Hey Ed,I didn't know what to expect with the change on your channel, this is actually pretty good! My job being aerodynamicist for cars (not for Tesla however) I can tell you few tricks : Even if your video is great, the shape of the front end of the car is not important at all.Usually it's the designer team that choose the overall shape and the aerodynamicists just confirm it's ok. The only rule is to avoid flow separation but it's quite easy given the high pressure gradient happening here. I'm glad you spotted the air curtains, flowing on the outboard of the tire, as you explained correctly, they are here to clean the wake of the front tires and not to be mistaken with brake cooling ducts that go, well, on the brake caliper. Concerning the flat surface on the front, it's due to the new design of electric cars : in normal conditions (not racing) they don't have a lot of cooling needs compared to ICE, and cooling is HUGE in drag... So designers come with new front faces (some people don't like, I like) that clearly reduce the mass flow rate going through the exchangers. But Tesla's secret to really low drag is not where everybody looks. Electric cars have a very big and flat battery on their underside and this is the key : full flat bottom with high energy flow to get a beautiful wake balance between top and under flow. For your next video you should do the same but stick all your little ropes on the diffusor and look how the flow will be attached on the middle and not attached to the sides (polluted by the rear wheel wakes). Because in the aerodynamic of a car, the most important things are the rear wake and the wheel wakes. Glad to see you back and I hope you're doing ok!

It needs an Armin wing.

Ted! I’ve been wondering what happened to you! Excellent to see you again!

Glad to see you’re back!

Awesome to see you doing great and enjoy doing videos again. Even it's not rc related. Do what ever makes you happy old friend!

thanks for taking the time to do this,, all so i like the input at the end at 8:42 , many dont take the time to add or think of things like this as even the new with car seat backs

Super interesting, fun and educational

The interesting part would be to see what air is doing in the back end of the car. The more they are able to keep air laminar and attached around the rear windshield and trunk area of the car the more they can reduce the turbulence behind the car and thus reduce the drag.

Really happy You are back sir🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Great job!

Appreciate the effort! Great results! 👏🏽

You are back! KZfaq didn't show me your uploads on my subscribtion feed. I would never know if I had not checked your channel while browsing old channels I am subscribed to. Happy to see you back :)

Glad to find your channel again. Like the new brand, and concept. Still subbed, and will look for your stuff in the future!!

Thank you

A worthy video

Thank you for doing this! I’d love to see it for the model y too 😉 Really appreciate this test though!

Welcome back! Did some housecleaning of my subscriptions and wondered hmmm...Tesla details?? I built some of your incredible foam core designs and am still flying them.

Oddly the 1988 Vauxhall Cavalier had a drag coefficient of just 0.29 which for a basic family saloon was bloody good. The equivalent Ford Sierra being about 0.34 and Rover 200 series cars of the same era coming in at about 0.32 it's not hard to see why the Tesla is the shape it is and the effects produced. The car designed in the 1950s the Morris Minor matched the Cavalier at just 0.29 allowing the little 950cc engine to achieve very high fuel economy and very little wind noise inside the cabin. Some modern cars manufacturers could learn a lot by looking at previous successful designs and steering away from form over function with cars having less usable space inside than ever while continuing to grow ever larger on the outside.

Great to see you making videos again Ed.

I remember this one guy on youtube thought that getting a sticker of a fake grille on his model 3 was a good idea. everyone in the comments told him it would look stupid but he did it anyway. then he acted surprised and disappointed when he didn’t like it after it was installed

Please MORE

Cool video Ed. Sad to see you not making plane vids anymore, but happy to know you are doing well :)

This is very interesting. It would be interesting to see other parts of the car.

Excellent video. Would you be willing to do the same test with a flat piece of cardboard taped to the indented front surface ? Tufts would then show where the stagnation point moves to, and I would think that you could test the efficiency in real time to see if the indent is indeed a aerodynamic tweak, or just 'style'. Thanks for posting !

Very interested in aero for the rear and maybe some thoughts on how that might interact with a trailer being towed behind it.

It would be interesting to see how air attaches behind the wheels (pilot door and copilot door) with the cover and without the covers

6:05 the airflow won't detach at the frunk-gap. it's very near to the front of the car and the hood is still coming up to block the airflow. the boundary layer is still "fresh" an full of energy at that point. it's similar to how you wouldn't see separation in front of the thickest part of an airfoil. the boundary layer will probably transition from laminar to turbulent though.

Not know much about aerodynamics, I would have expected the split line of air moving over the car and air moving down to be at that leading edge. As you said, and the test shows, it's further down below that leading edge.

I was walking past a new Honda Accord. I noticed the "chrome" accent piece is also angled like the Model 3.

Get a Vorstiener front lip or Unplugged front lip and/or their front bumper too and do a vs! :D Still, very neat field test you mocked up! Yarn Tufts are so messmorizing to watch. I love seeing physics in action!

Nice! Now do the rear from before the rear wheels to the centerline on the roof down to the rear licenseplate and you only need tufts on half of the car, right and left are similar.

The air "Damming Effect" is well shown, at 7:40 through 8:17, causing turbulence and loss of efficiency. (I'm sure theat Elon reached out to FORD about that, as they were one of the "First Pioneers" in laminar flow research on automobiles). (NIce car, for sure... But wouldn't hold my Kayak, R/C Airplanes, and all my fishing gear!). Haha! Thanks for bringing our attention to this...

If the frontal area is flat you have an air bubble that sits in front of it. This bubble can oscillate and shedding vortices above and below at a certain frequency. By having the lip you reduce the air bubble and create stability with air flow staying attached on both sides for longer. But to be honest compared to an ideal aerodynamic body it's still pretty crappy but that's what you get if you want 4 wheels as in a car!

Very Cool! Thanks for putting your thughts out on this.

Can you do The same but with extra lights i front? LED bar and so on

No more experimental airlines?

Hey Ed, I think you need to make a new front end out of foam board and packing tape.Then take it to Elon and show him how much more efficient you made it.Sure he`d give you a few quid,or a job ;)

Good to see you back Ed! I dunno; that shape on the front lip sure looks like and inverted wing to me. :)

Can u do it for a Geo metro or a 89 swift

do you have the Alula evo plant? Pass her to me

I wonder what the plastic license plate holder does to aerodynamics....

What is frontal area ,any one pls ?

I clicked on this immediately, and loved the entire video. Everything from the comedy, to the multiple camera angles. Subscribed ! Great explaination of what the air is doing as well. I'd love to see a video of the rear of the car, since the angle of the rear glass seems rather shallow when compared to " faster looking " designs. It seems like flow would have less velocity and just might detach in some areas. There is a manufacturer that sells a front lip and small rear spoiler for the back. Together, they show a .18 Cd, in CFD testing ( Fluent ? ) , so I found the turbulent area at the front interesting. This is my first video i have watched from you, but besides rear end testing, another interesting area would be behind the wheels, both with, and without the aero wheel covers. GREAT VIDEO. Subbed !

Did you do this for other parts of the car?

It is my experience that the flat front end looks just fine, but due to how lighting is picked up in high gloss reflection, high gloss paints make the front end look like the top portion is more bulbous than it really is, whereas semi-gloss and matte finishes pronounce the body lines a bit more, and mute the contrast on the underside of the lip, making it look closer to its actual geometry, and making the front end more attractive. imgur.com/gallery/HCF3JKY

Sir Why don't you make new videos about RC PLANES???? We really miss you

This popped up in my feed and I almost unsubscribed before I looked closer and noticed its your channel and not some random bs that snuck in some how close call and it's the ugliest part of the car 😅 🥃cheers🍻

No licence plate?

If you could get something speed of light, or near speed of light, you could find a straight path back and forth to create a time tunnel... at that speed subatomic particles and radiation accumulate in wierd ways, and over time, melt or Fuze, or disintegrate parts of whatever ship is going that speed. In theory you could radio control a perfect cube with the propulsion system at the center of gravity thats made of something basic like steel or graphite... over that distance under that speed you would see the "wear pattern" devolop and could build a manned spacecraft around that safely... it would grind a lot of material off... but what's left behind gets carbed into a fibonacci shape that would also naturally produce lift, I think. And you could reverse engineer that to ascertain a lot of other things. A plane should be just a crystalline structure of fibinacci silhouetted surfaces, all oriented in the right direction, obviously.

Hi，are you interested in reviewing some tesla accessories ？

This front face of the car is mimicking the sharks nose. It’s a creature that is traveling with little effort in the water and saves energy when can’t find food. Look it up and let know if it’s true.

Hello Ed, nice video, I have a big motor glider project that I have finished, I can send you a short video if you would like to see it, all of you RC videos really helped me, thanks heaps for all those videos! How can I contact you via email?

You cannot be away from wind Ed, better be airborn .

I was like wait a sec where did a Tesla channel come from lol. Nice to see ya making vids again

Great first Tesla video Ted. No way I will be buying one, completely out of my price range but I am interested in your take on them and will be following your new direction and stick along for the ride 🙂👍👍🚗

Yup, it's that time. Time for a foamboard Tesla. And if it has wings and flies, all good.

were you on M*A*S*H :) :)

What's a fasha?? Do you mean fachia.. :)

That curve on the front is not proprietry to Tesla, the Ford Probe V has the same curve since 1983. Nothing is ever new from Tesla.....

Hmmmmm.... Now I’m just thinking about taking a tesla body and putting it over a Dodge Demon, and REALLY see what those aerodynamics can do!

INTERESTING. THE MUSIC DRONING ON WHILE YOU TALK CAN BE ANNOYING.

What happened to EA?? Nothing said, just a name change and no explanation? Ed, what happened? Why not start another channel?

Oh, great. Another of Tesla's alt-sock puppet accounts doing guerrilla marketing. Cute! 👌🏻

Un-subbed

I don't see why you can't create a new account if you're going to do a complete 180 on channel content. I seriously doubt 95% of your existing subs want to see this vid. You've made some great stuff in the past, but I'm unsubscribing at this point, because I don't want to see this content, but also because this tactic is underhanded and disrespectful to your audience