Tesla Roadster upgrade: Drive the Roadster 3.0 over 400 miles

[nemo]

Combining all of these improvements we can achieve a predicted 40-50% improvement on range

Areas of improvement
1. Batteries
2. Aerodynamics
3. Rolling Resistance


Roadster 3.0 | Blog | Tesla Motors



I guess you can do these things on expensive cars. Would be interesting if all car companies offered upgrades to existing cars.

[NeilBlanchard]

I am curious to see the aerodynamic improvements (Cd 0.36 down to 0.31), and how they increased the battery capacity.

[Cobb]

Its interesting they would make such an announcement with no photos, specs, prices or date of availability.

[nemo]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

I am curious to see the aerodynamic improvements, and how they increased the battery capacity.

Yes, it will be interesting to see what changes to aerodynamics they will make for a 15% improvement. That is no small change. Boattail?

Originally Posted by Cobb

Its interesting they would make such an announcement with no photos, specs, prices or date of availability.

Marketing. Create the demand first.

[Goldenstate]

It will also be interesting to see what they have done to the wheel bearings. Perhaps they included the new ceramic technology to kick things up a notch.

[Cobb]

When I used a wheelchair to get around it turned out they used crap bearings for stock builds. To get it easier to push you had to upgrade to precision bearings and others were pushing bearings made of bone. I lucked out and found roller blade bearings were precision and fit the castors as well as the big wheels in the rear. I would buy a pack of razor wheels to use for castors indoors and changed them frequently to keep it looking nice and rolling well.

Now that I think of it I even attached a bike meter to measure speed and miles traveled. If I had kept a diet log I could do some Miles Per Gut measurements.

Originally Posted by Goldenstate

It will also be interesting to see what they have done to the wheel bearings. Perhaps they included the new ceramic technology to kick things up a notch.

[dirtydave]

boattail, moons, wheel skirts, mirror delete!

[awcook]

While I may not be an expert on aerodynamics, I do think that Tesla can get the Cd from .36 to .31 quite easily without going into boattails. Remember that these guys have access to all sorts of resources that us commonfolk can't get (might be an exaggeration, but still) like engineers and lighter materials. .36 Cd is fairly high, so it shouldn't be too hard to drop it 15% since it is already pretty high. Just look at Metro's 15 mods for 15% improvement and you will see that it is pretty simple to get improvement from a stock car.

I reckon that they will add an air dam, smooth the underbelly, add tire spats, and maybe get a new spoiler on that thing.

[Piotrsko]

they could change the set points on the battery for "extra free" battery capacity. On my Volt pack, I got 2 EXTRA Kwh going from Chevy's 380 end charge to my 398 v end charge. I can also go a wee bit on the other end if I feel daring, or got stoopid driving home.

Not like they have no experience or data points available on their battery warranties.

[Daox]

Those two extra kWh are going to cost you in battery life. There is a reason that Chevy charges to what they charge to. Packing that last bit in degrades battery life.