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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

#561

Post by rampant_ai »

JohnFen wrote: post #301
malwrar wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it was pretty hot and we had no water. Another take-home lesson: if you're driving out of range of civilization, carry water along with your first aid supplies.

Some other things to keep in mind regarding any phones in your group if you end up stranded:

If you're in an emergency and your phone says you have no signal, call 911 anyway. It'll attempt to reach any network in range that the phone is compatible with, not just the network you're subscribed to. Some phones nowadays will show "Emergency calls only" when this is the case, but it doesn't appear to be 100% consistent, so again, call anyway.

Also turn on battery saver and when you're not actively trying to call, keep the phone in airplane mode. If you don't it'll repeatedly try to reach a tower which will drain your battery quickly. Don't power it off unless you don't plan to use it for the rest of the day, because booting up uses a lot of energy.

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

#562

Post by dmode »

wil421 wrote: post #42
PhilipA wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Tesla Model 3 which was very optimistic with the range. My BMW iX3 however is quite conservative and I can usually drive longer than the display states.

We don’t have the iX3 in the US (yet?). I was looking at the x5 plug in hybrid with ~40 miles electric range and the normal b58 straight 6 motor. My wife has the X7, we have 3 kids and hobbies so I’m not sure if even an i5 would work. The new X5 headlights are not my favorite. Do you like the BMW electric system?

I have the BMW i4, and I would echo the same comment. BMW is extremely conservative with range estimates and would almost certainly meet or beat their range estimates.

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

#563

Post by 7thaccount »

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…

On a highway my hood latch broke (old car) and it flew up at 50 mph and crushed my windshield. I had no service (but knew the other carrier would have full bars) and spent over an hour waving at every car trying to get someone to stop to let me call my parents (I was 18 and not exactly intimidating). It was a crazy experience as I'd obviously had an accident. Nobody would help. Finally I just stood in the road like a crazy person and a nice family stopped and one of their kids was on the carrier I needed. It was far enough from a nearby town to be at least a few hours walk and not before nightfall.

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

#565

Post by zh3 »

wintogreen74 wrote: post #487
mannykannot wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought regenerative braking could be disabled by simply electrically isolating the motors. You still have the mechanical resistance of turning the rotor, but I would also think that is easier than turning over an IC engine.

>> You still have the mechanical resistance of turning the rotor, Isn't this exactly what regenerative braking is? There's no mechanical disconnect between the wheels and the motor (i.e. a clutch) so pushing the car essentially turns it into a generator.

Yes and no. Spinning the motor will generate a voltage but if it's not connected to anything there's no current flow and so the only resistance is friction. For it to act as a brake, something has to use the current - for example, charging the battery or more simply just shorting the motor (try turning an efficient DC motor with the wires open and the wires shorted - even with a stepper motor, you'll find a huge difference).

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

#566

Post by dmode »

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…

I had a Mazda 3 once which would routinely beat its EPA estimates, especially highway driving. You are too forgiving of Tesla's business gimmicks

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

#567

Post by dinom »

firesteelrain wrote: post #525
sib wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put the car in car wash mode, you would be able to push the car: Controls > Service > Car Wash Mode And then "Enable Free Roll"

... assuming you have battery (which he didn't)

Yeah, that's a fair point but isn't it true that a mostly discharged battery will still have enough charge to perform some limited functions. E.g. even in a normal car I think a dead battery can power the lights even though the starter only "clicks".

Nonetheless, I'm a rather conservative type of person and see your point so in my "dream car" I might want a way to manually put the car in neutral (or free-roll mode, whatever you want to call it). That's why locking hubs came to my mind in a prior reply.

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

#568

Post by mrguyorama »

mwint wrote: post #179
gen220 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have higher expectations of your vehicle. My 2016 ICE car's "miles left" meter is accurate to +/- 2 miles from the moment I top up the tank (80% highway driving, 20% hilly city and rolling country roads). IMO, accurately telling the vehicle operator how many miles of juice you have left is a KPI, as it informs when you'll need to plan for refueling. Having driven an EV for a few weeks in identical conditio…

> My 2016 ICE car's "miles left" meter is accurate to +/- 2 miles from the moment I top up the tank (80% highway driving, 20% hilly city and rolling country roads). No way. That’d be accurate to under 1% - well within the variation you’ll get just from different air densities (temperature, pressure, humidity). Forget about A/C on or off, tire pressure, etc. It’s gotta be tricking you somehow.

Fun thing about a car: They have computers that measure all those factors! Your engine knows the air density, air temperature, the rough gravity vector (used for things like hill start assist), lots of info on tire performance, speed, fuel flow, etc etc etc, with more modern cars getting things like GPS details. The estimate they use for range is based on the average fuel economy you get, not some fake model made by the EPA that doesn't represent reality.

This has been true in Toyotas since at least 2004, so I would hope it could be true for a "Luxury" car from a "tech" company.

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

#569

Post by mannykannot »

wintogreen74 wrote: post #487
mannykannot wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought regenerative braking could be disabled by simply electrically isolating the motors. You still have the mechanical resistance of turning the rotor, but I would also think that is easier than turning over an IC engine.

>> You still have the mechanical resistance of turning the rotor, Isn't this exactly what regenerative braking is? There's no mechanical disconnect between the wheels and the motor (i.e. a clutch) so pushing the car essentially turns it into a generator.

Your second sentence is correct, but it takes a lot more torque to turn a generator at a given speed when it is driving current through a load, than it does when it is open-circuit.

Inside the motor/generator, what happens is that if there's current flowing in the windings as a result of the EMF induced by turning the rotor, then, loosely speaking, it creates a magnetic field which opposes the rotation - but if it is not connected to some load (or a short-circuit) there's no current, even though there is still an induced EMF.

It's a standard case of the conservation of energy - if it were not the case, you could put an arbitrary number of generators on the same shaft, all supplying power to external loads, and then use the output of a couple of them to power a motor spinning the assembly...

If you are turning a motor/generator slowly, then the difference in torque is not much, but I am responding to the implication that the motor would have to be mechanically disengaged in order to disable the braking effect.

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

#570

Post by tredre3 »

b112 wrote: post #544
mikestew wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, small claims court in more than one state tops out at well under $10K. Hence the adjective “small”. IOW, you ain’t getting $20K out of small claims court.

Huh, 25k where I am, but in Canuck bucks. Still, even 10k is better than 0k. And many small claims courts forbit compelled discovery. I paid $100, had no lawyer, wrote 2 pages of "what happened", served the paperwork by hand (and went back to the court and gave an affidavit to that effect), and ... The other side "big corp" had a law firm, and several lawyers. I paid $100 and spent a few hours. The paid 50k to their…

10k was the limit in most of Canada until the 2000s. Since then most provinces have adjusted their limits.

It is now 35k in BC/SK/ON and 15k in MB/QC/NB.

Alberta is the outlier as usual. They're raising the limit to 100k next week.

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