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Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

nytimes.com

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Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#41

Post by CamperBob2 »

noonespecial wrote: post #31

Here's a hint from the usability department: Underestimate the remaining miles. Even if that makes you look bad up front. Its an eerie form of cognitive dissonance when your reserves are dropping faster than you consumption and the wheels in your mind spin wondering "will I have enough". You never forget this feeling. Even if its just a test drive, you'll associate Tesla cars with that feeling forever after.

Exactly. The alternative is to require your customers to pass a DiffEq test before you sell them the car.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#42

Post by greenyoda »

stcredzero wrote: post #4

My friends think I'm dowdy. Until recent years, I was very conservative about estimates. Every "event" in a trip adds 5 minutes, no matter how "nothing" it seems. I was often too early, but never late. A Tesla S with the 260 mile battery, I would treat like a car with 130 miles range. Plenty for an around town commuter and errand vehicle. A Leaf, I would treat like a 50 mile range car. Also, why don't those things co…

Having to put a propane heater into a shiny, high-tech electric car would be a marketing disaster: it would emphasize that battery capacity was something that drivers have to worry about under normal driving conditions. Plus, Tesla could no longer claim that their car had zero CO2 emissions.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#43

Post by tkahnoski »

bpc9 wrote: post #24
CamperBob2 wrote: post #21

In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…

The article mentioned that the top-end battery weighs in at half a ton --- not exactly hot-swapping material. Also, when it comes to safety, center of gravity, chassis rigidity, etc --- I'm sure there were a myriad of engineering decisions beyond weight that go against hot swapping. And that's not even getting to added cost and logistics of maintaining a network of skilled battery swap experts, "ownership" over the b…

I actually think the major thing missing here ia not swapping out the entire pack (although that would probably be more time efficient), but having some sort of emergency pack to get you that extra 5 or 10 miles you need to a charging station.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#44

Post by labcomputer »

malloreon wrote: post #10
saulrh wrote: post #7

This blog post states the obvious: early adopters better know what they're in for and what they're doing. The author isn't an experienced early adopter and doesn't know what they're doing, and rightly concludes that the technology isn't ready for universal mainstream use. Unfortunately, the article entirely fails to address the point and is aimed squarely at an audience that won't get it either. It will be used as am…

Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be different? Would he have been able to get where he wanted to go, or would he have not tried to go as far as the car said he could go?

>Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be different?

So, I've been reading the forums at teslamotorsclub.com recently, and there are a lot of questions (and answers) about the Model S's range. From what has been written over there, it sounds like the car's speed has the biggest impact on range. In the NYT piece, I notice that the only time he mentions his speed is after it started to look like he might not have enough range to make it to his destination--and then he only mentioned how slow he had to drive. I would submit, then, that an "experienced early adopter" would know that his driving speed matters and therefore not try to drive down the expressway "upside-down at mach 3 with his hair on fire."

I also notice that the author made no attempt to charge the car at his destination in Connecticut. Instead, he planed to rely exclusively upon Tesla's "Superchargers" for the entire trip. Again, an "experience early adopter" would know that the Model S can be plugged into a clothes dryer outlet and fully charged overnight (i.e., no waiting). He could have started his second day with a fully-charged battery, if he chose to. Actually, the author probably would have had enough range for the rest of his trip if he had even plugged into a standard 120V domestic outlet in Groton.

Frankly, it sounds like the author was trying to make his life difficult. Almost a third of the verbiage is devoted to range problems that were a direct result of his decision not to charge in Groton. When drivers choose not to fill up before driving across Death Valley, do we blame the driver or the car?

This isn't to say that the car is ready for prime-time. After all, the author may be representative of the general public. However, I think that anyone with even a modicum of curiosity about his new car--and more importantly, someone who, by purchasing one, had some sort of incentive to make things work instead of writing a diatribe in the NYT--would have no trouble figuring out these things, and avoiding the range problems described in the article.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#45

Post by andyl »

I just drove by some dude who was running down a pitch-dark freeway with a small child at his side. They were carrying a can of gas to refill at the station a couple miles ahead.

Damn gasoline engines - so unreliable! You'd think after 100+ years of development they'd have sorted this stuff out.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#47

Post by tkahnoski »

bpc9 wrote: post #24
CamperBob2 wrote: post #21

In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank. Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is something that I find astonishing. (To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-swappable batteries ar…

The article mentioned that the top-end battery weighs in at half a ton --- not exactly hot-swapping material. Also, when it comes to safety, center of gravity, chassis rigidity, etc --- I'm sure there were a myriad of engineering decisions beyond weight that go against hot swapping. And that's not even getting to added cost and logistics of maintaining a network of skilled battery swap experts, "ownership" over the b…

I actually think the major thing missing here ia not swapping out the entire pack (although that would probably be more time efficient), but having some sort of emergency pack to get you that extra 5 or 10 miles you need to a charging station (or in the case of the article, release the parking brake to quicken the towing process).

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#48

Post by notdrunkatall »

As a TSLA shareholder and as a general fan of the company, this is disappointing. TSLA's been doing everything right, which is what has given them so much momentum so early in the game, and if they are going to be the big disruptor that I'm betting on, they cannot afford to lose that momentum. If they start mis-stepping, they won't last long, and this is a misstep that many, many people at TSLA should have seen coming from many miles away.

Batteries suck in the cold. Did no one think to test the Model S in the east's freezing temperatures before they turned one over to a journalist?

What gives, Elon?

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#49

Post by jacobn »

Electric cars are second cars - the commuter one, not the road trip one. They currently don't make sense for road trips, absolutely. But they make a ton of sense for commuting, most likely even in cold climates.

It's an interesting and broadly relevant article, but it feels like we're having the wrong discussion - we might be single males, but the target market for the time being is well off families considering a new second car... ;)

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#50

Post by chc »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #39
chc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery for the Model S is the entire base of the car. It's over seven feet long, weighs more than half a ton and costs about $12,000 to make. I'm sure they would have loved if it could have been swappable, but getting there from the current technology would mean a lot of compromise that would almost certainly not be worth it.

Apparently -- see other comments in this thread, and the ones that were made the last time this came up in another HN story -- the Model S battery is designed as a module for rapid replacement. Of course, without an industry-wide effort to standardize a few core battery sizes for different applications, it's a moot point. That is the problem that I wish Musk had set out to solve.

AFAIK it's designed to be replaceable without major surgery, but I don't think the replacement is meant to be quite as rapid as "stop at a gas station and they'll pop a new one in." I'm not an expert, but that was my impression.
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