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Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

reuters.com

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Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#271

Post by reaperman »

purpleidea wrote: post #261
dinom wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Sounds incredibly short-sighted that the regenerative braking can't be temporarily disabled by the driver... two people can push a "regular" car to a nearby gas station in a pinch. Even one person can push a smaller car around a parking lot if necessary. That said, they often send…

Tesla cars are way heavier. Nobody is pushing one with their friend. Unless it's downhill.

I'd need to do some quick math to double-check but very rough ballpark estimates still make me think Teslas can be pushed by a single person. After all, a single strongman can pull a passenger airliner, and any car is nearly impossible to push uphill -- you have to really get some momentum built up first to let them coast up driveways/etc.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#272

Post by swader999 »

542354234235 wrote: post #228
swader999 wrote: post #190

I rode ebikes for commuting about 15 years ago. Looking at electric cars, I need at least double whatever specs they state for max range. So if I need 400 miles for instance, I need to find a manufacture promising 800. Wind, cold, age of battery, emergency reserve etc all play into it.

Battery tech has changed a lot since 2008.

I don't think so, cold and cycle degradation still impact range the same. Maybe battery heaters?

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#273

Post by darth_avocado »

londons_explore wrote: post #16
jvanderbot wrote: post #8

I have a model Y. I hate almost everything about it. But most germane, The "Battery meter" at the top of the display is total bunk. That's got to be "rosy" numbers. It'll display a the battery in miles, but it's at least 25% inflated. However if you punch in a destination, you'll get exact numbers, and those are insanely reliable. It claims (and I don't believe any claims coming from tesla) that it'll factor wind, el…

Battery meter at the top is EPA range - ie. the official range measurement method, in basically ideal conditions. The routefinder 'learns' from your previous driving habits. Driving style easily has a 50% impact on range between "drives 50 mph slipstreaming behind a truck" and "drives 90 mph and brakes aggressively at every corner".

I have a model 3. I recently took a trip of 196 miles but lost almost 270 miles in battery. I wasn’t driving like a maniac, I was on 65 mph cruise control the entire time with no traffic.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#274

Post by whelp_24 »

browningstreet wrote: post #56
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it backwards. The car serves you. You should not have to serve the car (beyond universal, traditional things, like the need to maintain, insure, etc.). It’s reasonable to ask for a range estimate that’s not naively optimistic.

Consider sprint estimates and story points. We have those discussions regularly here too and the HN community is very sympathetic to the line that those estimates can’t be accurate and involve too many unknowns and externalities. Why should this be different? And did anyone ever scrutinize gas vehicle tank estimates closely? I think one of the issues is the absolute lower range of EVs. You can feel it more when a 250…

Every gas car i have driven UNDER-estimates the range. And I am driving the car not looking for drafts and driving 20 under the speed limit.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#275

Post by yafbum »

malwrar wrote: post #158
jvanderbot wrote: post #8

I have a model Y. I hate almost everything about it. But most germane, The "Battery meter" at the top of the display is total bunk. That's got to be "rosy" numbers. It'll display a the battery in miles, but it's at least 25% inflated. However if you punch in a destination, you'll get exact numbers, and those are insanely reliable. It claims (and I don't believe any claims coming from tesla) that it'll factor wind, el…

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 watc…

Tbh though, going up a mountain is insanely more energy consuming than regular driving, so the range indicator can't possibly take this into consideration ahead of time unless you chart a specific trip. In the other direction, I've had the experience of the battery charge level continuously increasing while going down a long mountain road - infinite range!

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#276

Post by [deleted] »

dkarl wrote: post #144
ke88y wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that reputation already died in the last 2-3 years. It's now pretty common in my circle to hear people say they'll pay a premium to not own a Tesla. Primarily because of lots of bad experiences with build quality/repairs, but also because there are now lots of high quality alternatives. Namely Rivian and Lucid, but also the legacy automakers (two friends bought mach-es recently and there's a smattering of F-1…

Musk is pretty much the whole reason. People have a much easier time remembering sleazy business practices when there's a celebrity CEO whose personality matches the crime. If you think about the CEOs of major corporations, the only ones who are personally memorable for the public are founders. How many exceptions can you think of, memorable personalities that were hired as CEOs or rose to become CEO of established c…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#277

Post by ethanbond »

vel0city wrote: post #265
ravenstine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because, even today, gas stations are far more ubiquitous than charging stations. People who own IC cars don't pay that much attention to range because there's rarely a question that they'll find a gas station within their last remaining gallon. With electric, that's a bit of a different story, especially when you're driving a long distance, and to somewhere that's not a major metropolitan city with thousands…

I pay way more attention to the range of my ICE car over my EV, because I need to actually go someplace out of my way to recharge it while my EV practically always has more range than I need every day. I spend more of my time recharging my ICE than I do my EV. It's way less convenient and I never know what the cost will be tomorrow. Meanwhile my electricity is on a fixed rate contract measured in years.

People who are worried about range on EVs are not worried about a usecase that looks like this, obviously.

Home/work plug-in is amazing, and an underrated QOL improvement over ICE, but it’s just not relevant to most of the concern around EV range.

Range concern comes from either not having a charger available as a matter of daily business (street parking) or from frequently going on very long drives.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#278

Post by rsynnott »

jvanderbot wrote: post #8

I have a model Y. I hate almost everything about it. But most germane, The "Battery meter" at the top of the display is total bunk. That's got to be "rosy" numbers. It'll display a the battery in miles, but it's at least 25% inflated. However if you punch in a destination, you'll get exact numbers, and those are insanely reliable. It claims (and I don't believe any claims coming from tesla) that it'll factor wind, el…

> I hate almost everything about it.

By convention, you are required to phrase this as "I love my Tesla, but..."

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#279

Post by sdfghswe »

cs702 wrote: post #25

I have two Teslas. On both of them, I get close to the EPA range in city driving and lose 15%-20% on highway driving at 70-80 mph, on typical daytime temperatures for my area, which rarely drop below 40F in the winter or exceed 100F in the summer. On highways I always use autopilot, which keeps speed much more constant than I would -- it brakes and accelerates much less frequently. The estimates for battery use on tr…

Are you happy with them?

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#280

Post by Retric »

localhost wrote: post #258
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more relevant how much you need to accelerate, not just your velocity. A satellite in orbit uses very little energy even though it’s going very fast.

A satellite in orbit uses the energy imparted by the gravitational force of the Earth to stay in orbit (and very little to no drag depending on the altitude).

Gravity doesn’t add energy to satellites in orbit. It changes the direction of motion but not the velocity. In effect it’s no different than rotating a solid object where electromagnetism keeps all the atoms in the same relative position.
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