Zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds is fun, no doubt about it, but it is fun on a racetrack. You can go on YouTube right now and find dozens of people utilising Tesla's existing "ludicrous mode" on public streets.
And here's the thing, if people want to endanger their own lives that's fine. But they aren't just endangering their own lives, they're also endangering both other road users and pedestrians (when they eventually lose control).
I don't think anything has been done about this yet because Teslas are still pretty uncommon, and the features which unlock "ludicrous mode" are even more uncommon (like 1% of 1%). But once electric vehicles are the norm and the body count racks up, we'll see legislative action.
As an aside you could tie maximum acceleration into road conditions, including lowing it if the road is icy or wet, or increasing it on surfaces that provide superior grip (like freeways).
first of all, a minivan can kill you doing 10mph.
second, cars with this much power (and more importantly, top speed), have been around for a long time. you can build an 8-second quarter mile car in your garage and drive it on the street.
more nanny-state nonsense. "think of the children".
I really think it boils down to that some people value their own personal enjoyment over other people's safety. The sad truth is that you could absolutely enjoy vehicles like that but without endangering safety, by going to a race track. There's literally race days even for road-legal vehicles.
Electric vehicles are going to take something, once rare, and make it common. Once it becomes common, the accident incidents will be more than just statistical noise, and legislative action may follow.
The NHTSA and FMCSA are currently working on a proposal for large commercial vehicles that would artificially limit their maximum speed to 68 mph. So it isn't unheard of for legislation to be created to target new vehicles which aims to improve public safety.
Velocity is a much more obvious policy knob to tune for the goal of less vehicular deaths and injuries.
Similarly, in most places, speed limits are actually a little lower than they would be in the ideal world where everybody obeys them, to account for the fact that most people actually go a bit over the speed limit. And there are still highways that have absurdly slow speed limits that date back to the 1973 oil crisis (federal law set a maximum speed limit of 55mph, and not all highways have recovered from that yet).
Driving while eating a cup noodles is extremely dangerous too, I don't see any laws on the books against that.
EDIT: Thank you for the replies!
1. No cold starting. The engine is on as soon as you push power in.
2. Equal torque at all speeds
3. The lack of a need for a transmission. All "gears" can be controlled by how much power you're feeding
Low mass connected to the wheels(aside from the stator) combined with near instant torque control means they can adjust power to the wheels in a sub-ms(supposedly) range. Once you break traction it's really hard to get it back and you're fighting the momentum of an ICE engine in the non-EV case. You also have two completely independent motors so you don't have to fight with any transfer case or torque converter and it can just instantly shift power to where traction is available.
All I know is I can floor our 85D in the rain and it doesn't even shimmy, just plants and takes off.
With ICE, you have to choose either power or efficiency, i.e. the engine is tuned for specific load and the efficiency sacks when heavily under loaded. (Constant legal-speed driving makes only a fraction of load of heavy acceleration.)
But you still have to make tons of power and not be too heavy of course.
So, in a future where Tesla's are all over the roadways,and the earth falls under alien attack or some other crisis -- he could easily escape by speaking to any nearby Tesla, which would give him full access (maybe even unlocking faster speeds ;). Perhaps even having some sort of transponder to send the nearest Tesla's to his rescue, should that be required.
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[0] - Why ground assault instead of orbital bombardment? Well, there aren't many alien vessels left in orbit after a massive onslaught of Falcon 9s and BFRs ;).
I'd bet they have been slowly improving their junction temp. estimation model and are now able to push the power semiconductors a little bit closer to their temperature limit, allowing them to produce more current (or the same current for a longer duration) before pulling back.
> Speeds like this offer more Gs than Earth, so the rate of acceleration is faster than falling. It can feel difficult to support your head and shoulders if you don’t lean back on the headrest.
"A hard slap on the face may impose hundreds of g-s locally"
"Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in (compared to 12 g eyeballs-out) for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-G_training
> The terms "eyeballs in" "eyeballs out," and "eyeballs down" correspond to acceleration fields AX, -Ax, and AN, respectively, where AX, -Ax, and AN refer to the direction of acceleration forces measured in the conventional airplane body-axis coordinate system.
> AN acceleration factor, ratio of acceleration force to weight, positive when directed upward along spinal axis (i.e., from seat to head )
> AX acceleration factor, ratio of acceleration force to weight_ positive when directed forward transverse to spinal axis (i.e., from back to chest)
(o) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199802...
But even lower accelerations will glue you to the seat because gravity acceleration affects every part of your body. Where as the car grabs you by the butt and yanks you forward.
So - I think he has probably some vague idea of Newtonian physics but just didn't manage to produce coherent sentence.
The feeling of weight we associate with gravity is not distinguishable from elevator-style or car-style acceleration (not counting vibrations; or tiny gradients in the field). You don't feel gravity gluing you to the ground, you feel the ground continuously shoving you skyward to stop the free fall.
See: equivalence principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
So while it will be great to "hoon about" in and should be a win at the traffic light gran prix there are probably much better track day cars.
... and here they defined it so the P100D is the fastest. Welcome to the tautology club.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia has three cars above the P100D on its quickest 0-60 list: the Porsche 918, the LaFerrari, and the Bugatti Veyron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_car...
Note also that Tesla has also been called a bit "optimistic" with their 0-60 times as compared to other manufacturers (e.g. by Top Gear when testing P90D against Audi RS6 this year).
And Tesla only compares with cars currently in production. The LaFerrari and 918 are not.
Definitely some definitional tweaking to get the "right answer," but not quite a tautology.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/tesla-model-s-p85d-at-l...
http://www.caranddriver.com/flipbook/lightning-lap-2016-ever...
You're not the target audience for their top-of-the-line P100D. It's aimed at people who would otherwise buy Bugatti Veyrons, Ferraris, etc., and range probably doesn't even come up in their decision making process. The Veyron has a range of 50 miles at top speed, for example.
More like Porsche 911 Turbo, Mercedes SLS, Audi R8 buyers.
The people buying Veyrons are doing it for status. They're not going to replace their >$2 million car with one <$2 hundred thousands.
That top speed being 250mph. Who drives 50 miles at 250mph? And where do they do it?
And, more importantly, they can refill in the blink of an eye and travel 50 more.
People in the market for supercars at up to $2MM are not in the same market as the P100D.
Range may not come up as an issue, as you say with the Veyron. The fact that the Veyron can actually accomplish it's top speed for those 50 miles will, however. Just like Tesla cannot complete a lap of a race course at top speed without thermal shutdown / limiting.