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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

#491

Post by idontpost »

e136 wrote: post #312
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…

Most cars have one or more clutches to put the car in neutral. This is required so the engine can idle while the car stands still, among other reasons. Electric cars don't need to idle and therefore don't have any clutches in the drivetrain. Adding clutches just for allowing the user to push around the car seems needlessly complicated and over optimizing for a scenario that will not occur for the majority of cars.

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

#492

Post by hot_gril »

lawn wrote: post #366
andykellr wrote: post #353

[flagged]

> Each one of them has been the best car I've ever owned and better than the one before it. If you buy a new car chances are it will be the best car you've ever owned and better than anything you've driven before.

For a while, my only idea of cars were the two Ford Crown Victorias I owned. Didn't realize how slow they are until I bought another car.

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

#493

Post by dinom »

Reubachi wrote: post #456
dinom wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can enable free-roling wheels in the car and push away This was mentioned a little earlier and further down in the comment tree but many thanks to you too for clearing this up.

I'm racking my brain on this. Why is this not just called exactly what it is, "Neutral"? I just read about this feature which is advertised purely for car washes, and can be gotten into with a wierd combination of actions or "putting the car into neutral". Is it...not just going into neutral via disconecting a drive shaft?

> Is it...not just going into neutral via disconecting a drive shaft?

Very good point and although IDK how it's done I completely agree with you regarding the terminology. In other words, I don't see new internal combustion cars renaming neutral to be "car wash mode"... lol.

Cars should have neutral. And, if yours does then it should be named as such.

Making sure I've got "car was mode" is not what I want to do when I'm in the market for a new car. Nor do I want to start reading through the owners manual should I have to push my car onto the shoulder of the road in an emergency.

Perhaps my age and crotchety grumpiness is starting to show.

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

#494

Post by zodester »

gonehome wrote: post #122

I don’t really get the range complaints at this point, with an ICE vehicle people rarely know their range they just look at a gauge for F to E. With the superchargers, range doesn’t really have a material effect anymore and most of the time the network isn’t necessary anyway. It’s not a real issue.

> It’s not a real issue.

+1, I was worried about range before I bought a Model Y, but charging at home and trip planner I never even think about range anxiety at all.

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

#495

Post by yayitswei »

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…

This has been my experience as well. When there's a disparity, the Energy app gives additional details why the estimate was wrong (driving speed, climate control, etc).

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

#496

Post by 0xffff2 »

jnmandal wrote: post #328
dietsche wrote: post #160

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. Driv…

Both cars I've owned have had better efficiency and thus range than advertised (a Honda and a Subaru). I'm often shocked at how I can get 38-40mpg + on a car that is supposed to be getting 29mpg.

Same here. I've come to the conclusion that most drivers (or most drivers that complain about EPA mileage ratings anyway) have insane driving habits. Every car I have ever owned (And I've run the gamut from sedans to light pickups of both American an Japanese make) has met or exceeded the EPA rated mileage.

The only oddity that I have observed is in my current car, a Lexus hybrid crossover just barely meets its city rating in town while easily beating the city rating (which is higher since it's a hybrid) on the highway. Not that I'm complaining, but it's not what I expected from my first hybrid vehicle.

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

#497

Post by gonehome »

ravenstine wrote: post #442
gonehome wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're there if you need them - not always extremely visible though if you're not driving to one (can see the map here: https://www.tesla.com/supercharger ). If you got a Tesla you'd get a better sense for how many superchargers there are. What you're saying is relevant though and why until recently I didn't really consider non-Tesla EVs an option to recommend if it was your only car (though now that Tesla has pivot…

That's very impressive. I was totally unaware to the extent of where chargers have been placed. There's even a supercharger located in Green River, UT, which was exactly the kind of place I was picturing in my head.

Yeah - it's pretty wild, Tesla really committed to this a decade ago and has been chipping away at it since, the investment paid off.

Even better, strategically Tesla created the "NACS" or North American Charging Standard which is a clever name for their far superior Tesla charger. They also pivoted from the superchargers being an exclusive reason to buy a Tesla to licensing them for other EVs - now Ford is onboard, Electrify America is switching to NACS, GM too.

They pulled off this switch perfectly in a way most companies fail to do (ex: blackberry bbm) and as a result their investment in these will remain dominant and everyone will be unified around a superior standard (the EU charging standard CCS plug is a committee designed monster that's worse categorically). They're also continuing to expand.

I love manual transmission sports cars, but EVs today are just superior for regular use and Teslas are the best option for most people (especially when considering their lower cost), putting subjective opinions about their mercurial leader aside. There's a reason the Model Y was the best selling car in 2023 Q1 across all categories globally [0].

HN has historically been poor at objectively evaluating this sort of thing especially about Tesla.

[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/05/31/best-selling-car-worldw....

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

#498

Post by mcronce »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #438
prewett wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air resistance is proportional to v^2. My dad told a story once where he was driving out west borrowing one of his brother's cars with a broken speedometer. After he got back he said to his brother, "the car just seemed to top out at a certain point" and his brother said "yeah, that's about 85 mph" (the national speed limit was 55 mph at that time). So at 85 mph the air resistance equaled the force the engine could a…

That's how top speed works.

Either that or you're limited by revs - in other words, there's enough net torque that, in the highest gear, the engine is running at redline before wind resistance stops you accelerating.

You don't see that much these days, though, as having your highest gear that short is just leaving fuel economy on the table on the highway. If you can pick up speed going uphill without changing down at least one gear, you're wasting fuel to pumping losses on flats/downhill.

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

#499

Post by chayesfss »

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…

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

#500

Post by patd »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #93
londons_explore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

No reason it has to show the EPA range. My family’s Subaru has “learned” that it lives in the mountains and the range estimates reflect that. And I’m pretty sure it’s a simply looking at what kind of gas mileage it got recently. When we have kayaks on top of the car, it readjusts the mileage estimates down pretty quickly. All these comments about ICE vehicles being the same ignore that when ICE vehicles have estimate…

With your system, if I live somewhere flat and I go to the mountains, I will be out of juice during the climb. Tesla has a battery indicator in percentage and the navigation which is pretty accurate. Your ICE car has a gauge for the tank and an estimation of range.

Tesla should probably not allow you to show the battery as range as it will always be inaccurate and people will complain. But if they only show percentages, people complain as well.

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