation with other brands -

https://www.goauto.com.au/news/tesla/tesla-combats-poor-resale-lsquo-myths-rsquo/2018-06-19/73600.html

 

note $A120K = $US90K for comparison.

[Ryeman]

Tesla saboteur engineer sued for leaking to media -

https://electrek.co/2018/06/20/tesla-martin-trip/

 

(maybe he was a short also?) 

[Ryeman]

In-wheel electric motor breakthrough -

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1117338_slovenian-company-makes-in-wheel-plug-and-play-electric-motors

 

(maybe on an icy test track but what about potholes?..........unsprung weight?)

[KenONeill]

11 hours ago, Ryeman said:

In-wheel electric motor breakthrough -

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1117338_slovenian-company-makes-in-wheel-plug-and-play-electric-motors

 

(maybe on an icy test track but what about potholes?..........unsprung weight?)

"Each unit weighs about 51 pounds." Or, even with a built-in conventional brake included, Fvcking Heavy!

[Ryeman]

Chinese set to dominate battery production big time -

https://electrek.co/2018/06/29/byd-new-battery-factory-largest-in-the-world/

[Xavier]

Tomorrow marks the start of our great 4 day rally to Monte Carlo via the Swiss Alps and various passes.

 

When I say "our", I mean the Tesla Facebook group. And there are around 25 cars all doing it, with each one departing at precisely 6 minute intervals.

 

This should be rather awesome!

[Xavier]

Well, I'm about to go to bed, but a quick update: we're currently all at Beckenried in Switzerland. It's been great fun so far, and I realise I'm far more competitive than I thought!

 

More to come, but amazing atmosphere and camaraderie amongst us all as we jostle for top position on the scoreboard

[Ryeman]

Build it and they will come -

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1117563_oil-companies-fight-back-for-charging-dollars

[Xavier]

Well, our rally finally finished last night in Monaco.

My only frustration was being pelted by hail stones the size of table tennis balls resulting in a few dents in the bonnet. It's the first time I was in such a hailstorm and was genuinely scared that the windscreen or glass roof would give way. Half way up a mountain with no shelter...

 

 

 

But on the positive side, we all finished and a general feeling of accomplishment was certainly felt.

 

Here's my route:

 

Over 2500km covered in a few days:

 

Tomorrow, I'm installing three Tesla Destination Chargers for all to benefit from

[wyx087]

Congratz, 2500km in a few days is no small feat. But you had help in form of autopilot :p

 

Some of the charging time looks like overnight AC charging. How much time did you spend on rapid/super charging en-route?

 

At 600km, it's not too far out of range, in an ideal world, a quick 30min break should be enough each day. This speaks volume about EV long distance capability.

Edited 6 July, 2018 by wyx087

[Ryeman]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/tritium-lands-massive-eu-wide-deal-ev-fast-chargers-84878/

 

[Xavier]

On 06/07/2018 at 08:55, wyx087 said:

Congratz, 2500km in a few days is no small feat. But you had help in form of autopilot :p

 

Some of the charging time looks like overnight AC charging. How much time did you spend on rapid/super charging en-route?

 

At 600km, it's not too far out of range, in an ideal world, a quick 30min break should be enough each day. This speaks volume about EV long distance capability.

The majority of charging was done at Superchargers. The overnight charges are top-ups to leave with a nearly full battery. I was cheeky and plugged into some small mains sockets I found in the hotel car parks and trickle-charged overnight at a lower current.

 

Trust me, I wouldn't have used Autopilot on some of the terrifying mountain roads we used! The scenery was however just as breathtaking.

 

I'm now in the Pyrenees for a week after spending a week in Toulouse installing 3x Tesla Destination Chargers at a restaurant / cabaret I part own with a friend, hoping to attract more EV drivers :)

 

[Xavier]

Update on the whole Monte Carlo or Bust thing.

 

Organised as a true "rally" stage where we all departed at 6 minute intervalls, the idea was not have a "race" but to stagger arrival times at chargers. There were some challenges along the way, i.e. finding particular spots to photograph. Turned it into a bit of a treasure hunt whilst enjoying the driving. Absolutely amazing time amongst 20+ other Tesla cars. There were about 60 of us in total. Great camaraderie, stories to tell, as you can see from my previous post (sorry, this post is an edited copy/paste!)

 

One of the chaps on the group works for a tracking company and developed a website so we could track each other's progress in realtime. Complete with scoring leaderboard on the left. As you can imagine, it played a part in strategy as you could see where the ones in front of you were going and make last minute route changes to jump them or plan to use an alternative charger. Great fun! We've made the trip public now so you can see the routes each person took.

https://esplor.io/rally/tesla-2018

 

Also made a very quick one-minute YouTube video to give you an idea.

 

 

We're already planning the next one. Talks of Gibraltar or even Casablanca are being mentioned! 

[Xavier]

Oh and some of you might have been to Fully Charged Live at Silverstone a month or two ago where a whole load of us volunteered to chauffeur people from the car park to the venue.

 

Whilst I never would have considered being a cabbie for a weekend, this was the most rewarding and fun time with complete strangers. The public showed a massive interest and preferred to queue for 20 minutes to get a ride in a Tesla than a 5 minute wait to jump on the bus.

 

Following the success of FCL, we were contacted by Silverstone to cover the Silverstone Classic event where again, we'd be driving VIP and media around where they wanted to go. All done voluntarily and 65 odd of us gave up our weekend to do this. On the plus side, it did give us free entry so we were able to enjoy UB40 playing Saturday night 

 

I probably enjoyed FCL more than Silverstone Classic as some of the people in the latter took us more for a convenience service than truly wanting to talk about electric cars, but we now have a waiting list of people wanting to do it for next year - and our group is in discussion with other venues to offer a similar service, raising awareness of EVs, etc.

 

From the Tesla-perspective, it's great free publicity for them, and we even made Elon comment on our efforts on Twitter so for Tesla fanboys, it was almost a bit of an emotional overload the day you get Elon to reply to your tweet.

 

Still, public awareness is growing and I am noticing more and more EVs on the road, whether they be Leafs, Zoës, Tesla... With the new Kona EV being released as well as the IPace, it's a great time to see the next transition.