He added a plate under the sheetmetal to distribute the force. Making snarky comments can come in handy, but not when you don't bother to read the whole post.
Has anyone bothered to calculate the loads on this? I used some quick math, and assuming 8.8 bolts and a 4g bump, this should be more than sufficient to carry the loads.
One of the things I hate the most on internet forums is people dismissing a design as stupid because it's not the $400 off the shelf solution. I have a tendency to do stuff like this from time to time and I always run the numbers using all that knowledge I picked up in my professional engineering career and education, and then some 17 year old dingleberry calls me a retard because it's not an anodized billet aluminum spacer from Jegs.
Just because it looks retarded doesn't mean it doesn't work.
/devil's advocate
You didn't need a physicist for this. I suspect an Sophomore Engineering student is overqualified to debunk these commercials.
If you read the source of the above report, you'll see a list of very positive things about Tesla, but of course Ray cherry picked the two negative things (which were actually misquoted, listen to the conference call).
They could start selling the car two months early and have 10,000 by the end of the year, with all 5 star crash ratings and the fastest sedan Nurburgring time, and I'd bet money we'd just see more "Yea but..." reporting.
Ray, I listened to that Tesla earnings call, and double checked it this morning. Green car reports entirely misrepresented what Musk said. He said he didn't want to give cars to journalists until they were as close to production as possible, not perfect. He also said journalists would get to drive the cars at the same time as cars started deliveries, not after.
I just realized how far I've gotten into an argument on the internet.
I will stop now.
Tesla has made a profit on every vehicle they've made. In fact they have one of the highest gross margins in the industry. Google that. They haven't made a total company profit because of the investment (there's that word again) in Model S.
Woah there Fox News, they are not your tax dollars, they are just tax dollars. You don't get to be self righteous about every tax dollar just because you pay taxes. The tax dollars in question are not a handout, but a loan, part of a much much larger loan program given to companies so they can carry losses while building something bigger. That's the whole point of an investment, to spend money now so you can make money later. If they weren't carrying losses or "hemorrhaging money", there wouldn't be a reason to get investment money.
It does matter if they make cars in July, because that will lead to profits which will justify the loan's goal of getting electric vehicles on the road by helping private companies become sustainably profitable. If you don't like governments giving out loans, go bitch to the Bush administration for starting that program, and if you don't like companies failing and losing that money, wait two years and then go bitch at Fisker, but Tesla is still on schedule, still on track, still hiring new employees, and in a few months will still be making cars.
I think your story of Musk's career and Tesla's business is a contrived negative story assembled from a few distorted specific facts (and a few made up ones). I wonder what you will be saying in a year if Tesla does actually release the Model S in July and it does meet the audacious performance targets. Will you admit you were wrong, or just change a few facts again and say "well yea, but..."
F1 engines don't use pneumatics to open the valve, just for closing as a replacement for the coil spring. They still have a camshaft. I can't imagine pneumatics working without some sort of cam, what with air being a compressible fluid and all.
I'm not sure if i should be intrigued or just skeptical of the diligence of Car and Driver's reporting.
I blame Obama
Dear first car,
My god, you were such a piece of shit.
-Matt
If only Mini made a hatchback version of this...
I don't know if you've taken the 15 seconds to do basic rocket math, but the feasibility of ten bucks a pound to low earth orbit is on par with teleportation and time travel.
According to Bloomberg "Tesla’s battery packs may cost as little as $200 per kilowatt hour, compared with about $700 to $800 per kilowatt hour for so-called large-form cell lithium-ion packs"
And the "bailout" was a DOE loan, the same loan program which gave Nissan 3x as much money to build the Leaf and Ford 12 times as much money. In fact, GM applied for 14 billion dollars in loans from the same program to ramp up Volt production before pulling the application after not getting a response for a year. GM, of course, got an actual bailout from the government of, what 25 billion dollars?
I realize it's easy to look at Tesla and be all pointy finger, look at the rich people making toys on my taxpayer money, but I would expect a car blog and car people to do more research and be a bit more optimistic about an american car company employing a few thousand people and trying to get us out of the Prius / Leaf / CODA / boring eco-car future.
I still don't get the anti Elon sentiment on Jalopnik; he audaciously started a car company which has sold 50 times as many cars as Tucker and is clearly on the verge of launching another much higher production car, he daily drives a 911 turbo, he used to own a Mclaren F1, and in his spare time he launches shit into space.
I know this is a car blog, but you pretty much have to put a motorcycle in this list. You can get a used R1 for $4500 and go 0-100-0 in half the time that some of the cars mentioned here can get to 100.
I blame Obama
beat me to it
I've got a Glock .45 which I mostly purchased for wilderness camping and some occasional target shooting. I'd say it is pretty good for home defense; relatively small (compared to a shotgun) accurate, a lot of stopping power, and almost never jams.
I also live in California. A lot of people like to hate on Cali and assume the state is super anti gun without any actual knowledge of our gun laws. Anyone who thinks we're all anti gun hippies has never been to Bakersfield. Most guns are legal here with the exception of some esoteric assault rifle stipulations, and if someone breaks into your house and you shoot them, your lawyer will have about 1000 precedents to point at. It's not Oklahoma where they give you a medal and elect you mayor for shooting someone who was standing too close to your mailbox, but it's reasonable.
