If you zoom in there’s a road named Chrysler Corp Proving. Another named Chrysler Flat Track Rd and another named Chrysler Oval Track. Interesting.
This facility was originally the Chrysler AZ Proving Grounds, established back in the '60s or so. Chrysler sold this and bought a facility in Yucca, AZ, which was formerly the Ford AZ proving grounds, back around 2007.
This location and HP's old HQ is setting the stage for a trend that Apple buys up locations of once great US companies that have seen better days.
They’ve already been doing it for decades with Apple stores.
What once great US companies are they taking over en masse for Apple Store locations? From what I've seen it's nothing in particular and often a completely remodeled building, often being a remodeled Apple Store.
radarthekat said: You might change your view of you watched some of Sandy Monroe’s vehicle tear form videos. Tesla is leaps and bounds ahead in important engineering areas.
Such as? You've apparently watched the videos but don't have a synopsis of their "leaps and bounds" advantage?
Battery and cabin temperature management. The Octavalve designed to maintain temperatures for the battery packs and the passenger cabin is considered to be next level to anything else in the industry. It's compact, integrates several heating and cooling systems and eliminates both weight and parts, obviating the need for several hoses in addition to pumps and other components. Hoses are a failure point and every hose adds the weight of the fluid moving through it.
Front and rear castings. Tesla has made great leaps in reducing parts and weight with its Giga castings. The rear section of the Model Y, as one example, reduced 70 parts, all welded/bolted/glued together down to a single molded aluminum part, with mounting points molded in. This translates to factory space and time savings and a much better fit for body panels and other components. Other automakers are just now starting to order their own equipment so that they can follow in Tesla's footsteps in simplifying their designs and optimizing factory efficiency. It'll take them years to get close.
Battery management. Tesla's battery management software is next to none, ensuring that batteries are both charged and utilized to optimize overall battery life by minimizing degradation. This is accomplished through battery conditioning (warming) early in each charge cycle and drawdown. The octavalve mentioned above plays a significant role here.
Over-the-air updates. It's recognized by every player in the industry that Tesla is far ahead in OTA software updates, often unlocking new capabilities (more power and longer range) through constant innovations in battery and motor management algorithms. Tesla also uses software to control far more aspects of their vehicle's functions versus competitors, and this means that Tesla can enhance or correct functionality of everything from the way the windshield wipers function to seatbelt tension, emergency breaking, etc.
There are additional aspects where Tesla clearly leads by a long way, such as its charging network hardware which is now being adopted by most, and soon all, other car makers. The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers just announced that Tesla's NACS (North American Charging Standard) will be the official charging standard. I could go on.
Those aren't very good examples. Every EV company has battery conditioning features now and the typical battery warranty for EVs (including Tesla) is something like a minimum of 70% original capacity after 100,000 miles. Giga castings? Those are made possible by a 3rd party company. Anyone can get equipment from companies like Idra if they choose to do so. And despite making the car lighter and manufacturing less expensive those kinds of castings make reliability lower and repairs harder/more expensive. It solves some problems while introducing others. OTA software updates? That seems like a reach. Tesla has problems with OTAs too...https://www.topspeed.com/real-story-behind-teslas-failed-ota-update/
I can’t make you watch one of the leading experts in the automotive industry (Sandy Monroe), but if you decide to do so I recommend you find his video where he very explicitly debunks the misconception about Tesla vehicles being less repairable because of their use of castings. TL:DR: any impact that would deform a Tesla casting, requiring the vehicle to be totaled, will also total any competitor’s vehicle. Sandy goes into detail as to exactly why this is the case.
Your misconception on this topic, which is a common one, well points out why people need to really dig in and do research in order to become well informed. For sure you want to get this stuff right if you’re picking stocks, which is entirely how I’ve made my living the past dozen years since retiring from my career building software startups.
On the Top Speed article regarding OTA updates, did you notice they didn’t mention the model or the model years affected? Nor did they mention the total number of vehicles affected. Because those bits of information would greatly minimize the sensationalism of the story. Maybe bookmark the Teslarati and read all the daily articles on there, plus the comments, to get a true idea of stats an issue and what’s just negative hype.
Haha! I live like 15-20 mins from here. If I remember correctly it was once marked as Chrysler proving grounds. The oval track is the same, but the internal layout looks different in these maps now. I know Ford has a proving ground out this way as well (south of what’s believed to be Apple’s). It’s interesting to see the very different layouts. The one discussed here is definitely more city driving oriented, and fords is more terrain oriented. I’ve been to Fords proving ground. They take your phone from you at the security check point, cover the cameras and place in their own cases to insure the cameras stay covered. They used to straight out confiscate your phone and return them as you exit.
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