Elon musk.....

[Dirtman]

Well i was really leaning more towards this thing thats 5 miles from my house...

 

[Ranger850]

Looks like the same thing just BIGGER

 

[JoshT]

Miniaturization, it'll get there eventually.

View attachment 27728
Did anyone else notice the tip of the Big plane has a Jet sized stabilizer. OMFG

Yes, yes I have.

That peice comes off and turns into a little voltron robot in emergencies....

LOL!

Some times they do remove the top of the T-tail for maintenance. I must admit that I've looked at one of them sitting out on the ramp and wandered what it would take to fit a turboprop engine and turn it into an airplane of its own.

 

[PetroleumJunkie412]

Bought a Tesla Model 3 about 2 months ago and put 8500 miles in that time. It's a pretty amazing vehicle. We got the Dual motor long range so range is about ~300 miles. We have a Nema 14-50 outlet installed in our garage to charge overnight. We get about 30 miles per hour charging this way. There's 2 superchargers on our commute route. Range anxiety is not a thing, at least with the long range model. Trips would be no issue as long as you are traveling down a major route or plan ahead to have charging where you park. With RV parks all over it's not hard to find a place to charge. The vehicle is simply incredible. We were choosing between a new Ranger for 48k or this model 3 for 52k. It was a no brainer. the price difference is only because we got the Advance autopilot. Wife drives the model 3, I'm now driving her mini cooper which gets 40 mpg. We are saving $750/month on gas by owning a tesla, even after the ~$700/month tesla payment

Yeah... That autopilot thing??

Chinese hackers make Tesla drive into oncoming traffic (VIDEO)

Researchers from Keen Labs in China, one of the most widely respected cybersecurity research groups in the world, have successfully hacked a Tesla Model S autopilot system and forced the car to drive into an oncoming lane.

www.rt.com

I won't get in a Tesla. Period.

This is what the Chinese have openly said about the cars. Which means their actual abilities to hack and control the cars are far greater.

 

[Dirtman]

Why is the autopilot system connected in any way that can be hacked? You cant hack a stand alone system so it must be connected to the internet or other signal in order for hackers to access it without physically pluging into the car.

Why....

 

[Bird76Mojo]

Hacking a car remotely was a thing long before the Tesla came along... Systems like OnStar made that possible. Documents released by WikiLeaks appear to show that the CIA was looking into technology to remotely take control of vehicles. Anything with a CANBUS system can be hacked with some dedication, since all communication in CANBUS have no authentication involved. A lot of the info is out there online now. Any vehicle that has bluetooth/cellular service built-in is an easy target for this crap. Have SIM card, will hack..



From 2014:

From 2015:

The only difference today is that hackers can now also steer the vehicles because of the auto-lane control systems. That wasn't a threat in the beginning.

 

[Dirtman]

Yea but those features serve a function (letting onstar unlock your car, call for help etc) what logical reason is there for having the autopilot accessible in the same way. It should be a 100% self contained system only accessible by plugging directly into the car. I just cant see a scenario where anyone outside of the drivers seat would need the ability to access any features of the autopilot.

 

[Ramcharger90]

Can't people comprehend that pulling a Boeing aircraft on the flat just like the Fiat pulling the ship is way different than up hill or even at 55mph that exploder I had pulling the 89 wrecked stx was swaying back and forth, ok that was a car dolly but the back wheels on the sploder were kinda coming up.

 

[stmitch]

Yea but those features serve a function (letting onstar unlock your car, call for help etc) what logical reason is there for having the autopilot accessible in the same way. It should be a 100% self contained system only accessible by plugging directly into the car. I just cant see a scenario where anyone outside of the drivers seat would need the ability to access any features of the autopilot.

Just like the rest of a Tesla, the autopilot software receives frequent updates over the air and it sends data back to Tesla HQ constantly. Elon recently claimed they'd have tons of autonomous vehicles on the road in about a year. He wasn't talking about selling tons of new cars, he's talking about wirelessly updating the vehicles that are already in customer hands. If you drive a Tesla, you're basically an unpaid test pilot. If you lock autopilot down for security reasons, then you'd lose the ability to instantly update every vehicle around and they'd lose access to data for millions of miles driven each year. Since Tesla has no dealers, there's really no easy place to take a vehicle for updates either, so over the air is faster, cheaper, and easier for them. Welcome to the future, for better or worse. Makes bare-bones old ranger seem pretty appealing!

 

[bobbywalter]

good luck hacking my truck....it dont even need electricity if push comes to shove.



but yeah....you can be locked in and driven off a bridge in many machines these days.

 

[91stranger]

The only thing I think of reading this post is that 70's show. When they are talking about cars that run on water and they say they already have that. Boats. LOL. Musk is about 50 percent genius and 50 percent dumbass too. HE's definitely ahead of his time and will probably be living on mars before he dies. Pretty sure he has connects with aliens. The 300,000 towing capacity reminds me of a train. In the RV world we always say that "yeah you can tow a big 5th wheel with a half ton truck but you wont be able to steer or stop it." I'd like to see how fast you can stop 300,000 pounds at 70 mph. Probably would stop after crushing everything in the last 300 yards lol.

 

[pjtoledo]

The only thing I think of reading this post is that 70's show. When they are talking about cars that run on water and they say they already have that. Boats. LOL. Musk is about 50 percent genius and 50 percent dumbass too. HE's definitely ahead of his time and will probably be living on mars before he dies. Pretty sure he has connects with aliens. The 300,000 towing capacity reminds me of a train. In the RV world we always say that "yeah you can tow a big 5th wheel with a half ton truck but you wont be able to steer or stop it." I'd like to see how fast you can stop 300,000 pounds at 70 mph. Probably would stop after crushing everything in the last 300 yards lol.

about those brakes,,,, they use regenerative braking first. the kinetic energy is put back into the battery. that doesn't suffer from fade, at least if you don't mind overheating the electronics. the electronics are also capable of extremely fast ABS & stability control.

 

[Bird76Mojo]

Like them or not, his semi trucks could completely change the way we deal with freight.

 

[stmitch]

Like them or not, his semi trucks could completely change the way we deal with freight.

Trucking is responsible for paying a large part of my bills. There's a lot of promise for electrification in trucking and the heavy duty sector but I'm not holding my breath for the Tesla semi, or any long-range semi for many years.

Weight is a huge part of the money calculation in trucking. Semis are legally limited to 80k lbs total for truck, trailer, and load. The less your truck weighs, the more freight you can carry. And the more freight you can carry, the more money you can make.
A modern diesel tractor weighs about 20k lbs. Estimates for the Tesla truck put the battery alone at nearly 15-20k lbs, which ultimately means less freight can be hauled and less money made by the trucking company. It would take some pretty miraculous battery tech for them to keep total weight in line with a modern diesel. We don't know for sure because Tesla hasn't released the weight of their truck, and they never miss the chance to toot their own horn so the fact that they're hush hush about the weight isn't a great sign. Here's a decent overview from the trucking industry perspective:

Electric Trucks Face Long Road to Unseat Diesel Engines | Transport Topics

The next battleground for replacing fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles will be U.S. interstate highways, where longhaul trucks keep the economy moving.

www.ttnews.com

On top of that math stuff/financial issues, there are logistical issues. They currently have no place to manufacture the trucks, charge the trucks, or service the trucks at this time. They have a single production plant that's maxed out making their current vehicles. The chargers needed to charge a Tesla semi sized battery/batteries aren't in existence yet, and the infrastructure needed to have them in place is pretty substantial for places like warehouses or truck stops. That will require significant investment from those places to have available. Tesla's regular Superchargers average 6 figures to install, and these will need WAY more juice than a Supercharger. They have no dealers, no nationwide parts network/distribution centers either. Every minute a truck isn't delivering freight keeps a trucking company from making money. If there's an issue with a truck on the road, how long will it take to get the truck moving again? Right now there are roadside service companies that can grab a Cummins, PAACAR, or Eaton part off the shelf and have a truck fixed in an hour or two, or have it towed to a nearby shop that's experienced in similar repairs because those companies have been in the business forever and have invested in those parts of the business. That's not happening with Tesla for a long time.

And that doesn't even begin to address how difficult it is to convince super conservative trucking fleet managers to spend tons of cash upfront on an unproven new truck from a company with zero nationwide presence or service network and a shaky financial footing. If your job depends on reliability and low cost, you're probably not going to gamble on the flashy new comer that makes big promises about the future while struggling to stay afloat in the present.

I really think Tesla has more than enough other stuff going on right now that they can't afford to jump into revolutionizing another entire segment of transportation. They're stretched pretty thin financially as it is, and the competition in the automotive market is catching up so it's only going to get tougher on them from here out.

 

[Bird76Mojo]

People also thought Henry Ford was a nutjob, but he revolutionized automobile manufacturing...