Category Archives: Automotive

Lamborghini has unveiled the carbon fiber chassis for its upcoming Aventador replacement and it uses more of the composite than ever before. Inspired by the light-but-strong world of aeronautics, the car is currently codenamed LB744 and is underpinned by what ulasan film Lambo refers to as the ‘monofuselage’ giving it more strength with less weight.

“Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere.”

Rockets, you say?

Evolution From Aventador
One function of the aforementioned increase in strength is better torsional stiffness or less twist/flex in the chassis helping the LB744 put down the power from its hybridized V12 effectively. Forged composites are used for the front subframe and crash structure of the new car, marking a 20% weight reduction over the Aventador’s aluminum frontal structures with double the energy absorption abilities.

Related Story: Lamborghini’s Le Mans Hypercar Will Use A Twin-Turbo Hybrid V8

The monofuselage is about 25% stiffer torsion-wise than the Aventador chassis and the whole show is around 10% lighter. This should all make for better driving dynamics plus increased efficiency, if indeed such a thing matters to the V12 supercar buyer.

Tesla Cybertruck Executives Hint at Release Date

Were there clues and information that were shared with Tesla executives about the Cybertruck? Matthew, one of the attendees of Investor Day, talked to them, and they had this to say about the Cybertruck.

They said they are following Elon Musk’s vision to the letter. What Elon Musk said publicly is true and that first deliveries will happen in Q3, 2023, with around 1,000 deliveries this year. Volume production will start next year.

Matthew asked Franz von Holzhausen how close the Cybertruck build shown at Investor Day was to the actual Cybertruck customers would get. He said this is the exact build that a customer would get if they got it today.

There is a production version and a release candidate which will start driving around. It’s possible Tesla may make changes to the current production version, but it looks pretty solid from all the pictures and videos I’ve seen.

This leads me to think of a bigger question: When can you expect to get your Cybertruck?

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If you weren’t one of the first to reserve a Cybertruck, you most likely won’t be getting it this year – unless you were in the first 1,000. There is a spreadsheet that does its best to estimate when you will get your Cybertruck using a number of factors.

Originally, first deliveries were expected to begin in January 2022, however, this will not be the case. You have to add about 2 years to this in determining when you will get your Cybertruck.

I expect Tesla to get to about 3,000 Cybertruck vehicles per week in 2024, and to get near 10,000 in 2025, assuming the demand for the Cybertruck is about 1 million units per year.

If you reserved a Cybertruck, I think there is a great chance you will get it before 2026, if not sooner.

You can hear more discussion about this here in this video from Farzad Mesbahi:

Tesla has revealed that they’ve unlocked a 30% faster charge time at its Superchargers using a combination of hardware, software, and customer education. There are six primary reasons for Tesla improving its charging times:

Transition to V3

Tesla Superchargers were upgraded in 2019 to V3, and this increased speeds to about 250 kW. At the time, on March 6th, 2019, Tesla had about 12,000 Superchargers world-wide. V3 is a completely new architecture for supercharging. The cabinet is a 1 MW power cabinet with a similar design to the utility scale products that Tesla offers.

A Model 3 long range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. With other improvements, Tesla cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50% according to their fleet data.

Efficient Routing With Trip Planner

Trip Planner is a very useful tool when taking a road trip. It lets you enter a location and a destination and will tell you all your stops along the way, depending on which vehicle you are driving. The trip planner will maximize your charging efficiency and times.

For instance, I set a trip from where I live in Utah to Kalamazoo, MI, and I got these locations to charge at:

• Evanston, WY: 50 min. charge
• Rawlins, WY: 25 min. charge
• Laramie, WY: 55 min. charge
• Ogallala, NE: 55 min. charge
• Grand Island, NE: 50 min. charge
• Council Bluffs, IA: 45 min. charge
• Altoona, IA: 55 min. charge
• Davenport, IA: 75 min. charge
• Michigan City, IN: 25 min. charge
• Kalamazoo, MI

The duration of the trip ends up being about 30 hours and 15 minutes for a total of 1,557 miles. I have done this trip before, and it took me about 24 hours in a gas car. The extra 6 hours comes here for charging my Model 3 RWD, which is the slowest charging Tesla vehicle.

If I had a Model 3 long range or other high-end vehicle, the charging times are halved and the trip takes a few hours less. You can use the Tesla trip planner here.

Supercharger Density Increasing

Tesla V3 Superchargers saw an increase in peak power from 250 kW to 324 kW. This is close to a CCS charger that gets about 350 kW. Tesla increased the power that these chargers have compared to its older versions.

Despite being more than $30,000 less expensive than the next car up in the Lucid Air range the Touring loses none of the magic according to the latest Lucid review from InsideEVs.

IEV’s Daniel Golson has been putting some miles on the Lucid Air Touring, which fits between the Air Grand Touring and base model Pure in the range. The results are good for the American automaker. He mentions previously wondering if the Lucid Air Dream Edition’s magic would be watered down with the more accessible trim levels and states that these worries were ultimately unfounded as the Touring still packs everything that makes the Air a great luxury sedan.

Performance
The Air Touring features a pair of electric motors with a total output of 620 horsepower and 885 ft.-lb. of torque. Unsurprisingly, huge horsepower and enough torque to reverse the planet’s rotation mean that the Touring never leaves its driver wanting for performance. Special mention is given to the Air’s ability to accelerate out of corners and pick up speed on the highway which is done with addictive immediacy and loses none of its surge as speeds climb higher.

The Air Touring also shines because of its chassis and steering, the latter of which was benchmarked against the Porsche 911 GT3. The handling makes it a joy to attack the corners in this 5200 lb.+ super sedan with the supple, composed ride and near-limitless grip inspiring confidence and driving joy. Golson also points out that the Air achieves all this without fancy air suspension, active anti-roll bars or rear-wheel steering. Kudos to you, Lucid handling department. Also helping out is the fact that the Touring weighs about 250 lbs. less than the GT.