Tesla just announced a brand new car - a $25K hatchback

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/tesla-just-announced-a-brand-new-car-a-dollar25k-hatchback-coming-in-2023

by mbreese • 5 years ago

18 16 5 years ago

I'm interested, and it will probably come out around the time I'd be replacing my Volt... but if they insist on the dashboardless, touchscreen-focused control system like in the Model 3, I won't go near it. I hope consumers in general put their foot down about this dangerous trend in (bad) car UX.

ianai• 5 years ago

I think some after market breakout boxes exist for key functions. I agree that the UX is poor.

maximus-decimus4• 5 years ago

"touchscreen focused control system" is misrepresentative when the driver is mostly expected to control everything from the steering wheel.

adflux• 5 years ago

Musk also promised that the Tesla hatchback would be fully autonomous.

Ah, so we can expect this car in a year or 10

ben174• 5 years ago

Elon, can you please focus on delivering what we early adopters paid an extra $8,000 for so long ago - the promise of a fully self driving car? Or should write that off and forget about it so you can make cheaper cars.

It's getting pretty hard to recommend a Tesla to my friends and family these days, especially with all the other offerings the competition is bringing to the table.

Traster• 5 years ago

To be fair, I think they're basically orthogonal problems. I'm not a Musk fan - I think his public statements about autonomous driving are horse shit, but I don't think any one working on a hatchback Tesla would be better focused on self-driving, and I don't think Tesla is resource constrained. At this point if they wanted to put more resources into self-driving they could just hire more people into the self-driving team, paying for it through issuing stock or debt at their ridiculous current market value.

maximus-decimus4• 5 years ago

As Jean Chretien (past Canada prime minister) once said : I can walk and chew gum at the same time. Really, I don't think doing one affects the other.

clouddrover• 5 years ago

Tesla follows the Rules of Acquisition (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition).

Rule 1: Once you have their money, you never give it back.

Rule 17: A contract is a contract is a contract… but only between Ferengi.

Rule 239: Never be afraid to mislabel a product.

Someone2• 5 years ago

FTA: “The new battery uses a tabless design that promises to be 35% smaller than conventional batteries, which promises to be cheaper, safer and more powerful.

According to Tesla, this means the battery offers five times more energy and six times more power, all of which comes together to offer 16% more range per kilowatt hour of juice.”

I don’t follow that math. All else being equal, 35% smaller means about 50% more range if they go for the same size battery. If it’s only 15%, they must make the battery smaller by about 25%.

That’s fine, but where does the “six times more power” come from. What do they compare that with?

Can’t be current cars, since range would then be six times as large, and they wouldn’t want to build such a car (better build a cheaper car with a bit less range, don’t want to compete with own more expensive models)

(It might work out mathematically if these new batteries were incredibly heavy, but the article says it’s lighter)

What do I miss?

nickik2• 5 years ago

What you miss is that people throw out a bunch of number that use different base numbers and so on. The reality is very complex.

This is a long video series attempting to explain everything from Battery Day:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyvdbTy3v1d5luwdDGPFP...

You can watch only the last video if you want a more simple overview.

maximus-decimus4• 5 years ago

The five times more energy dense and 6 times the power refers to the design explained on Tesla's Battery day. Seriously, they made a 2 hours presentation about it. Total nerd porn : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds

This really applies to the cells, not the battery itself, I think they just misunderstood. This is in comparison to the current design. They did that mostly by... making the cells bigger! I think the battery itself is 35% smaller because this removes the need for using tabs and the cell volume/surface area is greater.

Also note that "six times the power" doesn't mean six times the range. Power is energy per unit of time so it really only tells you how fast you can use the energy in your battery (and I'm assuming how fast you can charge.)

Someone2• 5 years ago

Yeah, “six times the power” was a lapse of me. Intended to copy-paste the “five times the energy” part.

The math still doesn’t hold up, making this article as good as content free for me. History so far tells that we can’t trust their projections on price and delivery date, not to mention full self driving. So, the content for me is “Tesla is working on a hatchback”.

nickik2• 5 years ago

No they didn't.

slownews45• 5 years ago

They did not announce anything - this is just clickbait trash.

In November 2020 Elon said this "In Europe, it would make sense to do a compact car"

If HN wants to run with this as a June 2021 announcement of a $25K hatchback go for it, but there has been nothing of the sort announced, this is just conjecture on old tweets.

Some kind of SEO optimization I think to do "just announced" - seeing it more lately so it must be working.

maverick-iceman• 5 years ago

For people complaining about Musk lies.

They will only end when every other CEO in America starts behaving like him. People have to understands that other guys, they aren't stupid or squares....they are all capable of doing what Musk does, in fact you'll struggle to find someone who is a worse public speaker than Musk . They just can't because Musk already sucked out all the dollars of those who are attracted by this sort of behavior, so it's a losing propositions

Custodians of 125 years old institutions such as Ford or GM or Daimler, they simply can afford to enter a tug of war game against Musk for the graces of the retail investors.

Retail investors are unique, rather they are very similar to your average person who has their cycles of emotions and on-again , off-again type relationship with basically everything and everyone

Tesla just announced a brand new car - a $25K hatchback

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