Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Tesla Motors, Green Daily
Tesla clarifies their plans for early production transmissions
Following a customer town hall meeting held by Tesla Motors last week it was reported that the company was considering shipping some early cars with short-life transmissions and retrofitting them later. That information came from notes that were posted on-line by one of the attendees on the conference call. Tesla VP Darryl Siry contacted us to clarify the situation with the transmissions. The company won't be shipping cars with a gearbox that they know won't last.
What they have decided to do is to equip the early build cars with a dedicated single speed gearbox. This gearbox is derived from one of the previously tested transmissions, but with simplified internals to eliminate the second speed. These units will be fully tested and will stand up to all the durability requirements. What it won't do is allow the car to meet both the acceleration and top speed performance targets at the same time, so they are sacrificing some low end acceleration to get the cars into customer hands. At the same time, development and testing of the production intent two-speed transmissions is ongoing and as soon as those units have met all the requirements, they will be introduced into the production flow. At that time, the company will bring in customer cars that have already been delivered and retro-fit those with the new unit. Regardless of which transmission is installed, the company's intent is to deliver production cars that won't leave customers stranded at the side of the road.
[Source: Tesla]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sam Abuelsamid 4:20PM (12/19/2007)
Joseph, that's correct they will be building up gearboxes without some of the internals for first gear to provide a single speed transmission.
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Joseph 4:21PM (12/19/2007)
Thanks for the clarification. Let's see how off the media is when reporting this. :) (Hopefully this doesn't include ABG!)
To me this sounds like a fine plan; indeed, it is disapointing, but still marks the stellar progress made by Tesla. (P.S. Tesla Store Merchandise for sale!)
Also....
"so they are sacrificing some low end acceleration to get the cars into customer hands"
So, you mean that the first cars are given what would be the second gear for the two-speed, correct?
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Joseph 4:24PM (12/19/2007)
Thanks Sam.
Later on, why don't they offer this is an option? You can choose between the simpler, (hopefully) less expensive, more efficient (because it has less parts?) one speed and sacrafice some acceleration or go with the high performance two-speed. Not for the roadster they would do this though, because they wouldn't want to complicate assembly with more options and anyways it supposed to be high performance. But maybe for future vehicles?
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Kardax 5:18PM (12/19/2007)
Joseph: It wouldn't make sense to spend $100,000 on a car and then save $3000 by picking the cheaper transmission "option".
Once the transmission issues are fixed, they'll become the standard on all future Roadsters. There's a chance the WhiteStar sedan will have the same transmission, so it gets a quick 0-60, also :)
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Yanquetino 11:42PM (12/19/2007)
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if some --perhaps many-- of the first customers to receive their Roadsters will later decide that they prefer to keep the single-speed transmission. They should have that option, IMHO. Time will tell, I suppose.
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