Musk, in a cryptic, tweet on Wednesday, said that it’s almost time to “unveil the D and something else” at an Oct. 9 event.
The “D” could possibly be a new model of electric car from Tesla Motors.
Recode noted that Tesla Motors is already developing a sports utility vehicle, the Model X, and has announced plans to offer a $35,000 electric car that’s been called the Model 3 or Model E.
UPDATE:
The mysterious missive is accompanied by a picture of what is undoubtedly a Model S peeking out from under a garage door emblazoned with a big stylish letter D.
So, what is it going to be? It probably isn’t going to be a brand-new Model D, but several EV-watchers have speculated that it might be an all-wheel-drive version of Model S. Tesla has already developed dual-motor AWD technology for Model X, and it has hinted in the past that an AWD Model S might be a cool thing, so…
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The day after the tweet, a mysterious photo appeared on TeslaMotorsClub.com showing a a Model S P85D – definitely a new version of the S, and quite possibly a Dual-motor AWD version.
Or maybe it’s a Mars rocket?
Probably dual-motor / all-wheel drive, which seems to be the consensus among Model S owners & aficionados. Given that the Model X should be shipping in Q1 2015, this is likely since that vehicle is ONLY available with dual-motor AWD and is based on the Model S platform.
But there’s supposed to be another reveal Oct 9th and it’s not clear if anyone knows what that will be.
To clarify, I meant dual-motor AWD for the Model S. Looking around, someone posted a pic of a Model S with no license plate that had P85D on the rear.
Are you sure it’s not a Mars rocket? Musk may be making some electric cars right now, but his eyes are on going to Mars (and providing the spacecraft from SpaceX to do so at great profit to Musk and great expense to everyone else, of course)
He envisions a million human colony on Mars, and seems to be infected with the same sort of bright-sided belief in projections that has hit some Crockers so hard. “SpaceX is only 12 years old now,” he said. “Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.” Uh-huh, if the technology improves, we can do it!. And we’ll be burning less coal too in 2040 too!. And our children will all be smarter and better-looking than average!
I am finding it hard to place much trust in someone who is so out of touch with the reality of man’s most pressing needs here on Earth. He needs to stick with cars.
http://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musks-mars-vision-is-bigger-than-you-thought/
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/
Elon has managed to have his head in the clouds and his feet on the ground at the same time. He’s devoted to SpaceX and basically runs Tesla as a sideline although it does take up much of his time.
That concerns me because I don’t see who could take over if he steps down, which he plans to do in a few years.
it’ll be far easier on Mars with electric cars
A Diesel model S?
NOOOooooooOOOOOOOoooooooooOOoooooooo
Not to worry. We’ll have a thriving Martian colony before that happens.
Looking at the feasibility of a Mars colony (or even a temporary base on Mars) from a purely “energy” point of view, I can see no way to do it without using nuclear power.
Keeping humans alive on Mars for even a few months (or indeed, for the months required just to fly from Earth to Mars) will be an energy intensive process. During the Apollo missions to the Moon, the astronauts were kept alive by energy supplied from fuel cells – it was barely adequate to run the life-support systems for one week. Getting from Earth to Mars requires seven months with a conventional rocket, but a round-trip requires two years (because Mars only gets into a close position to Earth once every two years). So the astronauts would need a source of power for two years if it’s to be a round-trip mission, or seven months minimum if it’s going to be a one-way suicide mission.
What alternatives are available? Fossil fuel is out – it can’t be burned in space where there is no oxygen (unless your bring the oxygen). If Mars has fossil fuel (not likely, but not impossible), it won’t help the colonists much since the Martian atmosphere is devoid of oxygen.
Wind: no wind in space, obviously. It is windy on the surface of Mars, but the atmosphere is less than 1% the density of Earth’s, so a 100 mph wind on Mars only packs as much energy as a 1 mph wind on Earth. On Mars, you’d need at least a 500 mph wind to get a wind turbine to turn – Mars may be windy, but it’s not THAT windy.
Hydro-power – no surface water on Mars, so it’s out. Geothermal – same deal, Mars is no longer geothermally active.
That leaves solar. Yes, it is sunny on Mars, except maybe during wind storms that kick up a lot of dust. The biggest problem with relying solely on solar is the need to generate enough heat to keep colonists alive during the frigid Martian night when temperatures drop to more than minus 100 degrees Celsius. Heat is also needed for melting ice to make water, and to perform the necessary reactions to turn CO2 into O2 so humans could breathe. Even at the Martian equator, temperature conditions are rather like Antarctica. You would need many square miles of solar panels to keep even a small colony of humans alive, and energy storage would be crucial – if the power goes down for even one day, the colonists would perish.
Nuclear could do the job. It would have to be a fourth generation reactor using liquid metal fuel, since you couldn’t rely on water cooling the reactor. Something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
A long-term viable colony would have to find uranium or thorium on Mars. It’s likely that Mars has it, but no one is quite sure how much or now deep down you’d have to look.
Now whether or not it’s really even worthwhile to send humans to Mars – that’s a question I can’t answer. Elon Musk seems to think that it’s terribly important, but I’m not totally convinced.
If we can’t make it on Earth, I don’t see how we’ll do any better on Mars.
Maybe asteroid or lunar mining might pay off eventually but unless we can Terra-form Mars, establishing a longterm colony is impractical.
All of that pales in comparison to the risk from cosmic rays and solar particles, both on the journey to Mars and once there, since Mars has an atmosphere ~100 times thinner than Earth’s, and that provides little shielding. Anyone who want to go to Mars or try to live there may as well play Russian Roulette (and with rounds in at least half the chambers). Quicker and cheaper.
“It is windy on the surface of Mars, but the atmosphere is less than 1% the density of Earth’s, so a 100 mph wind on Mars only packs as much energy as a 1 mph wind on Earth.”
Wind turbine output is proportional to the cube of wind velocity, so a doubling produces 8x the power.
A Martian wind turbine in 100 mph wind of 0.01 density relative to Earth would produce much more energy than the equivalent terrestrial turbine in a 1mph wind – but would hardly be worth the effort, considering the difficulty of construction on a far away planet, and solar and RTGs are already available.
A long term martian colony would need to be tens of kilometers underground, safe from cosmic radiation and where atmospheric pressure would be similar to our own planet.
Having a substantial atmospheric pressure makes it possible to build large living spaces without the need for unfeasibly massive structures to withstand pressure differences on or near the surface.
Over time, a colony can grow downwards, mining minerals and making progressively larger and pressure-friendlier spaces to farm and live using energy piped from above.
“It is windy on the surface of Mars, but the atmosphere is less than 1% the density of Earth’s, so a 100 mph wind on Mars only packs as much energy as a 1 mph wind on Earth.”
You should have stopped there with the physics lesson because you went a bit off the track with the velocity business. It’s an F=ma thing. The density (mass) is the key factor, because without sufficient mass the wind velocity would have to be insanely high to produce adequate force.
All the rest of what you say is perhaps plausible but not feasible because of “the difficulty of construction on a far away planet”. It does make for good science fiction though, at least of the kind I read in the 1950’s—-nowadays everyone just accepts that we can have Moon and Mars bases and fleets of Battlestar Galacticas and Enterprises zipping all over.
Plus it all sounds like what “Moon Man Gingrich” was spouting during the 2012 primaries, and that alone should make you leery of repeating it.
We need to focus on the here and now on Earth. It is wishful thinking to think we will ever have any meaningful presence on Mars.
I’ve been advocating underground colonies for a while, on the moon as well. Don’t think we’ve got to start too deep though…The pressure difference of 1 atmosphere isn’t too difficult to handle.
I said I would ignore the village idiot, but this is such a concentrated dose of ignorance that I can’t resist. Perhaps I will confine myself to responding only to his first comment on any thread, and leave it to others to follow up on the resulting cascade of stupidity that acknowledging Omno always produces. Since this is his first attempt at trashing this thread, I will comment briefly.
Omno has been “advocating underground colonies for a while”? Sorry, the prairie dogs and meerkats beat you to it, Omno (to say nothing of the ants and termites).
And “….on the moon as well”? Omno is now a lunar expert too and surely has “started too deep” as he piles his ignorance up for all to see.
Perhaps if he had the science knowledge to understand that “1 atmosphere” IS “difficult to handle” in many instances, he would not embarrass himself here.
One atmosphere is 15 psi or 2160 pounds per square foot, and if Omno stuck his chubby little face out of his moon burrow, it would get very chubby indeed. No amount of Preparation H would cure the “brain tumor” he will get. Has he not seen “Total Recall”—-great sci-fi (and cli-fi as well).
Sorry Dumbo since you’re ignoring me your list of cretin ideas and space history denials obviously doesn’t exist