Test Drove a Tesla Today

Rivian reaches $3 billion in venture capital

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Rivian has suffered far less drama than EV startups like Faraday Future, Lucid Motors, and Byton for a few reasons. One, it remained remarkably quiet following its founding. Rivian kept its employee count low while it focused on developing its core technologies (like its battery pack and electric powertrain), existing for nearly nine years on just a few hundred million dollars from Saudi Arabian auto distributor Abdul Latif Jameel and Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo. At the same time, Rivian locked down a manufacturing facility — a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois — long before announcing its vehicles.

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Now, the EV startup is roughly one year away from kick-starting production of its electric pickup truck and SUV, each of which will start at around $70,000. Rivian has promised the top spec of both vehicles will be able to travel more than 400 miles on a full battery, and the company has outfitted each with tons of features tailor-made for outdoor and off-road use to reach those Patagonia-type customers.

Post-apocalyptic zombie-proof house, yee-haw.

Bill Gates is not a Tesla fan, go figure.

Cybertruck redesign was an April Fools joke -- but not unreasonable regardless.

"Open the rear hatch door, Tesla."

"I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave."

Another reason I'm glad I never bought a Tesla is that their founder is showing increasing signs of being batshit crazy.

New season of Jay Leno’s Garage starts this week, and one of the episodes will feature a ride in the Cybertruck with Elon Musk.

Musk is ruining his brand with his antics though. Talking about how the virus is fake and re-opening his plant before time. The crazy is showing.

NoCoPilot wrote:

New season of Jay Leno’s Garage starts this week, and one of the episodes will feature a ride in the Cybertruck with Elon Musk.

The episode is available now.  The truck is still butt-ugly.  Elon is still a few batteries short of a full charge.

How about this for an idea, all Teslas should be fitted with deer scarers.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/17/business/jamie-lynn-spears-tesla/index.html

"Respect."

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/03/05/elon-musk-twitter-ford-tesla-gm-chrysler-jim-farley/4591913001/

Canoo.

There is no intelligence test to buy a Tesla.

This is only three weeks after a driverless Tesla crash in Texas killed two.

Idiots.

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Which is a problem because the small battery is responsible for a lot of systems, like, crucially, the locks. May can’t get into his car, and he also can’t open the frunk to access the small battery, either, because that is electronic as well.

Sounds like the kind of thing an engineer would have noticed.

So, when the big batteries are being charged, electricity is directed to the small battery at the same time to keep it fully charged. But when the big batteries become fully charged, and the wall charger turns off, the small battery no longer gets its trickle charge. Meanwhile it continues to run the computer and all the other electronics in the background. It will actually run itself flat, rendering the car inoperable. I wonder how long it that takes? Astonishing oversight.

Rivian is already building its second plant and it's only delivered 156 vehicles -- most of them to employees.

Here's a great idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/22/us-investigates-claim-tesla-video-games-driving

NoCoPilot wrote:

One factor most of the online cost-of-ownership comparisons seem to routinely miss is cost of replacing the batteries.  They're only good for 8-12 years and cost $15,000 to replace.

I guess it's now up to $22,600.


Explosives: "We have quite much."

On October 20, 2020 Tesla started allowing it's beta test Full Automatic Drive cars to do "California stops."

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The “rolling stop” feature let the Teslas go through all-way stop signs as long as the owner enabled the function. The vehicles have to be traveling below 5.6 mph while approaching the intersection, and no “relevant” moving cars, pedestrians or bicyclists can be detected nearby. All roads leading to the intersection had to have speed limits of 30 mph or less, the documents said. The Teslas would then be allowed to go through the intersection at 0.1 mph to 5.6 mph without coming to a complete stop.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tesla-self-driving-car-recall_n_61f9ccd0e4b0b69cfe872875
 Come on.  We all do it.  No cars coming, no peds and no cops in sight?

Here's Why Teslas Don't Come With A Spare Tire


I sort of understand the logic. But over the years, I have had occasion to use a spare tyre several times, and each time involved a sudden incident, not a slow leak.