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Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

tesla.com

51–60 of 358 posts

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#51
post #40

They mention "significant weight reduction" but don't mention how much weight they saved. Considering how heavy Model S's are, this seems like it could be a productive approach, though on the other hand if there were easy/obvious ways to reduce unnecessary weight, it would have been done by now. On some level it's a trade-off between being too heavy and being unsafe, though reducing the weight also means it doesn't h…

yes and no. Older cars were far heavier and far less safe. They could make incremental safety design improvements that allow to reduce weight incrementally without compromise.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#52
post #8
post #2

"a new custom tire" sounds expensive to replace when you drive over a nail

Yes but don’t most “luxury” automobiles come with non-cheap tires to begin with that may or may not bring 2% mileage improvement with them?

I guess it depends what you mean by "luxury", but the vehicles I'm thinking of tend to come with sticky high-performance tires. these actually increase rolling friction.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#53
post #6

I'll wait for Consumer Reports or the EPA before believing any of Tesla's range claims. E: As in from the EPA itself and validated by Consumer Report's field-testing, not Tesla claiming EPA certification and verified through easily cheat-able testing.

Teslas are known for achieving only 75-85% of EPA in the real world. This is based on my own data, owning multiple Teslas over four years. The issue is that short drives suffer HVAC losses and long drives are at highway speeds, which is significantly above the speed the EPA uses for their dyno. tests. Further, Tesla actually runs the tests themselves and uses their own calculations to simulate wind resistance.

Based on my own data, owning a Model X for two years, it achieves about 95% of EPA in the real world.

Plural of anecdotes etc.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#54
post #50
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another bonus of having an EV is charging in your own home. You end up with a full tank every night.

Yeah, it's silly to compare. BEV charging infrastructure is trivially expanded and piggybacked on an already ubiquitous power grid. You still need big trucks constantly hauling liquid hydrogen around for the fuel cell option...

I've always considered electric charging to be similar to an interface. You can change out the back end without the consumer having to do anything. You consume electricity but it could be nuclear, wind, coal, or pig shit.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#56

It's really incredible what Tesla is doing. Haters gonna hate, but they continue to innovate and move the industry forward.

Really enjoying Tesla's 'innovation' of giving my Model 3 only 70% of the promised range.

Doesn't help that everyone on Tesla forums love to praise the company no matter what they do, so it's not like this is something easy to learn prior to using the car for some time.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#57
They are lying. I was in the market for a new car earlier this year, and I really wanted to get a Tesla. I also really wanted a car that could handle a trip of 295 miles that I regularly make. I will not go into the nightmare that was scheduling a test drive of the long-range Model S, but after getting conflicting answers from multiple PoCs at Tesla, I finally got the firm answer. The car cannot do even my 295 mile commute (either way) without recharging once. I gave up and bought something else, but I did reserve a "Cyber Truck" which they claim will have a 500 mile range.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#58
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but don’t most “luxury” automobiles come with non-cheap tires to begin with that may or may not bring 2% mileage improvement with them?

I guess it depends what you mean by "luxury", but the vehicles I'm thinking of tend to come with sticky high-performance tires. these actually increase rolling friction.

Exactly so one, they don’t run very long and two they add rolling resistance (for better two wheeled traction), so both in Tesla’s favor.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#59
post #29

Wow, they are doing brake blending now? I'd be interested to know how good their implementation is. I always assumed they refused to do it because it's so damn hard to perfect.

Tesla doesn't do any blending of the brake pedal. Pressing the brake pedal always applies the friction brakes only. However, since a software update last year, they have had a one-pedal driving mode (Stopping mode "Hold"). In this mode, the vehicle is able to come to a complete stop without using the brake pedal, using a blend of re-gen and friction brakes to do so. In practice, it means it uses re-gen down to a very…

Quick question - do Teslas turn on brake lights when using one-pedal mode? Seems it can brake quite aggressively using regen.

Re: Model S Long Range Plus: Building the First 400-Mile Electric Vehicle

#60
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can duplicate pretty much the same effect with cruise control in my gasoline powered car. If I go on a 5 hour freeway road trip with cruise at 65mph and spend 95% of my time in the right lane, there's definitely a 2-3 mpg improvement in fuel consumption, vs 75 mph. At that point it becomes a tradeoff in time vs money spent on extra fuel, and need to get somewhere in a hurry. Over a 4.5 hour period if I can cruise a…

For ICE cars, it depends on what the mfg has optimized for. I had an Infinity years ago and I remember that it was optimized for 70mph precisely as per the owner's manual. Higher or lower speeds would be less efficient.

Similarly; I used to drive a "somewhat" performance enhanced Subaru Impreza WRX. One month I tried an experiment of driving as fuel conscious as I could. It improved 1 mpg over the normal 21 mpg. However in my Model S, there is a very direct and obvious correlation between efficiency and acceleration/speed.

I don't really have a problem with my effective range being less do to my driving style as long as it's predictable (and it is).

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