I assume those are places with strong labor protections and typically put union reps on the board. And also that these places are not known for a high level of innovation.
In any case, the proposer was not a moron because there’s something wrong in principle with separating the roles. He was a moron because it was an obvious loser of a vote and was just a waste of everyone’s time. I suppose it did have the effect of solidifying Musk’s role, though.
TSLA is up ~10% today, so apparently investors liked what they heard (even though the reporting on the meeting was kinda dumb). Not that stock price is everything, but it is a nice vote of confidence.
Is there any reason why a gas station owner couln’t put a Supercharger station or two on his/her property? Or a rest area, like a truck stop? Since most of the profits a gas station gets are from the snack aisle or restaurant and not the pumps (cite) and you have commercial power wouldn’t having both fuel sources in one place make sense, also gaining more customers as a result?
I don’t think that EV drivers want to hang around a gas station for a half hour or so. (I also think standalone fast charging sites aren’t the greatest idea either.)
Now, putting chargers outside of Target (there’s been a pilot program announced recently) or a restaurant, that makes sense.
The couple of times I’ve used a fast charger have been at malls and and I think one gas station. At the gas station I sat in the car for like 20 minutes. Booooorrrring.
Tesla has a Destination Charging program where a business owner can contact them and Tesla will pay to install a charging station at their business - the owner need only pay for the ongoing electric costs. Many restaurants/hotels participate so when on the road Tesla drivers can recharge. It’s not as fast as a supercharger, but it’s quite convenient.
I’ve used 6 separate supercharging stations so far. All of them have been adjacent to places that I’d planned to go to anyways like a restaurant or store so it was quite convenient. If there were no supercharger there, I’d still go and the charge was really only done because it was there.
I think a difference in your experience is that the range of your EV is lower. With a 300 mile range, you really don’t need a supercharger unless doing a longer road trip. In those instances, they are positioned near rest stops, or places you’d stop to get a bite to eat, etc.
Tesla is also putting their own branded rest areas near Superchargers. For instance, this one in Kettleman City has a coffee bar, vending machines, bathrooms, some lounging areas, etc. It’s about halfway between LA and the Bay Area and a good place to stop.
Other car makes do this, though, just to less fanfare.
It’s almost a given that the first or early model years of a vehicle will have a few (or more) problems, which the manufacturer will later iron out and revise over the course of its life. With more popular vehicles, this is exactly why the later models tend to carry higher resale and/or more desirability.
Tesla is just unusual, in that they’re a younger company and the subject of hyperfocus, atm. For what they’re doing, I don’t think any of their growing pains are especially abnormal, though.
Just went with a friend so he could test drive an X and I could see the 3.
My primary impression of the X is this: anybody who has ever said anything bad about the gull wing doors has never had to put a kid into a car seat in the back of an X. It was so incredibly easy. My kid is old enough to climb in herself, but it was so easy to pick her up and put her in. I didn’t have to stoop over, or bang her head on the roof. Other cars with high door clearances are easy, but having part of the roof lift up is next level smooth.
Otherwise, it was a nice car, and I was perfectly comfortable riding in the second row. The third row was fine for me, too, but I have short legs.
For $100k, why aren’t the seats cooled?
The 3 was nice. Maybe they hand picked the showroom car, but the fit and finish was excellent. I obviously didn’t get to drive it, but sitting behind the wheel, it didn’t seem like a big deal to use the screen. It will take some time to learn where all of the setting are buried, but not too much. The screen is very responsive. I put my finger on the map and scrolled fast and mindlessly, and it kept up.
Unfortunately I didn’t see anything on the premium package to keep me from waiting for the base car. If it had cooled seats, I would upgrade to premium.
Apparently the used to, but the users questioned the value and didn’t feel like it worked very well so they discontinued it. They also seemed to be of poor quality and were easily damaged.
Although this article from last month says they’re bringing them back;
Funny how there’s such divergence in preferences. Not criticizing your opinion or anything, but there aren’t many features I value less than heated/cooled seats. The whole idea is super-weird to me. I just find it a little funny.
Obviously it depends on how far back the standard sound is, but if it’s at average car level, then the premium sound alone is worth a couple of grand to me. It really is that good once you have a decent audio source.
The glass roof is really nice, too. It’s not hot and doesn’t cause any extra glare. It just gives the interior a nice and open feeling. The rear passengers especially like it (and always comment on it without any prompting).
You’re in the bay area, right, where it’s always 75 and overcast? I can see why don’t care about heated or cooled seats. I’ve only experienced cooled seats on some rental cars, but both times in the deserts of southwest Colorado, and Utah. Even with cold AC, my back still turns into a sweaty mess. The cooled seat eliminated that, and felt fantastic on a long summer drive.
Heated seats are great in the winter, because they heat up much faster than the engine. I know that doesn’t apply to the Tesla, particularly with the ability to start the climate control early. The heated seat in my car has been broken for 8 years or so, and it isn’t worth the $500 or whatever to fix it. I did like it when I strained my back.
Sitting in the second row of the X, sun through the glass roof was completely a non-issue. It was neither too bright nor too hot, even with the sun shining in directly. That was my biggest fear of the glass roof, so I don’t have that anymore.
The audio and the roof are both nice extras, personally I just can’t assign much value to them—I won’t ever get $5000 of enjoyment out of them (I’m not criticizing other people for what they like, just knowing what I like).
San Francisco is always(ish) overcast; here in the South Bay it gets somewhat warmer and is almost always sunny. Not quite crazy Central Valley temps but frequently 90+.
But yeah, the pre-cooling seems to solve the hot seat problem from my perspective. Also the automatic cabin temperature control, which keeps it under 105 inside.
At least with the Bimmer, a way bigger problem (when visiting Sacramento in mid-summer) were scorching hot seatbelt latches and steering wheel. Literally too hot to even touch. A sweaty back didn’t even enter the equation since by the time I could drive at all, the cabin air was a reasonable temperature.
I think the A/C is reasonably efficient, so it’s tempting to just leave it on when I’m shopping or whatever. The interior materials should hold up a bit better at room temperature.
When I test drove an X, they actually just let me borrow it over the weekend. My biggest concern was kids in and out of the doors repeatedly so they said to just take it and use it as normal to see if we’d like it. Picked it up on a Friday and returned it on a Monday.
Only thing I left was a copy of my drivers license and insurance, room a total of 25 min in and out.
It’s a really nice ride, and fun to drive. I only wish the center console had more storage. Everything else is fabulous.
I haven’t been in an X yet, and didn’t get to really inspect the S I took a test drive in, but the 3 with PUP has excellent center storage. Two deep compartments, two cupholders, a tray for odds and ends, and another tray with charge ports for a pair of cell phones. And all with nice magnetic-latching doors. I have all kinds of chunky stuff stuffed in mine (umbrella, power inverter, phone battery packs, etc.). My only complaint is that the shiny surface is a fingerprint magnet!
Been thinking about converting one of the compartments into refrigerated storage for cold drinks. The rear one has a cigarette lighter port and I might be able to reconfigure a peltier mini-cooler to fit in there…
But it’s not “snark”; yeah, it’s cool to look at, which is why I do what I do for a living. Building cars is cool. But the thing is, the impression this gives is that Tesla must be super advanced because of these pictures, where in reality, it looks just like every other auto production line.
In the linked article: I’m a customer of Fanuc, Leoni (disappointed with them right now), Schuler (not me personally; that’s stamping), and when I visit Atlas-Copco (né SCA né Schucker) or Nordson, I see the required Tesla red on their shipping floors, too.
It’s not snark, I promise. It’s cool, I admit. But it’s the same cool that GM and Ford and everyone else has, too.
It’s a strawman, though. I never claimed it’s anything but some cool pictures of robots. And neither has Tesla, really–all of their claims about next-gen manufacturing are statements about the future, not the present (aside from Gigafactory talk, at least, and we haven’t seen that).
If you want to quibble about some particular statement in the article, I’m all ears. But general “I don’t see anything new” doesn’t really contribute anything since it’s arguing against a position that wasn’t held.
One thing we do learn from the article: Tesla does all of their seat manufacturing in-house. I mentioned earlier that Tesla had another company do the seats at the Fremont plant. But it seems now that it’s all Tesla (and still at Fremont).
The article claims that no other manufacturer does this (though I’m welcome to hearing if it’s wrong). It should probably weigh into calculations about Tesla’s efficiency based on Fremont headcount.
It isn’t criticism to say that one thing looks like another. If someone posts a picture and says, “Look at this super-cool Boeing cockpit!” its not snark to say, “That’s what all jetliner cockpits look like these days.” It’s kind of a fact.
Now, I don’t know anything about auto manufacturing, but I’ve been to quite a few aircraft and satellite manufacturing facilities. Obviously, much different beasts. The automation in car manufacturing is interesting for me to look at, whether it’s Tesla or Kia building the car.
I never said it was a criticism. Nor would I have a problem if it was! I like to see reasonable, constructive criticism of Tesla. There’s certainly plenty of material (as with any manufacturer).
The problem is that so far, it’s manifested as strawmanning. It conveys no information and isn’t constructive.
If the comments actually added something, like “We had a seat installation robot like that at X; it was a disaster because Y kept happening and halting the line. We went back to a manual install with a lift assist and got 2x the productivity.”; well, that would be interesting information. Even more interesting would be to get past the superficial similarities and turn a sharp eye to the differences, no matter how small, or whether they cast Tesla in a positive or negative light. Yes, Tesla’s factory is a sea of robots with recognizable brand names. But surely there is quite a lot more going on.
To make an analogy with something I know, die photos from computer chips look pretty much all the same. Really not much more than a bunch of lines and rectangles. Statements like “looks like every other computer chip I’ve seen” are both completely true and utterly useless. However, there are in fact differences to be gleaned; one can figure out how much area is dedicated to cache vs. logic; the number of cache levels; the style of memory bus; the number of logical units; their hierarchical arrangement; etc.
Or to go with your analogy; yeah, Airbus vs. Boeing cockpits are superficially similar. Except that even a cursory look reveals one major difference: Airbus uses joysticks, while Boeing uses yokes. There are probably a zillion other differences that an actual trained eye would spot (where’d LSLGuy run off to, anyhow?). I doubt I’m unusual in finding this kind of stuff way more interesting than “it looks the same to me.”
