Tesla: Introducing Autopilot and Dual Motor All Wheel Drive

http://www.teslamotors.com

by bradly • 12 years ago

339 219 12 years ago

teslamotors.com

jolux• 12 years ago

Offline :(

yelnatz• 12 years ago

Here's a quick demo of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7quu551ehc0

dirtyaura• 12 years ago

It seems that Tesla's autopilot is pretty similar to other highway autopilots from manufacturers like Mercedes Benz. The new feature seems to be automatic reading of speed signs.

bri3d• 12 years ago

The new feature seems to be automatic reading of speed signs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_sign_recognition

Tesla might have the first US-compatible system, although since it's not out yet it's hard to say if they made it first or not.

InclinedPlane2• 12 years ago

And lane changing.

mpg33• 12 years ago

Impressive...I wonder how effective these "autopilot" features are in snow and ice road conditions? Does the autopilot and traction control work together?

California doesn't have to worry about these things but a lot of northern markets (Canada/Norway) do.

encoderer2• 12 years ago

Plenty of snow in California :)

zatkin• 12 years ago

Wow. It's incredible how far we've come with technology.

sxp• 12 years ago

From http://www.teslamotors.com/models/design

Model S comes standard with a forward looking camera, radar, and 360-degree ultrasonic sensors that actively monitor the surrounding roadway. Progressive software updates over time will enable sophisticated convenience and safety features that use these sensors to respond to real world conditions. These features will ultimately give Model S Autopilot capability on the highway from on-ramp to off-ramp.

That's a pretty nice TODO to leave in the code :)

dwd2• 12 years ago

At this stage all you need to install is the machine learning algorithm so it can watch and learn what real drivers do when faced with the conditions it's sensing.

Absolutely brilliant!

quonn• 12 years ago

Machine learning can't do that and won't be able to for a long time even in principle, to say nothing of doing it in real-time on a car. Autonomous driving contains very little machine learning for all the sensing and high-level parts.

It may contain some low-level classifiers for things like people and possibly other cars, but this is not strictly required and car manufacturers generally try to avoid it, because it is difficult to reason about. Traffic sign classification is another candidate, but again, at least the Google car probably pulls this from their precomputed map.

Finally, none of these classifiers are trained online, in the car, but always offline, likely on carefully selected data on some GPUs for many days or weeks.

ibrahima• 12 years ago

Meh, there's no way their hardware is equivalent to what Google or the like put on their self driving cars. So I don't think any algorithm can realistically learn everything based on highly limited information. I feel like it's much more likely to enable some safety functionality than anything approaching real autonomy.

InclinedPlane2• 12 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3WtvzmKCQQ

simonh• 12 years ago

I don't think 'our system has been trained to respond in the same way as the average driver' is much of a selling point. You want your auto drive to do the right thing, not the average thing.

anonfunction• 12 years ago

That's the most terse introduction ever. Where can we find out more information?

ck2• 12 years ago

A strange thought but I wonder if their cpu uses ECC memory.

Autopilot is not a place I want bit level errors to happen.

ps. not really a car person but dang that Model X looks nice - announced Feb 2012 but still not shipping?

duskwuff• 12 years ago

ECC? Yes, but that's not all; safety-critical applications like automotive often use two cores running the same code in lockstep, each with their own memory. If the behavior of the two CPUs goes out of sync, the processor can be configured to take corrective actions, such as resetting, halting, and/or going into a failsafe mode.

TI has an overview of the safety features in their Hercules microcontrollers here:

http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/spry178/spry178.pdf

m_mueller• 12 years ago

Don't you need at least three actors, such that in a single failure condition you can use an election algorithm? I guess two are enough if you do regular snapshotting and the worst case time to restore from a snapshot is lower than the real time bounds you need to comply with.

Cthulhu_2• 12 years ago

TBH, assuming the system either has a relatively short log of the traffic situation, and / or does a few thousand calculations a second, I can't imagine how a random bit level error would severely influence the system. Unless, you know, it causes a full system crash, but I'm sure there's a lot of measures against that.

glurgh• 12 years ago

It's not really 'autonomous driving' so you might be overestimating the safety factor implied by the term 'autopilot'.

I'm not a car person or expert in the field but I've done a little bit of work on automotive systems. As the other responders pointed out these systems are designed to, ECC or not, do things like (at the slightest sign of inconsistency or error)

- reset and recover very quickly

- enter reduced functionality or failsafe modes

- fully disable themselves and anything that might cause you to rely on them

They're fundamentally built around the eventuality of them failing and with consideration of the things that need to happen when they fail. They don't usually rely on 'well, we'll just put in a somewhat more reliable component'.

guelo• 12 years ago

D is for disappointment.

Animats6• 12 years ago

Their "autopilot" is basically a "driver assist" system: lane-keeping plus adaptive cruise control. Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, Volkswagen, Ford, etc. already have that. Tesla's is rumored to be the Daimler-Benz system.

That's good enough for about 99% of freeway driving. The last 1% is a problem, which is why none of the big car companies call it automatic driving. Most of them put in systems to insure the driver keeps paying attention, such as insisting on hands on the wheel in auto mode.

We're approaching the "deadly valley" - automatic driving that's almost good enough that the driver can stop paying attention. On the far side of the "deadly valley" is full-auto driving, including automatic handling of unusual and emergency situations, which is where Google and CMU/Cadillac are headed.

The minimum safe level is probably a system that can get the vehicle stopped autonomously when it's headed into a situation it can't handle. Beeping the driver to take over is not going to work in practice. As soon as hands-off driving is available, people will use it when tired, drunk, or texting.

FeeTinesAMady• 12 years ago

Who downvoted you? This is a very serious issue. A partial autopilot for cars is worse than useless: it will create distracted drivers who can't react when the car encounters something it can't handle. Self-driving cars need to be either 100% or 0%.

iaw2• 12 years ago

There has been a ton more downvoting on HN in the last month and it's getting kind of absurd. It's like a group of redditors hit the downvote threshold and just started going at it.

edit: case in point

robot• 12 years ago

Agreed, and similar accidents are helped by autopilot even on aeroplanes. See below as an example. While the main cause is not autopilot, it is heavily relied on, and certainly worsened the situation when it was suddenly cut off in the middle of the night.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Final_rep...

"the crew lacked practical training in manually handling the aircraft both at high altitude and in the event of anomalies of speed indication; the two co-pilots' task sharing was weakened both by incomprehension of the situation at the time of autopilot disconnection, and by poor management of the "startle effect", leaving them in an emotionally charged situation;"

Animats6• 12 years ago

I used to work on automatic driving. I ran Team Overbot in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. (We lost, but we didn't crash into anything.) So I'm painfully aware of the problems of automatic driving.

You need to be both looking at the road with cameras and profiling it with LIDAR. (Or terahertz radar, once that gets going.) It's not enough to just sense the car ahead. You need to be able to detect potholes, ice patches, junk on the highway, small animals, and similar problems. We could detect and avoid potholes back in 2005. Since we were doing off-road driving, that was a normal driving event.

The reason for a high-view LIDAR is that you want to see the pavement surface ahead from a reasonably useful angle and get a 3D profile of the road ahead. Google uses the Velodyne spinning-cone LIDAR scanner, which is a lot of LIDAR units built into one rotating mechanism. That's a research tool. There are other LIDAR devices more suited to mass production. Advanced Scientific Concepts has a nice eye-safe LIDAR which can operate in full sunlight. It costs about $100K, but that's because it's made by hand for DoD and space applications. The technology is all solid state, not inherently that expensive, and needs to be made into a volume product. (Somebody really needs to get on that. In 2004, I took a venture capitalist down to Santa Barbara to meet that crowd, but there was no mass market in sight back then. Now there is.)

You can only profile the road out to a limited distance, regardless of the sensor, because you're looking at the road from an oblique angle. Under good conditions, though, you can out-drive the range at which you can profile the road. That was Sebastian Thrun's contribution, and won the DARPA Grand Challenge. The idea is that if the LIDARs say the near road is good, and the cameras say the far road looks like the near road, you can assume the far road is like the near road and go fast. If the far road looks funny, you have to slow down and get a good look at the road profile with the LIDARs.

Automatic driving systems have to do all this. "Driver assistance" systems don't. Hence the "deadly valley".

That's just to deal with roads and static obstacles. Then comes dealing with traffic.

krschultz• 12 years ago

That's absolutely not true. What if you are drowsy or distracted and the autopilot brakes for you an avoids an accident?

Keep in mind every car out there is currently built with a feature where you can accelerate to a lethal speed, then press a small button, and the car continues to travel at that lethal speed until the car runs out of gas, hits a brick wall, or the driver consciously disengages it. We call it cruise control.

If all we are doing is adding automatic braking and lane following to cruise control, I don't see how it can be anything other than better.

baddox3• 12 years ago

We're approaching the "deadly valley" - automatic driving that's almost good enough that the driver can stop paying attention.

This sounds to me like the "technology right now is crossing a distinct line into doom" fallacy. It seems like the same could have been said when automobiles started being operated by average folks rather than professional chauffeurs, when the synchromesh was invented, automatic transmissions, antilock brakes, cruise control, adaptive cruise control, and so on.

josho• 12 years ago

We've seen this happen with airplanes. Where the autopilots result in the human pilots no longer being fully aware of their environment and context in that environment. So, when the autopilot alarms, the human pilot doesn't have the context of the problem and often makes a naive mistake as a result (a naive mistake that has fatal consequences).

There was a good article discussing this recently on here, a quick search should find it for more details.

So, I agree with the parent that semi-auto pilot like features are probably quite risky when intervention is required. At least current generations, but I think we can also make better designs that address these concerns.

darklajid• 12 years ago

As a driver of a car with these systems (Audi, having a 'Lane assist' and 'ACC'): The implementation is absolutely crushingly useless, every day.

Lane assist kinda, sorta works (I can choose if the car will actively try to stay in the lane and/or if it's going to alarm me by vibrating the steering wheel when I cross over into another lane). It's limited to the Autobahn though and really more often then not just doesn't recognizes the lanes. IF it does, it has the kind of protection you describe. Unfortunately that makes it even less useful. On a really straight road I cannot turn it on, because it's going to beep at me after 1-2 seconds. You need to drive (I exaggerate, but the idea's true) like in a Hollywood movie from the 60s (or the Simpsons intro), turning the wheel left and right for no reason.

(The ACC in this car is crap as well, but .. let's leave it with lane assist for now)

I am extremely skeptical that this system can work, in general, any time soon. Even in a Tesla.

gadders• 12 years ago

As a Brit that lives in a village with minimal public transport, the ONLY reason I want (fully automatic) hands-off driving is for when I'm drunk.

ghshephard3• 12 years ago

The interesting thing is that, based on my experience with the cruise control/driver assist on the 5 Series, it's far better at responding quickly to changing road situations, like when somebody in front of you just jumps hard on the breaks. The car will take it all the way down to a stop in just a few seconds - quite often before the driver would have even realized something was happening, and way before they could have reacted to prevent an accident.

I'm guessing once the technology is widespread, we'll see almost total elimination of rear-end accidents on the freeway - the technology really is quite amazing.

matthiasb• 12 years ago

Better than what? The average human driver?

danielweber4• 12 years ago

Ideal human reaction time is around 200 milliseconds[1]. At 60mph that's more than 1 car length.

How many milliseconds does it take the 5 Series to notice what's going on and start applying the brakes?

[1] If you are a) early 20's, b) male, c) responding to a audio cue, and d) doing exactly one thing on the cue (as opposed to making even a very simple decision based on the cue), you can get down to 150ms.

jjm• 12 years ago

Among the auto manufacturers offerings, some 'lane assist' systems can only handle the most simple of turns (taking you out of the lane, _very scary_). These systems are too simple IMHO with single cameras and or no mix of additional systems.

Tesla seems to want a system that is more complex. Things like "have the car come meet you from where it was parked", lane _crossing_ (let alone lane keep assist), and eventually on-off ramp driving. All with live updates rather than going into the dealer.

What makes this offering (potentially) different is the ambitious intended use of the system, something which would make even a Daimler-Benz lawyer cringe.

chrisBob2• 12 years ago

We're approaching the "deadly valley" - automatic driving that's almost good enough that the driver can stop paying attention.

Infiniti has a commercial out now that I see frequently while streaming TV that shows someone who should not be on the road but is enabled by the driver assist features.

Maybe one mandatory feature of driver assist should be that if the car intervenes more than 2 times in 10 minutes its next step should be to find a safe place to pull over and stop.

awestley• 12 years ago

Man oh man I hate that commercial. Every time I see it my blood boils.

thret2• 12 years ago

This. Why shouldn't driver assist be able to tell when the actual driver is drunk/tired/dangerously incompetent and pull over. It could even call their emergency contact or a taxi and disable the car.

Animats6• 12 years ago

Is this the commercial you're talking about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id8CQ-vsojQ

mrow84• 12 years ago

Are the current generation systems in a state where they can recognise and deal with some high percentage of that 1% by bringing the car to a safe stop? I realise of course that stopping can in itself be dangerous in certain situations, but it's probably going to be safer on average than just barrelling on regardless of what's coming.

I can imagine that not being default behaviour because it doesn't match driving norms, but perhaps it would be better?

eyeface• 12 years ago

I don't think the term is misleading at all. Autopilot on aircraft does not remove the need for a pilot, it just maintains course and speed.

gvb3• 12 years ago

"Course and speed" are necessary, even vital, but not sufficient.

Two airline pilots fell asleep while cruising over Hawaii last February, flying past their destination toward open ocean for 18 minutes before waking up and returning for a safe landing, federal accident investigators revealed Tuesday.

Ref: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=5042619

A packed passenger jet heading to the UK was left flying on autopilot when both pilots fell asleep at the controls, it emerged last night.

Ref: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2432847/Both-pilots-...

derefr4• 12 years ago

The minimum safe level is probably a system that can get the vehicle stopped autonomously when it's headed into a situation it can't handle. Beeping the driver to take over is not going to work in practice.

I think the MVP for an automatic driving system—presuming we don't just get the AI version out soon enough—would be your suggestion (stopping the car when it can't handle a situation), plus passing control of the vehicle to the moral equivalent of OnStar. There'd be call-centres full of people remotely driving drunk/sleeping people's cars for them using the vehicle's instrumentation+the driver's pre-programmed route. Like a taxi service where your own car is the taxi.

existencebox• 12 years ago

I'm recalling some discussions with scientists in remote robotic surgery a few years back where I was told that for some truly high precision operations, the latencies become unmanageable past a point. I'd be curious to know if the state of the art has shifted at all, or if we really are starting to hit the limits of systems that require a certain bar of reaction time and precision.

Following from that, I wonder what bar Driving has, and as such, what distribution of "Controllers" we'd need to be safely within that, and if that would allow it to be viable.

rsync• 12 years ago

I find it so odd that automated driving and auto-safety features (adaptive cruise, lane assist, etc.) are being so aggressively developed.

These features have never once appealed to me and I can't imagine using them even if I had them. I find it very hard to square the "American Love of Driving" and the cultural connotations that driving has in the US with systems that relegate the driver to a passenger ...

Maybe for stop and go rush hour driving ... but beyond that, I don't see the appeal.

john_b• 12 years ago

Not that I disagree with you about the American love of driving, but that notion is part truth and partially a creation of automotive marketing. Frankly, many cars aren't that enjoyable to drive, and driving an enjoyable car in traffic is usually not very enjoyable either.

dminor• 12 years ago

Americans love cars, but not necessarily driving them.

I think this pretty well sums up why most people hate it: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2587

derekp7• 12 years ago

Lower insurance rates. And I don't care how much you love driving, no one loves to accidentally rear-end someone that just slammed on their brakes while you were distracted by checking adjacent lane prior to moving over to get to an exit. And automation can help both situations (when putting on the lane change signal, I want some type of alarm if a car is entering my blind spot, for example).

Shivetya3• 12 years ago

Trucking industry.

The pay isn't always great, humans require sleep, and freight needs to be delivered. I am still amazed trains are piloted but they are and that is far simpler to automate than trucks.

Once trucking becomes automated you will have trucks delivering at all times to warehouses, scheduling around traffic patters. Whereas humans are not necessarily best at driving at night, vision and physiological reasons, computers could drive at hours when traffic is always the lightest.

ibisum• 12 years ago

>>Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, Volkswagen, Ford, etc. already have that.

So? None of these manufacturers have a carbon-friendly drive train. The fact that Tesla added a software feature "late in the game" is no 'bonus' to the already-contenders. Actually, lets see Mercedes' obstacle-avoidance compete with the SpaceX/Tesla crowd. I'm willing to suffer the down-votes until such a point is reached that we all, conscientiously, acknowledge the docking maneuvers allowed by a SpaceX/Tesla co-operation. In the meantime I'd like to point out to you: software features as an "also-ran" is not really a dilemma.

chrismorgan• 12 years ago

Ooh, I like http://www.teslamotors.com/en_AU/:

“Wir präsentieren Autopilot und Dual Motor Allradantrieb”

Did they confuse Austria (de_AT) with Australia (en_AU)?

sschueller• 12 years ago

It sure looks like it.

blackdogie• 12 years ago

There are no kangaroos in Austria , that's how I remember the difference ;)

That will confuse those Australians this morning.

aortega• 12 years ago

Marketing fail. They should announce it as a 700 HP car with better acceleration than the fastest Audi R8, while being big enough to take the kids to the soccer club and go shopping.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

Does it improve battery life too ?

cfreeman• 12 years ago

For the Performance model it loses 10 miles, all the others gain 10 miles.

CRASCH• 12 years ago

According to the website the ranges are the same for the RWD.

S60 208

S85 265

P85 265

The dual motor configuration increases range on all models.

S60D 225

S85D 295

P85D 275

antoncohen• 12 years ago

More impressive than the "autopilot" is the D option, at least to me. The P85D has 691 hp and will do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. If that 0-60 holds true it should the quickest accelerating production 4-door sedan, besting the E63 AMG S (3.4 sec). And 691 hp makes in nearly the most powerful.

The "autopilot" is similar to what Mercedes and BMW have had for a while (software updates is a nice capability), but the performance is best in class.

simi_• 12 years ago

For comparison, the Ferrari FF has something like 670 bhp.

lylebarrere2• 12 years ago

I am surprised that they did not stream the announcement or immediately put it up for viewing. I think they have the opportunity to turn their announcements into as much of an event as Apple does.

Certainly the amount of hype they got from Elon's tweet shows that people are paying attention, I bet there are people clamoring for Tesla news in the same way people are clamoring for Apple news.

Sammi• 12 years ago

Your comment is from 9 hours ago, their video is from 8 hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6lZJWL_Xk

lylebarrere2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the link. I checked the front page of their website, their blog and the Vimeo channel their new car walkthroughs and the model X announcement were on, I thought I checked the youtube page.

My point is more general, they are missing an opportunity to turn these product announcements into as much of a event as they possibly can and vastly increase their visibility.

Update: I show the video having been posted on October 10th. The event and my comment were on October 9th. Their blog post is also on the 10th and starts with "Yesterday we...".

They are missing an opportunity making the resources available the following day, a Friday (take out the trash day) when news viewership numbers are way down.

tmsh• 12 years ago

I don't understand why they don't solve the problem of sitting in traffic (relatively safe) in a hands-free way first. Would help so many people be more productive, etc..

lnanek2• 12 years ago

It's already solved for highway driving. There have been radar assisted cruise control since 1997 and consumer cars that can handle stop and go traffic automatically since 2006. I don't think anyone who recommend or take liability for taking your hands off the wheel, however.

jonmrodriguez• 12 years ago

video demo of Autopilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7quu551ehc0&t=40

dakrisht• 12 years ago

Quite a bit of hype here.

My 3-year old CLS can do most of not all of these "new features." Including, parallel parking itself, alerting me to someone in my blind spot via audible, visual and haptic feedback via the steering column shaking, keep its distance from the car in front via Distronic Adaptive Cruise Control and slow to zero (0) during a braking situation, alert me via haptic feedback (steering column shake) if I swerve out of my lane and for shits and giggles has night vision (totally useless for me in the city at least).

But what's even more impressive is that the brand new S-Class I just picked up does all of this and then some: it has a pedestrian awareness system: the car will brake if it senses a collision with a pedestrian. It has magic body control: a system that scans the road ahead via stereoscopic cameras for potholes and uneven pavement surfaces and adjust the suspension in real-time for a smooth ride (this is an insane feature). It has active steer assist! It will keep me in my line by applying brake pressure to the opposing wheels and will not let you swerve out. It also has another two features that I simply can't think of at the moment. But there is a really neat video from Mercedes Benz on all of this somewhere.

I also believe Tesla's entire drive train and technology is made by Daimler-Benz.

Finally, like Animats pointed out - all of these features are not necessarily a good thing for the heavily distracted driver these days. These features open the door for even more careless driving (texting, fiddling with Google on your Tesla screen and etc.) I believe Mercedes actually have self driving technology working for a few years now (they have a freight truck that is completely autonomous) but decided to pull full self driving from the S-Class due to many of these issues raised.

I guess what irks me most about a lot of these Tesla drivers (from reading articles, blogs, posts and watching the news tonight after the unveiling) is that they are so hung up on the damn hype, they do not see past the issues that still remain for the company. Yes, Musk is a visionary guy, no doubt. But too much hype here. Some dumb women even said on the news when asked how she likes the new car "I'll let you know tomorrow morning." Clearly alluding to her caring solely about the lousy $20k of shares she probably has in the company.

I think another big problem for Tesla (and yes, going off track here) is the fact that not everyone can afford a $70k+ car. Tesla needs to get a sub-$40k car if they want to actually sustain this model. I just don't see how they can by selling a niche car to a niche market.

Finally, like others said, we need to go 100% autonomous or 0%. The middle ground is scary. I bought two Mercedes because I love how amazingly engineered they are. They are at the pinnacle of modern engineering and perhaps the best built cars on earth (most likely). I enjoy driving. I don't enjoy playing with a touchscreen or texting. The features I have on my cars compliment the driving experience, they make it better. I fear many people will start buying cars (whether Teslas or cheaper) for these "lazy" features that allude to you not having to concentrate as much any more. This is a scary premonition and I don't see it ending well.

jhgg2• 12 years ago

The most exciting part of this for me is not the immediate features that are being released, but rather the hardware being put in place that can open up a bunch of neat possibilities via software upgrades.

I think another big problem for Tesla (and yes, going off track here) is the fact that not everyone can afford a $70k+ car. Tesla needs to get a sub-$40k car if they want to actually sustain this model. I just don't see how they can by selling a niche car to a niche market.

They're working on that, it's called the "Model 3". But it's still a while away for them to reach the economies of scale for them to be able to produce it.

fnayr• 12 years ago

ur a jealous ahole

mempko• 12 years ago

Look, if Nissan has beeb doing it for years already, Tesla can do it too. This is a terrible excuse. It just shows that Tesla is still learning, and cannot make a cheap car, even after getting their currebt factory at a steep discount.

jp555• 12 years ago

Is it fair to compare an S-class, which has been engineered into it's current state over 60 years, to a car that did not exist at all 3 years ago?

You may have it backwards; Tesla is building the powertrain for the Mercedes electric A-class E-cell.

smackfu• 12 years ago

I think a lot of people pay attention to the new tech in the Tesla but don't follow any other luxury sedans, so they do come off a bit uninformed.

encoderer2• 12 years ago

Yes, it is, because that's the market Tesla is in! They're selling a $90k car, this is the market.

jhgg2• 12 years ago

Footage of the announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6lZJWL_Xk

IgorPartola4• 12 years ago

It is funny that on HN the discussion is mainly focused on driver assist and its merits/drawbacks, while the real innovation is being ignored: this thing has two engines, increased range (on all but top of the line versions where range is decreased by only 10 miles), and is nearly a 10 second car, with 0-60 time in just over 3 seconds. Oh and roller coaster-like lateral acceleration of 1 g. Also note that the range of the dual motor setup is the result of software optimization of which engine to run at what power level at what point. This is the really exciting new development here.

cstpdk• 12 years ago

Thanks for saying this. I was scratching my head as to why the top comments focused on the wrong thing. Distributed coordinated engines is in my opinion hugely exciting

IgorPartola4• 12 years ago

Absolutely. Some more stats I found about the maxed out P85D: 691 horse power, 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, quarter mile in 11.8 seconds. The curb weight on this thing is 4,936 lb which is quite heavy for a car this fast.

Also very cool: apparently, the reason for adding a second engine increasing range is because now there is more capacity to regenerate/recapture energy when slowing down.

Personally, this is the first Tesla car I actually want.

Edit: Jalopnik review http://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-s-p85d-this-is-it-and-i-went...

m0th87• 12 years ago

The's some pretty big maintenance drawbacks to AWD though. If you blow out a tire, you have to replace all four.

Shivetya3• 12 years ago

There is no innovation in having two motors in a car, unless your restricting the statement to a purely electric car. Many cars produced by others do the more difficult, combine and electric and petrol motor. There may even be examples of dual electric motor vehicles.

The performance should be expected since they engineered for that. Electric motors have their torque immediately and it becomes a balance of suspension and tires in effectively using it.

What I am disappointed in that there is only ten more miles. Frankly why is a 100k car than only gets a little over two hundred miles lauded so much? If anything its a demonstration that the technology IS NOT THERE.

I was really hoping D was double range. When a 100k electric gets 500 a charge call me, then I will be impressed. Tesla better hurry, many of the big manufactures plan to field 200 mile range affordable electrics no later than 2017

IgorPartola4• 12 years ago

I'm with on you on that Tesla is still too expensive for what you get range-wise. However, they are far and ahead of everyone else. By 2017, when the first Fords, Chevys, and Toyotas with 200 mile range will be rolling out (probably with lots of issues), Tesla will have years of expertise and technology innovation on them. They are almost a decade early on all of this stuff.

Now, as far as having two motors, no it's not brand new. There are even prototypes/one-offs that have a motor on each wheel. The innovation is that you now have a car with two electric engines, one up front, one in the back, that can be controlled by software, really tuned for the driving conditions and based on sensor inputs, and updated remotely for better range, better performance, etc. That, and actual performance of a Ferrari for just over $100k.

mikeash7• 12 years ago

It gets lauded because the range is enough. It's not great, but it's enough that you can mostly treat it like a car, rather than a glorified golf cart. 265 miles is enough to treat it as gas^H^H^Hcharge and go, rather than needing elaborate planning for everyday activities.

You're completely right that the range and price demonstrates the limits of current technology. But the Model S is great because it makes different tradeoffs from usual, and tradeoffs that make it a great car if you have the money. Other attempts at electric cars have tried to keep the price down, and that means sacrificing range to a huge degree. Tesla responded to this tradeoff by making an expensive car with a good range that has comparable features to other cars in that expensive price range, rather than making a cheap car with crappy range the way others have done.

And yes, dual motor is no real innovation. It's cool, and 3.2s 0-60 is fantastic, but all it really took was throwing extra money into the machine.

As for 200 mile affordable electric cars in 2017, we'll see. The battery is the limiting factor right now. The Model S battery pack by itself costs more than an entire Nissan Leaf, and you can't reduce the energy needed for that range that much beyond what the Model S needs. Battery technology, whether chemistry or manufacturing or both, needs to get substantially cheaper for that to happen. I assume that's what everybody's betting on happening.

dntrkv• 12 years ago

You can get the 85kWh Model S for $80k with an EPA rated range of 265 miles. Let's see what the other companies are offering:

BMW i3: $41k @ 81 mile range Nissan Leaf: $30k @ 75 mile range Honda Fit: $36k @ 82 mile range

It has 3 times more range than any of these cars and sells for 2-3x as much but is a few classes above when it comes to safety, comfort, performance, options, etc... The Model S deserves every bit of praise it gets.

gfodor2• 12 years ago

Why does it matter if your ev gets a 250 vs 500 range? The only time this is relevant is for long road trips, and in that case you have superchargers. For most people the distinction is irrelevant.

The 200 mile range or so seems to be the sweet spot where you can plug the car in every night and never think about it; on any given day you are not going to drive 200 miles other than the rare days you have preplanned road trips. The key point to remember is the car is recharged every night.

On the contrary, I think the reality of tens of thousands of people owning teslas and never complaining about the range (in terms of practical effects) is evidence that the technology is there.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

I was about to get all OOH, CAR PORN STATS but then I saw the Dodge Challenger/Charger SRT Hellcats... which are literally half the price, and faster. Womp womp.

joyeuse6701• 12 years ago

Somewhat... In a straight line ya, not in a road course (most likely). Definitely agree with you on the point of price and yet, it's sort of hard to compare them. If drag racing/street racing is what you're after yah, Dodge all the way.

hnnewguy2• 12 years ago

not in a road course (most likely).

For that, the GT-R is a monster, also $30k cheaper than the Tesla.

grecy• 12 years ago

The Hellcats are cheap...Do you want to buy a cheap car?

And of course, it's only until you go to a gas station.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

If you're trying to insinuate the North American definition of 'inexpensive due to inferior quality', that doesn't apply here at all. One is a muscle car, and one is the most advanced electric vehicle in the world. Apples to oranges. On comparing price to horsepower, it's totally cheap in comparison, and yes I would prefer the Dodge.

Assuming $80 per tank, with a fillup once per week, it would take me 14.4 years of continuous driving for the cost of gas to equal that of the Tesla, without taking my house's electric bills into account.

Datsundere• 12 years ago

I love tesla for it's all electric cars. But do we hate driving so much now that we're taking drivers out of the driving experience? This is not just for tesla but any other automaker.

If you're doing 'self driving' cars, why not make better technology for public transportation which makes way more sense. Not to mention this picture: http://randomdude.com/images/car-bus-bike.jpg

ceejayoz5• 12 years ago

But do we hate driving so much now that we're taking drivers out of the driving experience?

For the most part, yes. Plenty of people in LA/NYC have multi-hour commutes each day, and I imagine they'd be very happy to work in the car if the computer could drive. I just finished an 8 hour drive to visit family, and it'd have been much more pleasant if I could just hang out with the family and play games in the car for that time.

why not make better technology for public transportation which makes way more sense

In the US, because it's a political non-starter in most areas.

wffurr2• 12 years ago

I really dislike the idea of vehicles capable of that kind of acceleration on city streets. It could make for some truly spectacular accidents at intersections.

It's a shame that superfast impractical cars like this get all the good press and hype, while a sensible version with limited acceleration and top speed but with much greater range would be boring. The latter would be a much greater benefit to humanity.

chadgeidel3• 12 years ago

I'm sure you've seen all the same "street racing" videos with folks crashing that I have. Yes, it's dangerous, but typically what you aren't seeing is that the driver has completely disabled the (normally always-on) traction aids.

I hate hooligan drivers as much as / more than the next guy, and the "horsepower wars" are getting a little out of control, but I don't think that the Model S is any less safe than a Mustang Camaro, or Charger that one can get for less than half the price.

(disclaimer: I'm a huge automotive enthusiast, and regularly take my car on the track)

wffurr2• 12 years ago

I don't care to share street space with those, either. Or sport bikes, or tractor-trailers, etc.

The track is an appropriate place for those kinds of vehicles. (Also an enormous amount of fun!)

Not-fun is trying to drive a twitchy high-horsepower car in a congested urban environment.

Somewhat fun is opening up that car for the one clear block that you get, except that it's extremely dangerous for everyone around you. Only sociopaths incapable of thinking about the effect of their actions on others do that kind of thing. Not even street racing, just stepping on the gas out of frustration.

I'd be way more interested in the "autopilot" features if they worked in urban settings, such as automatic braking for obstacles.

Tharkun• 12 years ago

Seems like more and more cars have radar/ultrasound sensors. Won't this eventually lead to interference? Can such a system be influenced by, say, a nutter with a stronger radar?

Tesla: Introducing Autopilot and Dual Motor All Wheel Drive

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