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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

#81

Post by jasonlotito »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Why did the reporter have to rope Steven Chu into the article? Even if all the facts are 100% right, it seems lame to try and make this a political issue. I know people who have done family road trips with the Tesla S already and didn't have those problems in normal weather. One could surmise that pushing the edges of the range AND pushing extreme weather conditions might be risky, and in an EV it is certainly riskie…

The weather described in that article is not extreme. It's normal. Driving at much slower speeds than traffic and not using heat in the winter is the extreme part. Cars that require extreme conditions to drive have problems.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#82

Post by JamisonM »

purplelobster wrote: post #5
tokenadult wrote: post #2

Very worth reading if you want to know what it's like to drive a Tesla Model S on an actual road trip. The New York Times reporter John M. Broder finds out that the gauge in the Model S to estimate remaining mileage before the next charge is badly confused by temperatures below the usual temperatures in California. I remember back when I used to have a travel-intensive job that I was flying into airports all over the…

For sure. The lack of charging stations will eventually be solved, but longer charging times and unreliable readings might be with us forever. Hopefully the cost offset for fuel will make it worth it.

There is no reason for unreliable reading to be with us forever, accounting for temperature and driving-style in an estimation system is non-trivial but far from impossible. It is the sort of problem that will be incrementally solved as the technology matures, Telsa themselves will learn from their more northerly deployments.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#83

Post by cromwellian »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Why did the reporter have to rope Steven Chu into the article? Even if all the facts are 100% right, it seems lame to try and make this a political issue. I know people who have done family road trips with the Tesla S already and didn't have those problems in normal weather. One could surmise that pushing the edges of the range AND pushing extreme weather conditions might be risky, and in an EV it is certainly riskie…

I agree, on the northeast, 30F isn't extreme. I'm biased, I live in California where I wear shorts and t-shirt almost 365 days a year. :)

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#84

Post by codex »

wlesieutre wrote: post #76
ilaksh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people are blaming the wrong thing here. The car works great. The problem is that there are very few places to charge it. If there were more than two cities in the whole area to charge, he could have stopped sooner at one of those.

The car works great when it isn't cold. If the mileage estimates aren't taking temperature into account, that seems like something Tesla should be addressing in software. A relative gauge or percentage would be one thing, but if you tell the driver it's going to get 100 miles, they need to know it can make that to the next charging station.

From what I can glean from the article, it may not be possible to completely address the problem in software, because weather prediction is inexact, and it's hard to account for all eventualities. The software can say, "100 miles of range unless the temperature drops more than 5 degrees from forecast, or unless it turns out your hotel has no indoor parking, or if you have to stay late at work and your car spends an extra four hours outside, or your flight is cancelled and your car spends an extra day at the airport." That's not to say it can't be improved, though.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#85

Post by stcredzero »

eropple wrote: post #29
michael_miller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing nothing about heaters, I'm curious: why does electric heat make no sense? My intuition would be that an electric heater would require far fewer components (especially considering the battery is already in place), be less dangerous, and require less maintenance. What is the relative efficiency of electric heaters to propane heaters?

I don't think they "make no sense", and I'm not sure a propane heater is the answer, but an electric heater is going to require the use of battery power otherwise used for getting you from point A to point B.

In terms of how big a chunk they take out of range, they're a disaster.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#86

Post by stcredzero »

danielweber wrote: post #34
michael_miller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing nothing about heaters, I'm curious: why does electric heat make no sense? My intuition would be that an electric heater would require far fewer components (especially considering the battery is already in place), be less dangerous, and require less maintenance. What is the relative efficiency of electric heaters to propane heaters?

Electric heat via resisters is very simple, but very inefficient. ( EDIT : Thermodynamically space-heaters are 100% efficient, since they always convert their source energy into heat. They are inefficient from a monetary point-of-view.) You can do electric heat via heat pumps, but it requires more equipment and it doesn't work if it's too cold. You can get about a 4 to 5 advantage over plain resistance heat. Gasoline…

> (EDIT: Thermodynamically space-heaters are 100% efficient, since they always convert their source energy into heat. They are inefficient from a monetary point-of-view.)

They're a disaster from a range point of view.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#87

Post by stcredzero »

danielweber wrote: post #18

I used to be excited about electric cars, but lately I've been wondering if it wouldn't be better to use the power source to manufacture fossil fuels using an environmental source of carbon and ship that to customers. That would make the fuel carbon neutral. Because the world understands completely how to store and handle and deal with liquid fossil fuels.

There's also something elegant about the technology. If you compare the complexity and expense versus the energy density of a lithium-ion battery pack and a metal can, there's no comparison.

However, in an ideal world, I would think that carbon neutral hydrocarbons would become a niche fuel for things like long haul trucks and bulldozers. (And for auxiliary space heaters in people's electric cars.)

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#88

Post by stcredzero »

saulrh wrote: post #20
malloreon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

He wouldn't have tried running the vehicle to the edges of its optimal-condition performance in non-optimal conditions. Or he would have been expecting trouble and reacted early enough to avoid being towed. Or, most of all, he would have emphasized in his writing that his experience is unusual and that the article will be obsolete in a year. An average consumer with one of these cars will be able to draw on years of…

> He wouldn't have tried running the vehicle to the edges of its optimal-condition performance in non-optimal conditions.

Yeah, either the author was kinda ignorant about how batteries react to weather, or he was trying to achieve a bit of sensationalism.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#89

Post by fernly »

peteforde wrote: post #14

As a fan of Tesla's efforts, it pains me to read this; no matter where the blame lies (physics, bad planning, poorly tested diagnostics software) this article will haunt the company for years. Every oil lobbyist will eat this up, and it should become the foundation of any EV-haters argument. And that sucks. However, I'm annoyed that Tesla's UX people let a car with this much design intelligence leave without connecti…

But if I read the article right, the car IS adjusting its display for temperature. When the temp went down, the calculated available miles went down also -- and almost accurately, that is, the car went dead about when the miles-left display went to zero.

The question I'd have is, how much current would they have to divert to keep the batteries warm? It seems like the juice expended to hold the battery pack at 20C might be less than the capacity lost by letting the batteries go down to an ambient -5C.

Or, they could provide what a lot of east-coast cars have, a built in engine-block heater that you plug in to a 110V extension cord overnight. Except in this case it would be a battery pack warmer, but the same idea, keep the important bits toasty over a cold night.

Re: Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway

#90

Post by chrisbolt »

fernly wrote: post #89
peteforde wrote: post #14

As a fan of Tesla's efforts, it pains me to read this; no matter where the blame lies (physics, bad planning, poorly tested diagnostics software) this article will haunt the company for years. Every oil lobbyist will eat this up, and it should become the foundation of any EV-haters argument. And that sucks. However, I'm annoyed that Tesla's UX people let a car with this much design intelligence leave without connecti…

But if I read the article right, the car IS adjusting its display for temperature. When the temp went down, the calculated available miles went down also -- and almost accurately, that is, the car went dead about when the miles-left display went to zero. The question I'd have is, how much current would they have to divert to keep the batteries warm? It seems like the juice expended to hold the battery pack at 20C mig…

When the temp went down, the calculated available miles went down also -- and almost accurately, that is, the car went dead about when the miles-left display went to zero.

Showing that the range is zero when the battery is dead is not hard. The problem is when the displayed range drops faster than you're traveling, and if that wasn't the problem, he wouldn't have been stranded. If it was adjusting its display for temperature, it wouldn't have been wrong.

Or, they could provide what a lot of east-coast cars have, a built in engine-block heater that you plug in to a 110V extension cord overnight.

Had he plugged the car into a 110V outlet overnight, the battery would have been charged in the morning.

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