Thread: 400,000 miles in a Tesla Model S in 3 years

Originally Posted by Homestar

This is hilarious - it's just a tunnel. Built for around the same cost any tunnel of that size and length can be built for. I particularly like this bit - "But Musk’s underground construction arm, known as the Boring Company, has already envisioned a second- and third-generation technology that would simultaneously dig the hole, move the dirt out, and automatically install the reinforced concrete tunnel walls."

So a TBM as we know them already...

I just can't figure out 2 things - how this system will work - the graphics show cars being lowered into the tunnel system so a huge bottleneck compared to normal tunnels and secondly - why does the media fall for this guff?

I'm all for cleaning up traffic in Cities but this means mass transport systems not individual cars/pods/whatever - these will always (until we get FULLY autonomous vehicles) because everyone will still want to go to an exact spot while in a car and this will still cause gridlock no matter what you try and do.

Musk will soon be overrun by the big car manufacturers who are spending billions globally in EV development. Tesla may just be bought out as a high end arm of someone like VW and Musk will be consigned to a Wiki page.

Seriously thinking of taking an Ionic for a test drive in the new year too.

Yeah, I haven't read into it , but the Tunnels are not for general public / road traffic to use , I get the impression they are for shuttles / pods as in a form of public transport.

Tesla will build the 'pods' for the Boring Company's Loop, says Elon Musk - Electrek

Originally Posted by goingbush

Yeah, I haven't read into it , but the Tunnels are not for general public / road traffic to use , I get the impression they are for shuttles / pods as in a form of public transport.

Tesla will build the 'pods' for the Boring Company's Loop, says Elon Musk - Electrek

Regardless, it still won't work - just can't see how they will get enough pods in and out of the system to make it viable - even with Musks 'Generation 2 and 3 tunneling machines' - ie - TBM's - tunneling is grotesquely expensive. I doubt a cost benefit analysis would find it would work - current road tunnels need 100's of thousands od cars a day to make them economical and train tunnels need trains about 10 minutes apart max during peak hour (most cities twice this) to make them viable.

Just some back of the envelope calculations quickly show how futile this is. Based on the graphic in the article you linked, each pod would hold maybe 30 to 40 people? Melbourne's new High Capacity Trails which will run in the new Metro Rail Tunnel project hold 1380 people - and would be full during the peak. These will run 5 to 8 minutes apart through the tunnel, so during peak, so around 10,000 people per hour moved through each station area. To replace that with the pods, you would need 250 of those per hour - and we're talking just one busy route in the centre of a City here, not the whole system. So 4 per minute - you couldn't physically get 30 or 40 people on or off each pod in 15 seconds, the math just doesn't work for a system that would cost as much to build as any train Tunnel system in the world.

Pie in the sky BS from the BS master. Just another thing for the media to swoon over while capital investment companies keep shoveling money into his coffers.

I think there are certainly a lot of unanswered questions, but at least he's having a go.
I understood the pods would not be private, but be public transport, autonomous and EVs. Is that right?

Yeah, but there is no oversight or accountability with others money that he's spending and any analysis to see if this would actually works fails - not just me, but from countless others with far more expertise in the field. The questions aren't unanswered - they can be - and are - being answered now, but it's not what Musk or the teat suckling media want to hear. I'm not anti public transport or anti EV - we need more of both but most get labeled as such as soon as they have a go at Musk for some reason - In my opinion, he's just stealing other people money to play with. Most of his ideas and projects just don't stack up. If it was just 'having a go' with his personal wealth paying for things like this and the hyperloop, I wouldn't care about him wasting his money, but when he's spending money that's not his own that could be used for much better purposes - that grinds my gears...

Not sure how long it will be until everyone realises these things to be honest.

Investors back him because they know it will only take one big idea to succeed and those who were behind him will clean up.
Besides Teslas are selling as fast as the company can pump them out, while other prestige sales are down.
Americans are more willing to bet on innovators than we Aussies, who want guarantees of profits before we will put up money, which is why so many Aussie discoveries go overseas to be manufactured - they can't get backing here.

It’s not the Tesla’s - they’re great and I’m happy they are selling although I think they are on borrowed time now with the flood of mass produced EV’s about to hit the market.

Apart from Tesla, everything else Musk has done is a bust.

Inverstors do what they do, time will tell who’s right...

Tesla cuts car prices and shuts stores as it shifts to online-only sales

Tesla cuts car prices and shuts stores as it shifts to online-only sales | Technology | The Guardian

Tesla cuts car prices and shuts stores as it shifts to online-only sales

I guess that Tesla is at present a "special Case" as the average Tesla owner in the USA has 5 cars, but usually people don't actually BUY cars they SELL cars.

At some point Tesla will be faced with the fact that people will want to trade in their old cars. I don't think that many buyers will want to sell their cars on the side of the road or via ebay.

Traditionally this has been through a dealer network and is one of the reasons that Land Rover struggles in Australia because it has a small dealer network. If Tesla is forced to introduce a dealer network the selling cost will rise by about 15%.

It gets more and more interesting.

Regards Philip A
New thought. what about warranty, service , accident damage repair? Do it on your iPhone?