It’s electrifying! Now where have we heard that before? Maybe a little movie called Grease? You know, John Travolta and his dancing and wooing. Okay, back on topic. This is the third day of carsmas, and it is, in fact, electrifying!
This post is brought to you courtesy of the oil slump of 2013 and Greta Thunberg.
The idea of powering cars off motors and batteries is not new. Manufacturers like Toyota and Honda have toyed with the idea in the past but it never made it to fruition thanks to the power of the oil lobby (and those who didn’t think climate change was a thing *cough* trump *cough*).
It can also be blamed on the lack of innovation in battery technology. A battery pack does make the car considerably heavier and hence less efficient.
Charging the battery was another issue to consider. It only takes 5 minutes to fill up a tank of gas. It would a lot more time to charge big batteries. Remember the early 2000s when it took all night to charge your phone?
2012 changed all of that when Tesla Motors and Elon should-never-tweet Musk brought in the Tesla Model S.
It was an all-electric car with a range upto 600 kms.
The top of the line, P100D, would do 0-100 kmph in 2.36 seconds. That is faster than every production supercar and hypercar ever made. This full size family sedan took the 0-100 kmph game to a whole new level. The internet was upto its neck in videos of Teslas destroying petrol. And it did so silently.
Charging batteries got a lot better too. With a Tesla Supercharger, the cars would only take around 75 minutes to juice up. The supercharger is capable of charging the P85 to 50% in 20 minutes.
While this is still slower than the 5 minutes a gasoline car would take to fuel up, it is still a breakthrough in technology and the manufacturers are working on technology to reduce the time to charge an electric car even further.
Apart from battery and motor technology, Teslas have changed in-car technology as well. The Teslas featured a minimalist interior with only a massive screen to control and monitor all of the cars functions. Everything from the radio, drive modes, heating and cooling, navigation were all controlled from the single touch screen.
But the best new thing they brought us was a thing called the AUTOPILOT. Autopilot is a semi-autonomous driving system (SEMI being key) that lets the car change/keep lanes, increase & decrease speed all by itself using GPS and by monitoring the road ahead. This system made the task of driving a little less stressful – not having to worry about speed limits and if the car in front of you is braking or accelerating or if you need to change lanes. This was a game changer.
It is only a matter of time before we can yell at driverless cars (in hope they don’t yell back).
As of 2019, they have also rolled out a beta for the “summon” feature which lets the car come to you from its parking spot. The system is not perfect at the moment but we hope that they will nail this one soon.
Tesla brought about an electrification revolution. Every top tier manufacturer, including the likes of Ford, Volvo, Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW are now electrifying their line up.
This is the future. Thank you Tesla.
12 Days of Carsmas
Check in daily as we post a new car for every day of carsmas.
You can see the entire list here: https://mikaniki.com/news/2019/12/the-12-days-of-carsmas/
