Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

>They probably can get the right estimate for a destination because it knows the speed limit

Even this is a massive over-simplification. Driving the same speed with a 20 mph headwind is going to take lot more energy than with a 20 mph tailwind for example. There's lots of other variables and they may be certainly tracking some (like A/C current draw) but I doubt they track others (like rolling friction or road conditions).

Edit: I found this article [1] and it claims they track an impressive amount of weather and traffic data for the calculation. I'd be curious if this is based on car sensors (probably not?) or local weather stations.

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/03/16/tesla-accounts-wind-air-densi...

I agree. I’ve rebuilt cars. I get it.

Knowing the best way to use something is not the same as serving it.

I don't quite get this. It was a round-trip thing right, like the overall net elevation change at the end of the day was 0, right? All that energy was stored as potential energy, they'd get it back rolling down the mountain. To my understanding a round-trip it shouldn't have made that much of an impact.

I actually got stranded once for some hours because of the mileage indicator!

Was driving back from a campsite that I turned out to not have charging compatibility with, but thought I had plenty of margin to get to the nearest charger. As I drove through the mountains however, I began noticing that a.) my battery was depleting much faster than expected and b.) I wasn’t seeing any houses and very few motorists. I watched with increasing dread as the trip miles began converging with the battery miles, as my friends in the car got more and more quiet. We reached the inflection point, and the best I could do was hope we’d encounter somewhere with a plug that might be able to get us the rest of the way. Eventually though the milage indicator reached zero, and I pulled off the road to what I thought was a campsite but turned out to be a sort of rest stop with no power plugs in sight. To make matters worse I was in a mountain valley and had no phone signal, and hiking wasn’t an option as it was pretty hot and we had no water. We were there for hours until I was able to flag down a nice older couple and get a ride to a place with cell signal, where I was able to get a tow truck capable of transporting my car (turns out you need one that has a full bed because of the regenerative breaking, and tesla’s service doesn’t have infinite coverage) to the charger I was trying to get to.

Ironically that last part was probably the most frustrating. The charging spot was full save one spot in the back, which my tow truck guy Mel couldn’t get back to. No sweat I thought, I’ll just try asking someone to swap, but people in their cars pretended to ignore me, and one couple leaving theirs just walked away, as I asked if they could move so we could unload my dead car. Had a sudden wave of empathy for the people I usually walk away from who ask me for spare change lol. Eventually someone left and I was able to charge and resume the 6 hour road trip home. Biggest lesson learned was that slow is fast, keep it at 60 if you want the milage meter to not die as quick.

As a Tesla owner, I think the source of the confusion is the EPA range displayed in the HUD on the Tesla. We toggled ours to show the battery percentage, which is much more useful to us.

We've never owned a gas vehicle that met it's EPA range and the Tesla is no different. No one takes EPA MPG * GALLONS of gas and expects it to be a real life estimate of range.

Wind resistance increases EXPONENTIALLY with speed. Drive a little over the speeds the EPA used to determine range, and the observed range will drop significantly as a percentage when compared to the EPA range for any vehicle.

If you do have a Tesla, you'll quickly find out that the trip computer is very accurate. The worst I've seen is a cold January day in Wisconsin (-10F) while on a road trip with a head wind. In that scenario, the trip computer was off by 7% mostly due to the head wind. In the summer, it is spot on usually within 1 - 2%.