As of Friday October 10th, the Tesla Model S P85D is now the fastest 4 door car in the world. Elon Musk, the rocket man, has built a rocket car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7quu551ehc0
The P85D can go from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. Also packed inside is an autopilot system that has the ability to detect street signs, traffic signals, speed limits, lanes and even cars ahead. It can even make its own lane changes and will automatically do so if it senses an impending accident begging one to ask will .08 even be a law sometime from now?
But the real story is Tesla itself. 3 years ago my parents both car enthusiasts had never heard of Tesla. My friends most of whom are engineers and science guys believed it was a farce. Now my middle aged, technologically challenged, conservative voting parents want to save the world and what’s fast and thats electric. The smartest minds leaving Harvard, Cal Tech, and MIT don’t want to work at NASA or Microsoft. And definitely not Ford. They want to literally be a part of something bigger by joining Musk in building rockets or rocket cars. Innovation will always tower over the big three.
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In Econ 244 we talked about automated cars at length. It will be interesting to see how this plays out because it is obviously the future, though there are many problems that must be solved first. The biggest challenge will be for the government deciding how to regulate this mode of transportation. Google and Audi both have computer piloted cars but they have yet to bring them to market because of these issues. Let’s see if Tesla can do it again and surprise the world by being the first consumer car that is automatically piloted.
I’m not convinced that what Tesla is doing so far is particularly innovative – these things are on production cars already. That calls into doubt your core assertion, that Tesla is uniquely innovative. Instead I would claim that suppliers are the place to be. Tesla provides the “backbone” connectivity and makes sure the pieces talk to one another. However it’s the pieces that are key. The choice of which supplier technology to use and the nitty-gritty of integration is a function of the sort of vehicle that Tesla wants to develop in line with their marketing and sales strategy.
The market for cars that accelerate to 60 mph in 4 secs or less is small; why would Ford care? Ford’s challenge is to use non-exotic materials to develop a car that meets fuel economy and safety objectives and will last 20 years and where the size of that market is such that at least 100,000 a year can be sold. Tesla is not in that market, and if this represents the direction of their engineering, then they’ve decided not to enter volume segments, which will disappoint their shareholders more than a little.
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