Since no one else has said it, this isn’t a design flaw of the truck. The operator didn’t let air out of their tires. Before driving on sand you really want to let your tire PSI down to like 15 to be safe. I used to pull hummers out of the beach with my old four cylinder Nissan pickup because their drivers were often overconfident they didn’t need to deflate their tires (or just completely unaware). I don’t like Tesla but this is an operator error, not a fatal flaw of the truck.
I used to race cars, and would over/ under inflate my tires based on the weather and track conditions. Never thought about driving on sand, but that’s a super useful tip that I would wager most people have never heard.
It’s not just sand, rock crawlers will deflate tires down to single digits (that’s why they use beadlocks) so that the tires actually wrap around the rocks.
Wait wait Wait, can you give me more on this kWh thing? I thought I understood this already.
A single kW is a unit of power, literally 1000 watts.
A kWh is a unit of energy, as in stored or delivered.
Draw 500 watts for 2 hours? That’s a kWh.
Or have a battery that can hold 1 kWh, then assuming 100% efficiency you could draw 1000 watts from it for an hour before it was empty.
All of this is kW times hour, I would say?
But in my mind I would interchangeably say per hour as well, they feel the same.
A watt is a derived unit for a rate of change, an amount of energy used in a unit of time, so P = E / t. A kW per hour would be a rate divided by time, or E / t^2, resulting in another rate.
More colloquially, think of watts/power by analogy to another rate, that of speed. Moving at a speed of 100kph for 3 hours results in 300 speed-hours of distance. Saying 100 kilometers per hour per 3 hours sounds awkward, but is actually a weird way to say acceleration, a rate of change of speed. (And probably a hint to get your car serviced.)
Anyway, the key is to think of a kilowatt as a rate, not a quantity.
I see now that watts and therefore kW are rates. So it’s silly to add another rate to the end by appending “per hour”. But what is the time component of the watt calculation? To me it’s essentially instantaneous, even if that’s wrong. Even if that breaks the math, it’s still essentially true on a macro scale. And if it’s instantaneous, or even just close like microseconds, then it doesn’t hurt to apend another rate to the end, does it?
So why not use it? Batteries come with capacities rated in Wh and kWh, and it weirdly still makes sense to me because of my usage rate per hour example in my last comment.
And if we shouldn’t use it, then what should we use?
Is this problem we’re discussing, one that only occurs if you try to get really accurate with the numbers and times? Because for my uses it’s always seemed to work well enough.
Not being argumentative, just trying to learn, thanks
If you use exactly 20 kW for an hour, it will translate to 20 kWh. But if your power usage varies over time, you can’t keep track of it so simple. It’s just how it is.
The unit is really watt [W] and the Greek prefix kilo (k) for 1000. This way it’s fast and easy to convert to different scales (like Mega, Giga etc) for comparing numbers
Since no one else has said it, this isn’t a design flaw of the truck. The operator didn’t let air out of their tires. Before driving on sand you really want to let your tire PSI down to like 15 to be safe. I used to pull hummers out of the beach with my old four cylinder Nissan pickup because their drivers were often overconfident they didn’t need to deflate their tires (or just completely unaware). I don’t like Tesla but this is an operator error, not a fatal flaw of the truck.
It’s more of the taking $150k truck that doesn’t like sand, salt, or water to the beach.
You aren’t wrong though
I used to race cars, and would over/ under inflate my tires based on the weather and track conditions. Never thought about driving on sand, but that’s a super useful tip that I would wager most people have never heard.
It’s not just sand, rock crawlers will deflate tires down to single digits (that’s why they use beadlocks) so that the tires actually wrap around the rocks.
I guess you’re talking about psi.
(No offense to you, dear Buffaloaf, I just looked it up and thought I might share).
For everyone of the 191 non-USA countries, 10 psi is 0,69 bar or 690 hPa. That’s pretty low.
By the way, why is psi written in such a weird way? It should be lbs/ in^2
Because in^2 is generally said “square inches.”
So it’s “pounds per square inch.”
Sometimes “per” will get its own letter, like in PPM - parts per million - and sometimes it’s left off, as in PSI.
Thanks, friend :)
I know how it comes to be, I just think it’s stupid.
For example, kW times h is not the same as kW per hour. That’s why kWh means kilowatt times hour.
If I wrote ms to denote meters per second that would create massive confusion.
Wait wait Wait, can you give me more on this kWh thing? I thought I understood this already.
A single kW is a unit of power, literally 1000 watts.
A kWh is a unit of energy, as in stored or delivered. Draw 500 watts for 2 hours? That’s a kWh. Or have a battery that can hold 1 kWh, then assuming 100% efficiency you could draw 1000 watts from it for an hour before it was empty.
All of this is kW times hour, I would say? But in my mind I would interchangeably say per hour as well, they feel the same.
Obviously I’m wrong, but I’d like to know why lol
A watt is a derived unit for a rate of change, an amount of energy used in a unit of time, so P = E / t. A kW per hour would be a rate divided by time, or E / t^2, resulting in another rate.
More colloquially, think of watts/power by analogy to another rate, that of speed. Moving at a speed of 100kph for 3 hours results in 300 speed-hours of distance. Saying 100 kilometers per hour per 3 hours sounds awkward, but is actually a weird way to say acceleration, a rate of change of speed. (And probably a hint to get your car serviced.)
Anyway, the key is to think of a kilowatt as a rate, not a quantity.
Thanks, I guess I still don’t understand though.
I see now that watts and therefore kW are rates. So it’s silly to add another rate to the end by appending “per hour”. But what is the time component of the watt calculation? To me it’s essentially instantaneous, even if that’s wrong. Even if that breaks the math, it’s still essentially true on a macro scale. And if it’s instantaneous, or even just close like microseconds, then it doesn’t hurt to apend another rate to the end, does it?
So why not use it? Batteries come with capacities rated in Wh and kWh, and it weirdly still makes sense to me because of my usage rate per hour example in my last comment.
And if we shouldn’t use it, then what should we use?
Is this problem we’re discussing, one that only occurs if you try to get really accurate with the numbers and times? Because for my uses it’s always seemed to work well enough.
Not being argumentative, just trying to learn, thanks
If you use exactly 20 kW for an hour, it will translate to 20 kWh. But if your power usage varies over time, you can’t keep track of it so simple. It’s just how it is.
The unit is really watt [W] and the Greek prefix kilo (k) for 1000. This way it’s fast and easy to convert to different scales (like Mega, Giga etc) for comparing numbers