Tesla Semi Truck Revealed

The Tesla semi-truck has been a long-awaited reveal in not only the tech world but in the auto and shipping industry as well, and it is finally here.

With its sleek, almost spaceship-like design, the Tesla semi looked like Musk had just driven it from the future when he pulled it into the hangar where he unveiled it to the public for the first time.

In a TED talk, Musk  said that the Tesla Semi’s performance was top-notch, and that it could pull a diesel semi “uphill” in a truck pull. At the official unveiling of the semi-truck, he’s revealed some performance stats to back up his claims.

In the Tesla semi reveal, Musk said the semi (with or without a trailer) will reach 60mph in 5 seconds. Now, fully loaded, at the max gross weight allowed on a U.S. highway (80,000 lbs.), the truck, “[will reach] 60mph in 20 seconds.” The diesel semi didn’t even compare in acceleration.

With the same load, the Tesla semi can 65mph on a 5% grade compared to the 45mph a diesel semi can reach.

The truck has a 500-mile range, “at maximum weight, at highway speed.”

Musk said they designed the truck to be like a bullet. In comparison, typical diesel semi-trucks have a drag coefficient between 0.65 and 0.70 while the Tesla semi has a drag coefficient lower than that of the Bugatti Chiron (0.38), two-million dollar sports car. The drag coefficient of the Tesla semi comes in at 0.36.

Musk guaranteed that every Tesla will have enhanced autopilot as a standard. This includes automatic braking, automatic lane keeping, and forward collision detection.

In an emergency, Musk said, “the truck will stay in lane, and gradually come to a halt, put on the emergencies [lights]. If it doesn’t hear a response from you it will actually call emergency services and get an ambulance.”

According to Musk, a trucker’s worst nightmare, jackknifing, is gone with the Tesla semi-truck. The Tesla’s four independent motors will dynamically adjust to eliminate the possibility of jackknifing.

Tesla places a lot of confidence behind their new creation, so much so that they guarantee 1,000,000 miles without breaking down.

Tesla is accepting orders for the truck, and production is set for 2019.

For more performance stats on the Tesla semi-truck, here is a link for the unveiling.

Musk’s Boring Company to dig tunnel in Maryland

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned Elon Musk’s Boring Company and its goals. Well, it seems they’re making progress.

In Oct. of this year, the Boring Company was given permission to begin digging a 10-mile tunnel in Maryland.

While this is a rather typical utility permit granted to businesses who wish to tunnel, it is a grand stepping stone for Musk’s hyperloop dream.

Once the 10-mile tunnel is dug and the hyperloop design completed, the system could transport passengers from Washington to New York in just 29 minutes, according to Musk.

Further use for tunnels the Boring Company wish to dig include creating a system of tunnels and lifts that will ferry cars, in a toll-like system, past high traffic areas and alleviate congestion.

Here is a link to the original announcement in the Baltimore Sun.

Elon Musk thinks some people should not develop AI

Elon Musk has voiced his concerns about the dangers of creating Artificial Intelligence. More than ever, humanity is close to creating true AI, and in the next couple of decades, AI research and development is expected to explode.

Not everyone shares the same concerns as Musk. Some people are taking part in what Musk describes as, “reckless” development of AI.

Musk feels so strongly about the dangers AI development poses that he has insisted on passing protective legislation around the development of AI.

In Oct. of this year, Musk tweeted a link to an article about an “AI God.” In the tweet, Musk said, “On the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence.”

Both Musk’s tweet and the article by John Brandon were referring to Anthony Levandowski, former Google self-driving car engineer, who recently founded a nonprofit religious organization called Way of the Future. The organization’s goal is to create an AI “Godhead” that, “through understanding and worship of the Godhead,” will contribute to the betterment of society.

Here is a link to an article with Musk’s tweet.

When you think about worshiping a machine, the organization sounds a little culty, and culty sounds scary. There could be some grounds behind what Elon Musk is trying to tell us.

Tesla, Inc.

The world, particularly the United States, runs mostly on fossil fuels.  Experts on the matter say that we cannot survive on fossil fuels alone. We will need to find renewable forms of energy, green energy.

Power stations, planes, trains, and cars all currently run on fossil fuels and deplete the nonrenewable energy source every day. A large part of this depletion is due to combustible engine cars, so what do we need to do to make our lifestyle sustainable? Musk says cars and other forms of transportation, must become electric for this to happen.

So, how does creating electric cars make us more sustainable than we are now? In his first Ted Talk, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity …, Musk mentions that if we take natural gas, the most prevalent hydrocarbon fuel source, and we, “burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you’ll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency.”

So, if we take all the combustible engine vehicles off the road and replace them with electric vehicles, we more than double our energy efficiency.

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Musk to create a fully electric car that could compete with the world’s combustible engine market, which Musk says will be going down in the next few decades, and legislation from modern countries seems to suggest he is right.

Britain recently passed legislation with the goal of banning combustible engine vehicles by 2040, and other countries like France, India, and Norway have all passed similar legislation. With electric cars making up only 3% of the world’s car market, it seems that the United States is set behind the start line for this race, that is, if it weren’t for Elon Musk.

In his Ted Talk, Musk said there are three stages to Tesla’s business model: high-cost, low volume; medium-cost, medium-volume; and low-cost, high-volume. During the time of this statement in 2013, Musk said they were in stage 2.

With Musk founding Tesla in 2003 under the assumption of a changing world car market and legislation for electric cars being passed only in recent years, I would say he is a visionary well beyond his time.