We admit that when we first saw the falcon-wing rear doors on the Tesla Model X, we thought they were little more than another—pardon the pun—flight of show-car fancy. But at a recent town-hall meeting in Norway, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged that the falcon-wing doors will be produced, despite the considerable challenges of making them producible and practical.
"We will absolutely keep the falcon wing doors in production," Musk said. "It's been a very hard design problem. We're still agonizing over [them]."
Musk elaborated on the design itself. The longitudinal center spine of the roof must remain extremely rigid, he said, but cannot intrude into passenger space. The doors will open with two hinges along "quite a complex curve" that would make them adaptable to the available height and width restraints around the vehicle.
"There will also be proximity sensors—kind of like parking sensors, that will automatically stop before the door hits the garage roof or the car next to it," Musk said. "They will actually change the opening dynamics according to the environment. The goal with the X is that if you can physically fit between the car [next to you] and the Model X, then the door will open and not hit anything."
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Apparently, Musk has a serious aversion to flights of show-car fancy in general. "One thing I hate about the car industry is that they will do these show cars and then that show car never comes to reality. And that just kills me. You shouldn't show somebody something cool and then not do it. Anything we show, that will make it to production.
"In fact the rule actually goes beyond that at Tesla . . . any car that's shown as a prototype, the production car must be better. And that will be true of the X, too."
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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