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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

#161

Post by user_named »

frumper wrote: post #136
goalonetwo wrote: post #68

I always found it interesting that almost every EV in real-life exceeds their EPA range, while Tesla in real-life cannot even get close. I would not be surprised that Tesla over-optimized everything with the EPA test as an utility function. (reminds anyone of the VW scandal?) https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/

Did you read the link? 12/37 exceed their range and Porsche is half those. Remove 1 very high end maker and you're at 6/31 exceed. Not exactly "almost everyone"

Tesla doesn't have high end cars? Right, their quality is terrible

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

#162

Post by constantcrying »

abduhl wrote: post #110
constantcrying wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not for anything illegal. If you believe Musk on this the lawsuit is practically pointless. Having an optimistic algorithm is not illegal and even alledging that it somehow is seems absurd.

A tale of moving goalposts, as presented by constantcrying: “Unless you can get some actual developer to testify that he was explicitly ordered to build the algorithm to report a range which he knew was impossible to reach or something similar, this seems practically irrelevant.” “Zero evidence for that.” When confronted with evidence that the algorithm was specifically designed to show an unrealistic, misleading, an…

>specifically designed to show an unrealistic, misleading, and apparently impossible to meet

You are making stuff up. Musk said optimistic, which directly implies that it should be truthful and accurate, just not representative of average performance.

And it absolutely isn't moving the goalpost. If you didn't think I was initially asking for evidence that would support the legal claim against Musk I don't know what to tell you...

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

#163

Post by flaxton »

Electric car range varies widely depending on how you use it and conditions, regardless of which car brand or model you use. Our family has a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model 3 and both ranges vary widely depending on how you drive.

Driving at 80mph on a highway will greatly reduce the range of any EV, compared to 45 mph. Using high-draw features like heating (also depends on the type of heating used) will also drain the battery faster.

Cold temperatures also reduce range, but it depends on the EV. Teslas cool or heat the battery to keep an optimal battery temperature. Nissan Leaf uses air cooling, which means repeated supercharging in hot weather overheats the battery, so they cannot make long trips. So Teslas are less affected by hot and cold temperatures than some other EVs. So it depends on the EV.

EV users need to educate themselves on how electric cars operate regarding range. It's not unique to Tesla by any means.

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

#164

Post by Etherlord87 »

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…

In my opinion if people responsible for the choice of such and not another metric realized it will mislead the clients, then it was a fraud. You can do a lot of philosophical gymnastics proving fraud or no-fraud, but in the end of the day you're communicating something to your clients, and if you deliberately confuse them to think your product is better than it really is, is a fraud.

So it probably was a fraud, by my standards.

I'm considering buying Starlink access, but now I have to rethink what it really offers - maybe they use some different than common metric, which is 'technically true' but miscommunicates the actual performance?

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

#165

Post by DANmode »

flaxton wrote: post #163

Electric car range varies widely depending on how you use it and conditions, regardless of which car brand or model you use. Our family has a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla Model 3 and both ranges vary widely depending on how you drive. Driving at 80mph on a highway will greatly reduce the range of any EV, compared to 45 mph. Using high-draw features like heating (also depends on the type of heating used) will also drain th…

It's not exclusive to EVs either.

ICE, and hybrid ICE, can all be more efficient depending how well you match its optimal driving profile.

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

#166

Post by Tarragon »

Delphiki wrote: post #54
MBCook wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every other EV tries to give a realistic range based on the temperate and your driving habits. Teslas appear to always show the EPA range at full and it sounds like they stay very optimistic for quite a long time, giving drivers a very unrealistic picture. That’s lying to the customer. They’re not trying to be useful but to look good. And in every EV range comparison I’ve ever seen, teslas are the ones that…

> in every EV range comparison I’ve ever seen, teslas are the ones that can’t meet their claimed range by a fair margin. Other brands are almost always close to accurate or in some cases do noticeably better than claimed. What's your source? Cause I don't think that's true... [1][2] [1] https://youtu.be/fvwOa7TCd1E?t=2233 [2] https://youtu.be/xg6-Vc9CSwk?t=2589

Carwow is in the UK and tests the claims against the European WLTP test. The claim is that Tesla doesn't meet their EPA range ratings.

Here's InsideEV's comparison to EPA range where Tesla is a huge outlier:

https://insideevs.com/news/679024/recurrent-tesla-range-lowe...

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

#167

Post by frumper »

user_named wrote: post #161
frumper wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the link? 12/37 exceed their range and Porsche is half those. Remove 1 very high end maker and you're at 6/31 exceed. Not exactly "almost everyone"

Tesla doesn't have high end cars? Right, their quality is terrible

Tesla may want to see themselves as high end, but the Model 3/Y are around the average cost of a new car. That is less than half what a starting Porsche EV costs.

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

#168

Post by kyriakos »

bdcravens wrote: post #38

My EV6 shows me a range that seems to be based on recent driving. When I've been conservative, the range is high; when I've been driving sportily, the opposite. Does Tesla do the same?

Ioniq 5 seems to do the same. If I keep speeding overtaking etc range goes down. If I drive conservatively I actually gain range while driving.

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

#170

Post by mrguyorama »

constantcrying wrote: post #93
mrguyorama wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an issue that tesla created on purpose though. These people are confused that their car is not going as far as THE RANGE DISPLAY shows they will go. Hundreds of millions of cars have been made over the past twenty years with range displays that you can trust to hit zero BEFORE you run out of gas, due to estimating with recent driving data, and probably a gentle bump down of the number to make sure drivers hav…

And what should Tesla do instead? Putting a team together to tell customers their cars are fine seems completly legal and not a conspiracy in any way.

Do the same, less inaccurate thing that every single other car maker has always done and give more accurate range estimations? Something Tesla already does in the route planner, and also show they know how to do as the battery meter gets closer to empty, when they switch out their estimation for more accurate ones?

This isn't difficult. Tesla is not required to use the EPA range estimation figures to do any range estimation internally, it's literally only something that goes on the window sticker. Tesla instead chose to design their range display to do something that no other automaker did, and use a KNOWN OVERESTIMATOR as their methodology for range estimation.

Nobody else has to set up these call centers because nobody else chose to set up their range meters in such a way to mislead customers. It's really that simple.

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