I've been following Tesla and Elon Musk for years now, with sincere admiration. I'd have reserved a Model 3 yesterday, if it wasn't I am waiting for the Model Y (compact SUV). IN a tweet today Elon Musk seems to hint at that (Model 3 unveil part 2, I suspect it could be it...).

Any of you guys reserved the Model 3?

I need a 240V power plug in the garage for use with welding gear. But have been holding off wiring it up as we ponder battery powered vehicles. Here, those would best require a 240V/50A circuit, more capacity and expense than what the welder needs, but..

Pretty sure now that when I do add that circuit (this year), it'll be the full 50A capacity.

Whether it be a Telsa, Chevy, Nissan, or ZENN vehicle, the future is rapidly becoming clearer.

Cheers

Perhaps install two high capacity circuits, for two EV cars. It is just some wire and circuit breaker costs, up until you install the actual charger(s).

One of the interesting future things about owning an EV is that during electrical mains power outages the plugged in car and wall mounted 'charger' can act as a giant UPS for the house, providing hours of AC runtime. Do any of the Tesla compatible chargers offer that capability? The house wiring would be slightly more complex to handle the house load transfer, so worth planning for if that is of interest to you.

I have a fair sized electrical sub-panel in my garage. I find that having more capacity and more circuit options is a good thing, especially in a garage where the space can be repurposed for many different possible things.

For the next while at least, I don't see us having more than a single short-range (aka. "electric") vehicle. We'll still need something that can drive to Toronto for a weekend, and none of the Evs can do that.

The Pumpkin (our home) has a dedicated lower-level workshop with good access and lots of circuits. The garage here is really just for storage and vehicle repair.

That said, there already is a 240V inlet socket in the garage, wired to a transfer panel for powering the house when the mains are out.

Cheers

Very tempted by the Model 3 and glad to see the Tesla Supercharger network continue to grow. Excited to see Tesla's roadmap making these cars affordable for more people. With the supercharger network, it easy to consider going Tesla only for my future car needs.

I've so far avoided test driving a Tesla, especially after hearing how it ruined other high performance cars for Carmack.

Hopefully before his reaches production, they will do something about the unfinished appearance of the nose.

I'm not sure what their deal is with noses. The current model has that odd looking thing that looks like someone put a cheap plastic cover atop a Jaguar grille. The model 3 improves on that a bit but still looks strange. I wonder why.

More problematic than the nose though, is the dashboard in the interior. It looks like someone glued an iMac to a 2x4 and said "good enough".

(Edit: Pics here for those who don't know what we're talking about.)

There is no broad public consensus on what the front of an non-internal combustion car should look like.

As soon as they delete the need for an air cooled radiator with large air inlets and accompanying 'grill' in the front, what do they put up there? Even gasoline powered cars that have omitted the traditional front grill have struggled with acceptance of the alternate adornments. The belt buckle badge on the front of the older big Infiniti cars comes to mind, among others.

Absence of a grill is, itself, good for aerodynamics.

As to the style Tesla has chosen so far r the front and the rest, I actually like it. The one element I do not like in the Model 3 is the steering wheel. As to the rest, it is a pretty great looking car.

I think the interior without instrumentation in front of the driver may actually be quite pleasant while driving. I am curious to see if that is true. I'll certainly test drive it when possible.

Toyota Pruis and a few other cars have experimented with centrally located instruments.

Personally I find it 'unnatural' to have to glance down and to the side to view instruments.

Part of that is of course the result of many years having the primary driving instruments directly in front, inline with my view down the road. Even after driving a rental Pruis for a week it just took more concentration and effort to shift my view to the side as I looked over and then realign my view with the road as I looked up.

I have not perceived any significant benefits to the central dash location. Certainly there are times when my arm and hand would obscure my view of any display adjacent to the steering wheel.

Overall I'd guess the interior has a surprise or two waiting to be shown in the second unveiling event. All the images on Tesla's site only show the exterior at this point: https://www.teslamotors.com/model3

Perhaps a HUD on the windshield in front of the driver.

Elon Musk repeated several times over the years that he wants production cars to be better than prototypes, so I agree we'll see improvements in Model 3. I'd guess more or less everywhere, and definitely in the software. If you watch the many Model 3 test drive videos out there in these days, Tesla people make it quite clear the on board software is far from final.

The front seems to be Model 3 most controversial style choice. Personally, the more I look at it, the more I like it. It has a SciFi and traditional look, at the same time, that makes it simple but brilliant.

I'd definitely consider spending more money for a front glass extending uninterrupted all the way to the middle of the roof, as in the Model X. That is clearly a more expensive solution, but I'd love to see it as an optional feature.

So, in tonight's AMA on Twitter, Elon Musk sayd some tweaks are planned fo the front styling, and that the steering system and levers are not final: "Wait until you see the real steering controls and system for the 3. It feels like a spaceship."

I am really happy for the steering wheel and controls. I really want the SUV version of the 3 (the Y?), but this is so tempting.

... and he said the lack of a dashboard will make sense after Model 3 unveil part 2.

I'd previously thought that the whole center screen thing was just a way to cut cost. But now? Maybe it's a placeholder for something newer and weirder. And I had previously thought that Tesla managed to keep things simple for this new car. Now I'm not so sure.

Maybe if it wasn't for the giant blockage that is forcing the air onto a lip, creating unnecessary drag. Maybe the boundary layer is large enough to prevent issues, but at the very least you are creating a ton of turbulence. Overall, my initial reaction was to wince at it.

There are a lot more aerodynamic things that can be done to that nose, and I am sure none would be as hideous.

https://twitter.com/i/moments/716787366984228865

Elon musk AMA on Twitter last night.


Tim, I mean: in general terms, absence of a grid is good for aerodynamics because it *decreases* turbulence. In other words, it is easier to decrease turbulence w/o a grid. Then of course specific designs with and w/o grid would need to be compared, of course, to say. A bad gridless design could produce a worst CX than a good grid design.

Anyway, Tesla is aiming at 0.21 CX on model 3. That is going to be quite good if they succeed. I strongly doubt the final "gridless" design will be less than excellent from CX perspective. All Tesla cars are the most aerodynamically efficient in their categories, obviously, since they need to squeeze every possible mile from those batteries. They just can't afford otherwise.

Whether you and I like it or not aesthetically, of course, is a different story. I was not criticizing your sense of aesthetics, I was just sharing mine. Anyway, we'll see how the final design looks like...

My best guess is that they will produce a full HUD instrumentation dashboard, projected in front of the driver.
I'd actually love to see that, and I'd love if that could be customized to the driver's taste, to some extent - selecting which gauges to see, size, color, nav, audio controls, etc.

I'm loving the 3 from what I've seen so far, although the center console stuff could get annoying. I'm not sure I'd be able to get used to a HUD, actually (if that's what they're announcing). I feel like that's an idea that sounds better than the reality of it.

Am I the only person who hates the roof? To be honest, I'm someone who owns a car with a sun roof and never opens the moon roof part because I hate sunlight. But it's weird to me that a car would give you no option BUT to have your rear passengers bathed in sunlight at all times. I'm trying to imagine the number of sun shades I'd need to put all over the roof to keep the sun out of my baby's face. I don't know, maybe I'm just not visualizing what it's like to be underneath that glass. I get that it allows for more headroom, but the cost seems like constant glare.

Other than that, I love this car, and wish I were in a position to be one of the hundreds of thousands of preorders. I love that Tesla is getting this popular, even in the face of such low gas prices. Although, it was nice of the oil industry to slightly raise those prices just after the announcement

I know the Model X has sunshades built in to that purpose. I'd assume Model 3 will come with similar/better features. It could be quite inconvenient otherwise, and quite a silly mistake on their part.

Having said this, many sunroofs are so dark you barely realize they are there. Not sure that is the case for Model 3, but both my last car and my current one are like that. I have a sunroof but it is quite dark and I never close up the shade on it because sun virtually never bothers me. I'd guess particularly sunny areas would require a sunroof, but not Rome, or anywhere I've ever gone with those cars.

Living in Texas, where the sun is the enemy six months out of the year, any sort of solar intrusion into the car, when parked, is a very bad thing. There's just no way I'd want to have a glass roof.

After Musk's tweet storm, clearly they've got something cool planned for the dashboard, but I think the other thing they must have in the pipeline will be multiple variants on the car body. Two vs. four door. Convertible. CUV. Hatchback. Wagon.

For contrast, the annual production of BMW 3-series cars seems to hover around 500k / year. That includes everything from a 320i to an M3 and, I guess, also includes the 4-series and oddballs like the GT. That includes all sorts of different body styles.

It's hard to imagine Tesla cranking up to ship a similar volume of cars with a singular body style.

Though I have to applaud Tesla's wide range of charging options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mz1cnCkE-c

I love my HUD and find it hard to drive a car without one any more. It isn't hard to get used to, and is pretty natural.

Actually, one of the engineers mentioned variants for the roof, I forgot to mention before. So, there, also, we'll see some interesting stuff happening.

I am not sure we'll see THAT many variants - though, it'd be great if we did -. I certainly expect to see SUV (Elon Musk mentioned a Model Y in a tweet a while back) and possibly a cabrio.

Tom, I know you like two-wheeled transport, have you considered an electric motorcycle like the Polaris Empulse TT (nee Brammo)?

I'd love if Tesla made a motorbike. If such a thing was as good a bike as Model S is a car, I'd buy one right away. I'd be just spectacular.

In the realm of motorbikes, instead, the Polaris Empulse TT, with 213 Kg and 54HP, is sadly quite unattractive. Many modern scooters would outperform it, let alone motorbikes. Admittedly, I suspect torque could be quite good, as I could end up finding out if I decided to compute how many Nm is 61 FT-LBS .

... So, it's 82.71 Nm circa.
Not bad for just 61HP, as expected, but nothing extraordinary either.

Once more, Tesla proves to be making not just electric vehicles, but quite great ones too. I'd love to see THAT engineering excellence in the motorbike industry but, that's not the case yet.

I've curious to test ride one to experience the torque power without the gearing. Though I'm probably not going to consider one as my primary bike for a while. They would be a great around town bike, but I'd be concerned about the range issues currently. I'm hoping to see some interoperability with the quick chargers along the highways like the Tesla Superchargers.

One of the vendors of them did make the battery pack easy to remove from the bike, with the idea that apartment dwellers could carry the pack inside to charge overnight.

It has been good to see more electric bikes showing up in various races including the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

Not exactly a motorcycle and not exactly a car, a Lit Motors C1 would be fun if/when it finally hits the market.

Tesla do seem to be the front runners ATM when it comes to EV tech, it certainly would be interesting if they designed a motorcycle.

I would like the lack of vibration and noise compared to an IC bike but yes, range anxiety is still an issue.

http://bgr.com/2016/04/14/tesla-model-3-hud-dashboard/

HUD it is, I think.

A HUD really makes the most sense and I was surprised how long it took manufacturers to pick up on it. I am still amazed that it isn't offered on more models.

Agree 100% .
I add that I've been amazed at how long it took for manufacturers to adopt digital instrumentations, in general. I was never entirely sold to the justification that visibility in the sun etc. is an issue.

When I was a kid, I used to believe that my first car would not have real analog gauges at all. Not only that wasn't true, but the revolution we're about to see - I believe - will be a jump from mostly analog instruments to HUD directly, skipping "traditional" LCDs (of course, with few exceptions today, in top of the line luxury models, Model S included). And once again, I think it will be Tesla to drive and push such change, simply because they're going to do it right, the market will rightfully like it, and all others will follow.

LCDs don't work all that well in the Cold. They do work, but sluggishly. That's one reason electro-mechanical gauges have hung on for so long.

Yes, I wonder if manufacturers have actually ever invested resources in addressing that, since say... the 80s?
I mean, Tesla Model S instruments seems to be pretty OK in the cold, as far as I know?

In other words, I am not sure that cause-effect relationship is that and not the opposite. I would guess that because the whole industry never really tried, then LCDs instruments never really evolved to work as desired (with few notable recent exceptions).
Opposite example: diesel engines never really worked nicely in the cold, when I was a kid. Now they do, brilliantly, because many manufacturers worked on that technology and improved it.

You must be younger than me... Around 1980 the car industry went out for digital gauges in a big way. Most of these were VFD (like our empegs) and worked well in cold, were not slow, etc...

The reason that they quit making them is that customers hated it. Some things are just better suited to needles.

Are the Tesla displays plain LCDs? Or are they OLED/Amoled?

I think with smartphones pushing display tech in the past five years, things (such as temperature tolerance) are improving rapidly.

Yes, execution has been often poor in the past. I guess what I am saying is precisely that it seems to me that the automotive industry decided not to invest to improve technology for digital instrumentation, and simply gave up. Actually, I think that the overall industry has been generally slow in evolving and catching up with new technology. The general low quality in infotainment systems and on board electronics of all sorts - the Empeg is to this day the best in-car head unit I've ever used! - seems to support my impression. I may be ignoring some real technical challenge here, but, I have the impression they needed an newcomer (Tesla) to wake up and start taking IT/digital technology seriously.

Example: yes, I too think computer industry and smartphones pushed the display tech significantly, but, until Tesla, car manufacturers have been really slow in adopting display tech already in the market for years. I have a end-of-2013 Mazda CX-5 with top of the line infotainment system, and the small dashboard display (6", good for a car in 2013) was bad virtually on everything. I ended up replacing it with a cheap Chinese Android-based head unit, which, with all its limits and glitches and bugs, looks like SciFi in comparison. ANY smartphone in 2013 was better than my stock Bose infotainment system. I suspect in 2016 the situation has only minimally improved.

Not to mention shockingly naive poor design of keyless systems, hackable by anyone with some googling and few dollars, or cloud-based services that allowed your car to be hacked and controller remotely.

Honestly, at present, when it comes to in-car electronics - mostly in the area of human interface, but, sadly, not only there, I doubt anyone is in really good shape with the very notable exception of Tesla, a car manufacturer born in 2002.

http://jalopnik.com/theres-a-new-tesla-model-s-rival-and-its-from-the-chine-1772005727

Here's an electric with out a grill that doesn't look unfinished.

I'd say that that car does have a grill, it just happens to be filled in.

Other than that part, and the antenna, LeSEE is a fairly good looking car.

I'm not sure what Tesla uses, but it's definitely not some sort of OLED, because the black levels aren't anywhere near. Apparently one of the many rolling changes to the Model S has been improved contrast of the driver's display, so Tesla is definitely trying to ride the curve as these things improve.

My own Tesla (a late 2013 model) is perfectly fine in this regard, but then I think it's spent exactly one evening in its life in anything resembling below-freezing weather. Otherwise, well, it's Texas.

The real cold-weather issue isn't the LCDs as much as it's the battery pack. When the pack is cold, it has reduced regeneration capacity. Tesla indicates this with a line in the power meter. After you've driven a few miles, the pack warms up and the problem goes away. If, however, you live at the top of a hill, parking outdoors in a cold climate, and your initial commute is downhill, then this lack of regeneration capacity would be an issue.

Or you can have digital gauges made to look like analogue!

Of course, and those are the few exceptions I was referring to.

Or it could just be some overlarge panel lines.

New model S nose is pretty awesome too (IMO), actually better than the Model 3's we've see in the unveil 1.

I never understood why commercial aircraft that have glass cockpits have displays that replicate the steam gauges. They were created in that shape due to limitations. For some reason, they insist on recreating the same shapes where there are no limitations.

One example is dial gauges.

It baffles me.

I believe that it's because it's easier to see if anything's amiss by glancing at the dial, without having to actually read the number off it. This is not strictly relevant to car instruments, but it's why (along with the inertia systemic in aviation) glass cockpits still use steam gauges.

I could have sworn that there was a similar question (with answers) on http://aviation.stackexchange.com, but I can't find it now.

This is exactly right. The gauges on a plane are arranged such that all the needles point the same direction when everything is ok. It only takes a second to scan them all. Reading digits requires comprehension.

Also, it's nice when all planes are similar, so you don't have to search for what you want. It's why they standardized the layout (mostly) back in the '50s.

Bar graphs that are colored green, yellow, or red also just require a glance, no digits need to be read.

So, I just got a new motorbike (Honda Africa Twin) and for the first time I am using entirely digital instrumentation in my daily commute to work.

When it comes to speedometer, looking at pure numbers (90Km/h, for example) is just fine with me. Actually, I find it better than a gauge, as unexpected as it is.

As to revs, the bike comes with a bar graph, and I never know what revs actually are: I only know visually how far I am from the red zone, which is most likely what the instrument was designed to show at a glance. But, whether that is 7,000 rpm or 10,000 rpm, it took me a two weeks driving it before being able to read it with a glance; and actually, I do not READ the value on the graph. I just learned that a that point of the scale I should be around 8,000, for example. I am not particularly happy with the bar graph. It does work, but leaves me a bit lost.

So, I find it all is working the OPPOSITE of what I expected (and what seems to be the general consensus), with me. Weird.

Here: https://allroadendurotouring.com/wp-cont...rumentation.jpg

and here:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/c9/97/46/c9974635b87d62b30e9e6f4d7625e87f.jpg

and here:
http://www.xrv.org.uk/forums/attachments...15-clocks-2.jpg

Bad choice for the ~6% of the male population who's red/green colour blind.

Raises hand... I routinely send reminders to the washington post on this very issue.

-jk

I have normal vision, but I am still flabbergasted by how many things in the world don't properly take color blindness into account.

For aircraft controls, for instance, a glass cockpit with bar graphs that change red/green, I think that might be OK, because isn't it true that you can't be a commercial pilot if you're color blind? I could be wrong about that. I think my information on this topic comes from an old episode of Northern Exposure. :-) But anyway, might point is, though that might be acceptable for a plane, it's not acceptable for a car.

But think about the simple idea of putting red and green lights on boats and planes so that you can tell which way they're heading at night. Whoever started that trend didn't take into account color blindness.

And traffic lights, for that matter. Yes, we have a system now where the vertical position of the lights takes care of that, but think how much nicer and more compact traffic lights could be if we simply had taken color blindness into account when we designed them in the first place?

I remember some video games catching flak a while back for making puzzles that couldn't be solved by color blind people. You'd think that in the game company there'd be at least a few team members who were color blind.

14 CFR Part 67: (the pilot must have) "the ability to perceive those colors necessary for the safe performance of airman duties" for all medical certification classes.

Color blindness prevents a successful Class I Medical certificate. Class II is still possible, but the limitation is on any night flights and using color signal controls, which means no airports that use color signals for ground guidance.

Edit: That should be 'certain colorblindness'. Specifically the ability to distinguish between white, green, and red/amber.