You can bring an extra battery or generator, too. I wouldn't want to carry another ten gallons of gas, either.
While that is theoretically true, with BEVs we run into practical issues that make such approach unrealistic. First of all, extra battery would add very limited range while also adding weight, and that is even before the fact we don't have such options besides the Tesla's extender (once it becomes available). A generator could extend the range indefinitely, but at a significant time/weight penalty: I have an 11kW diesel gen that weighs 600lb (dry) and would take half of the bed space. At 11kW you require ~10 hours for adding as little as 90-100mi (towing).
Two 5-gallon jerry cans of gasoline are a lot cheaper and more compact than a $16,000 Range Extender that takes up one-third of your bed. And the Range Extender doesn't even exist as yet, while the jerry can option has been viable for 80+ years.
How many gallons of gas/diesel do you need to carry to power the generator?
So, I understand the point I just don’t think it applies to the CT unveiling. Was it illegally binding promise? No! Absolutely not! Was it a, “promise?” Of course it was! In any world where words in English mean what they mean, yes!
You’ll get no argument from me about this. It’s the biggest threat to our nation right now.
...But there's charging stations, so you don't need to do that.
Good thing that ICE vehicles didn't evaporate the moment EVs excelled at everything but this one thing almost no one does.
Facepalm.
-Crissa
Okay, so I don't know what else I can add to that other than perhaps the need for people to look at the track record of Elon's companies. They consistently make product roadmap announcements that in practice materialize in different ways. I understand why that is the case, and see it as a reasonable tradeoff to having no cutting edge products, but there is just no way to have it both ways - doing things fast and also hitting every bullet point from 5 years prior.
Yes but you make it sound like Tesla anticipated that the vehicle was going to take five years to develop. Elon didn’t anticipate Covid. Lots of things happened in between the reveal to launch. Thank you for getting the timeline and how it happened - this was not a preview, it was an unveil.
Exactly.
They definitely anticipated that it will be a difficult vehicle to produce. That was stated repeatedly, and they knew it from experience - both Model 3 ramp and Semi development were the references.
Preview, unveil or any other word is meaningless. One could compare to other car manufacturers, but Tesla doesn't use traditional automotive constructs pretty much anywhere in their business model, why would this be an exception ? The reality is the vehicle demonstrated was a hand built advanced prototype. It was effectively a message to investors "look what we're up to." They had no final specs, no manufacturing techniques, and definitely no production lines for it until years later, and all of that was communicated the entire time - nobody was kept in the dark.
I've noticed your occupation in the profile. Are you saying you or your colleagues never bend into a pretzel to get the words mean whatever you need them to mean ?
It is just annoying since we've been over this hundreds of times already. People are annoyed and they are voicing their annoyance.
Elon commented on this topic a few years ago. He rejected the notion bigger batteries are needed in favor of better charging infrastructure. I would also add that you don't need 500mi EPA range for off-roading - at lower speeds you travel significantly farther on a charge than on-road at highway speeds. Towing is also disputable once there is a significant critical mass of pull-through charging stations.
Yeah but I do. Whether I’m towing my travel trailer or not I first have to get to the wilderness area that I’m trying to get to. I’m in the west that isn’t going to be close. Most of the places that I want to be in are one to 200 miles from my starting point then I need juice for overnight for as many nights as I want to be there and over landing once I get there. So no 50 miles of range remaining isn’t going to cut it.
Okay, so let's say you need a 500mi BEV. You may then be in 1% of the customers with the edge case requirements. What would any reasonable business say about that ?
I’m pretty sure I’m not edge case when there are millions of people in my own town that have off-road vehicles and like to explore their state. I’ll just keep repeating it until somebody understands these words in English: There are parts in my state that I simply cannot get to AND return from with the range that we have in the CT.
Millions of people in your town are off-roading like there is no tomorrow ? Okay.
Let me help you understand this then. Tesla is not in the market of making toy vehicles. They consistently talk about sustainable transportation at scale and not the weekend fun. They did their analysis and decided it's not worth building a significantly more expensive/heavy vehicle variant upfront because absolute majority of their customer base aren't likely to buy it over a cheaper and sufficiently capable variant. That is not to say that they don't want a larger market, but they simply decided to optimize for the largest market segment first. It is possible that they will release other variants in the future iterations, but they already sort of went through this exercise with their Model S and Model X lineups. Most Americans are cheap and paranoid. Cheap comes first.
