Tesla Model X Falcon-Wing Doors — Patent Requested
Originally published on Ecopreneurist.
The Tesla Model X, an electric crossover, was revealed a long time back. Reservations started in February 2012. Nonetheless, we just got word of a patent for which Tesla has filed an application, a patent for the crossover’s falcon-wing doors.
Value Walk‘s Michelle Jones writes:
Spotted by Shane McGlaun of Slash Gear, the patent describes those falcon wing doors as “a dual hinged door assembly.” The assembly features upper and lower portions, with the upper part pivoting “about a primary axis formed by its juncture with a structural member in the roof.” The upper part of the door may have a window. The lower part of the door may also have a window and “pivots about a secondary axis formed by its juncture with the upper door portion.”
Tesla offers power rear doors
The door may also use drive systems to independently power the motion of each of the door potions. Each of the drive systems could have a powered and a non-powered strut. In other words, the rear doors of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s Model X could have some kind of automatic system like what’s used on a number of SUVs today. It could also use gas struts which are manually powered.
By separating the doors into two parts with a hinge, the automaker hopes to make it possible to still open the doors even when the vehicle is parked between two others in a parking lot. If the doors were all a single piece without a hinge in the middle, it would be unlikely that there would be enough room to open the massive wing doors with a vehicle next to it.
Is this the Model X technology?
Of course the technology described in many patents never sees the light of day, but this one just may be the design Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is actually working with. Tesla’s website shows off the Model X doors with an innovative feature enabling the viewer to click and drag the doors of the vehicle up and down. It’s possible that this patent represents the original plan for the vehicle’s doors.
The website even describes the doors as opening “up and out of the way, in even the narrowest of parking spots.”
Deliveries of the Tesla Model X are scheduled for the end of 2014, with “volume production” in 2015.
Aside from the Model X, Tesla plans to roll out self-driving cars within 3 years and a “sort of affordable” electric car that will cost about half of what the Model S costs by 2017.
Image Credits: Tesla
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