Igor Antarov from Moscow Tesla Club struggles with 20 myths about Tesla and electric cars
Today it seems that if you write “Tesla” on a banner and go out into the street, you will be twisted for an uncoordinated single picket. Attitude towards Tesla has grown from a consumer view of the product into an ideology and political position. Tesla is discussed with the words "believe-not-believe." Opinion about her is immediately linked to outlooks on life. If you say “I believe in Tesla” to a stranger, he will immediately understand what I think about Trump and Putin, and which smoothie I like most.
All this is very, very strange. After all, we are just talking about a car that is a little unusually arranged under the hood.
Us baragol wanted to talk about Tesla, so that once and for all. Therefore, we went to people who know best about her in Russia - to the guys from Moscow Tesla Club.
They opened more than five years ago and during this time almost all of Tesla, who now travel on our roads, came to Russia through them. They are on a short leg with engineers from California and once almost opened the official Tesla service in Moscow. But they simply confined themselves to the title of “Club” - it seems that it’s neither a dealer, nor a service, nor a store, but it seems like yes.
We tried to touch upon all controversial, controversial, and acute issues, but in preparing this material I had a feeling that the concentration of our interlocutor’s love for Tesla and skeptical readers would simply be sick of electricity. Therefore, if the word "Mask" somewhere inside you ripens "how sick of these ...", it is better to read how plasma engines are made in Kaliningrad .
Igor Antarov ( Antares19 ), the owner of Model S, managing partner of the club and business partner of Alexei Yeremchuk, talked with us and drank smoothies with us, together with whom they develop the club. Igor is a former programmer. He developed it for the ZX Spectrum, and read the entire instructions for the Palm OS API from a 160 by 160 pixel screen for fun. Next - his monologues on controversial topics from our many hours of conversation.
Nobody needs electric cars in Russia
One third we are a logistics company - we help to purchase and deliver cars. On the other - the owners club. And the third part - we are engaged in the popularization of cars, which, in my opinion, is the biggest problem. People in Russia have not even seen electric vehicles live, but believe in all the rumors and stories. It is necessary to talk about real operation. Fighting myths is a big deal.
In my estimation, there are about three hundred and fifty Tesla cars in Russia. Most of them are in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In general, there are about 3,700 electric vehicles in the country, and the Far East is the leader in their number. People see that a used right-hand drive Nissan Leaf costs 500 thousand rubles, consider the cost of electricity, and understand that it makes no sense to drive gasoline. True, in Moscow, a good left-hand drive Leaf with mileage is twice as expensive. At the same time, mileage does not affect the electric car as well as gasoline. Rings in cylinders do not wear out, oil does not flow. They look only at the body and battery.
New Tesla goes to Russia through us two to four months. The car is assembled at the factory, it floats by ship to Europe, is completed and goes to Russia. For Tesla, it is important that all the cars we import quickly acquire owners. And they are calm when each order is registered for a specific person. Tesla does not hold warehouses, it produces to order.
But it happens that a person comes and says: “I need a car as a present tomorrow. Necessarily red, with a white interior. ” Although black and gray is in the cabin and is for sale - we always have several cars that can be purchased in one day. But Tesla has intermediate warehouses, for example, with unredeemed machines. We can find urgent orders there, and Tesla is ready to give them to us.
Five years ago, everything was chaotic and unofficial. Now we work through an understandable channel, Tesla knows about us. There were even cases when a person wanted to buy a car in Russia in Europe, and he was offered to contact us there.
Tesla not cleared, there will be confusion with horsepower
Oddly enough, our car is more expensive, although the economy is weaker. Buyers do not like such a big margin. They say: “We see the price there, why is there so much here?” Such is the reality, you won’t do anything.
The lion's share of the price is customs duty. Then there are added insurance, delivery, registration of Russian documents. The chain is very large. To clear the car correctly you have to go through a difficult algorithm. For each car you have to get a certificate of SBKTS, since the manufacturer was not engaged in certification in Russia.
The tax is based on horsepower. The customs officer will not miss his profit. He will take kilowatts and, according to his cunning plate, will count it in a “horse”. But what he writes does not correspond to reality. Tesla has two motors - front and rear. How to count? Add up their maximum power? They work nonlinearly. Need to be considered for motor power? Or how much energy is the battery ready specifically for this model? A whole series of questions begins. Tesla used to write how many horses they had, then they simply removed their mention from everywhere. The only understandable characteristic is acceleration time. The car rides 2.7 to hundreds - everything is clear, it can be measured. And how many horses are there is unclear.
But we are fighting, trying to lobby. I am a member of expert groups under the government, we are writing petitions for the governors to abolish the transport tax for electric vehicles, and there are already progress. Even if the Nissan Leaf is cheaper, people will buy, drive, and infrastructure will begin to develop.
This is a huge load for us, I would not do it at all and earn more in the IT world more, easier and faster. But I have to deal with it.
Mercedes, Porsche and Audi will crush Tesla with one left
Electric cars are a technology that will grow exponentially. At first it’s expensive and small, then there will be an explosion, as with smartphones. Every child has a smartphone now. The explosion will come anyway, it is inevitable. You can not even do anything, but the big difference is how long it will happen - in five, ten years. Or in a year. The term is affected by each action.
I think that in five years dramatic changes will come even in Russia. Even in 2019, a number of car manufacturers will produce electric cars. Mercedes, Audi, Porsche launch their electric cars.
But before Tesla still dig and dig. This is a very sharp question, and maybe I will hurt someone. Old manufacturers have extensive experience in the manufacture of automobiles; they know how to make an interior cool, soft, comfortable, with neat lines. But Tesla does not know, and everyone complains about it, which is not like a German car inside.
Old manufacturers say we have a loyal base. Now we will make an electric car, and easily get our market share. But even their advanced steps are conservative. They see what Tesla is now, and they want to make it look like. But in a year Tesla will go another ten steps forward.
Any car brand is trying to sit on two chairs. Gasoline cars are sold here and now. This is a huge production - boxes, motors, oil. Money is invested in machine tools, in production technology, in services. Dealers earn on maintenance of boxes and motors. It is not profitable for anyone to take and stop the car that brings money.
When the manufacturer releases a cool electric car that will bypass the characteristics of their own gasoline, then the production of gasoline can be curtailed. And a lot of money has been invested in this. It is necessary that the machine for ten billion work as long as possible and bring money in order to pay off four times.
Better hybrids than full electric cars
What hybrids! Gasoline is evil, and hybrids are even worse. If the electric car is radically simpler, everything unnecessary is thrown out there, there are no three hundred parts that work under heavy load, then in the hybrid we complicate everything. We shove the battery with wires into the gasoline system. She is small, sits down quickly, and you carry extra pounds on gasoline. It may be good as a psychological transition, but engineering is very bad.
Gasoline lobby will not let Tesla take off
In fact, it’s not the gasoline lobby that interferes with Tesla, but the dealership. Now Tesla has no dealers, only direct sales. If they agreed to a dealership model, large holdings would come to them and force them to sell electric cars along with ordinary cars.
Musk believes this will not work. Local gas dealers are not interested in selling electric vehicles. The first reason is that the dealer makes money on the service, but you can’t earn on the Tesla service. The second reason - it is necessary to retrain managers who sell cars. They need to spend four times as much time to explain about kilowatts, to tell how she drives in the winter, what to do with outlets, how to set up the station, what if you discharge on the road. A manager who lives on sales prizes could sell four petrol cars in the same time. Therefore, he has no motivation to talk about the electric car, and he will say: "This is complicated bullshit, come on, I will show a simple normal car."
Gasoline dealers who sell electric cars provide terrible service to customers. Cars are discharged, dusty, somewhere in the corner, no one is doing them. Buyers themselves come more prepared than managers - and this is even in California. Despite the fact that there is charging in each parking lot.
Therefore, Tesla's retail does not want to mix itself with gasoline cars. Its retail was built by George Blankenship - the same person who came up with how to sell iPhones. They began to open in shopping centers. There is a demo car there and managers just tell and show, but do not sell. Sales are online only.
Dealer enclaves in America are trying to clog Tesla. In the States, dealers are huge structures. They have their own senators, they are closely connected with the government, because lobbying is legal. Some States have laws in which a manufacturer cannot sell cars past dealers.
The law was passed a hundred years ago when powerful corporations-factories did not give life to small businesses. Now everything has turned upside down: now dealers are huge corporations. The strongest skirmishes in Tesla's courts take place in Texas, where they still cannot open their store. My friend in Texas was taken to Tesla from a neighboring state.
If at this confrontation in the USA Tesla opens a dealership, for example, in Russia, in America they will be told: “How do you not work according to the dealership model? But in Russia. ” Therefore, it is important for them that we do not purchase warehouses and do not work according to the dealer model. We are just in spirit. Electric cars must be sold by fans, people who drive themselves.
Tesla is just a scam for the sake of stocks, and it will collapse at any moment
I believe so far no one has beat Mask. Even in history, when he was removed from the post of chairman of the council.
This was after the tweets “I will redeem Tesla shares at 420” and “420 - because my girlfriend liked the number.” Then he wrote "funding confirmed." According to people involved in global financial markets, Musk has no right to tweet this, because it is a manipulation of the market. The court decided that he was leaving his post, hiring two more directors who should control everything. And recently he wrote that it was worth it. That's why.
The official story is this: he tried to find out whether he could buy the company, asked the owners of the shares for advice, he was not told, and he changed his mind.
In fact, he did it, because Tesla is a very volatile company, stocks are jumping from any news feed. It is very easy to make the trend go up or down. And many are playing for a fall, putting millions of dollars down against Tesla and ordering informational reasons so that the stocks will plummet. There are a number of large American media outlets that occasionally bombard with articles that something is wrong with Tesla. Stocks go down and they earn.
Musk said, “Don't short Tesla. I’m trying to transfer mankind to electric cars, and you are interfering, you simply cash in on stocks. ” He wrote, and it did not work. And when he wrote that he would buy back 420 shares, he burned billions of shorts. At the moment they were waiting for the fall, the stock went up, and their positions closed. A bunch of people came out with losses. It was a very tough lesson for those who were short. Musk paid twenty million of his money for a fine, and another twenty from the company. But he burned billions from people who played against Tesla and got in the way.
After that, a quarter passed, Tesla showed the first profit, and all that he lost was immediately returned back. And the fact that he was removed from his post - he himself asked that he be officially appointed "Nobody in Tesla." But on Twitter he was persuaded to leave at least the position of senior engineer.
Whatever happens with stocks, Tesla always owns the core technology. They have the best batteries on the market, they have been doing it for ten years. Modules, cooling, chemistry are different from everything others have.
The autopilot used to be done by a third-party company, but Tesla began to demand a lot, they put forward demands in response, and Musk said: “We do our own from scratch.” He tweeted that he was looking for people on the autopilot team with reporting to him personally. In less than a year, autopilot 2.0 on Nvidia processors was released. Tesla is now finishing its chip, which will be a thousand percent faster.
They own the core technology, which is super valuable in itself.
Where does your electricity come from? If from coal, then electric cars are also dirty vehicles
Even if you burn coal, an electric car is still cleaner. The electricity that gets into the motor has a very high efficiency throughout the chain - 90-95%. The efficiency of a gasoline engine is 30% or lower. Of the thousands of rubles that we pay for gasoline, seven hundred go to street heating. And while still creating a harmful exhaust. Plus, gasoline must be transported to gas stations with gasoline tank trucks. It needs to be mined, and the extraction is very dirty. I am sure that in 80% of cases we are ill because our health is spoiled by exhausts.
Electricity is an alternative that can be mined by coal, by gas, which is much cleaner, by atom, wind, and the sun. A tiny piece of desert is needed to provide everyone with energy. And with gasoline there is no choice.
When I introduced the IT system in Khanty-Mansiysk, they told me how pipelines flow. Nature in places of leaks suffers, but pipelines are guarded by people with machine guns, and no one will see it.
Even assuming the absurd situation that electricity production is as dirty as producing gas, I have a simple question - who wants to put a gas car in their bedroom, start it and leave it for an hour? This is wild. But walking in front of thousands of cars the street seems normal to us. We’ve just gotten used to it for a hundred years, which’s normal. If our coffee makers had been working on gasoline for a hundred years, we would be used to it too.
Battery disposal will kill the environment even more
Now they do not know how to dispose of batteries on a large scale. Power is not enough even for the number of cars that are currently being produced.
But car and battery manufacturers themselves are interested in disposing of them. The amount of lithium in the world is limited, and if you do not reuse it, it will end faster than all machines will become electric. That is, it is beneficial for manufacturers to develop recycling - they will not have to be forced. Just now there is not enough power for this.
But there is still time for development. The Tesla battery warranty is eight years. When the battery becomes unsuitable for the car, Tesla uses it in other projects - for example, in batteries for the home. She can work there for another fifteen years.
In total, it turns out more than twenty years. This is a good supply to develop cool recycling technology.
They write that in Tesla terrible working conditions
I’ve been to Tesla’s headquarters several times, and usually I can’t go further than the reception. The factory in Fremont, where stamping machines, can still be accessed. If you are the owner, you can even bring a friend. But I managed to get, with a guest badge, officially. We were led by one of the top engineers at the request of another famous person in the Valley.
When I saw how R&D looked from the inside, I realized that Tesla was doing well. You know, in the films they show how scientists work - there you can actually shoot it.
The whole floor, a big open space, where work is really in full swing. All are very tightly packed, sit, code, discuss. A huge crowd of people plows from bell to bell. Moreover, they are recruiting the best engineers, because everyone wants to work there. And this is just R&D. They are working on what will come out in five years. In the same open space there is a table by Ilon, next to a huge window. He constantly runs on an airplane between SpaceX and Tesla and works with the team at least twice a week.
Go down to the floor below - there are already people with soldering irons. There are test load units, supercharger batteries. This is crazy human potential, crazy technological base. Not a single automaker does this even close.
Tesla does not have enough capacity to produce cars massively
I have been to almost all Tesla factories. Was at the opening of Gigafactory in Nevada - the largest plant in the world. In terms of size, only the Netherlands flower auction is larger, and in terms of volume, the Boeing plant. But when the factory is completed, it will bypass everyone. By reaching full power, she will make as many batteries as the whole world put together before.
Opening tickets were played out among Tesla owners, and I managed to win. There were several thousand people, but in the hall it seemed that there were only a couple of hundred of them.
The factory costs five billion dollars - it's crazy money. Huge investments, the most large-scale construction among startups, tens of thousands of people are involved. And it seemed to me that if everything works out here, then you can believe in Tesla.
And so I come to the presentation. Around the desert, Martian landscapes, red mountains around, and in the valley this building is being built. It looks insanely technological - modular, seismic-safe, stands on platforms, robots ride inside.
When the presentation begins, Ilon enters the scene. He is greeted as a rock star, He says: Tesla has become more an energy company than an automobile. We are launching the Gigafactory One. And I understand that my scale of thinking - it will fail, it is far from its scale. I looked at this plant, and he was already planning the next two.
This is all for him - a small step. Tesla is a stepping stone to a big goal. I then simply had a tectonic shift. The main idea is to make humanity a multi-planetary civilization. All his projects are stacked in one box. Electric cars - you need to somehow ride on Mars without gasoline. Cheap rockets, solar panels, drilling machines, because Mars will have to dig a lot. His brother Kimbal creates vertical gardens, stand-alone hydroponic containers that grow food in a completely closed cycle. All projects add up to one goal.
And she is not here, but there. Tesla needs a Mask just to grow technology.
In Russia, the production of electric vehicles is impossible
Now is the best time to build factories for the production of electric vehicles and batteries, factories for the disposal of batteries. This is the future oil, and now you can have time to prepare. While making them is technologically simpler than gasoline engines, but in five years it will become difficult.
Electric transport is developing exponentially, and if support measures are not taken (at least to attract foreign cars) to build infrastructure, then we will find ourselves in a situation where Norway, Germany and India stop registering gasoline cars, manufacturers stop producing them, and used cars that nobody needs, merge to us.
Let them finish at least that IL - it's better than nothing. Appearance is unimportant, the main thing is that they put a real battery, which was made here.
Tesla can not stand the Russian winter
The first Tesla Model S, which ended up in Russia, was in Barnaul. In winter there is –40. On YouTube there is a video of the owner, where he is quite happy driving in the cold.
If you leave the petrol car for 4 hours in such a cold, you need to wrap it with blankets, and then start it with a blowtorch. Tesla in the cold and warm starts the same way, because the battery is always heated by itself - everything inside is lined with thermotubes. It cools, but not to the extent that chemistry begins to deteriorate and capacity is lost.
Of course, from heating the battery loses energy, the car sucks electricity just by standing. But in the harshest Moscow winter, I lose a maximum of 30% of the run. I don’t care - I’ll charge it in five days or in four. In Barnaul, I think battery heating will eat 50 percent. Instead of conventionally 400 kilometers, it will travel on a single charge of 200.
Once, I had a half-charged Tesla for a week stood in the snow. I dug up it, and there were 10 kilometers left. And after standing for three hours in the cold, you do not need to warm anything - he sat down and drove off. Warm air blows immediately, because it does not come from an engine, which is unknown when it will heat up, but immediately from electricity.
Impressions of Tesla from Ivan Zvyagin ( baragol )
Tesla is more of a gadget than a car. We have talked about this many times and removed a bunch of vidos, but I will still share my impressions of the three models in which I was sitting. The fact that almost everything is configurable from the display is understandable and, on the whole, not surprising. You can put servos in any car. But most of all, I was shocked by the fact that you can create scripts.
Near the garage, the car itself can fold mirrors, in the area of speed bumps it will raise the suspension, and depending on who gets behind the wheel, selects a profile and puts the seats and steering wheel in the right position. And also sensors, sensors, sensors. On top models, the doors open automatically and, so as not to bruise or tear off the paint, the door will not open itself if there is not enough space on the side. Model X will also not swing back doors all the way up if it sees that the ceiling is too close.
Power and responsiveness can also be configured - as the power of the feedback motor in smartphones. In the most relaxed mode, the car behaves like a family car, accelerating gently and even slowly. But I would not recommend Ludicrous mode to those who are driving recently. Once a professional racer showed me what Lamborghini Murcielago is capable of on a racetrack. So Model S in "funny" mode behaves in much the same way. He doesn’t just squeeze into the seat, but throws it with all the dope, and, not being ready, for the first time I managed to say only “your mother!”. To shoot an sensible video that would transmit acceleration did not work. Therefore, keep a video from YouTube about how the grandson shows grandfather this mode.
But here it is clear that the inside is quiet. And no, it doesn't sound like a trolleybus at all.
Model 3 (and now Y) has no classic dashboard. There is nothing at all there except the steering wheel and display, even the deflectors of the climate system - they are also on servos and hidden in a wide gap. And all this, of course, looks very strange. It is not clear where to look: where is the speedometer and tachometer? How much gas is left? Thank you, left the gearshift paddles, although theoretically they could get rid of them. You can probably get used to such minimalism in a day or two, but in the first half hour I sat and thought that it all resembled fantasies from the 90s about the future. Well, in short, it has come. Now I’m wondering: when the Mask is approved for autonomy, and completely independent cars appear on the roads, will Tesla add the option to turn the steering wheel?
In Tesla you'll always be nervous that the car will soon be discharged
There is the concept of Range Anxiety - the concern that you will not reach. It appeared when electric cars drove a maximum of one hundred kilometers. You ride on them and watch the battery melt.
Tesla's breakthrough is that this alarm is absent. Previously, the charge was shown on the monitor large and in the middle, then they stuck a small icon somewhere in the corner, which really and there is no need to look at. I know that I absolutely always have enough charge to get where I need to. Traveling is a separate issue, you need to know in advance where you will be charged. But in the city, no matter what I do, I cannot land the car. For four and a half years, I planted it only once. On purpose.
It was in the winter, just when the week was a frost of –30, she had a charge of 10 km. I could drive to the backyard to the outlet, I could negotiate with any store or car wash, plug into any 220V outlet. But it became interesting to me how long the car would actually stretch.
I set the path to charging in an office in the center from a private house and drove off, although according to calculations there was no chance. I just dropped off the hill. On the rise it was necessary to slow down, and I usually drove. As a result, there was not enough power to climb, and the car began to persuade to park. After that I drove another three hundred meters, parked, and she began to gradually turn off.
Why wait for charging when you can fill in gas and go
This is also an old concept that has taken root over a hundred years. In the new paradigm, fuel in principle is not necessary. The car is charging while it is being stored. Tesla owners do not need any urban infrastructure at all. A car that travels four hundred kilometers is charged at home or at work - you only need to make an effort once, solve the problem with the main charging station and never go to any gas station again in your life. I personally have already weaned, it is strange for me to be there. This is some greetings from the past, how to exchange horses at the crossing.
If Tesla breaks - you will repair her horse-radish
I do not know what needs to be done with Tesla to break it. Recently there was a Model 3 test with a mileage of one million miles. Motor after analysis looked like new.
In a gasoline engine, the fuel ignites, pushes the cylinder, it moves vertically, then it must be turned into rotation, at every step losses, mechanical wear, temperature, liquids, the motor vibrates from this transformation, the pipes crack.
In Tesla there is no box, there is no cardan, the motor is almost on wheels. Inside is a rotor, a copper winding, a set of magnets screwed to a stick. But it rotates too fast, so there is a reduction gear - two gears that simply reduce the speed of rotation. And all this is once collected, closed, and not serviced. On Tesla of the 13th year there was a problem in one of the series, when people managed to damage this gearbox, he began to tap.
It was repaired for free under warranty. Our car transporter arrives, picks up Tesla, drives to Europe and there they repair the car. And we do everything small here ourselves.
On a gasoline car, if you missed one MOT - goodbye guarantee. If Tesla has never looked for a hundred thousand kilometers, and something has broken - it will still be repaired under warranty in Europe. Because they are sure that everything will be fine with the machine. There is a remote diagnosis. The owner calls us, we contact Tesla, agree, the car is in the garage on Wi-Fi, on board Linux, and each light is controlled by a computer.
Running gear is the only thing that is subject to wear. But with a hodovka any car service will figure it out.
You will not find spare parts for Tesla
Tesla has a serious policy, because if something happens to the car, it will be in all the media: “Look, Tesla has broken! What a bad car! ”Stocks went down, everyone who plays shorts is happy. Therefore, Tesla gives parts for a specific car by VIN number. Here we have established a mechanism from the time when we planned to become an official service.
But in short - in comparison with a gasoline car there is nothing to break. When Tesla was in Yandex.Taxi, her bumper was torn off. The next day, the car drove like new. This can be repaired in an elementary way and comes out no more expensive than replacing a bumper on any Land Rover.
Autopilot, firmware and everything else does not work in Russia
For Russia, a car from the United States is definitely not suitable. To repair it, you have to smuggle it to America, because there is a guarantee. Tesla’s state has a different connector that does not accept three-phase electricity. And we have three-phase sockets everywhere. Once you become the owner of an electric car, you begin to notice them everywhere.
The American road graph has never been loaded into American cars. It will not work to pave the way through charging stations in Europe. He can only memorize the ones he was at (but in Russia it will not work in principle - we only have one supercharger and that unofficial one).
But now there is a firmware that does not pave the way in Russia, even on European models. Navigation just stopped working. This is due to the processing of autopilot and the fact that they make their own high-precision maps for navigating lanes. The autopilot engine was changed, old maps were removed, new ones rolled out - and there is only Europe, Russia is not there yet. That is, now navigation in Russia only works on old firmware.
We recently conducted a test drive of the first version of the autopilot on the garden ring in the snowstorm. There he did not behave very well. When there is no markup at all, it focuses on traffic. I was badly damaged by cars that were being rebuilt. This is the first generation autopilot, it has only one camera. In the blizzard and without marking, if the car in front changed the lane, then led me away.
But I'm sure that the autopilot of the second version would have done it. In such a situation, he would see lateral traffic and understand that the car ahead is rebuilding, and not walking in a lane. In the second version there are eight cameras (three are looking forward, the others are on the sides), twelve sonars, a long-range radar that sees two cars ahead. This saved me many times: I’m going for the Gazelle, Tesla suddenly hits the brake, and after a second the Gazelle hits the brake. The radar saw that something was wrong ahead.
The autopilot of the first version is designed for driving on tracks with a physical separator and in traffic jams. Under these conditions, he works in Russia and has always worked. You feel that not only you control the car. She taxies out if she leads you, slows down if you gape. It is very cool.
From new firmware - only surprises
The most unexpected thing that I have appeared is a heated steering wheel. Apparently, the heating elements laid in the design, but did not enter into the firmware immediately.
Second - once they wrote to me “Congratulations, your car has become faster. The inverter operation algorithm has been optimized. ” At this point, you can throw TCP with horsepower as an outdated document. Horsepower no longer makes sense because it is regulated by software.
They write a mask on Twitter - why not make a DVR out of the camera? He replies, a great idea, and after four months comes the firmware with the DVR. Then they tell him that the front camera is not enough, and in Tesla they make a panoramic recorder with several cameras. In addition, it became possible to write 360 ° video during parking, after the robbers broke glass at one of Tesla's.
At some point, the car began to remember on GPS how you set up its air suspension. You go through the familiar speed bump, she rises and falls. Now there will be an automatic folding of mirrors at the entrance to a familiar garage. A couple of years ago there was an automatic high beam.
And with such trifles Musk always gets to the point.
For that kind of money, Tesla’s interior could have been better
Yes, for nine million you can buy a car in which you will feel like at a reception at the masseur. There are premium cars literally with hot stone massage. Tesla doesn't do that.
One well-known owner of Model S put on a BMW interior. He says that he’ve traveled with them all his life, and believes that the interior there is the best, but like a car - the best Tesla. Therefore, he combined them.
The original profile of the owner was such that Tesla is the fifth car in the garage, because it is very expensive. But often she became the first. There are examples when the first persons of the state only go to Tesla and ride on their own. By status they are taken in armored Mercedes, and they drive Tesla for fun, and the guard complains that they can’t catch up. Because this is a car about the buzz of control, and not comfort in the cabin.
The easiest way to find a common language with owners from the IT world is because they understand the technical potential. They love Tesla not for speed, but because it’s an engineering cool thing.
The autopilot will not cope in a critical situation and will kill everyone
Recently there was a case. The owner of Tesla had an accident and began to claim that he could not overcome the autopilot. It is physically impossible. Usually the company always says that they need time to investigate, but here the representative spoke immediately and said that this could not be. For skeptics, you can always check the logs.
Even if for some reason the autopilot began to struggle with the driver, the driver would still get over it - it was done mechanically. Now the fate of the road is decided by the driver. But soon the programmer will do it.
There may be a situation where the autopilot knows in advance that he will 100% beat a pedestrian. The pedestrian jumped sharply, and the autopilot will understand that he can be saved only by breaking the rules and putting the driver at risk. How will he behave? A human driver will act irrationally, dodging luck, not yet realizing the consequences, but in the case of an autopilot everything has long been counted.
The guys who are in R&D - I think they have long resolved the ethical dilemma.
The car tries to act according to the rules, but in border cases the autopilot will save people in the car, otherwise they will not buy cars. It may sound cynical, but a car that violates the rules and sacrifices a driver to save pedestrians is unlikely to become popular.