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Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

reuters.com

471–480 of 769 posts

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#471
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cars have one or more clutches to put the car in neutral. This is required so the engine can idle while the car stands still, among other reasons. Electric cars don't need to idle and therefore don't have any clutches in the drivetrain. Adding clutches just for allowing the user to push around the car seems needlessly complicated and over optimizing for a scenario that will not occur for the majority of cars.

I would have thought regenerative braking could be disabled by simply electrically isolating the motors. You still have the mechanical resistance of turning the rotor, but I would also think that is easier than turning over an IC engine.

Others have mentioned that there is indeed a "free roll" mode and I'm prone to think your hypothesis regarding the implementation may be correct. The specifics, however, do not matter to me.

What I'm wondering now is, if "free roll" mode is activated while I'm at a red light... is there a chance I start rolling as I do in my manual when I take my foot off the brake?

Maybe I should just reach out to Tesla at this point though (-:

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#473
post #259

Earlier 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…

> able to get a tow truck capable of transporting my car (turns out you need one that has a full bed because of the regenerative breaking Sounds incredibly short-sighted that the regenerative braking can't be temporarily disabled by the driver... two people can push a "regular" car to a nearby gas station in a pinch. Even one person can push a smaller car around a parking lot if necessary. That said, they often send…

Yeah when I lived in South Africa, I saw people towing each other all the time with just a rope. Sure it was one of those flat threaded ropes, but it works.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#474
post #450

“In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery. He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convince…

> Driving through the Rocky mountains will reduce mpg significantly for an internal combustion engine as well.

Do you mean it will reduce the mpg because of reduced air density, or because of temperature as well? I thought the efficiency of an ICE was dependent on the difference in temperature it creates between the combustion and the coldest part of the cycle. It seems efficiency would improve in cold temperatures because less energy would be wasted cooling the engine since the incoming air is doing that.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#475
post #175

I have an S so I'm biased but this feels like a hit piece. Range is of course always going to be an estimate. Marketing is always going to be a battle of who has the bigger number. Having people schedule an appointment to fix their "broken" cars that can only go 470 instead of 500km is of course going to be a waste of time and money. I'm part of a facebook group for tesla owners and literally every day this week ther…

You should have higher expectations of your vehicle. My 2016 ICE car's "miles left" meter is accurate to +/- 2 miles from the moment I top up the tank (80% highway driving, 20% hilly city and rolling country roads). IMO, accurately telling the vehicle operator how many miles of juice you have left is a KPI, as it informs when you'll need to plan for refueling. Having driven an EV for a few weeks in identical conditio…

> this inaccuracy is probably the major contributor to "range anxiety"

Btw, this "range anxiety" term, is it designed to make people seem crazy for wanting a long-range car?

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#476
Ah yes, and when you factor in that EV's use 4x the materials to construct them as ICE cars, and we don't have the grid capacity yet for a full transition, I think we need another solution.

Sure EV's are a part of it, but it's not the silver bullet the marketing would suggest.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#477
post #450

“In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery. He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convince…

Sure, but the system continues to make extremely optimistic (and unrealistic) estimates about your range until you hit 50% battery, at which point it tries to be more realistic so that it doesn't strand you in the middle of nowhere.

It should be giving you the more realistic estimate as soon as possible, so that you can plan better, rather than misleading you for half your trip.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of AC / Heat will also just burn through your battery or your gas at a much faster rate.

Does heating in internal combustion engine cars really affect fuel consumption? My assumption was that most cabin heat was waste heat from the engine, that would otherwise be vented out? Given the dismal efficiency of ICE, shouldn't it be enough to keep a cabin warm even in quite cold climates?

The engine by itself produces a lot of waste heat. But modern engines are more efficient and take a while to warm up (especially diesels, but small turbos like Honda 1.5 too) so cars sometimes implement resistive heating to heat the cabin quicker.

Also some cars have independent heating that can be used to heat up the car up without running an engine. Not sure how exactly it works but I think it uses special battery.

AC compressor of course takes a lot of power.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#479
post #77

It’s a controversial opinion but I really believe EV’s need 500 miles of range to truly compete with ICE vehicles. Think: batteries not fully charging or depleting for longevity concerns. Having to stop at chargers before range is out due to there not being another one coming up, extra headwinds, extra heat or AC, simply ending up at a broken or crowded charger and needing it to a different one, pulling a load, etc,…

Maybe it's more important to have more/faster EV charging stations. I'm not buying an EV until I can go to any regular gas station (or at least half of them) and charge it up in a similar timespan as an ICE. That should be doable.

Re: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

#480
post #286
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I would love to see some kind of standardized way of supplementing an electric car's battery. Most people don't need massive EV range all of the time, just when going on long trips. Being able to buy or rent an extra battery pack and throw it in the trunk, frunk, or back seats to add more range seems ideal for those cases.
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