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Old 01-05-2019, 02:53 PM   #1091
John V
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Maybe with more tire. No way it can run with Shelbys and 1LEs..
Why are you concerned with comparing it to also-ran cars in BS?
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Old 01-05-2019, 03:20 PM   #1092
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Sure, *potentially* a game changing OTA update could be released that shakes up a car’s performance so much that it disrupts everyone’s expectations, but a) we’ve seen no evidence of that because no one actually knows what track mode can do, and b) how is that any different than a manufacturer releasing a new car that suddenly dominates a class?
It's not just track mode. They can change the acceleration. I vaguely recall the RWD model was beating its 0-60 times by a lot and they slowed it down well after it was released.

Some people also predicted the performance version will get faster over time once Elon trusts the drivetrain can handle it.

Having an existing car change overnight while you are sleeping is very, very different from buying new vehicle.
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Old 01-05-2019, 03:31 PM   #1093
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Why?

I mean, it’s good for the owner, I guess. But for all the competitors, how is it different? Ford could introduce a new suspension package on eco boost mustangs tomorrow that renders your car obsolete—your competition could go out and buy it while you’re sleeping. What’s the difference?
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Old 01-05-2019, 03:33 PM   #1094
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Re: JV—if it can’t keep up with also-rans it’s not going to be competitive?
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Old 01-05-2019, 05:09 PM   #1095
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Why?

I mean, it’s good for the owner, I guess. But for all the competitors, how is it different? Ford could introduce a new suspension package on eco boost mustangs tomorrow that renders your car obsolete—your competition could go out and buy it while you’re sleeping. What’s the difference?
Cars are classed in SCCA Solo based on the performance potential they come with from the factory and tweaks are made between seasons.

A suspension change requires someone buying a new car or buying and installing parts. The ruleset already addresses this and handles it relatively well.

An OTA update affects cars that have been built, classed, and bought with no action taken by the owner/driver. The ruleset does not address this at all.

If Ford introduces a new suspension package for the EB Mustang on a Friday night, no car I'm competing with Saturday morning will have that suspension package on it. If Ford decided it needed a little tweak due to Saturday's results, it won't be different for day two's competition on Sunday. If Tesla puts out an update Friday night, it will change the car registered for Saturday. If they tweak it and push it out a new version Saturday night, Sunday's competition will be affected.

I'm curious if you really don't see the difference or if you were just playing lawyer.

I'd be happy to let Teslas compete with traditional ICE cars with similar Solo performance envelopes if I know the Tesla's envelope will remain as stable as the traditional ICE car's. Tesla has demonstrated that it will not.

Even if Teslas are segregated into "Tesla Stock", what if your car gets a performance increasing update tonight before tomorrow's competition and rumatt's doesn't get it until next week? If I've followed the Tesla stuff closely enough, not everyone gets updates at the exact same moment. Depending on what a given update does, that could be pretty shitty for some people and pretty wonderful for others.

Tesla is disrupting, yes. Is that a good thing? Probably. Is the SCCA's Solo rules up to the task of dealing with that disruption? Absolutely not. Does that need to be fixed? Absolutely. Should it be fixed before there's an "incident"? Fucking A yes.
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Old 01-05-2019, 05:28 PM   #1096
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Your point on upgrades during multi-day competitions is a good one, but that’s an edge case that it seems to me could be dealt with by just forbidding people from applying any updates during a competition.

Otherwise, no, am not just being a lawyer. I really don’t see the difference. Ford introduces a new EB mustang tweak—it hits dealers on Friday and someone buys one Sat, shows up to run Sunday. How is that different, from your perspective as a competitor, than someone receiving an OTA update on a car they already have? Or installing some sort of mechanical upgrade—forgive me, I haven’t been paying attention. Are new shocks still permitted in stock? Or whatever else.

Existing cars get reclassed all the time. If Tesla introduces an OTA package that radically changes the car’s performance, why not just reclass it? Yeah, it takes time, but same is true of any upgrade to a model that might result in reclassification.
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Old 01-05-2019, 08:48 PM   #1097
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Mostly because reclassing takes time.

The way Tesla introduces updates, many by surprise, means to me that these cars should generally be classed very cautiously.
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Old 01-05-2019, 11:30 PM   #1098
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Your point on upgrades during multi-day competitions is a good one, but that’s an edge case that it seems to me could be dealt with by just forbidding people from applying any updates during a competition.
What if they don't have a choice? You turn the car on and it's done.

I don't know if that's how Tesla does it or if the owner/driver has a choice whether to apply it or not and I don't care. If it's not the way they do it today, it could be the way they do it tomorrow. Or that BMW does it the day after. Or Chevy the day after that.

Quote:
Otherwise, no, am not just being a lawyer. I really don’t see the difference. Ford introduces a new EB mustang tweak—it hits dealers on Friday and someone buys one Sat, shows up to run Sunday. How is that different, from your perspective as a competitor, than someone receiving an OTA update on a car they already have? Or installing some sort of mechanical upgrade—forgive me, I haven’t been paying attention. Are new shocks still permitted in stock? Or whatever else.
Cars are classed based on the performance potential of the car with all legal allowances. The car as classed is presumed to have upgraded shocks, not stock shocks.

FWIW, there is a pretty massive debate going on right now about whether aftermarket shock controllers for active systems should be allowed in Street (read: old school Stock). They've been shown to have huge performance advantages. It's a messy situation.

The equivalent is classing a car capable of receiving OTA updates based on the absolute bestest, mostest, capablist an OTA could possibly make the car. Not what it can do as it comes form the factory. Not on what it can do when with simple hardware mods with well known and well understood limitations based on many years of experience. But on what it might, possibly, be able to do with a lot of changes to many systems that are not at all understood. In a sport where differences between winning and losing bad are often in what would normally be thought of as edge cases of noise at the margins, it make a big difference.

Quote:
Existing cars get reclassed all the time. If Tesla introduces an OTA package that radically changes the car’s performance, why not just reclass it? Yeah, it takes time, but same is true of any upgrade to a model that might result in reclassification.
Before a car can be reclassed, a reclassing proposal must be announced and membership given time to comment. After that, the advisory committee can make a recommendation to the SEB. Then, the SEB can debate, vote, and send it to the BOD for approval. If it's decided the car will be reclassed, the earliest that can happen is Jan 1 of the following year after notification of the BOD approving the reclassing.

Say the Tesla 3 is a close also-ran to the top cars in BS for all of the 2019 Solo season. Top tier, multi-time national champions just can't get close to similar drivers in traditional top BS cars. Four mediocre drivers that are well known and known as mediocre drivers bring their 3s to Lincoln for the National Championships because it will be fun. The Monday of competition week, the cars receive an OTA update. These four mediocre drivers finish 1-4 with 4th place 0.5 seconds ahead of one of those top tier, multi-time national champions in a top BS car. The Tesla drivers say they drove well, but they know their skill level and that wasn't right. The top tier past jacket winner gets out claiming to have made the drives of his life each day.

The Street Advisory Committee holds their next meeting two weeks later, says, "we have to fix this," and puts out a proposal to reclass the Tesla 3 Performance to SS in the next Fastrack which is published in late September 2019. Memerbship gets at least 30 days to comment (not sure what the actual minimum time for comment is, but don't recall ever seeing less than that before an action was taken), so that finishes late October 2019. The SAC discusses the comments at their November 2019 meeting and refers a recommended class change to the SEB. The SEB takes up the matter at their December 2019 meeting, concurs with the SAC and sends the reclassing recommendation to the BOD. The BOD decides to allow the reclassification. Notice of that decision goes to the membership in the publication of the next issue of Fastrack which goes out in late January 2020. Because notice of the class change was not given before January 2020, the reclassing doesn't become effective until January 1, 2021.

If you are in the class with that Tesla, you're fucked at Nationals 2019. Before the 2020 season starts, you know the Tesla is gone for 2021, but you're stuck with it for 2020. What are you supposed to do?

The more likely scenario is the OTA update happens sometime earlier in 2019 and the proposal goes out in time that the reclassing is effective for 2020, but you're still stuck with it for the rest of 2019.

If Ford introduces a new suspension package on the EB Mustang on September 1, 2019, I will not be competing against it in Lincoln on September 7, 2019. The rules forbid it. A Mustang with a new suspension package that goes on sale Sep 1, 2019 will be a 2020 model year car. It will not be eligible for national Solo competition until Jan 1, 2020 unless it is explicitly classed via notification in Fastrack.

The Mustang example is like getting pregnant. You either do or you don't. It's black, white, and clearly defined. The Tesla is like getting a little bit preggers. It's never been done before, no one one knows what it means, no one knows how it works, no one knows what its potential is, and no one knows what its impact will be. Maybe it will be fully understood at some point, but that point is not today and not in the foreseeable future. Let's just put it to the side where it won't hurt anyone until we get it figured out.

Stability in stock classes is a season long at best as it is. Changing that to hours is not in the best interests of the membership, the club, or the sport in general.

If this still isn't clear, I have failed. Miserably.
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Old 01-05-2019, 11:58 PM   #1099
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Yeah, sorry. I don’t get it. My point always has been that Ford could tweak the settings of the Mustang tomorrow without a MY or package change and that car would continue to be classed where it was, absent action to the contrary. Just like the Tesla. And the example that you give seems so fantastic that I wouldn’t spend time stressing about it. But then again I’m not well enough versed in autocross rule minutiae at this point to be the right person to argue the point with.

My feeling about autocross rules is that they’ve always been arbitrary (as rules ultimately must be). Again, as with all rules, they can be ruthlessly exploited. There was a level of piousness about “keeping costs down” that always rankled me, because if you weren’t ready to spend thousands on tires and mods you couldn’t be competitive, and if you really wanted to win you had to buy whatever car was the class leader, anyway. I honestly don’t think OTA updates will change that materially. It’s going to be years before we get to that point, and by then all cars will be crossovers so it won’t matter.

I was vaguely amused by the idea of a seemingly misclassed Tesla being the hot ticket in DS. Burying it in BS is probably the right thing for SCCA to do; it’s not really an autocross car, anyway.
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Old 01-20-2019, 12:39 PM   #1100
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Because it's the current Tesla thread...

https://twitter.com/_KariedAway_/sta...13043932446721
Quote:
Originally Posted by @_KariedAway_

I’m not under any fucking NDA and I’d be glad to tell you how @Tesla laid off my disabled veteran husband then cancelled his sign on bonus and every fucking penny of his 2018 performance bonus. #tesla #ElonMusk
4:07 AM - 20 Jan 2019

33 replies 160 retweets 376 likes
Kari Pollock
@_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

We moved our family from NY to CA because we were thrilled to work for @Tesla and believed in the mission. My husband worked so hard and loved his job. He received high praise every year for his performance reviews. He was so proud of his job.
2 replies 4 retweets 45 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

They laid him off at the end of the day. He was misled that his section, including him, was safe from lay offs. They took his laptop 10 minutes after he found out and he couldn’t save his personal files. They escorted him “walk of shame” to HR like a criminal. He was humiliated.
1 reply 5 retweets 42 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

They gave him ZERO paperwork and said “we’ll email it to you”. This was Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend. Well, we just received the email and they scammed us out of his remaining sign on bonus and just fucking cancelled his 2018 performance bonus like it never existed.
3 replies 5 retweets 49 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

We are not rich. We are barely making ends meet. We live in a tiny little 2 bedroom apartment with our son and pay almost $3000 in rent. But it was okay that @Tesla didn’t pay much because the bonuses were going to make up for it over time.
1 reply 4 retweets 46 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

We believed in the mission. We chose to sacrifice a little and we were understanding about Tesla only giving bonuses broken down in payments over 4 years. Never, ever did it occur to us that they’d just “cancel” all our money and throw my husband away like he did something wrong.
1 reply 4 retweets 35 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

We’re shattered. Devasted. And fucking broke. @Tesla, shame on you. I know lay offs are a part of life, but you really took the low road and kicked your loyal employee in the balls when he was down.
2 replies 6 retweets 53 likes
Kari Pollock
‏ @_KariedAway_
8h8 hours ago

Oh, I know eventually we’ll be all right. My husband is brilliant, honest, and a hard worker. He’s got a great resume and he’ll find a job quickly. But right now, we’re broke, numb, pissed, and hoping for some fucking accountability with @Tesla. /end
Sounds like a nice place to work.
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