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

tesla.com

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

#241

Post by globular-toast »

steelframe wrote: post #18

I've been following a multi-month discussion over in the r/electricvehicles subreddit about EPA range. There's a growing consensus that something is very wrong with it. Here are a couple of the articles that got some discussion in that sub: https://insideevs.com/news/407807/eletric-car-real-world-ran... https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30874032/porsche-tayca... As someone who has owned both a Tesla Model X and o…

The trouble is you just can't trust anecdotes when it comes to driving at "freeway speeds". I had the displeasure of taking part in a two hour commute every day for a few months and the difference a few mph to your average speed makes is huge. If I travelled at 72mph average (above the national speed limit, which is the speed most seem to drive) I needed 2.5 tanks of fuel per week, but if I travelled at 68mph and made an effort to use high gears, low acceleration, engine braking over friction braking etc. I would need only two tanks.

To add to this, it's especially difficult to exercise the restraint necessary to drive economically in a fun and/or comfortable car. Before I got a comfortable car I didn't understand why BMW/Mercedes/Audi drivers drive so fast. Now I do. It doesn't really feel like you're moving very fast in those cars.

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

#242

Post by globular-toast »

elihu wrote: 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…

Makes me wonder if they've reduced the overall weight at all or just compensated for bigger batteries by reducing the weight of other components.

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

#243

Post by lazyjones »

steelframe wrote: post #18

I've been following a multi-month discussion over in the r/electricvehicles subreddit about EPA range. There's a growing consensus that something is very wrong with it. Here are a couple of the articles that got some discussion in that sub: https://insideevs.com/news/407807/eletric-car-real-world-ran... https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30874032/porsche-tayca... As someone who has owned both a Tesla Model X and o…

> I can also provide my own anecdata that at freeway speeds Tesla routinely underperforms their EPA range rating, and by quite a large margin. Meanwhile at freeway speeds my non-Tesla EV routinely exceeds its EPA rating.

But EPA rating is a mix, not a freeway rating. Though fueleconomy.gov has specific numbers for freeway speeds as well.

My venerable 2017 S90D is listed with 294 miles range, that's 473 Km, or 19.8 KWh/100Km. My last trips to Italy used pretty much exactly 20KWh/100Km (2500-3000 Km each time, more than 90% highway at 120-150Km/h [sorry Italy]). In the city I'm usually below that on average.

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

#244

Post by jokoon »

Still wondering why they haven't announced a new, cheaper EV yet.

Autonomy isn't such a big issue, price is.

I know Tesla needs to develop its production scale, which means making low-quantity high-margin vehicles first.

Did Tesla deliver all the model 3 yet? I'm pretty sure that selling a vehicle that can do 150km at a lower price could still sell well.

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

#245

Post by globular-toast »

laurencerowe wrote: post #103
sgc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not sure whether you mean older teslas or older cars generally here. Small cars in the 70s and 80s weighed just over half as much as they do now. The Golf Mk 1 was 795kg while a Mk 8 is 1255kg. Much of that increase in weight is safety equipment and they are much safer for it.

Some of the increase is safety equipment. Some is just the fact they they are bigger in just about every way. The Golf Mk1 wasn't even a particular small or lightweight car. The Mini was about 600kg, for example.

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

#246

Post by mft_ »

davidwhodge wrote: post #131
zamfi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made some graphs if anyone's curious, but I can't post them here. I’d love to see them!

Alrighty here's the first graph. Note that this is average speed, so any trips with an average speed near the right by definition have some parts of the trip faster than the average, so the actual drop at 80 mph isn't quite as severe as it looks. https://imgur.com/a/c10NXaz the reason for the cutoff is that because it's pretty hard to have a trip with an AVERAGE speed above 80mpg. It's very rare in my large dataset.

This is really great - thanks so much for posting! I've been hunting for a similar curve for Teslas for a while.

Can I ask:

* Which car models are included?

* You write that your methodology for this chart looks at average speed for the whole trip; if this is true, would it be feasible to apply a different methodology and divide your data up into much smaller chunks (e.g. 30 seconds) and calculate the MPGe for each chunk?

* Is there any way I could calculate a similar graph for my own car? Can I get a graph like this from your app? (I'd personally be super-interested in both being able to access my own car's curve, and also explore a 'dashboard' of the whole dataset with filters by (e.g.) model, wheel size, etc.

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

#247

Post by bkor »

arethuza wrote: post #234
octorian wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody is going to buy this thing. I commute 250 miles each way to my job, in my pickup truck, hauling a load of lumber to a cabin 100 miles from civilization. There's no electricity out there. Call me back when Tesla makes a real car with real range. Anybody who buys these now is a sucker." FTFY. There's one of these in EVERY discussion of something Tesla releases :-)

To make your day I will add a post like that. A typical weekend for me involves driving ~150 miles to leave my car in the cold and wet in the middle of nowhere for 8 to 9 hours while I wander around some mountains. Only 2 superchargers in the country and their not between where I live and where I go. Is this unusual - absolutely (mind you plenty people here do similar things) - but range is an important factor to me.…

> Is this unusual - absolutely

Often these claims are made while saying that it's a normal requirement and that everyone has the same requirement, thus nobody will buy it.

Cost is an important factor. I think a lot of people already would like to buy one, if they're way cheaper (also way cheaper than £25k). I've seen articles about new battery tech which focusses on cost quite a bit. So hopefully the cost of a new electric car will continue to go down.

There's also a "law" somewhere which states that with every significant doubling of industry the cost will go down. It has to do with gaining more experience, not the usual "economies of scale".

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

#248

Post by mft_ »

londons_explore wrote: post #235
alvah wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting(ish) tangent - the UK fuel economy specs used to be published at a constant 56mph & 75mph. When the Mk3 Vauxhall Cavalier was launched in the late 1980s, it had great (theoretical) fuel economy, much better than its rivals, but a couple of noticeable flat spots under acceleration. Turned out Vauxhall had leaned the fuel maps at the exact engine revs that corresponded to 56mph and 75mph in top gear...

Defeat device...? Cheating...? Multi-billion pound fine?

Totally different, isn't it?

Presumably the Vauxhall mentioned would provide exactly the measured MPG when driven at the correct speed by any owner in the real world - hence the 'flat spot' noticed.

The defeat concept you're referring to (presumably VW's) was set to only function during a test, and not in the real world (AIUI).

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

#249

Post by lazyjones »

jokoon wrote: post #244

Still wondering why they haven't announced a new, cheaper EV yet. Autonomy isn't such a big issue, price is. I know Tesla needs to develop its production scale, which means making low-quantity high-margin vehicles first. Did Tesla deliver all the model 3 yet? I'm pretty sure that selling a vehicle that can do 150km at a lower price could still sell well.

> Still wondering why they haven't announced a new, cheaper EV yet.

They seem to be selling their current low-end cars as fast as they can make them, why should they attempt to divert their efforts to a new lower-margin car? They can leave the cheap EV announcements to other manufacturers like VW for people who want to buy an EV some time later...

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