The whole dash oard is a mssive touchscreen, yes. The only physical buttons in the tesla are
-the 4 blinker warning button
-abutton to open glove compartment
-4 buttons for windows driver side
-1 window lock button driver side
-three mirror buttons driver side , two select left or right mirror, the third retracts mirrors
-a 4 way mirror pan/tilt paddle driver side
- 3 buttons, one passenger side, one rear left and one rear right to control those windows
- an illuminated button inside the frunk to unlock it should you be inside .. Duh!
- a button on the tailgate to open
- a button on the tailgate inside to close and set opening height limit
The control levers are limited to
Left/right turn
Park/forward/reverse/neutral
Cruise on off /faster/slower/resume/set
Pull to wash windscreen.
There is no control for headlights, windscreen wipers , speed of windscreen wipers , fog lights. You dont need that. The computer knows
The abs system is tesla made. As most of the braking happens during regeneration the motor can detect a wheel stall : the rpm of the rotor collapses immediately. So they lift regen to get them running again. Essentially the torque controller works both ways, during acceleration and deceleration.
You barely use the traditional brake pedal. Only for the last meter , and to hold the car in position. The regenerative braking controlled by throttle works perfect. Combined with parking radar it even slows down should the driver not react.
When parking in my garage the radar stops the car at a fixed distance. It will refuse to approach further , so i assume this also works on the road. It really 'stops'
The real car control computer sits under the armrest for the driver and passenger (where the usb ports are). Also the graphical computers sit there. There is simply an lvds link feeding the display panels. The reason is software updates. They do not want to send all the different firmware modules to the far corners of the car. It is all contained in one box.
There are separate, non critical processors. The nose has its own driving the lights and local actuators/sensors like radar, wheel pressure sensors, windshield fluid level and wiper motor, hood release etc.
The tail has the same for light, hatch release etc
The battery pack has like 20 cpu's inside. The battery is split in 16 modules each having its own charging and balancing processor. They communicate with the battery controller and charge controller.
Then there is the main charge module outside the battery. This takes incoming power and converts it up to the required 380 to 400 volt for the battery.
The propulsion system inverter also has its own computer.
What i am saying here above is public knowledge. Teslamotors forum and teslamotorsclub forum has all that info. Some guy already figured out how to open the charge port. He uses a simple pic processor to transmit a burst at 458 MHz, someone else reverse engineered the REST api and made a google glass app for the tesla that can interface with the car.
During the factory tour (you need to sign an NDA before entering, and no picture taking is allowed) we got to see cars in various states of assembly. One i took a long hard look at is the (low voltage) wiring harness.
There is virtually no wiring in this car. A big connector leaves the area between driver and passenger seat, which seems to confirm the central computer box there. It fans out , three bundles to rear, one bundle left and one right (i am assuming doors: controls plus speakers) , two bundles to front, three bundles to cockpit.
Each end then splits into small 'tails' like two wires for speaker , another tail with three wires for something else, ay e the side airbag etc.
But main bundles are all small wires accompanied by what looks like a low voltage feed and return.
They do not seem to be using the chassis as ground return !probably because the entire car is aluminum.
I have seen cable harnesses for traditional cars and they are much much larger.
I think tesla uses one or more can busses to the local units. The other individual wires are probably simple things like two speaker wires , a power and a ground and the two can lines. The airbags probly have their own four wires. Most of the bundles are linke only the thickness of two pencils.
I suspect they dont even splice anything inside a cable bundle. It is probably all point to point between an end unit (cpu module, airbag module or a speaker) and the central controller.
This thing is really radically different from anything else.
I am still amazed at how simplified the operation is.
Walk to the car , the car wakes up when it senses me 3 meters away and it extends the door handles , unfolds the mirrors , music is playing, displays are on. I open door, sit down close door. Press brake pedal and click it forward or reverse and drive.
I dont need a brake pedal, i dont need to turn on headlights, i dont need to control wipers , no gears to change. All i do is control speed with 1 pedal , direction with steering wheel and use the blinkers .
There is nothing else to do.
When i am done i click it in park , get out , close the door and walk away. When the car can no longer sense me it retracts mirrors, doorhandles, and goes to sleep.
I dont need to pull the handbrake (there is none) i dont need to remove a key , push the remote to lock the car , remeber to turn off lights .
Walk to car ,get in, click forward/ reverse and use steering wheel and throttle pedal. Click park, get out, Walk away
Thats it.
Think about it. Why do cars still need all these control levers and buttons like they did 50 or 100 years ago? We all grew up with cartoons like the jetsons and dick tracy, we all seen 70's scifi movies that showed us stuff in 2020.. How come we arent't there yet ? The tesla is the only machine that lives up to that 'futuristic promise'
Last night as i parked the car there was a little popup telling me the car would do a software update overnight.
What happened? A few days a go there was a fire in a garage in san diego. The firemen said the car charger caught fire. The car had no damage , no damage to charge cable either. Only the wall connector had melted and burned.
Tesla dumped the telemetry of the car. They detected voltage fluctuations. Further investigation revealed the electrician had used too thin a wire for the outlet. The wire inside the wall had overheated , melted and started arking. For some reason the mains breaker had not tripped.
Us breakers do not trip immediately. If wire insulation carbonises this may not immediately trip. It does cause voltage sagging.
Well, the new software now has a detection algorithm. If the incoming voltsge starts fluctuating wildly, like telemetry showed in this case, the charger will reduce current draw 25%. If it keeps fluctuating it will reduce another 25% and so on.
So now the car can even detect faulty or flaky house wiring and will lrotect yor house as well. How's that ? I think it is brilliant !