[devnulll]

> Putting a motor on each wheel — or at least one on each axle — could translate into hair-raising EV driving performance.

I don't understand this. My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles, and it's direct coupled to the wheel. The already are doing torque vectoring.

Like all things in engineering, the trade-off's are critical. This article doesn't go at all into the pros/cons of the approach Tesla (and others) are doing as opposed to this approach.

As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.

... with that said, bring on the competition. The whole world wins with every improvement to transport and electrification!

[rsynnott]

> As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.

This company really has made Jobs' reality distortion field pale in comparison.

Without comment on the specific innovation in the article, it's a _very_ weird assumption that all innovation in a field would stem from one company. That's simply not how things generally work.

[chakintosh]

Yeah I cringed reading that line.

Koenigsegg (yes, the hyper car company) made a motor the size of a briefcase that can output 355HP and weighs 30Kg. This is one random example of a company with not much experience in EVs (their Hybrid cars' motors and batteries are made by Rimac) improving on what Tesla is already doing.

[2143]

100% agree.

Both companies are interesting in their own way, but they aren't exactly comparable in my opinion.

Trivia: Christian von Koenigsegg's daily driver is a Tesla Model S :) [1]

[1] https://www.wheels.ca/news/christian-von-koenigsegg-drives-a...

[LegitShady]

koenigsegg makes cars so expensive in numbers so small that they arent relevant to even fairly wealthy people, so its a bit like discussing nasa's latest advances instead of cars that can actually be bought.

did koenigsegg do something cool? sure. theres about 100-200 people who dont work at koenigseff whose life that will affect and nobody else. theyre pretty irrelevent.

[arethuza]

Things like dual clutch gearboxes seem to an example of something that originated in exotic cars and have made the transition to low end cars.

I have a very humble Skoda with DSG and it works really well even though it has a 1L engine :-)

[MuffinFlavored]

Dual clutch gearboxes are kind of on their way out already, no?

Electric cars don't have gearboxes at all, and electric cars are "what's coming next/the future", no?

[arethuza]

I was merely providing an example of where a technology has "trickled down" from exotics to run of the mill cars.

[iamricks]

Koenigsegg does innovate a lot in manufacturing car parts for their hypercars, if you watched Christian von Koenigsegg speak about the engineering they do its really impressive.

In some alternate universe CVK is making cars that compete with Tesla and are better. Although they make amazing products i wish he and his team of brilliant engineers would work on inexpensive cars, im almost certain they could innovate in the space.

[mhh__]

They are making a "cheap" car. Maybe only the price of a house rather than a yacht.

[iamricks]

What they do over at Koenigsegg is amazing, i feel like most people arent aware at the incredible things they do, CVK is an amazing engineer too and its awesome watching him speak about the cars.

[texasbigdata]

I think the reticence is the old attitude that you basically had to drag the old car manufacturers to electric, then they insisted on doing design after design of the clearly inferior hydrogen alternative, it's hard to take them seriously now that they're just responding to stay relevant / alive. If they really "cared" about EV this would have come 20 years earlier given the sheer scale of endowed resources they had. Of course that's not a fair evaluation of them, but one perspective on how it'd be easy to be cynical.

[rsynnott]

> I think the reticence is the old attitude that you basically had to drag the old car manufacturers to electric,

But... that's not really true? Nissan and Renault's first modern electric platforms predate the Tesla Model S. VW's is only slightly newer (and of course it had a few NiCad false starts in the 90s).

> then they insisted on doing design after design of the clearly inferior hydrogen alternative

That's mostly just Toyota.

> If they really "cared" about EV this would have come 20 years earlier given the sheer scale of endowed resources they had

No, it wouldn't. VW and GM, at least, tried in the 90s, but it just wasn't a runner with NiCad batteries. Electric cars were effectively gated on battery tech.

[izacus]

What a bizarre post - the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market, many better than Tesla offerings in many ways.

Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?

[texasbigdata]

I'm not really familiar with this market but I'll just quote one article from last week suggesting it's a bit more lopsided than that; things can change quickly obviously.

"Tesla accounts for more than two-thirds of all-electric car registrations (almost 68%), which is a dominant position, but the non-Tesla electric vehicle sales are growing at a similar rate and potentially might outpace Tesla later this year."

If youre outselling everyone else _combined_ that suggests a clear current market winner.

https://insideevs.com/news/604580/us-bev-premium-car-sales-2...

[anon_123g987]

In 2021, worldwide, Tesla had 21% of the purely electric market and 14% of the plug-in market, down from the previous year's 23% and 16%, respectively.

Source: https://insideevs.com/news/564800/world-top-oem-sales-2021/

[rsynnott]

> If youre outselling everyone else _combined_ that suggests a clear current market winner.

I mean, if you assume the US is the only market which exists, then, yeah, okay? Tesla is third or fourth in Europe and in China, both of which are larger BEV markets than the US, though.

The electric car market has been slower to develop in the US than in Europe and China for a variety of reasons (fuel's cheaper in the US for tax reasons, the average drive is much longer, consumer taste is more oriented towards large SUVs and trucks), but develop it has, and US consumers should soon have about as much choice of electric cards as consumers in other markets.

[texasbigdata]

Fair. Good point.

[fvdessen]

In Europe, Tesla is now at only 5% of total EV sales, and in a not entirely unrelated news the US gov is proposing to exclude EU made cars from the 7500$ EV subsidy.

[salmo]

Tesla is only targeting the “luxury car” market. They don’t stray from Lexus’s or BMW’s footprint and haven’t touched the others lucrative SUV business. That’s a very small niche in the grand scheme of vehicles.

And they’re dodging the largest vehicle market entirely: fleet vehicles. At least a few years ago F-150s outsold all cars. Sprinter vans can’t be produced fast enough to meet demands. These dwarf family vehicles.

Their accomplishment was seeing a market problem and then killing it. Manufacturers were only targeting “city” vehicles or crunchy granola people with hybrids and EVs. Tesla made EVs freaking cool.

Seeing that as evidence that they’re the primary source for all EV innovation, though, doesn’t line up. They have a market targeted and are focused on delivering there. There is work going on with EV fleet vehicles, semis, etc. and they’re not involved.

It’s been about 10 years now, and they’re only making what an “old car company” would consider 1 platform with no sign of expanding. I think they’ll continue to dominate that space, but there’s a lot of innovation required to get outside of that footprint.

[clouddrover]

Those are US figures. The North American EV market is about one third the size of the European market.

Here are some current European sales percentages:

https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Y...

Tesla comes in 4th.

[darkwater]

But it's trending up, and they cost 10k more than the most similar VW model (and the difference is worth). But Tesla is totally the Apple of cars where VW is the Samsung.

[ZeroGravitas]

And its probably fair to attribute the difference to better governance in the EU, so the top down approach that worked for Tesla wasn't as necessary.

Still useful to have someone targetting Silicon Valley nerds that would otherwise own a Prius and a Porsche though.

[jjulius]

So, "it's a bit more lopsided than that", "things can change quickly obviously", and "non-Tesla electric vehicle sales are growing at a similar rate and potentially might outpace Tesla later this year", but Tesla is "the clear market winner"?

[ygram]

If you want to buy an EV today you are looking at months and months of waiting for the car to be produced and delivered. Sales numbers right now reflect production capacity more than demand for a specific brand or model. Tesla is ahead on production capacity.

[otabdeveloper4]

Electric car-shaped vehicles are a rounding error comapared to sales of all other types of electric vehicles.

Putting rechargeable batteries into a car form-factor is like strapping a jetpack to a horse. Not the transportation mode of the future.

[codeulike]

the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market

They are just about getting there as of last year, after 15 years of saying they were going to. e.g. look back at VWs claims about how they were going to be an EV leader back in 2013, vs how long it took them to actually get the ID3/ID4 done.

e.g.

"Volkswagen Group will be the world leader in electric and hybrid cars by 2018, it says.

The bold claim came not from an offhand comment by an executive at this week's Frankfurt Auto Show, but in a press release announcing that the VW Group had set its "sights on market leadership in electric mobility by 2018."

“We are starting at exactly the right time," said Group CEO Martin Winterkorn before the show.

"We are electrifying all vehicle classes, and therefore have everything we need to make the Volkswagen Group the top automaker in all respects, including electric mobility, by 2018."

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1086902_volkswagen-will...

But yes as of now there are a lot of good cars from a lot of manufacturers.

Tesla had to give the industry an almighty kick up the backside to get us here though

Without Tesla all we'd have is stuff like the 2016 Leaf with 100 mile range because 'market research shows people just want an ev for running around town'

[rsynnott]

> look back at VWs claims about how they were going to be an EV leader back in 2013, vs how long it took them to actually get the ID3/ID4 done.

VW was third in Europe by 2018 (or second, depending on how you view Renault-Nissan), and first by 2020, so... not _that_ huge of a miss, perhaps? The ID3/4 were their second generation; the eGolf and eUp, while far less ambitious, sold pretty well.

[codeulike]

Fair enough. Yes by 2020 VW had sorted themselves out.

My point really is that the traditional manufacturers wasted a lot of time faffing about. Lots of glossy promises about the future and not many actual EV cars being made. Possibly internal power struggles. I'm glad things are happening now.

e.g. BMW had the i3 in 2013 which was good for its time, then closed the whole program down and didn't come up with anything new until (correct me if I'm wrong?) last year?

In the UK, until the Jaguar i-Pace launched in 2018, Tesla were the only manufacturer with a 200+ mile range EV. In the States you had the Bolt but that never came to the UK.

But there's a lot of good stuff happening now so I'm happy. FWIW I drive a kia.

[papito]

They did do it 20 years ago. Actually, 25 years ago. GM's EV1 was a car well ahead of its time, even with a decent range, but then it mysteriously disappeared.

This is covered in the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" (on Amazon).

So it's not like Elon Musk paved the way for electric cars - he just faced fewer headwinds. And let us not forget, he did not actually found Tesla, he acquired it. The company also barely made it if not for government help at the time of dire need.

Elon Musk, being the storyteller that he is, said once that he was drinking alone at a table in a club (who does that?) all sad due to the state of affairs at Tesla. It did not look like the company was going to make it. Then he was approached by his model future 2nd ex-wife, and the rest was history.

If only all men were living in an episode of Red Shoe Diaries.

[biztos]

> drinking alone in a club (who does that?)

Every single drinking person who has a club to go to and needs to do some thinking, for starters.

[smcl]

Pub I can see, but drowning your sorrows alone in a club is an odd one

[dagw]

"Club" can mean both a private members club with various facilities, including a bar, as well as a place where people party and dance all night to loud music.

[biztos]

There are many kinds of club, and there are many reasons to have a drink by yourself, most of which are not about anybody’s sorrows. Maybe you like the music, for example, but aren’t in the mood for company.

But if we want to assume Musk was drowning his sorrows, and that it’s an EDM dance club — this seems to be your implication, maybe it’s true — then I still don’t find it weird. Darkness, distraction, the desire to be among people but also alone, avoiding your entourage… plenty of good reasons.

[suction]

Hydrogen was mainly Toyota, no German maker for instance made any serious commitments into that technology.

I suppose you mean that Tesla was the dragging force in the EV sector and all others were reluctant until they saw Tesla become successful?

If you look at the timeline of global auto makers putting EVs on the market, that claim is unsubstantiated, they would have been years later if that was true.

I get it though, Tesla is the first product of the American auto sector that is somewhat innovative, after decades of being behind all others. So it’s natural that many Americans are proud of Tesla’s success and will basically defend that pride with their lives. It’s a cult because they and facts the contrary will be seen as an attack.

[rkangel]

I think you mean Honda rather than Toyota for hydrogen and fuel cells.

Edit: or at least that was my perception. Doing some Googling it appears that they both have done things.

[shagie]

Hydrogen makes a bit of sense on in Japan.

You've got an island - people aren't driving their cars to other countries from Japan so you can build out the entirety of the refuting system with a smaller area (the long axis of Japan is comparable in distance from San Diego to Seattle - https://acme.com/same_scale/#41.30257,-121.06934,38.07404,13... ).

The second thing about being on an island is that importing oil is expensive.

So, the problem of energy storage for vehicles... plugins are one option. Hydrogen is another.

Hydrogen is still something that they're looking at for Japan and it makes sense in that environment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toyota-ramps-up-efforts-to-l...

I'll also point out in that article:

> Toyota started working on the development of fuel-cell vehicles — where hydrogen from a tank mixes with oxygen, producing electricity — back in 1992. In 2014, it launched the Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell sedan. The business says its fuel cell vehicles emit “nothing but water from the tailpipe.”

Consider where the high capacity battery technology in '92 was.

For cars the Galapagos effect on cars gives us a hydrogen fuel cell focus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_syndrome

I don't believe the research into fuel cell designs for Japanese car makers was a mistake and it likely is still a good idea for Japan and other island countries to have a hydrogen refueling system.

[NoPicklez]

With regards to your general rule statement.

There has been a lot of discussion/reporting around the manufacturing and design of Tesla cars that is way behind that of the likes of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. The computer systems are state of the art, but in with regards to the design and manufacturing of its chassis, Tesla has been historically behind the times.

Just because Tesla doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s not the right way to go.

[ricw]

That may have been the case 5 years ago, but these days it’s the opposite. Look at the Munro live Tesla tear downs on YouTube, particularly the megacastings structure, the battery packs or heat pumps. It’s night and day.

[NoPicklez]

That's great as Munro were the group who originally game them a bad wrap regarding their chassis design.

My point still stands and it clearly shows that Tesla have room to improve, just like all car companies.

[suction]

Tesla quality is still lightyears behind old premium brands. Panel gaps so wide you could use them as kiddie pools. Their scrap rates are testament of how crappy their production process is.

[beeboop]

Do you have a source for Tesla's scrap rates and the scrap rates for other large manufacturers?

[suction]

In that dreaded plant in Germany it’s a cool 60% currently:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/efahrer.chip.de/news/ueber-60-p...

[xbmcuser]

Partly I agree and its the reason I have been disappointed specially in Toyota trying to protect it cash cow and supply chain. They are not really getting into electric cars. Even today they are trying to hedge with hydrogen fuel cars its as they feel hydrogen cars will require the least amount of changes for their supply chain.

[rmason]

Toyota made the largest bet on hydrogen of any car manufacturer. They stubbornly stuck to it and were slow in developing EV's. They're playing fast catchup but will be a few years behind everyone else. What that costs them in market share is anyone's guess. I thought the laggard would be Chrysler/Stellantis but they're getting set to introduce a number of models starting next year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toyota-ramps-up-efforts-to-l...

[ZeroGravitas]

It seems to be a Japanese thing, I seem to recall that perhaps the Japanese government thought they might have some Methane Hydrate reserves under the sea and thought it would be strategic to pivot towards Hydrogen from this to replace gasoline.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Climate-Change...

Not a totally crazy idea, but has probably temporarily held them back by distracting them from EVs.

[avidphantasm]

Well, it’s far from clear that we’ll be able to meet climate goals with EVs due to material shortages. Hydrogen alternatives may help with this. Also, if we can build out hydrogen production, this may open up opportunities to retrofit existing ICEs to burn hydrogen. Lastly, while Toyota may be behind on EVs from a product POV, it’s arguable how far behind they are from an engineering POV. Toyota has had by far the best hybrid EV platform for the past 25 years, and have been incrementally improving it throughout. Hybrids are harder to make than EVs, yet have all the same components (esp. the plug-in variety). I think Toyota will be fine in the EV well before they need to stop selling ICE cars.

[jacquesm]

Even Toyota isn't large enough to influence the market like that, they will have to cave sooner or later if they want to stay in business.

[nly]

Toyota are the largest car manufacturer in the world...

[jacquesm]

Yes, and they are still not large enough for that strategy. You could do it as a monopolist.

Sony has a history of similar hubris, they always ended up adapting to the rest in the long run, usually after losing quite a big chunk of the market to upstarts.

[doctor_eval]

Largest car manufacturer seems to flip between Toyota and VW, but while Toyota is certainly in the top 2, it’s also far less than ½ the market.

[lagadu]

They already started caving in with the BZ series cars they have planned.

[drcross]

My suspicion is that Toyota is trying for a "too big to fail" move. Get bailed out by the governments to keep the jobs going.

[suction]

They are the only ones trying to make hydrogen a thing, not „all others than Tesla“. And Toyota has lost the plot a long time ago like all other Japanese makers. The Koreans are eating their lunch.

But Toyota recently put an EV to market, it’s called BZ4X or something like that. It’s not good.

[clouddrover]

> As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.

That's not a very good rule. There a lots of things Tesla doesn't do.

- Tesla doesn't do battery swaps, but NIO does. NIO's done it 10 million times: https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-users-china-have-completed-10-m...

- Tesla doesn't do 350 kW chargers, but Ionity (among others) does. Current EV truck drivers appreciate it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAttTG03WA

- Tesla's charging network is slowly rolling out charging to all EV brands in Europe, but Tesla still doesn't charge all brands in North America. Electrify America (among others) does.

- Tesla doesn't offer EV scooters, but Gogoro (among others) does: https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/

- Tesla doesn't offer EV vans, but other manufacturers do.

- Tesla doesn't offer EV city cars, but other manufacturers do.

- Tesla doesn't do a heads-up display, but other manufacturers do.

And so on.

[gridder]

- Tesla doesn’t offer LiDAR sensors, even if it’s clearly the best technology to use for the autopilot.

[jeffreygoesto]

Radar is working hard to get towards higher resolution and classification quality. From what I know, it is the closest competitor because it is active sensing and complements camera properties even better than LIDAR. In adverse conditions LIDAR and Cameras have similar failure modes, which is not good.

I do agree that cameras an ML on the images seems to be stuck at the next plateau of scene understanding performance. An impressive one, admitted, but still not sufficient. For real emergency reactions with highway speeds you need to assess situations about a quarter mile away basically.

[gzer0]

Not even close. Psuedo-LiDAR approach is the way to go and everyone knows it. Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

[chell830]

> Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

Waymo launched their commercial robo-taxi service in 2017. It’s still running today. Open to the public [1].

Meanwhile, Tesla is phasing out their FSD program. Beta-testers, 98 safety score, $15K cost, whatever, current Tesla owners are pissed off.

FSD is a sinking ship, just like the Tesla/Elon brand. They used to be cool.

[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/04/...

[drcross]

You obviously haven't seen the FSD upgrade that was released yesterday.

[hahaxdxd123]

Haven't you people been saying this for 2 years now?

[jjulius]

The update that is only to v10.69, instead of v11 like Musk had suggested would roll out now? The same upgrade that's only rolling out to ~1k FSD-enabled customers (which is only 1% of FSD Beta customers)?

[gridder]

I hope you’re not biased since you work for Tesla’s autopilot BU. Anyway I’m no expert and I’m open to learn something. With pseudo-LiDAR do you mean photogrammetry? Following your input I may say the best approach could be then to integrate both image and LiDAR technologies to create the most trustable 3d scan. Since LiDAR measures space and distance, it can correct the other photography sensors which could be prone to some errors. I understand the cost side of scale manufacturing but you cannot cut cost in this case, the risk of fatal injuries it’s too big. Also I feel Elon decided ‘dogmatically’ to avoid LiDARs and that’s why this is the only road you are considering…

[ohgodplsno]

You work on autopilot at Tesla. You are _the_ demonstration that Tesla's camera based approach is insufficient, has awful deficiencies and is a dangerous product. I wouldn't be saying much if I were you.

[dmitriid]

Except, you know, in parts of the world that are not sunny California. Your camera will mean nothing in the Nordics/Canada with snow/slush/dirt on the road, and the sun shining straight at you.

But sure, do tell me how you're going to ignore the laws of physics and see a road sign, a kid, or a deer when your camera is blind.

[sschueller]

Waymo hasn't killed anyone yet. I think that is probably the most important thing to show.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

Waymos drive so slow, any Tesla with the same "driver" would kill anyone else.

[arcticbull]

Well, except not running over mannequins of kids. [1] You know, the simple stuff.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMWERzT7SQ

[drcross]

This has been completely debunked numerous times in the last week. It's a total smear campaign by a competitor.

[hahaxdxd123]

oh https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1557766646026084359

[thedrbrian]

>This has been completely debunked numerous times in the last week

show us

[awestroke]

Because it is prohibitively expensive, and you get more data with multiple cameras than with one single lidar

[clouddrover]

It didn't prohibit Mercedes:

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes...

https://electrek.co/2022/07/22/mercedes-drive-pilot-review/

[awestroke]

Well yeah, if you double the price of the car you can afford to slap lidar on it. You'll sell fewer cars, however

[clouddrover]

So what's the Model S's and Model X's excuse? They've got the Mercedes EQS price tag but not the equipment.

[__m]

Not at night

[dmitriid]

> you get more data with multiple cameras than with one single lidar

Until you're at night in the snow/dirt.

[hoseja]

Yeah, lidar famously deals well with inclement weather and low visibility conditions. Those infrared lasers just punch right through the fog and snowflakes.

Lmao.

[dmitriid]

Ah you decided to be smart and sarcastic, and inadvertently showed just how limited the tech in these "autonomous" cars is.

And that you can't just handwave these problems away.

[hoseja]

Is this a sarcastic joke? Surely you can't mean that.

[neither_color]

On July 4, 2022, at the NIO power exchange station at Shanghai Hongqiao VEG Micro Creative Park, an ES8 marked the 10,000,000th power swap in NIO’s history.

Impressive that they were able to do this in July of '22 after just being in one of the world's most severe lockdown for months in a row. There were almost no non-essential vehicles on the road in Shanghai for at least 60 days

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/13/china/china-covid-shangha...

[rsynnott]

I mean, presumably the Shanghai facility is just the one that happened to do the 10 millionth change; China's a big country. Also, obviously, there was a time before the lockdown, when they presumably racked up some battery changes.

For comparison, if Amazon or someone claimed they'd just shipped their billionth package, to someone in Luxembourg, "there aren't many people in Luxembourg so this sounds wrong" would be a weird thing to say.

[Smoosh]

> And so on

I would really like V2H or V2G but no sign of it from Tesla so far.

[clouddrover]

Or even just V2L. Honda has it with the Honda e, Ford has it with the F-150 Lightning, and Hyundai has it with their E-GMP platform (currently Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, and Hyundai Ioniq 5).

[dzhiurgis]

IMO that should be illegal to sell. Such a missed opportunity.

[judge2020]

Technically all of those are covered under "otherwise has drawbacks they've judged significant", but I think they meant "in the realm of EV performance": the Plaid is still the fastest car you can buy without dropping a half million on a SF90 or even more on a limited-run supercar.

[zuhsetaqi]

It's the fastest in acceleration. Bring it to the Nürburgring and it's by far not the fastest car. Even the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is more than 2 seconds faster[0]. Driving quality or how good a car is is not defined by how fast a car can accelerate.

[0] https://www.nuerburgring.de/info/nuerburgring/records

[arethuza]

I was surprised by just how much faster the fastest ICE cars are than the fastest electric cars - about 50s faster?

[mhh__]

Electric cars are really really heavy, and people looking for a trackday monster are going to buy a 911.

[zuhsetaqi]

Yes, probably because electric cars have the heavy battery on board

[clouddrover]

> Technically all of those are covered under "otherwise has drawbacks they've judged significant"

Pray tell, what are these significant drawbacks?

> the Plaid is still the fastest car you can buy without dropping a half million

Nope: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312956/lucid-air-sapphi...

[googlryas]

According to that article, that car isn't available yet and is only going to made in extremely limited numbers.

[clouddrover]

And? How many people do you think buy high performance cars? The answer is: not many.

[googlryas]

Someone said

> the Plaid is still the fastest car you can buy without dropping a half million

And you said:

> Nope: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312956/lucid-air-sapphi...

Except you can't actually buy the car you linked to. That's a pretty big miss in a conversation about cars you can buy. In fact, I would say one of the two defining features of "cars you can buy" is the fact that you can buy them.

[melony]

Ridiculous. Just walk around the Bay area and see for yourself.

[judge2020]

> Lucid Air Sapphire will be offered as a limited-production model, with deliveries planned in the US and Canada next year. The price is $249,000 USD and $325,000 CAD.

https://www.lucidmotors.com/stories/introducing-sapphire-pin...

[clouddrover]

Yes. That's not half a million now, is it?

[bombcar]

The idea of a motor on each wheel independent has obviously been considered, but what is often ignored is the sprung vs unsprung weight.

You could develop a pretty amazing off-road vehicle with independent electric motors in each wheel, but it would be a relatively bumpy ride.

[shrubble]

The Mercedes 300SL, the Gull Wing of 1954, already had inboard-mounted brakes to reduce unpsrung weight. I would assume that any Mercedes engineer would be familiar with the concept...

[Wistar]

As do the Jaguar E and XJ types, and perhaps other Jags. The Audi 100, some Alfas and Lotus cars, too.

[adolph]

And the Humvee

[jacquesm]

Citroen DS as well:

http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/ds/image...

[bigiain]

And a bunch of Alfa Romeos (Suds and Sprints from the 80s/90s at least)

[benj111]

The 2cv did this as well. I'm undecided if this supports your argument though.

[lloeki]

Suspension design on the 2cv was a very specific consequence of the "egg" design brief:

> This suspension design ensured the road wheels followed ground contours underneath them closely, while insulating the vehicle from shocks, enabling the 2CV to be driven over a ploughed field without breaking any eggs, as its design brief required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_2CV#Suspension

[impossiblefork]

The unsprung weight won't be changed.

There is one motor connected to each of the wheels, but there is a shaft between the wheel and the motor and a CV joint on this shaft, allowing the wheel to move relative to the motor, and the wheel is sprung.

There are cars with in-wheel hub motors. For example, MW Motors make on of their Luka models with in-wheel hub motors. Those must keep their motors light, and have the advantage that you get more space in the car at the expense of a tiny bit more bumpiness.

[chrisseaton]

> You could develop a pretty amazing off-road vehicle with independent electric motors in each wheel, but it would be a relatively bumpy ride.

Military EV prototypes are considering wheels-in-hubs, because they have complex suspension and because of under-armour, but yeah it means the motor is basically un-suspended.

[_carbyau_]

sprung vs unsprung is a ratio.

These vehicles are likely heavy enough that electric motors in the wheels might not change that ratio much.

And swap/repair would be convenient!

[bombcar]

And at something like 10k pounds empty, and with army dudes in the cab who nobody cares about getting bumped, it might be the way to go.

[jillesvangurp]

There are several cars that use this already. The issue is not so much ignored; but been dealt with. Multiple EV manufacturers have now successfully used this technology in vehicles. It seems the benefits outweigh the theoretical downsides.

Of course the question remains what happens in a high performance car at extreme speeds. But presumably, Ferrari and Mercedes know what they are doing and have considered this as well.

As for suspension; I'm sure there are ways to deal with that as well. I don't see how this should be any more bumpy than other vehicles for off-road.

A bigger concern would be what you'd do in case of a flat tire as that basically means losing an engine. And when you are in the middle of nowhere, getting some road assistance would not be that easy.

[benj111]

You have the wheel separate to the motor, so you just replace the wheel? Just like you don't currently have to remove the brakes when you change a wheel.

[jillesvangurp]

Not if the motor is part of the wheel.

[audunw]

But it wouldn't be part of the wheel... there's no reason for it to be, and it'd make the car impossible to use in countries with snow where you need to change the wheel every spring and winter.

[kolinko]

You change tires, not the whole wheels between seasons.

[chasd00]

Don’t those giant mining dump trucks have electric motors on each wheel? Although that’s probably for the low rpm torque advantage like diesel electric trains.

[bombcar]

They do, primarily so they don't have to have anything resembling a "driveshaft" or a transmission, because they're so big they don't actually "bump" over anything, more like crush it into submission.

[rektide]

The unspring weight is the main reason I havent placed an Aptera (also in-wheel axial motor) pre-order. I have a hard time imagining this fundamental of vehicle dynamics can be adequately worked around, but oh how I want to believe. Also keeping me from placing a pre-order; their pre-order site wouldnt let me check out in Firefox.

[enragedcacti]

The Pros are volume and weight and the con is probably primarily price. Lower weight and volume means you have a lot more options on where they go and where you can put batteries that you couldn't before. In the article they mentioned the Koenegsegg Regera which is a perfect example of where this motor works well. A two-seater with an 1100HP V8 and 9kWh of battery that also needs world class handling makes weight and volume massively important and the MSRP of $4 million makes cost practically irrelevant.

The Gemera is a bit different but is using the same motor tech and you can see how it allows them to pack things very tightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNqaz9q_0

For Tesla they already have a huge car with a battery design that works and a large area for the motors so re-engineering the S to make use of the space you save was probably not a good idea, especially when they are already building the roadster. I also wouldn't be surprised if its a bit of a Not-Invented-Here problem considering how much they value vertical integration.

[karamanolev]

I don't think they're building the roadster in any capacity - at least haven't seen any evidence of that. What makes you think so?

[enragedcacti]

I should have said "designing" which there also isn't much evidence of but it seems fair to give them the benefit of the doubt that its at least real enough to drive category decisions for their other models.

[automatic6131]

>As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.

Why would you say something so wrong yet so bold?

[BoorishBears]

> if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.

Which of those applied to giving the Plaid suitable rotors for its size and power?

[jacquesm]

> My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles

In car terminology you have only one rear axle (which is all of the unsprung weight in the back) and two driveshafts, I think you meant driveshaft (unless you have a six wheel Tesla...).

[benj111]

Stub axles?

[ezconnect]

If the motor is on the wheel it will have less torque and power. Unless there is a new technology motor that can rival a long fat motor in torque and power, I doubt we can see this in high performance electric vehicles. Small city cars on very short distance this is feasible because we gain a bit of space on a tiny car.

[alliao]

isn't Rivian shipping already with one motor on each wheel?

[deepGem]

If you use 1 motor per wheel, at full torque you don't have double the power but the same power as one motor on the axle. This is the fundamental disadvantage of using one motor for each wheel, which is probably why Tesla engineers didn't pursue this route.

In addition, the extra weight also adds up, no matter how tiny the motor is. Essentially you are making each wheel heavier, adding to suspension woes.

The greatest advantage of individual motors is in cornering when you can precisely control how much power each wheel gets, and obviously on icy surfaces when you can lower the power on the slipping wheel or disengage it completely and drive power from even one wheel which still has traction and grip. Nearly the same result can be obtained by torque vectoring, which is what Tesla employs. So for may be 20% less accuracy you can do away with the individual motors.

[benj111]

>If you use 1 motor per wheel, at full torque you don't have double the power but the same power as one motor on the axle.

That's like saying if you double the power of an engine you get the same power at the wheels? The limiting factor is the grip. The more power you add the more you get out until that limit is reached.

But anyway, I'm not sure the one motor per wheel is all about more power. You could use 2 smaller motors instead of one large one. And then you can get rid of the axle and diff which are weighty items, so I don't think it's necssarily the heavier solution.

Plus there's ground clearance. The diff is often the lowest point in an offroader. A motor at each wheel removes that limitation.

Then you've got packaging. A centrally mounted motor uses space that could be used for cabin space or batteries. Hub motors are using otherwise dead space.

Then there's reliability. If you lose one motor you've still got another to get you somewhere, and it's probably easier to replace too.

[deepGem]

Thank you. I oversaw the aspect of what happens until the motors reach max power and all the other aspects you have mentioned.