Got an OTA update today. They added auto-dimming brights and some media player tweaks. Didn’t get to try out the auto-dimming feature but it’s definitely nice to see regular updates.
It’s a relatively minor thing all things considered, but it actually is a nice feeling to check my phone and see that the car is ready for an update. So far, they’ve mostly added stuff that I wasn’t expecting when I bought the car, so there’s not a great sense of ship first/patch later. It’s just a nice bonus that comes every so often.
How well do the safety features work in real world - i.e. when not in autopilot mode will it do a good job with stopping the car if backing up in a parking lot and some idiot runs behind you, so on? Or do those only work when autopilot is on?
Do you end up putting groceries in the front or the rear trunk?
Oh one other serious question that you may know the answer to. Well one factual question and one speculation.
I have heard that all Tesla 3s will actually have the same battery. The range difference being a constraint placed by software on the lower price one to create the premium price model in comparison. The factual question - is that true?
The speculation - if so then one suspects that as they lose the tax credit, increase production, and start to deal with more competition that still gets the tax credit, they might stop offering the lower range vehicle and offer the higher range at a lower price instead as their way to offset the loss of tax credit. Does that seem likely to you?
I actually don’t use the frunk much. It really doesn’t seem that fragile, but it’s not really like the trunk, where you can just kinda grab the lid and slam it down. Even completely ignoring fragility, it just takes longer to close it than the trunk. You have to set the lid down and then kinda press on it to latch it.
Fortunately, the trunk is quite nice–particularly the “hidden” compartment, which is perfect when you have just a few bags of groceries, or really anything that you don’t want sliding around (it also fits a desktop PC and LCD monitor nicely :)).
I have not really tested the safety features. In principle AEB (automatic emergency braking) is on all the time, independent of Autopilot. TACC (traffic aware cruise control) works extremely well–even if you don’t trust the autosteering, TACC is definitely nice and will maintain following distance even with quite hard braking. So it’s great when you’re in dense traffic and the people in front of you occasionally slam on the brakes.
The ultrasonic sensors are only engaged at low speeds. Maybe 5 mph? It’ll beep at you if you’re about to run into something. It won’t brake automatically, though.
I would be surprised if all 3s had the same battery. I believe they’ve explicitly said they won’t do this. Tesla previously did this with some Model Ss, but the 3 is not at a price point where they can afford to do this.
Even at the full $35k, I think the 3 will compete quite well against the expected competition. Though I wouldn’t be that surprised if Tesla did some kind of range tweak, depending on competition–say, a bump to 250 mi.
This is a pretty (technically) interesting tweet concerning AWD:
This confirms some rumors–that the rear motor is switched reluctance, not AC induction. The “partial permanent magnet” suggests that they have magnets for cogging reduction, which is otherwise a downside of switched reluctance motors.
Switched reluctance operates on the principle that if you put a bar of iron in a magnetic field, it will tend to straighten out. The field induces magnetization in the bar, but due to the shape it tends to align with the field. That puts torque on the rotor.
It’s tricky to get right without the torque having a pulsing feel. Judiciously-placed permanent magnets can smooth things out, though. They certainly seem to have done their job; the Model 3 feels perfectly smooth at any acceleration level.
I guess they’re going to AC induction for the front. Maybe lower cost (no magnets)? Maybe efficiency-related, although I had thought that switched reluctance was highly efficient at any speed. Maybe it’s just more power dense.
Silicon carbide is the latest power semiconductor tech. Can run very hot and does well at high voltage. I wonder if the non-performance models are just silicon. I’d be surprised if this were true since to get the most out of silicon carbide requires a significant redesign; it’s not just plug and play.
I guess they bin the drive units like semiconductor manufacturers as well (Intel, etc.). I wonder if this is directed at the motors themselves or mostly the driving circuitry.
As for switched reluctance : that’s good, avoiding rare earths as those may end up being a bottleneck for mass electric car production. It’s a shame the batteries require so much cobalt - the kind that don’t need cobalt are even safer and longer lasting (lithium iron phosphate) but they have about half the energy density.
Silicon carbide is several years old. It’s pretty good stuff, it allows for greater electronics density. It’s why the inverter in a Tesla isn’t much bigger than the inverter in a Prius yet it handles 10 times the power. The FETs can run hotter and handle much more current.
Amusingly, in the industry I’m in, we’ve noticed a parts shortage on Mouser for particular silicon carbide 50 amp FETs. We joke that it must be Tesla gobbling up production.
Wouldn’t surprise me! There can’t be many more consumer-scale products that use silicon carbide (as a semiconductor).
Tesla has made significant efforts and improvements in cobalt use–down around 60% from their first generation (from 11 kg per car to 4.5 kg). They claim they can go further.
I’m actually a little surprised at the use of AC induction again; I’d think they’d value economies of scale over material cost here. But maybe the difference is more than it seems.
More tweets regarding the dual-motor configuration, including one stating deliveries starting in July (although it’s not clear — to me, at least — whether that is for the performance model).
He indicated that one motor is optimized for performance (rear, I suspect), and one for range.
Some good-looking specs there. Claims better handling than a BMW M3 for the perf model. Can’t wait to see one taken out to the track! Reports from the Model 3 LR are that it tracks much better than the S–it doesn’t go into a thermal shutdown nearly so easily. Brakes were the main limit, so if they beefed those up they might have a pretty nice track car. $78k sans autopilot+FSD, so about a $28k premium over the LR model.
Basic AWD is more reasonable at a $5k premium. Same range (310 mi) and a bit quicker (0-60 in 4.5 s).
I’m not regretting getting the RWD model. I really don’t need AWD–I drive in the snow incredibly rarely. And it’s already quick at 5.1 s 0-60; 4.5 s isn’t really enough to entice me. I’d have thought about it if it were offered when I made my order, but I expect I’d have declined in the end. Also, the premium may be more like $12.5k, from the loss of the Federal rebate. Really not worth it then.
Probably a disappointment to those waiting for the $35k model, but I don’t think anyone can argue with the practicality. On the upside, there’s no indication of the base model being delayed indefinitely or canceled.
Latest indications from VIN trackers and Tesla are that they’re producing 3000-3500/wk at this point. So it’s reasonably promising that the’ll hit their 5k/wk target by the end of Q2, which means we might see the base model before the end of the year.
May be due to the permanent magnets in the SRM - difficult to “sleep” it when power is not needed (coasting at highway speeds) without inducing a load, where an induction motor can just be switched off and allowed to coast. My guess is that with one induction motor and one PM/SRM, the rear motor is always “on”, and the front motor only activates when there is a traction/power demand for it. This would be different from the model S/X, where the front induction motor is supposedly geared for efficiency, and the rear induction motor is geared for power, and I think the car switches to operating on only the front motor for highway/low-load driving.
I wonder what setup Tesla is planning for the roadster.
Also, at least per this whitepaper from Parker Hannifin, induction motors tend to do well against PM motors only in the low-load/high RPM operating region, so in some respects it makes the most sense to deploy them only for highway use.
Maybe I’ll be getting one sooner than I thought. The current car is losing coolant. I think it’s a leak from near the engine, which probably means a hose or clamp, and relatively cheap to fix. If it’s a cracked radiator, or the coolant is getting into the cylinders, then it will be expensive.
With the standard range coming online in 3-6 months, even being at the front of the line, I’m guessing that I won’t be taking delivery until the tax rebate is $1875. That makes the effective price difference between the LR+PUP and SR $8375. If I’m going to be spending $4000 of that difference to keep the current car running, then I may as well just order the Tesla now.
Also, these articles starting last week keep saying the dual motor version will be available to order tonight/today/yesterday (relative to the article date) have been wrong. The dual motor option is still grayed out on the build selector. It could go live any second, but as of 3 minutes ago, it wasn’t yet.
$5000 is right at the top of what I would consider paying for dual motor, which probably means I’ll get it. Having had a 4 wheel drive vehicle this last winter, it sure was nice. 90% of what 4wd was good for was starting at shaded and icy intersections, where the rest of the roads were mostly dry, and the auto locking rear diff in 2wd mode was just as good as 4wd for that. That’s because the snow never stuck around long enough.
Does the Tesla use a locking differential, or some equivalent type of power vectoring if one rear wheel loses traction?
So if it’s a cracked hose, a shop can get you back on the road for $300. And if it’s a cracked radiator, $1000, tops. (you could just buy the radiator from amazon or ebay for ~$200 and swap it yourself, of course).
And yeah, if it’s a hole in your engine block, you’d need to get a salvage pulled engine from a car with a lot less miles ($1000-$2000 probably) and have a shop swap the engine. Swapping engines isn’t something you can do without help. That would be $4k if you can find a good price.
I believe Tesla uses an open differential on all of their cars. Torque vectoring is done via selective brake application, essentially just traction control, although due to the electric motor’s throttle characteristics, this can be done with a lot more precision/control than a standard ICE. RWD tesla’s generally do better in the snow than regular RWD sedans due to their weight distribution (more weight over the driving wheel).
Also before you consider AWD, you may want to consider the timing of the tax cut phase out (AWD runs much more of a risk in losing the full credit), and whether or not you were already planning on purchasing a dedicated set of winter tires. A RWD vehicle with winter tires is generally going to do better on snow & ice than a AWD vehicle equipped with all-seasons, and it’s going to be less expensive overall.
Seems contradictory–but I lean towards the first one. It’s a really good point that I didn’t think of; that on an PM-SRM you need some amount of current even while sleeping if it’s to turn smoothly. Probably not as much as a standard PMM but not zero. Whereas, as you say, an AC induction motor can sleep with no resistance just by switching it off.
So I’d imagine that the induction motor really just kicks in under high acceleration or slip conditions. Which really is what you want, since RWD is generally superior outside of those conditions.
Yeah, I know $5k buys lots of winter tires and even pays to get them swapped. I’ve been surviving the last 15 winters here with front wheel drive all-season performance tires. It’s always been fine, unless the tires were too worn out, because I generally drive sanely. In my experience, on bad days, the cars stuck in the median of I-70 are all SUVs and Subarus. AWD/4WD makes it very easy to go too fast for conditions.
The question is, will I regret not getting dual motor? Re: driving sanely, I’ll enjoy the extra speed, but it’s not like I’ll use it routinely. I will get the money back if I sell it in this region.
It’s a German car, so multiply each value by 1.5-2. I could do the radiator, but I really hate working on cars. I didn’t even do the thermostat, because it requires draining the coolant. I’ve done thermostats on other cars that don’t require draining, and that’s about as complicated as I like to get.
I’m going to need a new timing belt in 7,000 miles or 11 months. That’s $13-1400. If it’s the water pump leaking, then I may as well just do the timing belt early. There’s no white smoke, so I don’t think it’s a head gasket, but I’m also not seeing much in the way of puddles.
There is the real question in that I’d much rather put $2-3k towards a Tesla now, than spend it on my old car, even if that means spending more total on the Tesla—it might bring the price difference for LR+PuP vs. SR to something I can tolerate. The subtext is, that I’m looking for an excuse to order the Tesla now (or wait a few days and order dual motor).
Oh, nevermind, lol. Abandon ship! I figured you had a civic or camry or Prius, lol. Even a Lexus. Yeah, you hear about how even the latest German cars have about the same reliability as a 1970s GM product.
I mean technically you can skip the timing belt. You probably won’t blow your engine if you go a little over. Lol.
