Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does any of this have to do with the fact that Tesla is lying to its customers and the other EV manufacturers are not.
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Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
281–290 of 769 posts
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got stranded once for some hours because of the mileage indicator! Was driving back from a campsite that I turned out to not have charging compatibility with, but thought I had plenty of margin to get to the nearest charger. As I drove through the mountains however, I began noticing that a.) my battery was depleting much faster than expected and b.) I wasn’t seeing any houses and very few motorists. I watc…
> slow is fast, keep it at 60 if you want the milage meter to not die as quick This also works in petrol cars: the air resistance efficiency falloff is dramatic at higher speeds.
Air resistance is proportional to v^2.
My dad told a story once where he was driving out west borrowing one of his brother's cars with a broken speedometer. After he got back he said to his brother, "the car just seemed to top out at a certain point" and his brother said "yeah, that's about 85 mph" (the national speed limit was 55 mph at that time). So at 85 mph the air resistance equaled the force the engine could apply and the car wouldn't go any faster.
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#283Carwow did a test fairly recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvwOa7TCd1E
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
This really is an extreme and specific example, but risks like this are why most people want lots ( lots ) of range and why gas/diesel cars won't die out any time soon. The sheer ease of mind that comes with having densely packed energy that can be replenished at a moment's notice practically anywhere should not be disregarded easily. Maybe battery tech can get there some day, but it's certainly not today.
Why can't battery tech achieve this? I have a very old petrol car (>35y) with a terrible fuel-indicator. I bring a spare 5L tank with petrol under the backseat always. An EV could achieve the same with a small portable powerbank, not? My current tank can hold some 50+L; this gives my old T3 a range of ~430km¹. When we lived in Botswana ('83, other car) we had an extra 150L spare fuel-tank instead of back-seats. We co…
You know, I don't think I've seen this idea before. I've seen discussion of "can we swap the whole battery pack at a station", "can we make the cells pourable", people carrying generators, etc., but I've not seen the idea of a removable part of power pack for limp-home situations. A modern equivalent of the Jerry can.
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#285As a Tesla owner, I think the source of the confusion is the EPA range displayed in the HUD on the Tesla. We toggled ours to show the battery percentage, which is much more useful to us. We've never owned a gas vehicle that met it's EPA range and the Tesla is no different. No one takes EPA MPG * GALLONS of gas and expects it to be a real life estimate of range. Wind resistance increases EXPONENTIALLY with speed. Driv…
FWIW Our Audis (Q5, A6 allroad) have significantly better MPGs than the advertised ones
The Q5 advertises 28mlg on the highway but i consistently hit 30+ here
And the wagon hits 35mpg on the highway very often even though it only advertises 26. It actually turns off 2 of the 6 cylinders when it senses that it can.
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
This really is an extreme and specific example, but risks like this are why most people want lots ( lots ) of range and why gas/diesel cars won't die out any time soon. The sheer ease of mind that comes with having densely packed energy that can be replenished at a moment's notice practically anywhere should not be disregarded easily. Maybe battery tech can get there some day, but it's certainly not today.
Why can't battery tech achieve this? I have a very old petrol car (>35y) with a terrible fuel-indicator. I bring a spare 5L tank with petrol under the backseat always. An EV could achieve the same with a small portable powerbank, not? My current tank can hold some 50+L; this gives my old T3 a range of ~430km¹. When we lived in Botswana ('83, other car) we had an extra 150L spare fuel-tank instead of back-seats. We co…
> I bring a spare 5L tank with petrol under the backseat always.
Not too safe of an idea...
> An EV could achieve the same with a small portable powerbank, not?
Say that tank gets you 70km. You'd need 15 kilowatt-hours or 54 megajoules of battery, or about 56kg and about 25L of volume to do the same.
> An EV could achieve the same with the back-seats replaced by additional battery-packs, not? I'd presume this might be too heavy or not allowed due to regulations, but technically just adding ridiculous amounts of batteries would solve this.
Maybe, but it's also ridiculous amounts of money. Also, really increasing the mass of the vehicle is enough to hurt efficiency, so...
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#287I have a model Y. I hate almost everything about it. But most germane, The "Battery meter" at the top of the display is total bunk. That's got to be "rosy" numbers. It'll display a the battery in miles, but it's at least 25% inflated. However if you punch in a destination, you'll get exact numbers, and those are insanely reliable. It claims (and I don't believe any claims coming from tesla) that it'll factor wind, el…
I make EVs at a different company, and I'm not a fan of Tesla's range indicator. It's misleading because miles don't map directly onto battery charge. The range that that indicates is miles on flat level ground with no wind at 55mph which you will never experience in real life. At 80mph you're going to get 2/3 of that range every time. At 35mph you can get significantly higher range, but no one is ever going to drive 300+ miles at 35mph. If you just tap on the range icon it will change to percent, which is less misleading. ICE vehicles have all the same problems, but most ICE vehicles always just show gas level, rather than range.
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#288The article ends: > [one customer] ultimately concluded there is nothing wrong with his car. The problem, he said, was that Tesla is overstating its performance As I read this, either his car was defective or he was lied to to convince him to make a $XX,000 purchase. It seems that Tesla should be facing some form of fraud-based lawsuit over the lies selling the car or treating it under warranty, right?
Most normal Tesla owners I'm familiar with just come to accept that the website range claim is complete horseshit. They go on with their lives and just don't worry about it. For around town, it'll get somewhat close to rated range anyway, and road trips aren't that common for most people. The supercharger network is pretty good, and if you have to stop every 200 miles instead of the rated 358, then so be it. Personal…
No. Sorry. Making the claim that most tesla owners do X is in my opinion horseshit. Tesla should be ashamed of themselves and should be sued into oblivion for false advertising. This is not a +/- 5%. This is a massive lie and a coverup.
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They probably can get the right estimate for a destination because it knows the speed limit Even this is a massive over-simplification. Driving the same speed with a 20 mph headwind is going to take lot more energy than with a 20 mph tailwind for example. There's lots of other variables and they may be certainly tracking some (like A/C current draw) but I doubt they track others (like rolling friction or road condi…
Does all this somehow not apply to ICE vehicles? Cause the gas meter/range estimate was pretty accurate in my dad's '93 Corolla...
Of course. YMMV (literally), I suppose. My ICE Nissan seems highly variable while my SO's Ford seems pretty accurate. Maybe it's just the difference in driving habits :-)
Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
#290That's a pretty damning article and it looks like there are more and more of those coming. Tesla still somehow benefits from its innovators / clean company reputation, but at this pace it won't be long before agencies start to act on what's become much more than just 'optimistic marketing'.
I think that reputation already died in the last 2-3 years. It's now pretty common in my circle to hear people say they'll pay a premium to not own a Tesla. Primarily because of lots of bad experiences with build quality/repairs, but also because there are now lots of high quality alternatives. Namely Rivian and Lucid, but also the legacy automakers (two friends bought mach-es recently and there's a smattering of F-1…
Are there quality alternatives that dont cost six figures?