Tesla Releases First Official Photos of Model S Sedan 378
Thelasko writes "After several pictures of the Model S were leaked onto the internet, Jalopnik has the first official pictures of the Model S. One of its most striking features is its massive touchscreen in place of the center console."
American cars.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote from the third link:
"it has a 3G connection all the time."
"There's HD, AUX, USB and iPod input to the car"
"there's no start button. You just sit there and wait for the car to detect your RFID presence."
Keep on building kinda cool stuff that noone actually wants & they'll keep having their lunch eaten by the Japanese & Koreans.
Touchscreen in a car? (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me old fashion, but the center console of a car is a place where I prefer to have physical controls that don't need to be looked at in order to use. Perhaps they plan to back it up with some other type of UI, such as voice recognition or a HUD?
Re:American cars.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The RFID tag is also very interesting. When you walk up to the car, the Model S detects your RFID keytag and pops out the handles for you. When you want to start up the car, there's no start button. You just sit there and wait for the car to detect your RFID presence.
WTF? What if I stand near my car and don't want it to open or start up?
Sounds like a usability nightmare.
the most interesting feature of which is that it has a 3G connection all the time.
Yay, now we can have a moving botnet!
Re:Cow of the future? (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, that's imitation leather anyways.
Boring! (Score:2, Insightful)
Alright, the /internal/ tech might be neat, but...
It looks just like EVERY OTHER CAR put out in the last 20 years.
Seriously, have car makers forgotten to make a car look like anything other than a squashed jelly bean?
Tech might be nice, but it's just as dull and unimaginatevly plain looking as just about every other soulless melted bean blob out there.
Dissapointing.
Re:American cars.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Touchscreen in a car? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure you understand good UI design, because it's completely depended on what the interface is used for. If I'm barreling down the motorway and notice that the windscreen is starting to fog up, there should be a reliable way to deal with that that doesn't require me to take my eyes off the road or press more than one button. Perhaps if we're talking about something more complex like the radio, that is different -- A dynamic UI could be much better in that case.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of advantages for a dynamic touchscreen interface in a car, but that doesn't mean you should replace the entire console with a single UI method. Compromise can be a good thing. Of course, without more details, it's hard to say if what they've done here is a good or bad thing.
Stop Deanalating us, please (Score:1, Insightful)
You must be under 25.
You're so enthralled by glassy shiny things like your iPhone (and everyone else's) that the idea of physical controls with physical, tactile feedback is automatically old hat.
The very fact that you had to spend time learning to type on your little Apple-branded toy proves the inappropriateness of touchscreen controls in situations where you should be focusing on something else - like, say, driving. With physical controls you can 'feel around' for something. With a touch screen, you HAVE to look.
I also call bullshit on your "eyes closed" assertion. Try it. You won't finish a single goddamned paragraph. No peeking, now.
Re:Touchscreen in a car? (Score:3, Insightful)
Great... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet another step away from user-maintainable automobiles.
The authorized service mechanics are going to love this.
Re:American cars.... (Score:2, Insightful)
OTOH, the AUX & ipod input probably cost $1 each. I don't understand why every car built after 2005 doesn't have those.
Re:Boring! (Score:5, Insightful)
If a "squashed jelly bean" happens to be the most aerodynamically efficient shape, then so be it, I'm glad. It's convergent evolution in action.
Re:And... the electric car is still not quite ther (Score:3, Insightful)
1. likes public transport every once in a while, or
2. has a 2nd vehicle, or
3. lives with someone with a vehicle they can borrow, or
4. takes long trips so seldom they don't mind the public transport
OR, anyone who has enough money to afford sending the car off for repairs and has a concern for the environment, or doesn't like sending money to the middle east, where some ends up in the hands of al queida, or believes in global warming, or likes to show off their tech, etc.
Re:American cars.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reasons you would shut off a car in that position aren't present in a full electric car.
Reasons like climate control and DRL and radio are present in all cars.
Re:American cars.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They (Tesla) can't make it affordable. That's why they have to make it luxury. No one will pay those prices without those extra features.
I'll wait for actual car (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anybody remember how GM Volt prototype looked like. I said to myself "wow, I want that car". When they start to actually selling that car, it look like Seat Toledo of my grandpa.
Re:And... the electric car is still not quite ther (Score:3, Insightful)
The US has public transportation in some places. In many places that have it however, you will not "lean back and relax" for a length of time comparable to what it would take you to drive.
I know somebody with a medical license suspension. For something that the system is designed to do, it's OK. Downtown San Jose to Mountain View? Not bad. Suburban San Jose to Half Moon Bay? Yeah, you can do it--in, IIRC, 5 or 6 hours. That's assuming you catch the transfers. He got part way by PT, and I drove him over the hills.
Then there are some economic factors that work against it too. Caltrain from Redwood City to San Francisco? A day pass is $8 (maybe less if you ride often, but probably not astoundingly less). If two people want to take this trip, that's $16. Now, if we carpool, the car burned $8 worth of gas, and this was when gas was $4/gal. By splitting the gas, we've already dropped the round trip cost to $4 a head.
This is why a car pool wins big vs. PT. You can't really "train pool"... it's already pooled. A 4-person carpool from Redwood City to SF would cost $2/person if they split the gas. You have to multiply $4/gal gas by a factor of FOUR to beat that... $16/gal! Of course, the 2-person carpool breaks even with the train at $8/gal. Isn't gas in most EU countries about $8/gal? Maybe that's what you have to do in order to make PT economical. It won't happen in the US, because it's a political non-starter. The only way for gas to cost that much here is because oil costs that much, and then in that case the PT system has to raise prices too. The only way to make PT the better option is to tax the living daylights out of gas, and use the proceeds to build PT. I don't see that happening unless actual gas shortages arise, and by then it would have to be hardcore, emergency PT buildouts just to save towns from isolation--real, dire, WWII style gas rationing.
cars are for driving (Score:3, Insightful)
Cars are, first and foremost, for getting from point A to point B. The ideal is to do so comfortably.
The touchscreen looks like it would do anything but. I can imagine:
1) The backlit display interfering with night vision, even at a very low brightness level
2) Being unable to do simple - trivial - things, like change the radio station or skip a CD/mp3 track without looking away from the road.
3) Being able to quickly and efficiently finding (visually) the appropriate widget to tell you the information you're looking for.
That touchscreen doesn't even have widgets of a size and type which help you quickly identify what you're looking for! They look like mock-buttons, ffs! Weather/temp in particular.
Re:Imagine buying one of those... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Air Conditioning Options (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And... the electric car is still not quite ther (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't compare the fuel costs of a car to public transport and complain about the price of public transport. Compare the real costs, including those caused to commerce by congestion caused by too many cars.
I used to give a guy a lift to work, but he never once gave me a penny towards it, even though I asked. So I stopped doing it. Even if you pay part of the fuel bill, it doesn't mean you are covering the costs of the ride being available in the first place.
Re:Imagine buying one of those... (Score:3, Insightful)
A navigation system is usually mounted in a head-up location, though. Moving your eyes down to the centre console in a moving car to find navigation info is truly wide-screen surround-sound epic fail. Tactile knobs and switches are also much better for things like AC, demisters, etc from both a useability and safety point of view. This was a bad idea when I was studying ergonomics in the early '80s. It's still a bad idea today.
Re:American cars.... (Score:2, Insightful)
This doesn't mean that the door locks itself immediately when you close it - just that you can open the doors without fumbling with keys and whatnot. When you exit the 1-meter radius the car locks the doors automatically. This system has been in use in high-end cars for years (called keyless entry) and works quite well.
"Then the car starts while you are sitting"
Remember that this car is electric. This "starting" means the same as in a normal car to turn the key for two notches (i.e. you have radio, air conditioning etc.) - the engine does not start up until needed. Electric engines are perfectly happy sitting at 0 rpm until power is required - and can spin up from there immediately.
Re:American cars.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I heard it would retail for $50,000. That's... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am willing to bet, that their production line will be full for the first 3 years of this car. As it is, the roadster is a total sell out even at double the price. Aptera? I am guessing that they will sell OK, but will not be years our for sales UNTIL the next oil crisis. At that time, the Atera's sales will occur quickly (just like the prius). But I would still guess that Tesla S will sell more in their first month, than Aptera sells in their first year. The simple fact is, that Aptera's price will appeal to lower sells, but the body style and the company will not. OTH, Musk is selling to those WITH LOADS OF MONEY. In addition, it is to their liking.
Re:How do you *know* its locked? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a problem. Just don't sell one of these to Schroedinger.
Re:American cars.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I, for one, would pay the price to drive an electric car, especially if it wouldn't be bundled with features I wouldn't use...
Re:American cars.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that automobiles in general were a luxury item too until Henry Ford came along and decided that he wanted to make cars that were cheap enough that the people assembling in the factory could afford. Granted, it isn't readily apparent on how to make the batteries cheaper, but it wasn't readily apparent in 1900 how to make internal combustion engines cheaper either (it required the development of the precision machining necessary to make an assembly line style of manufacture work). So what you say is true, but the Tesla could be following in the same footsteps as the internal combustion engine.