Tesla X unfolds its Falcon wings, stumbles belatedly into the light Tesla will launch the Model X tonight. This is the third model the company has launched after the Lotus-built roadster and the amazing Model S. As a minivan with three rows of seats to fit seven adults, it’s a big deal for the US market, and has “Falcon” as opposed to “gullwing” doors. Falcons being much cooler than gulls, …
In order to get adult passengers sensibly out of a third row of seats, the rear doors need to be the size of the doors on a coupe. Cars such as the Vauxhall Zafira do not have this and it is difficult to access the third row.
Large doors take up a lot of space, and with a wide car, access in garages and parking spaces is an issue. The usual solution is sliding doors, but they tend to come on less aerodynamically shaped cars. Presumably the track along the rear wing is also a drag issue.
>Why the silly^W fancy doors?
Fancy car, fancy doors!
You must take a closer look, though, you will notice that these types of doors make a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider that they need much less free space to open than ordinary doors, so much so that I question the intellect of regular car manufacturers ... but then again, who am I... ? Some reg commentard, so look for yourself.
The thing is if we assume the roofline is typical of other SUVs at about 64" we can roughly estimate the height of the open doors is near 90" (7.5') and most home garage doors are only 7'. Granted many garage doors in the open position will be higher than the door opening but there has to be some room for the mechanism and the door itself so I'm thinking an 8' garage ceiling may be very tight indeed. Given there are plenty of even lower garages/car ports here in SoCal it means not opening those doors inside the garage but then that's a fairly common thing to do anyway since many aren't really wide enough for real humans to enter on both sides of a normal car anyway so I guess it's just a matter of if it fits.
(1) So it's not a minivan, because minivans have sliding doors. People don't want minivans, because, well, they're minivans.
(2) Because it'll be cool and differentiate the vehicle. Some future owners have suggested that it'll be easy to find in a car park.
(3) Because it's practical*,
(a) they allow easier ingress and egress, and allow people attending to children in the back to be stood up.
(b) they can open in tight spaces
* Unless you wanted a roof rack, in which case, it's not. Or if it's snowing, maybe: we don't know yet what they've done about that.
Why the fancy doors?
Long live the Delorean DMC-12! New ones still for sale at www.delorean.com
I don't buy that these doors can open in tighter spaces. Normal doors can open 30cm and let you squeeze through. These cannot, unless you fancy crawling on the ground.
Common misconception: gull-wing doors tend to require less side clearance to open fully. IIRC the delorean needed only 28cm to open fully.
However, all this ignores the issue of escaping from a flipped car - some modern gull wings have explosive bolts installed, I wonder if tesla has followed suit or just expect the passengers to exit through the front doors?
"The Model X concept cars had cameras instead of door mirrors. This is a very sensible move in terms of fuel economy but unfortunately illegal as the world's car-industry regulation hasn’t caught up with technology."
My understanding is that it has less to do with slow regulation, than to do with the fact that rear cameras are just not as good as mirrors. Specifically you lose the 3D cues humans are used to that allow us to judge distances. Seeing a 2D representation on a screen of what is behind you will never be as good as a mirror (unless they develop a 3D display and camera set up, which will probably be a lot more expensive than a mirror).
Plus you would have to keep the displays running all the time so that you can do the "mirror-signal-maneuver", and there is a lot more that can go wrong with the system compared to a mirror (the only real failure mode is the mirror getting smashed)
Hence despite the fact that the tech is old(*) I don't think it will replace mirrors soon. After all, it hasn't replaced mirrors it in any other modern cars that I know of, especially as this is tech that can be retrofitted to ICE vechicles, and even there improvements in fuel economy are appreciated.
(*) I remember seeing some tuning houses in the 80's demo'ing rear view cameras with fat CRT screens in the dash instead of mirrors, not to mention that the late-90's and early 2000's "pimp my Vauxhall Astra" scene was full of LCDs and rear view cameras as well.
You have no stereo vision at the range of a car behind you. The vision system can have distance measuring (Radar, lidar image processing) and can highlight cars in your blind spot
If you have the screen anyway then the cost of the camera is negligble and less than the lifetime cost of fuel used by the extra drag. Wing mirrors also get broken and aren't replaced until the next MOT (or never over here) they are probably less reliable than cameras.
Big advantage on no wing mirrors is reduced noise in the back,
"You have no stereo vision at the range of a car behind you. "
Not technically true. People instinctiely will bob their head about when looking at the mirror. This has the effect of increasing the parallax, allowing people to more accurately judge distances. Most people do this without noticing , but it is somethiing that cannot be done on a 2D screen.
It is also the trick people use with animated gifs, allowing you to perceive a 3D image in a 2D environment. (see here as an example: http://www.maddocman.com/wiggle-3d.htm Not my site, just the first on google search)
"The vision system can have distance measuring (Radar, lidar image processing) and can highlight cars in your blind spot"
So now we are replacing a cheap, simple and reliable system, with two complicated, computerized and expensive systems? And this is considered an improvement?
"If you have the screen anyway then the cost of the camera is negligble and less than the lifetime cost of fuel used by the extra drag."
Where would you put the screen? Most people look left when they want to manuveur left, having the screen in the centre would be worse than before. I would imagine there would need to be two screens (left and right, roughly where people now see their wing mirrors), in addition to whatever screens the rest of the car has.
"Wing mirrors also get broken and aren't replaced until the next MOT (or never over here) they are probably less reliable than cameras"
I disagree with that, I have rarely seen broken wing mirrors, most of them are really sturdy, you really need a lot of force to break them. I think less than 1% of the cars on the road I have seen had broken wing mirrors.
Not to mention a broken wing mirror is easily seen by others, so they can say "Ok, person might not be able to see me on that side of the car, better act accordingly". It acts as a visual sign. There is no way for other drivers to tell if the wing cameras are working or not, including police (who can pull you over if you have a broken wing mirror, at least here in the UK).
"Big advantage on no wing mirrors is reduced noise in the back"
From what I can see, replacing wing mirrors with cameras provides two minor advantages, while giving a boatload of disadvantages.
We are replacing a simple, reliable system, with two expensive, complicated less reliable systems, that will be:
a) more expensive to buy
b) more expensive to repair (coupled with others not being able to tell outside the car, less likely to get fixed unless it becomes an automatic MOT failure)
c) more dangerous (not only due to loss of ability to tell distance of car behind and because others can't tell if you can see them, but also because it is easier for cameras to be blinded by bright lights, or get dirty, or fail)
All for a minor gain in fuel economy, and less noise in the back? I would argue that as cars get more and more complicated, they last shorter periods of time. Pretty much the first things that go on second hand cars are the electrics. Engine/mechanicals are last, usually (unless you bought a pup that was badly treated).
As cars get more and more computerised and interconnected, they become so expensive to repair, that their lives will be shorter than the old cars. Some people already own a car only for the duration of the warranty, then sell it due to the expense (everyone complains about rip-off mechanics though, as if the job is easy and simple on new cars. It is ruddy awful working on new cars).
Cars like these will not last long, and will be scrapped and new ones built more often, becoming more like a consumer good rather than a durable good. This is a huge waste of energy IMO, which dwarfs whatever the fuel consumption improvement you would gain by getting rid of of the wing mirrors (especially as the drag can be reduced by smart aerodynamics, I seem to remember reading that some sports car actually had the wing mirrors improve downforce).
Really, complexity breeds problems and failures. It takes a lot of thinking and effort to make something simple, elegant and functional, along with an understanding the law of diminshing returns when it comes to application of technology.
"The driver's side rear view mirror glass (just the glass oval) is over $800."
Damn... that sounds excessive. What on earth are you driving? And does that price include fitting?
The mirror glass for my cars costs in the range of $60-$250 new (the $250 is for special glass with the heaters and polarization and other fancy stuff).
I don't think I have ever seen $800 mirror glass (excluding fitting. Simple jobs can take a long time on modern cars, so I can imagine $800 if you include parts, labour and taxes).
There's another advantage of mirrors over CCTV.
If you're filtering (lane-splitting for readers in North America) then you can sometimes look the driver in the eye and know that s/he's seen you and possibly understand who's going to pull away first, reducing chances of an accident, or if you don't make eye contact, then you know to play safe.
You mention the lack of 3D vision for such mirror replacements, but Nintendo's 3DS shows that there is a reasonably accessible solution, with up-coming light-field methods possibly offering further improvements shortly. Also, synthetic view multi-camera methods like that shown in recent Land-Rover prototypes may even offer improved visibility around or through obstructions such as pillars.
I had heard before that car door mirrors were responsible for "up to 5%" of a cars drag, so perhaps it would be understandable for vehicle economy concerns to influence regulations shortly.
I think the lack of wing mirrors could actually be a vandalism deterrent and make sharing the roads with cyclists safer. It might even be cheaper. Based on looking at BoMs for phone components a reasonable camera and screen combo might only cost about 20-100$...wonder how the cost of an entire traditional motorised wing-mirror unit compares?
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When the world is edging towards cars that drive autonomously, a wing mirror is not going to be all that useful to a driving computer.
Blind spot detection is already available on ordinary cars.
My car monitors its in-lane position.
It's a matter of time before somebody solves the mirror drag problem with some clever tech.
Anyway, on the author comment about staying up for a Tesla launch better than a red moon. No chance is way off the mark.
You mention the lack of 3D vision for such mirror replacements, but Nintendo's 3DS shows that there is a reasonably accessible solution
The 3DS does offer a good stereoscopic experience, however is very sensitive to your head positioning. It simply wouldn't work in an environment where you're being bounced around, moving your head around and shifting your gaze frequently.
How about periscope mirrors? I.e. a very small outside mirror and a much larger mirror inside the car to show the image. All the advantages of removing the door mirrors without the complexity of a camera and screen system.
http://www.aerocivic.com/photo.php?img=mirror-z.jpg&caption=Aerocivic%20relocated%20mirror
"Until they become reasonably numerous, at which time governments will start to notice the amount of fuel duty they're losing. Thereafter electric power will be subject to a two-tier taxation regime similar to the one currently applied to diesel."
Nah, they will just start charging you by the miles driven. Works for all vehicles, regardless of method of energy delivery, and the charges can vary based on time of day and location.
Especially as the side effect is that they will have a legitimate reason for why they have to track the vehicle's every movement from when it is first registered on the roads, and for making it a criminal offence to disable tracking.
They would have a complete timestamped record of the vehicle location, speed, etc... and eventually will probably have access to any internal microphones/cames in the cockpit of these overly-computerised cars.
Why do people need cars?
If we start asking stupid questions like what or why people need X, Y or Z we're going to be in for a rather poor existence because existing is what we'll have whittled life down to. We need backdoored encryption? We need self destructing phones? We need to leave our potentially explosive water bottle at the TSA checkpoint, you TSA types will be gentle with that won't you? If I hear one more stupid politician telling us what we need I'm going to go postal1!
1. In this context the term "postal" means to write many letters, buy many stamps and mail every jackass congress critter2 a firmly worded letter informing them of my disapproval of this particular choice of wording.
2. Yes, I recognize the redundancy; it's for em-fah-sis.
> Why do people need cars?
I haven't had a car since 1996. So no, people do not need cars.
I got tired of having my bung reamed by the local service department. It's a lot easier and cheaper to maintain a motorcycle, and fun to boot, as long as it's not made by the idiots at Suzuki. Plus bikes are cheap enough that when one's waiting for new tires or something, I can drive the other one.
Contraceptives are even cheaper than bikes.
Heated and Goretex clothing takes care of wind and rain.
For snow you buy a Ski-Doo instead of a third motorbike.
However, an electric Minivan could be useful for taking bicycles and bell tents to distant places. (I have to admire the 911 I saw carrying 2 mountain bikes on the roof to the HONC some years ago.) I have perched one bicycle on a motorcycle's rear carrier (take the wheels off and strap against the frame), but you'll need lightweight camping gear in the panniers.
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