Well, if they upgrade the batteries in the future for free as they’re doing with the Roadster then it’s already future proof :tup:
Everything I have heard is they are offering an upgrade, with no price announced. It would be great if they did, maybe a free ~$10k battery if you buy your spouse a Model X.
http://www.roadandtrack.com/go/first-looks/first-look-tesla-model-s-p85d-dual-motor?src=soc_fcbks
cliff notes:
Musk adds a 188hp Emotor to the front wheels. the P85D now has 691-hp / 687 lb-ft combo and is AWD
The dual-motor setup Tesla shaves a second from the already quick P85’s 0-60 time. The P85D hits that mark in just 3.2 seconds. That’s faster than a Dodge Charger Hellcat or a Porsche Panamera Turbo S. The quarter mile mamrk arrives in 11.8 seconds. It should feel incredible from inside the car—electric motors hum hard and then 60 happens.
oh… and the car is 4936 lbs…
Dual motor Model 3 please 
That’s what I’m thinking. :tup:
Adding the 2nd motor increases the car’s range too. Hell, why not add 4 of them, lol.
Oh and Porsche 918 style brakes that can be tweaked in-car.
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“Hang on while I switch to insane mode”
Tesla is still working on calibration, but I got a brief, spirited run in the back seat, and the results are – and kinda I hate admitting this – scary.
Acceleration runs don’t freak me out. I’ve been in cars with over 1,000 hp manned by a competent driver, and I’m able to keep my cool. But something is different in the P85D. When the driver slams on the accelerator, my mind knows we’re OK, but my body – for just a few tenths of a second – got freaked out. Maybe it was the torque or the blackened tunnel that we shot into, but there was the briefest moment of panic, which subsided as the twist of the motors started bleeding off.
It’s like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, and that includes a run in the electrically-augmented Porsche 918.
I caught Musk talking to another reporter before going for a ride, and he mentioned driving modes. Currently, there’s Normal and Sport. But Musk wants to add another designation: Insane. “I’m serious,” Musk says. I don’t think he’s overstating things.
Tesla sales forecast cut by 40%
low oil prices could be a problem
Eh, people who buy $80k+ cars don’t really care about gas prices.
And if the Model 3 hits the price points they’re shooting for, $0 for a gallon of gas is still better than $2/GAL.
Electric cars are currently cheap because its a novelty and not done at scale.
If 5 years from now some huge % used electric cars the price of electricity would sky rocket the infrastructure isn’t there to support them.
this is some what true…utility companies are scrambling trying to handle all of the PV proposals that are being thrown at them and its causing much greater demand swings throughout the day
so when you add unknown demand of EV’s the swings will drastically be effected
People definitely don’t understand the scope of the issue of energy demand for transportation.
U.S. Transportation fuel consumption accounts for over 70 percent of total U.S. oil consumption, and more than 65 percent of that amount is for personal vehicles. American drivers consume about nine million barrels of gasoline per day for personal transportation—378 million gallons every day—about 45 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.
378 million gallons of gasoline a day just for personal transportation. The EPA figured out that 33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline. So that makes the math really simple for us, even if you can’t use a regular handheld calculator because there are too many zeroes. 12,738,600,000 KW of power per day would be needed to replace gasoline in vehicles. That’s almost 13 billion. Divide by 1000 and you get 12,738,600 megawatts per day.
The US in 2013 consumed 4,686,400,000 megawatts of electricity… IN A YEAR, or 12,839,452 megawatts per day. That’s every house, office and factory combined, every single watt of Nikola magic juice we sling down the lines. Notice how close those per day numbers are? Yeah, we’d need to DOUBLE our electricity production to replace gasoline with EV. Not sure how many of you are up on the current state of the electrical grid in this country but the adage “deck of cards” and descriptor “pile of shit about to implode” are both appropriate for it’s condition.
National grid in my area is actually ahead of the curve and have 50% capacity remaining…doesn’t take much to realize how off that is with your quick math
just saw today that there is a tesla supercharging station near me…didn’t realize you could charge at these locations for free. by 2015 it looks like they plan to have coast to coast coverage with charging stations…almost makes buying this electric car a reasonable proposition.
Where are you located? They already have coast to coast coverage, they’re just expanding on it fairly rapidly it seems.
i live north of pittsburgh. the station near me is in cranberry township. i understand they there is “coast to coast” coverage…if you take a particular route…but based on their current map you can’t get into or out of texas using only their charging stations.
stock 5,000lb sedan with an E-motor runs 11.6 out the box… jeez. saw this earlier today.
when these things are 1,000lbs lighter they’ll be what… high 10’s?
^^^^^^^Deck of cards or house of cards?
Tesla Model S drivers are learning that the expensive way, with a list of repair estimates ranging from $7,000 to fix “a small dent and scratch” to $45,000 for “minor front-end damage.”
I didn’t know they were aluminum so part of it is the expense to tool and repair that material similar to what the industry is seeing with the F-150, but part of it is Tesla specific
The elevated numbers are put down to a few reasons beyond the difficulties of working in aluminum: the tools and equipment required to fix it are expensive, with one shop saying it spent $100,000 to get fitted out to Tesla standards, and incidentals like rivets and bonding agents are pricey; one repair shop charged $35 for a single rivet, and the bonding agent recommended by Tesla is $100 per tube.