acoste

If I have a 5 gallon tank, it contains 5x the energy compared to a 1 gallon tank.

Elon Musk Tesla Could Produce a 25000 Car In 3 Years

acoste

9.245 seconds

Twitter.

Lucid hasn't delivered any cars yet, but the people who work there did.

westwest888

Elon has nothing but intent and a research pitch. At best, that battery is 16% more efficient as a function of size. He doesn't even have a demo car to test the range, cycles, cold weather performance, etc. Reminds me of "university has a vaccine candidate". Everyone has a battery idea. LG Chem and CATL are the leaders with $300 billion in orders and $100B of combined market cap. They're not going to do nothing until 2030 and let Elon win.

Plaid Model S is a half baked product launch. The car has no specs, no mention of standard features, and apparently comes with 19" wheels? It doesn't say anything about the aerokit or body size. You would think they need to upgrade the brakes, use wider rubber, add some battery modules in the trunk or back seats to get the higher claimed range, etc. That car won't have the new battery cell; it's almost an inch taller and would require a totally new architecture and crash test.

Elon said the Plaid would be ready in June 2020. What he meant was, I'll show you a demo in September 2020 of a car I think I can make by January 2022. This means he "might" have a reveal of a $25,000 car design in 2023. Concerningly, if it's going to take almost 3 years to put a new rear powertrain on the existing Model S, how are they going to build the first of its kind exoskeleton heavy duty truck in a reasonable amount of time?

As for the Taycan Turbo S, I think there's a lot left in it. Elon plays dirty with discharging the battery quickly, making more of the pack available, etc. He's willing to do stuff that damages the electronics (extreme burn-in) to win. Audi is already doing a tri-motor E-tron, and it would make sense to me that Taycan Turbo and Turbo S would have tri-motor. That would differentiate them more.

AlexCeres

This is unduly pessimistic. It’s the same cell chemistry with improved manufacturing techniques. Those are from Maxwell. It’s not production scale ready, but it does function. It’s much further along than “vaccine candidate” or “glass battery” or “solid state battery” which are all basically science projects. This is an engineering project.

The Plaid S is the car we saw at Nürburgring last year. There’s no reason to believe it isn’t real. It’s exactly the same as the current S with a new 3 motor power train. Just like Audi. Just like Lucid. This attitude is like saying the 992 gt3 isn’t real. Your odds of prognosticating wrongly are extremely high.

manitou202

I hope the Model S Plaid we saw at the Nurburgring is real, but without more details about the car that goes on sale next year for $140k we just don't know.

The Plaid on the Tesla site shows a standard Model S, body, brakes, and wheels and only mentions a powertrain upgrade. They also don't mention anything about lap times. Only 0-60 and 1/4 mile. They may deliver on the one from the Nurburgring but call be a bit skeptical on all those additional upgrades (aero, wider body, ceramic brakes) for the $140k price plus hitting a 520 mile range, and Nurburgring times.

Kudos to Tesla if they pull this off.

Pokerhobo

I posted a video of the new Plaid model setting an EV record at Luguna Seca above driven by a well known race car driver. So at least one exists.

AlexCeres

it’s really not much of an advancement. It’s a 3 motor power train, which they, Audi and Lucid have all been testing for year+. No new tech, nothing nobody else is doing. Plus a 25% improvement in range from the current model S. The model 3 batteries are currently more advanced so just swiping those may be enough.

Incremental improvements over 8 years lead to some good stuff.

Petevb

A well known Nurburgring expert to be exact. The season at the ‘ring lasts another month or so but the weather has already turned; I’d expect he’s giving tuning input on the car before it ships to Germany, though a competitive timed run might need to wait until spring.

Pokerhobo

I think there's a chance the Model S Plaid is testing their new 4680 battery which would increase range without adding more weight since Elon showed they already have a pilot manufacturing line for their new cells which may be sufficient just for the sales of the Model S Plaid. This is just my speculation as I don't think they'd just add more cells and weight to get the 520+ mile range.

bdoviack

I think you are right that the Model S is currently being tested with the new 4680 batteries. Elon confirmed in a tweet:

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/26...he-road-today/

Dyefrog

The other tip-off was the 1,100hp would not be possible with the 1865’s from what I’m told. Regardless, if within a year, they reach the10 GW production expected, that would be 100,000 cars worth so those batteries have to go somewhere. Hoping we see some in public hands this spring.

AlexCeres

it’d be easier and cheaper to use the 2170s from the model 3. It’s possible that the plaid S will have the new large cylinder batteries but there’s no actual evidence to that effect atm.

Dyefrog

The 4680’s have been in test vehicles since May. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to think performance testing wasn’t on the agenda. How else were they able to improve performance by 21% on the plaid? Did last years Nurburgring Model S release any specs to compare?

westwest888

By 2019, Tesla was supposed to be making 600,000 cars in Fremont. 2020 will slip 500,000 again -- with counting the 150,000 cars that came out of China. So Fremont may have seen its peak at 367,000. "The machine that builds the machine" was supposed to have Fremont at 800k to 1,000,000 this year, per Elon's original projection at the start of Model 3 production.

So when he throws out crazy numbers like 10 gigawatt hours at the prototype line, that means the peak hour of production on a research line, multiplied by a year. Not an actual yearly output.

This is a guy who said he was making 1000 solar roofs a week 6 months ago -- and not one person in California has a solar roof to date.

I like Elon and my Model 3, but you can't take any of his words seriously. Or make projections off of them. And god forbid you're trying to simulate $TSLA cash flows, you will die on that hill.

Dyefrog

Please provide a source that contradicts this one from 2014:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/elon...ry?id=24111407

"Tesla projects that it will produce about 500,000 Tesla vehicles by 2020." June 12,2014
When Fremont was home to NUMMI, Toyota and GM in their best year made less than 450,000 corollas and whatever GM clone.

Also one that has Elon stating Fremont would be making 800,000 to 1,000,000 per year.
I think you mixed up the quote from Volvo in response to the Model 3 reveal.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/luxury...kes-aim-tesla/

"With an $11 billion investment from its new Chinese owner, Volvo rolled out a slew of well-received products packed with advanced driver assist technology. The makeover drove a sales streak, with 461,313 vehicles sold globally in the first 10 months of 2017, and a target of 800,000 vehicles sold annually by 2020. "