This came across my Twitter feed the other day, but I found it to be too tinfoil-hattery to share here. What an exciting sentence to read - were it not followed by five of the lamest examples. Doors that open themselves? It's very similar to the door handles that pop out, but now they can safely do the entire door because they have sensors on the side of the car installed anyway. It doesn't open far and it only opens the driver's seat, the one seat that loses meaning in a fully driverless car. Easy to get in? Great for everyone. Especially great for the target audience, large rich families. Yeah, it does help for selfdriving cars. But arguing that this foreshadows self-driving cars is a stretch too far. The snake? Tesla's been researching anything that might make the charging more efficient. They are developing a battery swap drivethrough where the car drives over a hole at Tesla stations and robot arms swap the entire battery pack with a fully charged one, automagically. If they can develop a simple technology to make charging at parking spots and at home easier, you can be sure they'll chase it. Spacious? This might be the only decent example in here. I do think that interior design of cars will change dramatically to accomodate the changing use - more long-distance drives, more comfort and more media consumption just to name a few. 'Just more space' is nice, but is it really pointing to a Model X-based self driving future? I don't believe it. Even less if you consider the cost, size, overpowered engine and the other arguments kb mentioned.But during the show, Musk almost downplayed features of the Model X that, within the right circumstances, are in my view nothing short of revolutionary.
Wait, I got lost in your post a bit -- I've been reading about this idea of trading off batteries with the last person who used that charging station and it seems like a brilliant temporary solution to the long charging waits we've got now. What's the skepticism?The snake? Tesla's been researching anything that might make the charging more efficient. They are developing a battery swap drivethrough where the car drives over a hole at Tesla stations and robot arms swap the entire battery pack with a fully charged one, automagically. If they can develop a simple technology to make charging at parking spots and at home easier, you can be sure they'll chase it.