Tesla battery day - technical highlights

RandallFlagg

Here's a summary video of the technical improvements Tesla are making to battery production and castings for their cars as announced yesterday.

Their focus is on improving the manufacturing process to make it industry beating. Their ambition is to be the best manufacturing company in the world.

No-one can doubt Elon Musk's commitment to Tesla for the long term, he has stated that making the machine is hard but making the machines that makes the machine is far more challenging.

He delivered this with far less hyperbole than expected and kept it quite technical. If Tesla can keep travelling along this path over the next 2-3 years, that stock price may just start to look justified, it's still a gamble, but one that might just come good.

strtdv

The lack of hyperbole, as well as lack of actual new products and the admission that they're not very profitable took $50 billion off their stock overnight.

Honestly, I prefer it when they don't make ridiculous claims. Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

PVO_Dave

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

monquixote

I think it's an interesting race.

Tesla seem to have the next gencars, but not the reliability that would make me buy one.

Someone like Toyota have the reliability. but not the cars.

Tesla basically needs to get the build quality up before the traditional manufacturers catch up.

It seems very much like what happened with the iPhone. Everyone else has been caught totally flat footed.

wibble

Arstechnica had a good write up about it

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/how-tesla-plans-to-make-batteries-cheap-enough-for-a-25000-car/

strtdv

PVO_Dave said:

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

I don't want to turn my head to look at the speedometer, and having to use a menu on a touchscreen to adjust wiper speed is an awful idea.
This is why the virtual cockpit in VAG cars is so good, you just need to glance down for a split second to look at the satnav, but it's also the reason why the new Golf isn't as good as the old one: you have touch sliders to adjust the Aircon etc.

A German court has recently ruled that turning on the wipers on your Tesla through the touchscreen counts as "using a device at the wheel" and therefore may be illegal (and possibly uninsurable if you crash while doing it, as happened in the test case).

RandallFlagg

strtdv said:

PVO_Dave said:

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

I don't want to turn my head to look at the speedometer, and having to use a menu on a touchscreen to adjust wiper speed is an awful idea.
This is why the virtual cockpit in VAG cars is so good, you just need to glance down for a split second to look at the satnav, but it's also the reason why the new Golf isn't as good as the old one: you have touch sliders to adjust the Aircon etc.

A German court has recently ruled that turning on the wipers on your Tesla through the touchscreen counts as "using a device at the wheel" and therefore may be illegal (and possibly uninsurable if you crash while doing it, as happened in the test case).

Don't most cars, even horse & cart ICE ones have auto rain sensing wipers these days?

RandallFlagg

PVO_Dave said:

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

I agree about quality improving when Berlin opens. Berlin gigafactory will service European sales and those cars won't  be made by Californian millennials!

I think the next few years is critical for Tesla, they have to nail continuous improvement in manufacturing and cost reduction so it becomes business as usual and can scale up while achieving high quality. That is a hell of a challenge but they have a pile of money, a tailwind and a huge technological head start over the competition. 

strtdv

They do if your wipers are "on". If they're off entirely they'll just stay off. Same as your automatic headlights.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla-wiper-controls-ruled-illegal-germany-crashed/amp/

RandallFlagg

strtdv said:

They do if your wipers are "on". If they're off entirely they'll just stay off. Same as your automatic headlights.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla-wiper-controls-ruled-illegal-germany-crashed/amp/

In mine and my wife's car we just set them to auto and forget, works perfectly, they come on when it rains and stop when it's not. I don't see the issue.

However, I do see an issue with needing to squirt the washers to clean your windscreen when it's not raining, especially when following tractors in Lincolnshire!. How does that work in a Tesla, can you assign that to one of the steering wheel buttons? 

Danny1969

On my Focus the lights and wipers are just set to auto and I never bother changing it. Seems to work just fine. 

There's all kinds of thing wrong with a Tesla but they are the only company that actually move things forward in the technical sense. 

crunchman

I don't like the auto wipers on my Seat.  They rarely go at the right speed - normally going really fast when there is a little bit of drizzle.  Not figured out if I can control the speed manually or not.

Snags

I hate the auto-wiper setting on my car (Hyundai). The sensitivity/detection is all to hell, so for intermittent it's either too slow, or stupidly too fast, but rarely just right when in light rain or mizzle. Would far rather have a variable speed dial for the intermittent settings.

PVO_Dave

strtdv said:

PVO_Dave said:

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

I don't want to turn my head to look at the speedometer, and having to use a menu on a touchscreen to adjust wiper speed is an awful idea.
This is why the virtual cockpit in VAG cars is so good, you just need to glance down for a split second to look at the satnav, but it's also the reason why the new Golf isn't as good as the old one: you have touch sliders to adjust the Aircon etc.

A German court has recently ruled that turning on the wipers on your Tesla through the touchscreen counts as "using a device at the wheel" and therefore may be illegal (and possibly uninsurable if you crash while doing it, as happened in the test case).

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark that you've not driven one or if so, not for more than 10 minutes or more. Just like a lot of Mini's (central speedo) it's something you get used to very quickly, you just look slightly to your left, you don't need to turn your head.

Auto wipers work fine, admittedly they were a little ropey when the car first came out, but software updates have fixed this. As an alternative you can also activate them with voice commands without an issue. 

Tesla don't use a rain sensor on new cars, it's all done via camera, it got better because the neural net is learning rain patterns from the fleet!

monquixote said:

I think it's an interesting race.

Tesla seem to have the next gencars, but not the reliability that would make me buy one.

Someone like Toyota have the reliability. but not the cars.

Tesla basically needs to get the build quality up before the traditional manufacturers catch up.

It seems very much like what happened with the iPhone. Everyone else has been caught totally flat footed.

Reliability on the Model 3 is great, I probably wouldn't however buy a second hand Model S or X out of warranty.

RandallFlagg said:

strtdv said:

I don't want to turn my head to look at the speedometer, and having to use a menu on a touchscreen to adjust wiper speed is an awful idea.
This is why the virtual cockpit in VAG cars is so good, you just need to glance down for a split second to look at the satnav, but it's also the reason why the new Golf isn't as good as the old one: you have touch sliders to adjust the Aircon etc.

A German court has recently ruled that turning on the wipers on your Tesla through the touchscreen counts as "using a device at the wheel" and therefore may be illegal (and possibly uninsurable if you crash while doing it, as happened in the test case).

Don't most cars, even horse & cart ICE ones have auto rain sensing wipers these days?

Yes, auto lights and wipers are there, nearly everything can also be controlled via voice commands. 

PVO_Dave

RandallFlagg said:

PVO_Dave said:

strtdv said:

Now if they could just improve build quality on the model 3 and model Y, and add back some physical controls for important things and put an instrument cluster in the right place they'd be making a very strong argument for themselves.

Build quality agreed, hoping when Berlin opens up we should see better made (and better painted!) cars coming over, the China made cars are supposedly of a much higher standard. 

Disagree on the buttons and instrument cluster, takes barely any getting used to, much prefer it, had mine over a year now, feels antiquated to get back in an ICE car with buttons everywhere  

Think the stock price mainly took a tanking due to the amount of hype leading the event and no actual deliverables available immediately. What they are doing / proposing to do sounds incredible, hope it pans out. 

I agree about quality improving when Berlin opens. Berlin gigafactory will service European sales and those cars won't  be made by Californian millennials!

I think the next few years is critical for Tesla, they have to nail continuous improvement in manufacturing and cost reduction so it becomes business as usual and can scale up while achieving high quality. That is a hell of a challenge but they have a pile of money, a tailwind and a huge technological head start over the competition. 

I think American car standards are just fairly low in the first place, there is a great review of the Taycan by Marcus Brownlee and his mind is almost blown at what you get inside the Porsche, a lot of which you'd get on a mid spec Audi 

The paint on Tesla's is my biggest complaint, Fremont have very strict rules which results in a very thin coating of paint, Berlin should definitely change that, they are having a specialist paint shop. China is already producing better cars, so the improvements are happening and fairly quickly now it's not just a USA operation.

The speed Giga Berlin is going up is incredible too. 

RandallFlagg said:

strtdv said:

They do if your wipers are "on". If they're off entirely they'll just stay off. Same as your automatic headlights.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla-wiper-controls-ruled-illegal-germany-crashed/amp/

In mine and my wife's car we just set them to auto and forget, works perfectly, they come on when it rains and stop when it's not. I don't see the issue.

However, I do see an issue with needing to squirt the washers to clean your windscreen when it's not raining, especially when following tractors in Lincolnshire!. How does that work in a Tesla, can you assign that to one of the steering wheel buttons? 

The washer fluid button is on the stalk, no touchscreens involved. One press of said button also clears the screen. 

Hard to give some of the replies without sounding like a fanboy, but most criticism tends to come from people who haven't driven one and have just read stuff online, which is frequently negative. 

There are definitely faults with Tesla and how they currently operate, but I wouldn't swap back to the new BMW I had before hand or any other ICE car, my Model 3 is light years ahead, gets better (nearly) every software update and has supercar beating performance in a straight line at least  

CloudNine

As per @PVO_Dave I came from a recent BMW into a Model 3. There are a few minor things you notice with build quality, dig about in the boot a bit and some of the plastics aren't BMW quality and don't fit as well, and yes the paint is shit, tiniest knock and it's gone. But you know what, none of it really matters a jot, it's like driving a fucking spaceship and makes you smile every time you get into it. 

RandallFlagg

PVO_Dave said:

Tesla don't use a rain sensor on new cars, it's all done via camera, it got better because the neural net is learning rain patterns from the fleet!

Yes, auto lights and wipers are there, nearly everything can also be controlled via voice commands. 

Wow. I had no idea Tesla implementation was so different. Voice commands to turn on wipers? Terrific.

Makes me want one even more. Roll on retirement. A Tesla will be my retirement treat for myself!  

PVO_Dave

RandallFlagg said:

PVO_Dave said:

Tesla don't use a rain sensor on new cars, it's all done via camera, it got better because the neural net is learning rain patterns from the fleet!

Yes, auto lights and wipers are there, nearly everything can also be controlled via voice commands. 

Wow. I had no idea Tesla implementation was so different. Voice commands to turn on wipers? Terrific.

Makes me want one even more. Roll on retirement. A Tesla will be my retirement treat for myself!  

Yep, trying to cut down on third party hardware. It was a bit crap to start with (the rain sensors) but it works well now - To be honest, I rarely use the voice commands, only time I really end up touching the screen whilst moving is to either skip the spotify track that my daughter loved the day before and is now boring..   

You'll love it, let me know if you need a referral code for some free supercharger miles - The most recent software update has got speed sign recognition, it's taken a while to implement because MobileEye own the patent, so Tesla have had to find a way round it. 

If you're a bit of a geek, you can also setup software (I'm using TeslaMate) to get more stats on your car via the cars streaming and rest APIs, I've got that running in the cloud so I can see the state of the car, consumption, battery, where I've been etc.. I've also put in some calculations on how much money I've saved since owning it  

strtdv

Tesla are the necessary kick in the backside that the rest of the car industry needs to go electric. 
They've been deliberately futuristic to create a brand identity and make the car stand out from the crowd.
However, I predict that as they want to sell 20 million cars a year, they will gradually move towards more mainstream design, and at the same time other manufacturers will push the boat out a little more (and develop proper EV platforms).

Hopefully at that point Tesla will have sorted build quality. Any Tesla Model 3 I've seen has panel gaps that wouldn't pass muster on a base level Ford Focus, never mind a £50k car. The boot lid light design unfortunately draws attention to this, I've noticed 1 driving around that doesn't look wonky out of about 7 I see regularly on the road.

They will get there eventually though, and it'll be a great car when they do. It's just a question of whether that happens before for example the VW iD range gains a large market share.

PVO_Dave

strtdv said:

Tesla are the necessary kick in the backside that the rest of the car industry needs to go electric. 
They've been deliberately futuristic to create a brand identity and make the car stand out from the crowd.
However, I predict that as they want to sell 20 million cars a year, they will gradually move towards more mainstream design, and at the same time other manufacturers will push the boat out a little more (and develop proper EV platforms).

Hopefully at that point Tesla will have sorted build quality. Any Tesla Model 3 I've seen has panel gaps that wouldn't pass muster on a base level Ford Focus, never mind a £50k car. The boot lid light design unfortunately draws attention to this, I've noticed 1 driving around that doesn't look wonky out of about 7 I see regularly on the road.

They will get there eventually though, and it'll be a great car when they do. It's just a question of whether that happens before for example the VW iD range gains a large market share.

There are panel gap issues on some Tesla's for sure, this is where China and Berlin will really help. Tesla will tend to fix / amend these for people if they are bothered, but they really should PDI them and fix before handing them over (and of course, put them together in Fremont with more care/attention to detail). Mine is no worse than my BMW was to be fair. 

There are lots of great options now available, Kia have some great EV's (if you can get them, was a big waiting list), Hyundai's offerings are supposed to be good, MG's EV punches above its weight and the ID 3 now being available is brilliant (with ID4 from November I think?). 

Biggest issue for non-Tesla EV's is still the charging network if you need to go on a long journey outside of your range, it's a minefield of needing cards for various charge points and reliability issues. For most people though, it's not an issue, the range should easily cope with the majority of peoples commutes. 

The other brands are also still not doing over the air updates and the ID3 still isn't software complete, VW had to update the fleet via laptop before selling! Next update is due in January via a service appointment I gather. 

strtdv

The range isn't an issue for me generally as Ireland is a fairly small place (you can basically get from one end to the other with just a charge in the middle).
I really like the like of the Kia Niro EV, and can see me getting one as my wife's next car.

I'm likely to stick with ICE for a while, the combination of strong residuals on EVs and generally high initial depreciation on performance cars means that if I'm looking at a 2 year old car that's fun to drive, for the same money the ICE car will be similarly fast and more entertaining to drive as a similar priced EV. 
If VW bring out an iD R for reasonable money that may tempt me over though.