Sandy Munro of Munro & Associates talks more about Tesla car technology, future plans and what Tesla is doing in China. Munro specializes in design for manufacturability and gets paid to tear down cars to find ways to improve costs, quality, design and manufacturing.
At 13.5 minutes Sandy says that Tesla is reducing the wiring in its cars from 1800 meters to 100 meters. This would mean Tesla will only have power wiring. Communication will be wireless. They will use Bluetooth or some other short-range communication.
Tesla received granted land in China and is getting official government assistance to build the factory.
Sandy says Tesla’s engineering is top notch.
At 23.5 minutes, they discuss how China is able to build so quickly. Chinese builders can start building even before final plans have been built. They can know where pilings are supposed to go and they can proceed based upon what they know will not be changing.
It is believed that Telsa will use CATL as the source for China built Tesla cars.
Panasonic, Samsung and the entire industry is moving factories and manufacturing to China for electric cars and electric car related components.
At 29 minutes, Sandy discusses the financial and other incentives for electric cars in China. In China, non-electric cars require people to pay 20,000 for a lottery chance to be allowed to buy a vehicle.
There are 380 car companies in China.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
There likely are. For example, there’s TOSlink cables, much more flexible but kind of optimized for much shorter distances than commercial data fiber…
Lasermotive was promoting power over fiber, basically funneling high power IR over fiber, and a solar panel at the other end.
Ethernet over powerline is a thing, but HAM’s will hate you for having a roving noise source if you stuff that into a Tesla.
But seriously, power over ethernet (PoE) is a thing, then there’s various things that can run over ethernet wire (EtherCAT, ESA’s Spacewire format, etc) to take the place of CANbus. Data is just going up over time so gigabit is no longer enough, especially if you are taking in raw sensor data and not offloading processing at the sensor. 10G is approaching the reasonable limits of copper systems (DAC cables usually are 5m or less).
I’m going to assume there are fundamental differences from the glass fibers used in the actual bodywork in say a Lotus or Corvette.
Yep. The strange thing is that you wouldn’t think fiber would have long-term brittleness problems…
But then, I’ve had Corel plates – pressed/tempered glass that are pretty darn tough – shatter into fragments while simply sitting in a stack in the cupboard.
So… yeah, I don’t think the idea of glass fiber data lines in a moving vehicle is a smart one.
So Tesla has caught up to where SRAM bicycle systems were a few years ago.
And running it in a vibrating, shaking, bouncing car would be orders of magnitude worse.
I don’t get baseball ads. Which is a sign of something going right because baseball is an sport played in Japan, not where I live.
I recently watched an interview with Monroe where they said that Tesla’s primary technological innovation was that they’re not a legacy car manufacturer and thus they’re willing to undertake clean-sheet EV designs. EVs like the Chevrolet Bolt and Nissan Leaf are basically gasoline cars that were adapted to be EVs. In the case of the BMW i3, it appears BMW was conducting a commercial experiment of sorts to see if they could use new materials and a new drivetrain with the “old” way that they’re used to assembling cars.
Love seeing this tech evolve in real time!
Brian Wang! Thanks to you and your team for making this information available
to me out here in this too often pessimistic world
. Next big future is how I start my day!!! : )
I use ublock origin, and the Connatix adds get past me for some reason on this site. What do you use?
I could just block all flash, but that can cause other problems. It is also possible my wife added an exception for some of her blogs that let that video through, but I am thinking not if other people see the same stupid adds. Like come on, at least make it a technology add…
I even tried to block Connatix at my router, but still.
I’m sure Wang loves these comments too. I’ve heard him bellyaching about addblock users before.
It’s very poor ad targeting. People who visit this site are relatively unlikely to be sports fans. This site should have ads for solar power equipment, after market parts for Teslas, and package tours to cape Canaveral.
You’d likely need backup runs. Got a friend who does fiber for AT&T – he says after about three to five years the stuff he’s stringing up gets kind of fragile. And 10 year old fiber – they don’t even bother with trying to splice it, just string new.
That’s what ad blockers are for. I didn’t even know about any basketball ads.
Bluetooth scares me. Wireless will encounter noise. Wireless will encounter crosstalk. Rather than wireless, they need one loop of communication wire that circles the vehicle. This would work like a wired internet, where each module would have a module ID, and the car’s computer would send communication packets down the line.
If the line were a full loop, the computer could check if the signal is making it all the way through. If it isn’t, it could send the signal down both sides of the line, and report that the loop is broken. This robustness is what’s called for.
That would be my preference as also. Less cost as well, I think. More complex sensors like cameras not so sure.
Another possibility is fiber-optical. You just have the wires for power and one fiber-optical line does everything else. Little or no insulation required. You might use three strands so there is backup if one or two get snapped somehow. Still fairly simple, secure and lightweight. And it would work well with any kind of complex sensor.
Probably need a propitiatory optical system so you can keep the weight down. Most of the standard stuff will be too thick and clunky. It shoulden’t need a whole lot of protection…and you are not going to be moving terabytes per second.
I would assume that critical functions like the accelerator, brakes, and steering would remain hardwired.
The metal body can act as a shield. And you can use a encrypted frequency hopping protocol deigned to be jam resistant.
Have to monetize the web somehow.
Makes me smile, I am sure my 1964 Beetle and a 1970s Renault 4 I once had, had less than a 100 m of wiring. In the 80s I had a Rover saloon car, with power windows and central locking and I was thinking then, that the car had more wiring in the drivers door than that Beetle in the whole car.
The moment I read that, I thought, “They’re going wireless for everything but power.”
Then I thought, “Hacker exploits this in 3, 2, 1…”
Why not overlay the information on the power wire? Each device needs at least one power wire (the GND could be the chassis), right? So why not just overlay a high-frequency signal on the power wires that contains the controlling instructions? This is more or less standard technology that is employed in home electronics where the ethernet signal is added on top of the 110 VAC / 230 VAC power lines…? That way, you would not have to be concerned with reflections in the motor compartments and so on, and any external radio sources would not matter either..
Having wireless communication in the car not require modifications to the metal structure so that the radio waves allways reach where they are supposed to go? And what about secure functions, such as the accelerator, will this information also be over wireless? So what happens if there is a very powerful radio source outside the car, will the car shut down in a secure mode or will the steering (for instance) just not work?
Well if this is true then the next logical step is wireless power for everything nonessential.
Agree, or simply jamming.
Later can be unintended like trains on an cold winter day or lighting.
Now you could use power and an data buss.
Tesla is a technology superpower. Germans now have tried to complete only to realize they are 6 years behind.
I am really sick of seeing these basketball and other ads. We come here to get away from this crap..
Wireless? Hoo boy a hacker’s dream.
Not a bad idea. A better idea I suppose would be to make window and door and light controls voice powered with a good AI that can differentiate voices (parents vs kids).