Gearstick gone in Tesla update?

Transmission selection set to become a matter of occupant’s on-screen touch or test of car’s smarts as it achieves an intuitive ‘feel’ for the roadscape.

HOW often have you employed sat nav to locate an address only for the guidance to relate an arrival point that’s actually down the street from where you actually want to be?

Alternately, the system is asking you to prematurely make a turn at a intersection?

This level of inaccuracy is not a fault of the system per se. Sat navs, whether embedded in your vehicle or running via a external device such as your phone, all rely on accurate location fixing. And that comes down to how many satellites are around. New Zealand is not always as well served as some countries, so the optimal triangulation required for full accuracy sometimes doesn’t occur. Accordingly, we have to sometimes put up with a degree of ‘guesstimation.’

It’s a factor that could prove irksome should a technology advancement just hinted at by Tesla’s boss be adopted in a series of updates announced, last week, mainly for the Model X car.

Big news there was an styling update for the SUV, a few cosmestic tweaks on rhe outside and a bigger rework within (notably, it now has the same size and formatted ‘do-all’ centre screen as the Model 3), plus adjustment of the lineup to replace the Performance trim level with a new model running the exotic three-motor “Plaid” performance drivetrain developed for the updated Model S sedan.  

As the cars share the same basic platform, it drops straight into Model X. It has an output of 750kW – enough for a 0–100kmh time of just 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 260kmh. More relevantly, Tesla also says the new flagship will cover around 548km between charges. The Long Range edition is also improved.

Like the new Model S, the Model X has also received a few updates to its autonomous driving systems. Now, the SUV can drive itself on the motorway “from on-ramp to off-ramp,” automatically changing lanes and avoiding traffic as it sees fit. The Autopark function has improved so the car can now park itself in parallel and end-on spaces with a single touch.

About that ‘t’ word. In subsequent on-line discussion about the new innovations for his cars, Elon Musk also slipped in another ‘improvement’ that might prove as flaw-ridden as his premature attempt to enable his cars with a higher level of autonomy that the world’s established car makers have deemed irresponsible.

Look into the cabins on the updated S and X and, erm, …. Sorry, where’s the gear stick, exactly? 

In addition to replacing the orthodox completely circular steering wheel for a yoke-style control similar to those seen in high-tech racing cars (what makes sense for F1 at max attack might seem rather annoying when attempting a multi-phase u-turn) Tesla seems to have completely eliminated the physical gear stalk. Previously, both cars used shifter stalks, sourced from Mercedes-Benz apparently, required being moved up or down to shift between Drive and Reverse, with a button on the end of the stalk being pushed to place it in Park.

It’s gone. Musk believes that the car is now capable of guessing which one of those you want based on context, saying when queried on Twitter, that the “car guesses drive direction based on what obstacles it sees, context  and nav map.”

He concludes with: “You can override on touchscreen.” Motoring publications have taken that to mean that there’s a set of controls that will pop up on the now 17-inch central touchscreen.

Tapping on a touchscreen for Drive, Reverse and Park is one step further than any other manufacturer in the world has gone.

How do we feel about that? Says US site Autoblog: “Considering all the information that the car is capable of taking in, this system of guessing could work just fine in many cases.

“It would require an extremely effective method of informing the driver which gear the car has chosen, but it could very likely choose the right gear in the majority of situations. However, it could also choose wrong. Never mind the ability to override the car’s "guessing," this possibility sounds like a safety issue that deserves exploration.”

You might be wondering about the legality of this move. Apparently, US legislation doesn’t have any specific code or rule that would bar Tesla from selling such a shifter design. Autoblog figures that’s probably because, at the time those regulations were drawn up, the idea of a transmission guessing what gear it should be in would have seemed so far-fetched they may have never even considered taking it into account.

Added the site: “There’s nothing within the rules that suggests putting the shift controls into a touchscreen is illegal, either. As long as the shift positions are identified and shown when the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards says they should be, Tesla seems to be in the clear. But just because something is legal or appears to be legal, doesn’t make it a great idea.”

Meantime, to support the new powertrain and technology updates, Tesla says it has fitted the Model X with “updated battery architecture.”

Again, there’s some element of mystery surrounding this as the nature of the updates are yet to be confirmed. It’s been reported previously that the company has been working on a more efficient shingle-lattice load-bearing battery, which would replace the firm’s traditional cylindrical cells, but nothing has been acknowledged in detail. Nor can it easily be: Tesla no longer has a communications department.

The result of the new design is likely to be a battery pack of a similar size and weight, but which can store far greater reserves of power. The cells are also touted to be much cheaper to make – a factor which is helped along by the switch to a new silicon anode in place of the traditional graphite anode.

Meantime, thought expressed by some Teslarati on the NZ EV Owners Facebook site seems to concur that the updated cars are set to be 2022 arrivals locally.