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Can You Sketch the Interior of the Tesla Bus as Described?

The description is a bit confusing

By Rain Noe - July 21, 2016

in Cars | Star Wars

As industrial designers, we are responsible for creating physical things and environments. Our expertise in this area necessarily comes at the expense of any mastery of engineering or technology. This puts us in an unusual position when viewing futuristic concepts: If someone shows us a Star Wars spaceship, for instance, we can say "Okay, so the engineers have figured out warp drive and deflector shields—but dude, what's up with those seats, why are the headrests shaped like that? And why isn't that lever the pilot keeps pulling on located in the center of the goddamn console?"

"Not that button, THAT one! Jesus! Look where my finger's pointing!"

I'm bringing this up because while I flippantly believe Elon Musk can push his engineers to perfect the technologies he dreams of, I'm having trouble following the logic of his proposed Tesla Bus' physical interior. To get you up to speed, in his "Secret Master Plan, Part Deux" he mentions that "In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport."

Read the following, and tell me if he loses you at the same point where he lost me:

With the advent of autonomy, it will probably make sense to shrink the size of buses and transition the role of bus driver to that of fleet manager. Traffic congestion would improve due to increased passenger areal density by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways, and matching acceleration and braking to other vehicles, thus avoiding the inertial impedance to smooth traffic flow of traditional heavy buses.

Can anyone follow what he's talking about? Shrinking the size of buses, what, in terms of width, or length? How the heck do you get rid of the center aisle and "[put] seats where there are currently entryways"—how do people get in and out? Can you imagine trying to get out of a crowded bus when you're all the way in the back and the only entrance is at the front?

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This week Musk mentioned that he had to pull an all-nighter to finish his Secret Plan draft, and him being a genius at other stuff I cannot expect him to be as articulate about interiors as a vehicle designer, but I just can't envision what he means. Can any of you with hand skills whip up a quick sketch of what you think he's talking about?

Oh, one other not-so-little tidbit, that "heavy-duty trucks" thing we glossed over:

"Both [a heavy-duty truck and a bus] are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year. We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate."

That's gotta be a bummer for the Nikola Motor Company. You can hardly hang on to the nickname "The Tesla of Trucks" when the real Tesla starts making trucks.

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Mark Trebicki

8 years ago

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I think he may even have a context for his statement having grown up in South Africa, where the majority of public transport is done using Minibus Taxis. They have no central isle and while there is an isle of sorts that runs along the side of vehicle with the passenger door, a much higher percentage of floor space is used for seating.
While they are horrifically unsafe, the industry is surprisingly efficient and highly adaptable to market forces and geographic changes in demand.

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O Studio

8 years ago

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Agree that perhaps it's a bus with multiple gull wing doors - allowing passengers to face outwards, and reducing width of bus. Also, since the batteries seem to be able to go very flat, consider this allows the seating height to be very low, so every seat could be ground accessible when the walls/gull wing doors are open. But bus access is limited to right side only and I wonder how efficient you can get with that system? Would like to see a comparison diagram.
Also then the question is how are fares collected? I imagine it's going to have to have its own App or have a phone/software solution or you'd need those bus systems they implemented in Curitiba (which is pretty singular/economical too).

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Juan Lopez

8 years ago

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As an industrial designer you should be more flexible when thinking about solutions, and do a bit more research before reaching conclusions.

1. While it's true that Musk can't be an expert in everything, he is not alone, Tesla products have shown that they are capable of great industrial design, creating some of the most innovative and functional cars in the industry. One would have to assume that before writing a piece that millions of people will read, and will be scrutinized by journalists for years, he worked with his industrial design team for months, maybe years. He didn't think about these ideas overnight, Tesla have been nurturing them for years. Give the team more credit than the 10 minutes you spent thinking about this.

2. There are a lot of historical examples on how this could work. And there are a lot of clues on Tesla's past work and future plans that can help us imagine how it might materialize.

Other people have already shown some historical examples in both SciFi and real world.

But we also have many more clues:
He talks about how autonomy and making buses smaller. This makes a lot of sense. If you don't need drivers then you are not limited to preset routes, you can create routes on-demand based on real time requests, this means more personalized routes that will tailor to less people. A big bus can fit around 50 people while one of those mini buses can fit around 16. If there is no driver that means 16 usable seats.

It can potentially fit more people if they are standing, something similar to an airport shuttle, but I believe full autonomy and personalized routes will allow for people to commute for long distances without switching buses, so sitting makes more sense.

He talks about plans to design a pickup truck, we've also seen how the Tesla X and Tesla S use the same platform. You can easily fit 16 seats in the same platform of a pickup truck.

A mini bus this size can be deployed in any city with minimal regulatory resistance. There are already circulating cars this size. As opposed to buses which require special permissions or are banned from some streets.

How do you get in and out? well, each row of seats would need to have an independent door, that means 4 doors on each side. Each door would need to open independently as to not open the whole side of the bus to pick up 1 or 2 persons. And Tesla developed the perfect door for this! Look at some of the properties of falcon wing doors:

A-They open up, so you can open any number of them simultaneously without bumping into the others.
B-They allow you to walk in, standing up.
C-They detect and avoid obstacles.

3. Safety. Mini buses are not very safe. Well, he is also dropping a clue by saying that autonomous vehicles will need to be 10X safer than their manual siblings. They can be optimized and be much safer than current cars and buses.

With the same information contained in the Master Plan v2 plus historical information about transportation design and Teslas own products and strategies we can reach a viable conclusion:

An autonomous mini-bus, with the same footprint as a pickup truck, able to transport ~16 people comfortably to personalized routes. With 4 falcon wing doors on each side to access each row of seats.

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Juan Lopez

8 years ago

Z

Z

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As an industrial designer you should be more flexible when thinking about solutions, and do a bit more research before reaching conclusions.

1. While it's true that Musk can't be an expert in everything, he is not alone, Tesla products have shown that they are capable of great industrial design, creating some of the most innovative and functional cars in the industry. One would have to assume that before writing a piece that millions of people will read, and will be scrutinized by journalists for years, he worked with his industrial design team for months, maybe years. He didn't think about these ideas overnight, Tesla have been nurturing them for years. Give the team more credit than the 10 minutes you spent thinking about this. 2. There are a lot of historical examples on how this could work. And there are a lot of clues on Tesla's past work and future plans that can help us imagine how it might materialize. Other people have already shown some historical examples in both SciFi and real world. But we also have many more clues: He talks about how autonomy and making buses smaller. This makes a lot of sense. If you don't need drivers then you are not limited to preset routes, you can create routes on-demand based on real time requests, this means more personalized routes that will tailor to less people. A big bus can fit around 50 people while one of those mini buses can fit around 16. If there is no driver that means 16 usable seats. It can potentially fit more people if they are standing, something similar to an airport shuttle, but I believe full autonomy and personalized routes will allow for people to commute for long distances without switching buses, so sitting makes more sense. He talks about plans to design a pickup truck, we've also seen how the Tesla X and Tesla S use the same platform. You can easily fit 16 seats in the same platform of a pickup truck. A mini bus this size can be deployed in any city with minimal regulatory resistance. There are already circulating cars this size. As opposed to buses which require special permissions or are banned from some streets. How do you get in and out? well, each row of seats would need to have an independent door, that means 4 doors on each side. Each door would need to open independently as to not open the whole side of the bus to pick up 1 or 2 persons. And Tesla developed the perfect door for this! Look at some of the properties of falcon wing doors: A-They open up, so you can open any number of them simultaneously without bumping into the others. B-They allow you to walk in, standing up. C-They detect and avoid obstacles. 3. Safety. Mini buses are not very safe. Well, he is also dropping a clue by saying that autonomous vehicles will need to be 10X safer than their manual siblings. They can be optimized and be much safer than current cars and buses. With the same information contained in the Master Plan v2 plus historical information about transportation design and Teslas own products and strategies we can reach a viable conclusion: An autonomous mini-bus, with the same footprint as a pickup truck, able to transport ~16 people comfortably to personalized routes. With 4 falcon wing doors on each side to access each row of seats.

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Bradley Johnson

8 years ago

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Makes me think of any number of sci-fi movie transport vehicles. This one came to mind first.

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Kevin Glannon

8 years ago

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Well, Tesla is already a leading innovator in gull-wing doors....

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Christopher Rowe

8 years ago

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A separate door for every row of facing seats? Like an old British non-gangwayed carriage. Faster entry and access. Doors wouldn't open for new passengers if adjacent seats were occupied?

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- Christian van der Linden
  
  Christopher Rowe
  
  8 years ago
  
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  That's exactly what I envisioned at first.
  Alternatively, everyone could sit back-to-back facing out the sides which could split open up and down. The bottom portion of the door could even be the exit step.
  Or, without the need for a driver, everyone could enter from the windshield area and exit at the back, but that would still require an aisle.
  
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