I think the next GM autopilot revision will knock Tesla off their perch. They have something very impressive in the works.

I also read that Tesla autopilot took a step backwards when they split with Mobileye?

I3s and Leaf (leaves?) are both fugly IMO... Tesla could have cleaned up that nose, not sure why they try to make a point with an ugly front end..

The cool stuff with Tesla is the automation. My boss has a new 95D and ona rainy day, summoned it from wherever it was parked to come to us, and it did. Great party trick! Very 22nd century ! Auto parking is impressive as well... I don't want the autopilot yet, but the car can do what it wants without me in it ;-)

Ask Nostatic about his experience with this turd.

I don't think N-S has been on for a year! SmileWavy

I agree, why do they insist on making electric cars so fugly? Certainly better/attractive styling should make them sell better. Unless they are geared toward the Prius buyer which is equally fugly.

That looks like someone was making a parody of a BMW. They had to try to make it look that bad.

It looks like the Onion was tasked with the chore to designed a BMW. And they all yuked it up.

Yeah, but the automation drives the price.
Automated parking and "deparking" without driver can be done with a BMW too now I think (new 5-series?).
Even my 2013 VW Touran can do that basically, half-automated.

The test car given to Car and Driver was $60k. It included an upgraded interior ($5k), extended range by 50% ($9K), enhanced autopilot ($5K), full self driving ($3k), oversized wheels ($1.5k) and multicoat paint ($1k).

The real Tesla after you take off the rose colored glasses:
Tesla faces 'considerable' credit risk during Model 3 rollout: Moody's | Fox Business

Step away from the Koolaid

WSJ had an interesting take with the bond issue. The bond interest rates are lower than the B- junk status. The downside is losing all of your money. The upside is limited interest. Seems like they need to increase the interest rate.

:D looks like a BMW got drunk and had sex with one of those gerbil cars ..Kia Soul.

So here's a question...

Energy conversion from one energy currency to another is not 100% efficient.

Where I live, electricity is largely generated by combusting natural gas, The heat from the chemical reaction of combusting the gas is converted to mechanical energy as it spins turbines high in turn are used to generate electricity.

The electricity is transmitted down hundreds of miles of power line with inherent losses on the way to the consumer. Once at the consumer's home, some of this electricity can then be used to charge batteries in electric cars (converted back to chemical energy).

As the electric car is used, the chemical energy in the batteries is converted back to electrical energy, which is then sent to electric motors which convert the electrical energy back to mechanical energy to turn the wheels on the car.

Let's look out some rough numbers to these conversion efficiencies, working backwards from the wheels.

I imagine the car couldn't be better than 80% efficient given A/C, driveline losses, wind drag, etc.
Electric motors are pretty efficient, lets wager 95%.
Battery conversion will be 95% efficient best case.
Battery charging will be 95% efficient best case.
Power line losses are probably under 2% but this is a guess so 98% efficient.
Electric generators at the power plant are likely no better than 80% efficient.
The gas turbine efficiency is less than 60%.

So what does this all mean?

32.2% overall efficiency. This is not far off what is already acheivable with CNG powered cars and trucks. You pull the gas from the existing gas pipeline infrastructure, compress it and burn it in the car which should have an overall efficiency around 20-25% with much less complications. Sure there is pipeline shrinkage and losses to compress the gas but this is a far simpler solution which accomplishes the same end goal...

The difference? Leonardo diCaprio won't buy a CNG car.

If you look at the overall (production, use and recycling) environmental footprint of an EV it is FAR worse then any gasfuelled car.

The pressure needed to liquify CNG is too high.

That's we they use propane....

CNG is compressed natural gas.

LNG is liquified natural gas.

I said CNG, you can get a better compression efficiency / energy density with high pressure CNG than you get with LNG.

If you haven't watched the short video above you may be in for a surprise as to the truth in Tesla's numbers.