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Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#151

Post by gnicholas »

jcranmer wrote: post #147
MBCook wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s 65. I’ve been in places where the speed limit is 70 but people usually go 75-80. That’s 20-25mph faster than you. At that point you’re practically impeding traffic, and having a big truck pass you is terrifying. Just because you can legally drive 55 or maybe even less doesn’t make it safe.

> Just because you can legally drive 55 or maybe even less doesn’t make it safe. Generally, you actually can't legally drive that much slower than prevailing speed.

I remember seeing minimum speed limit signs in Iowa. I was told this was to keep tractors off the highways.

Where these signs aren’t present, I think you’d have to be going more than 10 under the maximum limit to get a ticket.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#152

Post by vel0city »

lolsal wrote: post #148
vel0city wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of US households do. It's not like it's some massive outlier. Especially with people who commute to work by car instead of living in denser areas where car ownership rates are lower. Lots of people always point to this idea that charging a car is a huge pain point compared to just pumping gas, but the majority of commuter cars would have the exact same experience as me. For most commuters they spend more…

No point in discussing it really I guess. My anecdotal evidence says otherwise. I’m happy you have these conveniences though; I’m looking forward to when EVs catch up to the conveniences of ICE vehicles and infrastructure.

Cool, I base my data off actual statistics instead of just anecdotes.

https://www.statista.com/topics/5144/single-family-homes-in-...

82 out of 129 million units are single family detached homes. 62%. That's the majority. And I imagine most car-free households probably don't live in single-family detached by a large margin, so whatever percentage of that moves more car owners towards being the single family homes. Then another percentage of non-single-family-home dwellers probably aren't in the market for $40k cars, which for sure EVs have an upfront cost penalty.

Plus some of the other sizes like 2-4 units still often have garage or at least private parking spaces (carports and driveways) which would probably be easy to add individual chargers as well so another 16M units or 92/129 or 71% of housing units.

Average miles driven is like 16k these days.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

16,000 / 300 or so days driven is like 53 miles a day on average. Easily doable by any EV, even doubling or tripling that average use.

Maybe you should look outside your bubble. The majority of US households who could afford a $40k car probably live in a place that can add charging without too much difficulty. And they also don't drive much more than 50mi a day on average, by a large measure.

> I’m looking forward to when EVs catch up to the conveniences of ICE vehicles

For most US households in the market for a car priced like an EV, an EV can be more convenient than an ICE, today.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#153

Post by [deleted] »

MBCook wrote: post #28
Analemma_ wrote: post #14

Tesla's display shows the EPA range. While this is probably a bad idea and that's why no other manufacturer does it, "nobody else does it" is nothing but an informal standard and it seems a bit awkward to claim the approved government standard, in use at government agencies, is so obviously wrong that it constitutes fraud.

Clearly Tesla knew the EPA range isn’t what customers commonly got in the real world. They’re famous for all their telematics. If an example car can achieve 700 miles on the EPA test, but normal usage averages 150, is it fraud to advertise 700? To show 700 on the screen at full charge? I agree it’s an interesting question. If the difference was 5% I’m not sure people would care. But at 25% off I think it is a very a…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#154

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

mrguyorama wrote: post #67
mensetmanusman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s on the regulators to define a metric, lest EVs compete on made up numbers. EVs are so new of course that organizations are still figuring this out globally.

But Tesla is using that metric in a place most normally don't, and they are doing that purposely as elsewhere they use an in house estimation like everyone else. No gasoline car uses the EPA fuel economy to do it's range estimation, EVEN WHEN IT WOULD BE BETTER FOR THEM TO DO SO, because it's wrong enough often enough to make a range estimation using it lose significant value. Tesla has made a choice to stray from no…

I thought it was common in all cars these days. My gas car (Prius) uses the EPA fuel economy rating to estimate range at full, and is progressively pessimistic as I use up gas in the tank. On empty I can still get another 50-100 miles. My 3 also exhibits this behavior, although it's not quite as pessimistic as the Prius.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#155

Post by patmorgan23 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #135
nsenifty wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people don't tend to drive non-stop for hundreds of miles at cities (except perhaps taxis)? You also always have a charger nearby.

But the range is calculated based on the energy efficiency, and all drivers (should) care about that number, since that's the cost.

Range != Efficiency. Electric motors are all pretty efficient. It has more to do with how big a battery they were able to squeeze into the thing.

This is different from ICE vehicles where fuel efficiency is more variable and does affect range more.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#156

Post by patmorgan23 »

yurishimo wrote: post #36
CameronNemo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sad that we can't just drive 55 on highways. Not even trucks that are towing will drive 55 always.

Why do people need to drive slow? Sometimes you gotta get somewhere. If they are willing to pay the premium to driver faster and follow the law while doing so, what’s the harm?

Air resistant. For most vehicles the sweet spot for efficiency is around 45-50 miles an hour. If you go faster than that you start spending more energy fighting wind resistance than going faster

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#157

Post by kasdi »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #143
kasdi wrote: post #142

@dang Editorialized title that tries to manifest an allegation. The only thing missing now is all caps… “X KILLED Y by using Z!!!! (reports say)”

It's the exact title of the article.

No, the exact title is ‘Angry Tesla customers sue firm over “grossly” exaggerated EV range’

There’s a difference between “sued” and “committed fraud”.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#158

Post by twarge »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #119
sdfignaionio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two important things you're missing: 1. Tesla's estimates are not "highly accurate". They are alleged to use a deliberately optimistic estimate when the battery is near full, then gradually switch to a more realistic estimate as the battery drains. In particular they are alleged to incorrectly account for the weather. This means the car will always display nearly the advertised number at full charge (and on…

One important thing you are missing, there are two different estimates being referred to. The "miles remaining" display on the battery charge gauge (which can be toggled to show percentage instead) and the trip planner / navigation estimate. The trip planner is very accurate, you can view a burn down charge of realtime estimate as it changes while you drive and it says what component contributed what % to deviate fro…

This is correct. If you tell it the destination the range estimate is astonishingly accurate. And it will list all the reasons it turned out to be wrong down to what fraction a headwind impacted range.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#159

Post by user_named »

bdamm wrote: post #51
rubyn00bie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This take is a bit weird to me. It’s like saying because other companies aren’t lying that Tesla should be excused from lying. It sounds like Tesla has been displaying this number in car regardless of the accuracy; and in my opinion leaned into lying. From the article: > The complaint cited testing that found three Tesla models fell short of their advertised ranges by an average of 26 percent. In addition to alleging…

Right, and the one that is accurate is what you get when you put in a destination. The car can't tell you how far you can go if it doesn't know where you are going, because of all these factors (altitude gain, direction of wind, speed limits on the various roads involved, etc) which have a very significant effect on the range. The idea of a single value for "range" is fundamentally flawed. Is it Tesla's fault that pe…

Wrong. There are leaks saying that the fraud-dumbass himself forced the developers to display the incorrect number because it looks better.

Re: Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

#160

Post by user_named »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #122
dragontamer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, "lying" isn't a legal term. "Fraud" is a legal term, and "intentionally misleading people" is the very definition of Fraud. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud In fact, it seems like Fraud is still Fraud at the reckless or negligent levels. No intent needed (though I'm sure proving it at the "intent" level will get them more of a case). So... is this Fraud? Well, yes. It would be. But the next step is f…

There is no fraud or misleading people. The EPA test cycle is an official test, you can run the test and get the same results yourself. It's not fraud that some dumb consumers don't understand what an EPA range estimate means

It's fraud. There's already internal leaks documenting Teslas fraud perpetrated on the insistence of Elon.
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