Add to that its 3500 lbs load capacity, its 14,000 lb towing capacity, 500+ mile range, and fast charging at the ever-expanding Tesla Supercharger network, and it’s easy to understand how this vehicle will be the best, and probably the last, vehicle I’ll ever own. Unless I deploy it to the Tesla Network as a robotaxi in a couple of years. Now there’s a money making idea!

KIA SOUL EV

Kia is redesigning its funky/boxy compact full-electric hatchback for 2020 with fresh styling and myriad improvements. A new 64 kWh liquid-cooled lithium ion polymer battery pack should deliver well in excess of 200 miles on a charge. Power will be bumped up to 200 horsepower with 291 pound-feet of torque. It will come with four drive modes and four levels of regenerative braking, including a setting for one-pedal driving.

MERCEDES-BENZ EQC

The EQC is the first in what will be a series of luxury EVs coming from Mercedes-Benz. It’s a boldly styled SUV with two electric motors that combine for an output of 402 horsepower with 564 pound-feet of torque. All-wheel-drive will be standard, along with a long list of convenience, connectivity, and safety features. In Europe it’s rated to run for 279 miles on a full charge, though that number may be somewhat lower when evaluated by U.S. standards.

MINI ELECTRIC

BMW’s Mini brand is developing a new full-electric version of the comely Cooper coupe, likely for later in 2020. Details, however, remain sketchy. Only scant visual tidbits like this one remain available. Reports say it will share technology with the BMW i3, and could run for as many as 200 miles on a full charge. Expect it to deliver Mini’s famed go-kart-like handling.

POLESTAR 2

Volvo is launching a new high-tech sub-brand this year called Polestar. While its first model, the Polestar 1, will be a plug-in hybrid, the Polestar 2 is a sleekly cast full-electric luxury four-door hatchback. Intended to compete with the Tesla Model 3, the automaker is targeting a range of 275 miles on a charge, with its two electric motors expected to put around a combined 485 pound-feet of torque to the pavement. All-wheel drive will come standard.

PORSCHE TAYCAN

Porsche’s first full-electric model will be an ultra-exotic battery-powered four-door sports car. It’s said to leap off the line and reach 62 mph (100 km/h) in a sudden 3.5 seconds. The automaker claims around 300 miles of range with a full battery, with the ability to recharge about 60 miles worth of energy in just four minutes.

RIVIAN R1T

Yet another startup EV builder, Rivian plans to introduce a futuristic-looking pickup truck for 2020 to be built in the former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, IL. No mere poseur, the R1T is said to deliver a 400-mile range, with its quad-motor system enabling off-road adventures and a 0-60 mph time of just three seconds on paved roads.

TESLA MODEL Y

Expected sometime during 2020, assuming the automaker incurs no production delays or other corporate calamities, the Tesla Model Y will essentially be a crossover SUV version of the Model 3 sedan. Smaller and less expensive than the Model X, it’s sure to become the company’s best selling model. It will initially come in performance, long-range, and dual motor all-wheel drive variants with specs similar to the Model 3.

TESLA ROADSTER

Tesla’s original Roadster was its first model and it broke new ground in terms of performance and operating range. It’s coming back for 2020 with a freshly curvy profile and uncanny performance. Tesla claims it will fly to 60 mph in a rocket-like 1.9 seconds, reach a felonious top speed of 250 mph, and run for a seemingly impossible 620 miles with a full charge.

EV Q&A

1- Does using cruise control when going downhill in an electric car use more energy?

No – quite the opposite in fact.

When going at a constant speed downhill – the car uses regenerative braking to maintain that speed without going faster and faster.

In effect, the electric motor(s) in the car are turned in to generators – and charge up the battery as they go.

Here is an actual screen shot from my Tesla Model 3 – taken shortly after driving over the Franklin Mountains in El Paso…it’s a graph of the energy consumed per mile driven over the last 30 minutes (kinda like the “mpg” number for a gasoline car):

2- How was your Tesla car buying experience? Which Tesla; Model X, Model S, Model 3, or Model Y?

I bought a Model 3 Standard Range Plus with Full-Self-Driving – a little over a year ago.

I went online – did all of the options selection, all of the financing, taxing and insuring in about 40 minutes – and without ever speaking to an actual human. The deposit money was taken from my credit card.

The car was on a 14day delivery back then – but it took a little longer – more like three3 weeks.

During which time, I had to put up with just a model-Model-3:

The full-sized model 3 was delivered on a large covered car transporter – theoretically to my front door – but in fact the driver phoned me to say he couldn’t get through the twisty streets in my neighborhood in his gigantic truck – so we met him in a nearby street. He offloaded the car – gave me time to inspect it – handed me the “credit card” car keys – and that was that. So I drove it the last 100 yards home.

This is by FAR the most pleasant way to buy a car.

SNAFU’S AND MINOR GLITCHES:

There were some SNAFU’s and complications…mostly because I live in Texas where it’s illegal for a car company to sell direct to a customer…this is true in about 50% of US states.

So what happened was that the car was sold to me in Arizona – where it’s legal. The car was delivered by Tesla to their distribution center in Phoenix Arizona – where I actually purchased it. Then Tesla did the work to re-title the car in Texas at their expense.

The car was not shipped in a Tesla transporter but by some 3rd party (whom Tesla also paid).

This complicated little legal dance would not have been noticeable to me EXCEPT that there was some confusion about my insurance. They couldn’t re-title the car to me without it being insured – and I couldn’t insure it without a VIN – and somewhere along the line someone dropped the ball.

So the car arrived with no temporary licence plates and I had to go back to Tesla and have them do that after the insurance SNAFU got ironed out. I’m still not sure whether it was their fault, my fault, my insurance company’s fault – or the DMV here in El Paso’s fault…I’m betting the latter because we’re pretty sure ours was the first Tesla ever sold here.

3- What are some unforeseen impacts of self-driving cars?

Sabotage.

Although companies like Uber and Tesla are not very successful in that aspect, fully self driving cars will have to be able to avoid collisons by all means. They simply will have to be designed in a way that they do not crash against something.

Okay, so what will a self driving car do, when another driver deliberately cuts its lane? What, if some guys make a fun out of throwing garbage cans at self driving cars? What, if some unemployed taxicab drivers try to make a ride in a self-driving taxicab as unpleasant as possible?

This is unlikely? Tell me why people spend extra money in order to make their trucks pollute the air as much as possible:

 

CyberTruck will cost half the competition, and here’s why the math says it works.

How do Google’s self-driving cars work? By Yizhe Zhang

Currently I am responsible for system and safety engineering in a L3 autonomous driving project which is quite similar with Google’s self-driving car tech strategy.

Basically there are three tasks self-driving car will do in autonomous mode:

1. Perception
2. Planning
3. Control

Assume that you are driving a car and the car is making acceleration/deceleration, steering dynamic driving tasks. Which means you are using your eyes, ears(Perception), mind(Planning) to sense the world and using hands and feet to control the vehicle(Control).

Since there will be no human operating a self-driving car – Car needs to love itself.

For car perception, currently google is using these sensors layout to sense the world:

Lidar, camera and radar are three main selected sensors used not only in Google’s project but also in other automotive company projects. Lidars are used for lane detection, object detection. Cameras are used for lane detection, object detection, radars are used for object detection.

In addition, from safety point of view, redundancy layout of sensors are not only for algorithm and sensor coverage, but for the fail-operational requirements when car is under a fault and passenger in the car cannot takeover in time. – Duplicated sensor will still keeping to provide world information.

The sensor data are transferred via Ethernet/CAN/LVDS from sensors into a box in the car. Box is like:

Many I/O interfaces are designed to connect to the sensors, power supply etc.

For car planning, inside the box, there will be a baseboard integrated with SoCs like Nvidia’s TEGRA, after the SoCs get the data from the sensors, planning computation will be started.

After sensor fusion tasks in SoCs, the objects sensed by Lidar, radar and camera will be assigned to the lane sensed by camera, lidar. And combined with the localization data generated by GNSS+IMU. A map with all the lanes, objects, ego localization information will be generated.

The self-driving car get the measured distance to object, lane boundary and perform the trajectory planning like the yellow path in the picture above.

For car control, the vehicle motion control module will be divided into longitudinal and lateral control part implemented in SoCs. Motion control commands will be sent out towards the chassis subsystems to execute the vehicle.

There are three main parts in Chassis layout, electric power steering(steer the vehicle), engine management system(accelerate the vehicle) and brake control system(decelerate the vehicle).

That’s how strategically self-driving car works.

Why should you never buy an electric car?

The reason you should never buy an electric car are many, too many to list in this response, so I’ll only address a few.

1. You should never buy an electric car if you are addicted to the smell of gas on you and or your clothing and shoes.
2. You should never buy an electric car if you just can’t live without being nickeled and dimeed for routine and suggested maintenance.
3. You should never buy an electric car if you are hell bent on not having instant tourq.
4. You should never buy an electric car if you are wanting to stand firmly in your opinion that electric cars are a fad for a niche market. I could go on but I think you get the picture.

Sources:

Tesla

MyEV.com

Quora