601–610 of 769 posts
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I used to have a Nissan Leaf. Same trip took 30% less charge, just because of the if was driving a behind a large track most of the way.
If you are driving close enough for drafting to have an effect, you are driving dangerously.
The set-up is so dangerous but so tempting.
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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…
> this inaccuracy is probably the major contributor to "range anxiety" Btw, this "range anxiety" term, is it designed to make people seem crazy for wanting a long-range car?
It refers to the anxiety people have about not having enough "range" left in their car to reach their target destination. The symptom is looking at your "% battery remaining" every 5 seconds, and cursing your car when it drops "3 miles" of range in 1 mile of idealized highway travel. Unfortunately, it's a well-founded anxiety.
You're right, by characterizing the problem with a focus on the person (with anxiety) instead of the (misleading) vehicle, it serves the manufacturer more than the consumer.
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Teslas absolute don't have long-lasting materials or great reliability or great performance. There have been hundreds of thousands of articles and experience about poor materials, build quality, reliability etc. I have owned both a Model S and Model 3, and I did own them because I wanted to support an EV maker, but they are by far some of the worst made cars I have owned. I switched back to a BMW EV and its like nigh…
Not my experience. Let me add that at first, I thought the materials and build of my first Tesla felt "cheap" and "plasticky." Over time, however, I've been pleasantly surprised at how well they've held up. My oldest Tesla is now three years old, and it still looks and feels new. I could never say that about the BMWs, MBs, and Porsches I've owned over the years.
Only Ford/Lincoln, Audi, and Land Rover are worse—all notoriously unreliable brands.
This really shouldn’t be read as a defense of EV companies, but I think there is just a learning curve for EVs which people really haven’t grappled with yet. Here is a minor list of things which will reduce range pretty significantly: - Driving over 50 MPH - Using the AC - Using the heat - Driving in extreme cold or extreme heat - Driving in an area with a lot of hills. (From what I can tell regenerative braking make…
What does any of this have to do with the fact that Tesla is lying to its customers and the other EV manufacturers are not.
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Meh, I drove NYC Montreal in a $90,000 Tesla and I frequently drive NYC Raleigh in a $35,000 Acura. There is a 0% chance you'll convince me that the Tesla is the superior experience. It's not even remotely close. Granted Teslas aren't really the "nice" EVs these days anyway and not all of the badness of the Tesla experience was due to range/charging issues.
Are you really arguing the average car frequently makes 500mi+ road trips? Either way, your NYC Raliegh trip would be like 26 minutes of charging on an 8 hour road trip. Do you really not stop for somewhat that kind of time for an 8 hour road trip? You don't stop to eat for a minute, you race through the gas station as fast as possible, etc? I know for me I'd probably want to stop a couple of times sitting for eight…
I said that "most of your driving doesn't happen on road trips" is not a super convincing response to "I don't want to buy an EV because it'll make road trips a pain in the ass." Because, as I said, people buy cars for the totality of their driving.
The NYC Raleigh trip would add 26 minutes in a Hyundai Ioniq 6, which I'll note does in fact surprise me in a positive direction (and also thank you for sharing the cool website!)
In a Model S it'd add an hour, which yes I do find to be an unacceptable cost, and a wildly unacceptable one for the price and comfort difference.
The car question obviously contains many many dimensions. Adding 26 minutes of time is pretty acceptable IMO, but doing so for another $6k of car purchase price and downgrading from a super comfortable SUV to a tiny, tiny sedan... it becomes less acceptable again.
A Volvo XC40, which is pretty close comfort level to the Acura RDX, for example, would add 1.5 hours while keeping price roughly constant.
P.S. to level-set, I actively tried to buy an EV or hybrid. I loved having a plug-in hybrid when all my driving was around town and parked at home in the evening. I agree far, far more people can and should be driving EVs than currently do, but I'm pointing out that the multidimensional problem of car selection is not as simple as "there are lots of chargers now" or "just rent something else for road trips."
I wonder if the reason is focusing on a specific range, rather than a fuel capacity. Gallons is a pretty intuitive quantity that people are comfortable understanding. Maybe we need to focus away from range for EVs and instead focus on kWh capacity of the batteries. This is apparently less useful, since I really care about actual range - but it’s more accurate and allows me to use my human understanding to think about whether I have enough relative to my driving circumstances. Just like with gallons of gas.
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However, ICE is more efficient at higher free speeds unlike electric so there’s a higher sweet spot.
How so?
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It is not naively optimistic. I just finished a 2500 mile drive with a Tesla Y and its estimates are pretty much within 1-2% of my actual usage.
As the article (or another poster) points out, you get a different algorithm when you look at the dash on a random day vs. when the Tesla knows you are going on a trip. That's even more damning to me. Edit: Also a different algorithm when below 50% charged. As some of the replies point out, a destination does supply more information. The current charge level does not.
Like, this is painfully clear to the drivers of this car vs what this article is suggesting.
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…
>Wind resistance increases EXPONENTIALLY with speed. And the power required to move against the air is the cube, not the square!
It seems to have become fashionable to say "exponentially" or even "EXPONENTIALLY" when you mean it's a rapidly increasing function, but to the technically-minded, whom I would hope to find on HN, there is still a clear-cut difference between exponential and polynomial.