Tesla Unveils 2 NEW Tesla Model Ys. Take A Look | Bad News For US?:- Today we’re getting into the latest Tesla news including newly released paint colors, Tesla’s next vehicle, supercharger location voting, Tesla’s updated cameras for 2023 vehicles, and more.
A huge advantage Tesla has for their cars is Superchargers. They are still exclusive to Teslas in most markets, so charging is much easier on a road trip in a Tesla than on another EV. Tesla continues to expand their network rapidly, and last said in its Q3 2022 earnings report that “Paid to supercharge grew to more than 3X compared to the prior year, and we are working to further accelerate our deployment”.
Ultimately, superchargers are important for most owners when traveling. They need reliable fast charging all along major routes to easily make it to destinations, and while Tesla has thousands of chargers, there are plenty of dead spots.
Tesla Huge Advantages
Tesla has looked at data to choose locations in the past but now has officially initiated Supercharger voting. Initially, Tesla launched this with a tweet, saying “Supercharger Voting coming soon. Reply with location suggestions – replies with the most likes will be included in the poll.”.
This is apparently how they chose initial locations that have now ended up on their official supercharging voting page. As for how it works, they say “Vote on Tesla’s next Supercharger site. Every 3-month voting cycle, you can cast multiple votes to help us decide on new Supercharger locations.
Check the leaderboard to see which proposed locations are most popular.”. You cast your votes, 5 in total for proposed sites, and then suggest a location for the next voting cycle. Here is me voting on 5 locations. I live in California, so I mostly chose locations around me that I’ve seen in need of a charging location.
Big bear is the current worldwide leader. It’s a pretty great setup for voting, and then you can proceed to suggest a supercharger location. I suggested this location because it’s the last place I drove, that didn’t have a charger nearby.
I’m sure I’ll come up with more, but you can specify why a charger is needed there, and this should help Tesla, even more, to build chargers exactly where people need them in the future. I think that this will continue to be a huge advantage for Tesla owners, but if Tesla expands this network to other EVs as they’ve said, they’ll also be the best charging network period. We’ll see how they handle demand there.
Next up today, the popularity of the Model Y keeps growing. It seems like each quarter we hear about the Model Y outselling other cars in different markets, but now, Bloomberg NEF has estimated that TEsla sold around 200,000 Model Y in Q3.
This would bring their total for the year to more than 500,000, and put them on pace to sell nearly 800,000 Model Y’s in the year. If they hit this, or specifically hit 760,000 Model Y’s sold in 2022 as Bloomberg estimates, it would place the Model Y in the top 5 selling vehicles globally.
On its way there, it would be passing cars like the Ford F150, which has been a household name top seller for a long time. However, Bloomberg does note that “To be fair, F-150 volumes are largely limited to North America, while the Model Y is sold globally.
Looking at North America alone, the F-150 still dominates the sales charts and probably will for a long time.”. Right now, the Tesla Model Y stands a good chance to beat the Honda HR-V, Toyota Camry, and Nissan Sentra globally for the year. It’s incredibly impressive and goes along with Elon’s predictions of the Model Y being the best-selling car by the unit in 2023.
New Paint Colors For Tesla Cars
Next up today, Tesla, for the first time in a while has finally unveiled some new paint colors. For basically as long as most people can remember, Tesla has sold 5 basic colors for their cars. White, midnight silver metallic, blue, black, and red.
These colors look great on Tesla vehicles, but at this point, Tesla has sold so many cars in these 5 colors, that many have wanted a refresh here. Back with the Model S, and when the Model 3 first launched, Tesla had a silver option that was discontinued, and since it’s the 6th color Tesla shipped the Model 3 in, many get excited to see that color on the road.
In any case, new options, and paint colors for Teslas don’t come often at all, because Tesla is laser-focused on production. They have a lot of demand as is, and re-tooling their main Fremont factory to add some additional paint colors would mean halting production for some time, however short it may be.
Instead, they’d rather just keep production rocking, selling the same cars they can paint well. Back in April 2020, Elon Musk began hinting at paint upgrades specifically at Giga Berlin. He said, “Giga Berlin will have the world’s most advanced paint shop, with more layers of stunning colors that subtly change with curvature”.
He also added that Initial production at Giga Berlin is Model Y, which we’ve seen, and specified “To be clear, Fremont & Shanghai will also be upgraded over time, but it’s hard to retrofit these improvements to an operating paint shop”.
Then in July 2020, when asked if red is his favorite Tesla color, he responded “New deep crimson from Giga Berlin is my favorite”. This color was seemingly spotted on his own Model S at Tesla and SpaceX’s facilities in Hawthorne, California, and later, it was spotted on a Model S, covered up at Tesla’s Fremont factory.
So we had a lot of hints from Elon Musk about Tesla making a new red color, but leaks showed even more. In Tesla’s app, there were references to three new colors, Deep Crimson Multi-Coat, Abyss Blue Multi-coat, and Mercury Silver Metallic.
People visualized what they expected these colors to look like in basic form, as well as Model Y renders. Then, earlier this year, after the start of production at Giga Berlin, Elon confirmed “We are going to make a very special red, which probably a lot of people have seen.
It’s like 13 layers of paint. And we will also have silver with maybe eight layers. It’s also going to be special – kind of liquid silver.”. Out of Berlin, only Tesla’s normal colors have been seen, and we’ve seen Tesla upgrading Giga Texas’s paint shop, seemingly to produce future updated colors as well, but nothing was seen until this week.
Tesla officially released two new colors for the Model Y. As Elon confirmed, they are red and silver called Midnight Cherry Red, and Quicksilver respectively. Tesla updated their website, showing off new renders for the Quicksilver, coming in at around 3000 euros, and the midnight cherry red coming in at 3,200 euros.
These are quite a bit more expensive than the other similar colors, with midnight cherry red coming in at 1200 euros more than the prior red multi-coat that Tesla ships at all other factories. If these colors came to the US, that would make the red about $1200 more than the red multi-coat is, but Tesla is clear that these aren’t just new colors.
“Both are made from highly-pigmented metallic paint, designed to change depending on viewing angle & light”. And they show off videos of each color reflecting in the sun. They also added that it is “Our most advanced paint system yet, allowing up to 13 layers for depth, dimension & a hand-painted look”.
For now, these two colors are exclusively available in Europe and the middle east, and out of Berlin, these are replacing midnight silver metallic and red multi-coat in the configurator for the long-range and performance models.
As of right now, the standard range model doesn’t have these color options and keeps midnight silver metallic and red multi-coat. For those who have a long-range, or performance Model Y on order though, Tesla is discontinuing the old colors for those trims, in favor of the two new ones, so Tesla is upgrading customers for free.
Tesla posted a longer official video detailing the paint on these cars, and it’s great to see. It has been years since we’ve seen a new color on TEsla’s vehicles, which are becoming more and more popular each quarter, so this is a welcomed update. As of now though, they’re only coming to Europe and the middle east, but Elon has hinted at them coming elsewhere.
As I mentioned earlier, he talked about Fremont, and Shanghai being upgraded over time, but specified that it’s challenging to do so. Also, Giga Texas has been upgrading their paint shop early in production, but when asked if these colors are coming to the US, Elon said “Only Giga Berlin can make these colors, as the paint shop was specially built to apply many fine layers of paint, giving it complexity not otherwise possible”.
So it looks like we won’t be seeing Quicksilver of midnight cherry red anytime soon in the US, which is unfortunate to hear.
They’re very nice colors and add to the list of certain things that Tesla ships in other countries, but not the US, even though they’re based here. Shanghai usually gets the latest features before Fremont, other countries have the Model Y standard range available to buy, and now Giga Berlin has two new exclusive paint colors.
Of course, there are plenty of things available from Tesla in the US that aren’t in other countries, but it’s interesting to see this develop as they expand to new factories around the world. At the same time though, this doesn’t necessarily mean the US is stuck with 5 paint colors for years to come.
When asked “Can we at least get another color option in the USA”, Elon said “Yes”. I guess that it would be more of a normal paint color and that it would come from Texas so as to not interrupt operations at Fremont. We’ll have to see, but either way, it’s exciting to see new colors from Tesla, and another hopefully on the way in the US soon.
New Upgraded And 360′ Cameras
Next up today, a huge part of Tesla’s vehicles is their cameras. Each car comes with the Autopilot sensor suite, which soon enough will exclusively consist of 8 cameras to inform all safety and self-driving tasks. Tesla has removed radar from all vehicles and is beginning to remove ultra-sonic sensors as well.
As a result, a lot is reliant on cameras, and Tesla’s approach to autopilot and full self-driving going forward is using Tesla’s vision. Camera data and neural net processing make these systems function will fewer sensors, although many would argue they don’t function as well yet.
In any case, Tesla has shipped the same sensor suite in their cars for a while, but Tesla’s future updated self-driving computer, with updated cameras, is referred to as Hardware 4.0. This is supposed to bring a big improvement for the FSD computer and cameras, and now, it is reported that Tesla has officially begun shipping cars with updated 5 megapixels camera.
This comes via a Tesla supplier in China, who was asked if they will be supplying TEsla with 5.0-megapixel cameras after the switch to Tesla vision. The company responded, translated “The company’s vehicle lens business has a good momentum of development, and the HW4.0 platform vehicle lens has begun mass production and shipment”.
Technically they didn’t completely confirm the megapixels, but it seems to be a near confirmation. In Tesla’s vehicles today, camera resolution is about 1.2 megapixels, so this would be a huge upgrade to the cameras, and theoretically should make Tesla’s vision that much better.
Elon Musk talked about hardware 4 in the past, hinting that it would come first on the Cybertruck. He said, “Obviously, there will be a future Hardware 4, or Full Self Driving Computer 2, which we’ll probably introduce with the Cybertruck, so maybe in about a year or so”.
That updated computer would be 4 times more capable than the current computer, and as we’re seeing, it appears the cameras would be too. Elon talked about this being introduced on the Cybertruck, but that was before the Cybertruck was as heavily delayed as it is now, so this upgrade could be coming much earlier to all Teslas vehicles.
It’ll be interesting to see if this comes at the same time as the computer upgrade, which has been spotted in the source code, and if it will include a new hi-resolution radar sensor, which has appeared in Tesla’s part catalog.
Additionally, the big question for owners will be, since Tesla has promised FSD capability to people buying the software for the past few years, will these camera upgrades be required to achieve it? Will Tesla upgrade them for free? They likely will have to if it’s required for long-term FSD features.
At the same time, owners have noticed Tesla’s upgrade to the interior camera in their cars. Here’s a before and after photo showing the difference in lens size from 2021, and 2022 Tesla Model Y. I went and checked my car, and sure enough, I have the larger interior camera.
It’s unclear what this change here enables, and if it’s an upgrade, or simple parts change, but it could be related to future Hardware 4.0 cameras which seem confirmed from China.
I’ll keep you posted once we hear more about this. The latest for the wide release of the FSD beta from Elon is that it should come by the end of this year.
Next Generation EV Platform Tesla
Next up today, on Tesla’s earnings call, Elon Musk announced some more details about the next-generation electric vehicle platform Tesla is working on. For a while now, we’ve known Tesla has had something in the works.
At Battery day In 2020, they announced the path to get to a $25,000 compelling EV but later talked about that car being on the back burner. Also, Elon Musk talked to employees about this car not having a steering wheel or pedal.
That, theoretically, would make it a dedicated robot taxi, which is a product Elon Musk has talked about Tesla working on. He said, “I think it can be a very powerful product where we aspire to reach volume production in 2024”.
Additionally, on Tesla’s Installed Annual capacity chart, they show Cybertruck in tooling and then show Robotaxi & others in development. So the Robotaxi seems to be their focus, but “Others” could include anything.
So there’s confusion as to what Tesla is working on, but Elon Musk said that they’re working on a next-generation electric car platform that would be half the cost of the Model 3/Y platform. Elon said “It’s the primary focus of our new vehicle development team.
At this point, we are done with the engineering for Cybertrucks and Semi. So, it’s obviously what we’re working on, the next-generation vehicle, which will probably be about half the cost of the 3 and Y platforms. It will be smaller, to be clear.”.
That would put this vehicle’s cost right around $25,000 – $35,000 and very well could be the small hatchback that has been rumored. He reiterated this, along with the scaling goals for this car saying “Obviously, we’re going to take everything we learned from S, X, 3, Y, Cybertruck, and Semi into that platform.
But we are on a 2-for-1 target. We’re trying to get to that 50% number again.”. I’m glad to see that Tesla is focused on this new platform for a cheaper vehicle once again after Elon said they weren’t working on it, but I don’t think this is the vehicle people think it is.
My hunch is that Tesla is working on a cheaper vehicle platform, which is a dedicated robot taxi. With them, in their minds, very close to solving level 5 autonomy, this will be their most important product that will scale larger than anything, since it can drive anyone, anywhere, anytime.
My guess though, is that Tesla will end up needing to change the platform a tad, and sell a more affordable vehicle that can also be driven. What are your thoughts though? When Elon talks about this platform coming in at half the cost of the Model 3 and Y, is this a cheaper Tesla hatchback? Or is this a robot taxi? Leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts.
Either way, Tesla is hard at work on this car now that the engineering for the Cybertruck is complete. Last up today, some updates about other automakers. Over at Rivian, many know by now about their large recall, covering every vehicle they have shipped thus far.
This was big news and worried many about Rivian hitting production targets. The recall was “due to a possible loose fastener that could cause the driver to lose steering control”, and ultimately the fix proved very easy. My personal experience with my R1T was this.
I received recall emails from Rivian, called their service number to book a mobile service appointment, and scheduled it for this past Monday. They came out Monday morning, and the fix took a total of about 2 minutes. The technician raised the vehicle, tightened the fasteners on both sides, and I was good to go. The ease of this was great, and that was the experience of many.
At the same time, Rivian’s CEO confirmed that “By Friday evening, repairs were underway. We worked through a large majority of the vehicles for the next 10 days. We mobilized our entire service network to say let’s go through these vehicles fast. In this case, it was like a minute fix.
It’s just checking the torque on a fastener.”. It appears most vehicles have been fixed, which is great to see. Over at GM, they just announced the new 2024 GMC Sierra EV. Ultimately, this electric pickup will have cheaper specs, but the Edition 1 spec is what has been announced for early 2024.
It will get 400 miles of range on a charger, recharge 100 miles in 10 minutes, include 4-wheel steering with crab walk like the hummer EV, and have a lot of great storage features. 0-60 is less than 4.5 seconds, and it can tow up to 9500 pounds.
Inside, they call it to peak luxury, with a large center touchscreen, and a lot of features taken from the Hummer EV. As for the price, it will start at MSRP $107,000. For now, this truck is more than a year away, and edition 1 is very expensive, but as always, it’s exciting to see more electric options getting introduced each day.
This could be the first 400-mile range truck when it ships, but we’ll see if Tesla can ship the Cybertruck in 2023, and what the product range is.
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Information Source:-Ryan Shaw