71–80 of 98 posts
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How does keeping the tank fuller preserve the filter? All the crap in there sinks to the bottom anyway, no?
I think he meant the fuel pump. It can overheat if fuel levels get too low.
Not really a surprise - I don't think there was really any doubt about the performance of the Tesla in normal weather. The NYC area right now is well above freezing, approaching +10C in the daytime, nowhere near the deep freeze that occurred during the NYT drive. This still doesn't put to rest the expected (but somehow controversial) concerns about lithium battery performance in cold weather. This concern IMO needs t…
If it's so hard to get cold temperatures in the States, just send one unit up here a few miles North to Canada, we'll be back in the -20C during the week.
If I were Tesla PR, I'd jump on this. Drop everything else about the article; just throw a big party in DC in the morning, and ferry people to Boston for a big party the same evening (with refreshments and entertainment available in Newark and Milford, naturally). Get owners' clubs involved, make it an annual pilgrimage. Of course there may be a reason I'm not in PR.
If I were Tesla PR, I already orchestrated the entire thing, including instructing the CNN crew to fully recharge at every station and not stop overnight.
Every time someone reads this, a kitten gets run over: "Instead, I found myself maneuvering around slower cars. Now, I normally spend most of my time on the New Jersey Turnpike out in the left lane going at least 10 or 15 miles an hour faster than I was in the Model S. But sitting in the middle lane, I was keeping up with traffic. I certainly didn't feel out of place -- except for the fact that I wasn't burning any g…
Bingo.
Every time someone reads this, a kitten gets run over: "Instead, I found myself maneuvering around slower cars. Now, I normally spend most of my time on the New Jersey Turnpike out in the left lane going at least 10 or 15 miles an hour faster than I was in the Model S. But sitting in the middle lane, I was keeping up with traffic. I certainly didn't feel out of place -- except for the fact that I wasn't burning any g…
I love speed as much as the next guy; but this was a review that, as far as I could gather, was CNN's version of peer reviewing the Time's article... and finding it wanting. A normal person isn't taking their car to the track. TopGear already did that test on an even more suited car. If you were testing the range of a Bugatti Veyron to see if it was useful as a commuter car, would you go flat out the whole way? Or, more realistically, if you were testing a Subaru WRX STi, or an Evo X, for its "normal driving conditions" range, would you be keeping your revs at 4-5k the whole way?
Regardless of the "success" in the trip, the ultimate failure was in Musk's petulant response.
And I would say the secondary failure is in the advice given to Broder over the phone.
Had the people on the phone just told him to charge longer, anything Broder said about the extra time charging would have come across as a simple, forgettable nitpick. It's extraordinary events like getting stranded that readers remember.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sitting in front of a 1500 watt radiant heater, it seems implausible that 1500 watts isn't enough power to keep a car sized battery pack in an enclosed space warmed to operating temperature. For an idea what 1500 watts will do, I keep a 400 square foot room with only an R8 (US) ceiling and unheated space below at a 20°F differential to outside with this heater. It can't keep up when it gets too cold out, but my r…
Of course, for every hour of operation of the heater, you're using up about 1.5% of the battery capacity.
The explanation of the anecdotes is probably complicated, but I believe that the Tesla chargers monitor the voltage at the input to the car and reduce their current draw to keep a minimum voltage. So if your 120v transformer is a little on the low side (they vary) and maybe you used that 100' 16g extension cord you had handy, and maybe your house was wired when aluminum house wiring seemed like a good idea and that outlet has a bit more resistance between the wire and the terminal screw, you might be getting a lot less than 1500 watts. There could well be a point in the charging curves where there is a problem, but I don't think it is because 1500 watts isn't enough.
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> Tesla fills a niche of drivers who commute to and from work, occasionally to meetings and maybe the airport The niche is in the price, not the use case, because you're describing what about 80% of the population does with their cars 95% of the time.
I believe the niche is partially the price and partially those who want to arrive to work in style. Manager, CEO, COO style employees are the kind of people who'd buy this for the attention and to reaffirm the statement, "Yeah, I'm rich, but I work for it"
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Teslas are big sellers in Norway and Switzerland, yet (and I travel there often and even looked in Zurich showrooms) I don't hear them concerned.
If you drove the distance from Boston to DC in Switzerland, you wouldn't be in Switzerland anymore. The whole country fits inside New York State.