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Adjustable Suspension

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Kipernicus

Model S Res#P1440
Dec 2, 2009
1,256
141
Belmont, CA
I know there's other threads out there talking about ride height etc, but this is a question specifically about what was written in the May 22 blog post:

Personalize your Suspension

As you can see, we’re developing a theme here – personalization. At Tesla, we are thinking differently about the way you connect with your car. Every Tesla customer is different, so we thought everyone should be able to set his or her preference for suspension and ride height. A car set a little lower to the ground will reduce aero drag. You may choose to raise the suspension a few inches when faced with pesky speed bumps or very high when loading up the Frunk with groceries and supplies for a summer BBQ.

What's unclear to me is whether the above statement only applies to cars equipped with the air suspension option, or to all cars? I can't really see such adjustability happening without the air suspension, and hope they throw in some clarification.
 
Looks like badly phrased marketing-talk to me.

For instance: why would I need to manually raise the suspension for a heavy load in the frunk?

I think they meant to raise it up while putting groceries into (or out of) the frunk. So you don't have to bend down as much. In many of the manufacturing plants I have don work for they have lift tables so their operators don't have to bend over to pick up 50lbs bags. A few inches actually makes a huge difference.

Found that to be very interesting. I wonder how high can it be raised? Would impact Cd but will be great on snow.

It will increase your CdA a whole lot. Every inch of height will add ~2% (1" more to a 56" tall car) to your CdA. But driving on snow will probably impact your range more than the height. And below ~35mph the CdA won't matter all that much.
 
Is anyone else concerned about reliability issues associated with the increased complexity of the adjustable suspension? On the surface I really like the idea of the active suspension but it seems to violate the KISS principal ("keep it simple stupid"). $1500 seems like a very reasonable price but I'm afraid that it's going to cost much more than $1500 to have it serviced after my warranty expires.

I've seen it act pretty flakey at the Bellevue store and even the sale associate confided that he was a bit concerned over the potential reliability of the system.
 
Is anyone else concerned about reliability issues associated with the increased complexity of the adjustable suspension? On the surface I really like the idea of the active suspension but it seems to violate the KISS principal ("keep it simple stupid"). $1500 seems like a very reasonable price but I'm afraid that it's going to cost much more than $1500 to have it serviced after my warranty expires.

I've seen it act pretty flakey at the Bellevue store and even the sale associate confided that he was a bit concerned over the potential reliability of the system.

I've owned 2 cars with adjustable air suspension and one was incredibly reliable, and the other not so much. The reliable one, coincidentally is used daily, as my wife lowers the car whenever she stops so that ingress/egress is easy.
 
What's unclear to me is whether the above statement only applies to cars equipped with the air suspension option, or to all cars? I can't really see such adjustability happening without the air suspension, and hope they throw in some clarification.

The blog post has been modified now to read:
With Active Air Suspension, a car set a little lower to the ground will reduce aero drag.

Thanks Tesla