I have a model 3 (from 2023), that is rated 270 miles. I can get at max 120 miles, more like 90 miles from it. My drive to work involves going steeply uphill, not very cold. The only reason I don’t care is I have free office charging. If I didn’t I would be pissed by the range I observe.
Also Tesla servicing is famously bad, and the way the employees treat service requests (as described in the article) explains a lot
Slightly more nuanced: the "range"/battery level listed constantly is always bunk. When I enter a destination the final battery level is very accurate. This counts in cold weather or hot, with terrain effects or not. Sometimes even weather. It's quite good and I imagine there's some data driven process from past performance of the vehicle.
So, if you plan to test drive a Tesla, evaluate its range this way. If you're curious for me the listed range is often around 300, and the effective drive range tends to be around 250 200, seldom less except in cold weather.
Our BMW i3 gets EPA range on my round trip commute in the summer. It starts at the top of a mountain with a “100%” (actually 90% according to reverse engineering) battery (a tesla couldn’t regen in that situation, the bmw can).
It can be as low as 80% of EPA range with the heat pump cranked up in low 30F’s weather.
I’ve carefully measured two other EVs (not Tesla) on that route. One gets 110% of EPA, but can’t regen at 100% (so, it is similar to the BMW model without the hard 90% charge cap). The other gets EPA in the winter and does not have a heat pump.
FWIW, Tesla drivers that live up here complain about bogus range estimates.
I agree with the “type in destination and let the computer estimate” approach. That works well on all three cars, despite the mountains.
Getting only 30% of the advertised range would be very unlikely unless you always drive uphill and in the cold. I've had a Model 3 and a Model Y, and would get at least 80-85% of the advertised range in average California weather.
If they were traveling uphill to work you’d think they would gain some of that back coming back downhill. But I’m guessing it might be very hilly terrain where the roads are not level at all. The crazier thing is that their commute is 60+ miles one way (based on saying they are lucky they can charge at work).
Looking at Tessie, my Model Y's lifetime average is 83% (289 Wh/mi at ~40,000 miles) and my Model 3's average is also 83% (280 Wh/mi at ~53,000 miles).
Most of my driving is in the Washington/PNW, so a bit more hilly and colder than California.
If the gradient is steep enough then you would not be recouping most of the energy going back downhill because your brakes will be burning off the energy. Uphill and downhills is a combination where the estimated range might be thrown off entirely, depending on situation.
Regardless, even with a small gradient, the kinetic energy can never need 100% converted back into stored energy into the battery. There will always be a loss.
> I have a model 3 (from 2023), that is rated 270 miles. I can get at max 120 miles, more like 90 miles from it. My drive to work involves going steeply uphill, not very cold. The only reason I don’t care is I have free office charging. If I didn’t I would be pissed by the range I observe.
Were you mislead about or unaware of the range claims when you bought the car?
I don't own an EV or have any real interest in them, but I know the range is highly dependent on driving conditions and automobile condition (often to a much greater degree than ICE vehicles) and I'd assumed that was made pretty clear in advertising materials and sales pitch. I could easily see unscrupulous companies and salesmen or just unaware 2nd hand buyers being caught out by the range claims though.
The 270 actually 120 is a bit dramatic, but it does highlight a lot of the fundamental problems with range in EVs, especially the "200 miles is enough" crowd.
1) for battery preservation, you generally do not fully charge every night. So, lose 10% from that
2) battery degradation, things are better, but 10% max loss is common I would say
3) people drive faster than testing. Knock off about 10% for that
4) cold? hot? AC? heat? another 10% off
5) there isn't a charger around every corner, so you have to plan ahead and to be safe get a charger when you're at like ... 10% left
Holy crap, 50% loss of range! And if you are in a scenario where you are recharging on the road, you are doing the "80% charge" which really is a loss of 10-20% more effective range. Ok, the poster isn't being that dramatic.
This is why for non-city non-commuter scenarios, especially in midwest/rural areas, a PHEV with a 50 mile all-electric range would simnply be a far better car, for far less battery supply. Daily city driving rarely exceeds 50%, the engine can do range extension on the rare long distance trips, and it can also help with heat/cooling that heat pumps can't help with. PHEV drivetrains will still have regen, peppy acceleration, and good torque if done correctly.
I'm hoping the Dodge Ramcharger does really well. 100 miles almost in all-electric, and an engine to recharge it for really long ranges and towing capacity.
A truly peer range EV will probably need another 50% density, so
I have a model 3 from 2019 that is not quite as extreme, but gets similar issues. It should have 350 km of range. I see some people posting insane wh/km numbers, but I think I'm doing a pretty decent job (130-140 wh/km or ~225.31 wh/mile average outside of the winter); I barely get 270-280km, max.
The issue isn't the driving range, but rather the unexplained loss of range. I'm talking about losses of 7.5% if I leave it parked in front of my house for an hour or two. I have photos too; if you reach out to Tesla, they curtly tell me the battery is fine.
A vague "you need to keep your car plugged in" is frankly insane, what if I went on a 100km trip, left my car outside for an hour or two, and came back without enough range to go home? I've heard people say to disable the app on my phone, but that frankly seems like a Tesla problem, not a "me" problem.
I still enjoy driving the car. I just wouldn't trust it for long range driving. I probably will buy Hyundai or BYD (if Canada lets them in) next time.
Yes, I think that's a definite issue for the generation of Model 3 that I have. I had to disable sentry because it was taking a significant chunk too (and I didn't even bother putting a disk inside).
While the idle draw is relatively high on Teslas compared to other EVs (even without sentry mode enabled), 7.5% is quite high. I track my stats with Teslamate and it estimates typical SoC loss of 1% over a day.
What I have seen is that the BMS may update its SoC estimate after driving, and I've seen it adjust the estimated SoC up or down by as much as 5% in some cases.
I get that from a planning perspective, it still stinks to have range than you thought you did an hour ago, but it's not all that different from the variation you might get with an analog dial on the gas tank, just that it's much easier to notice and track when it's digital and showed as a precise number.
5% to 7% is pretty normal for me - in both summer and winter. This is just leaving the car in front of my house for a few hours (let's say I don't want to park it in the separate garage).
It's not the end of the world for driving around town with less than my whole family (which is 90% of my driving) but it's definitely annoying to come back to a car with 50% charge and see it with 43. I imagine it would be terrifying for a 20 -> 13, especially with the lack of supercharging infrastructure where I live (Calgary).
Huh, that's quite a bit more than I would expect. You already ruled out the 12V battery in the other thread, but there could be some other factors that would keep your car awake.
Does it only happen when you park in front of the garage at home, or does it also happen if you go out somewhere? For example, it might be struggling to connect to your WiFi at home (if you set it up with your home WiFi credentials) to download updates or upload telemetry, which would keep it awake longer than normal as it tries to make do with kilobits per second of usable bandwidth.
I’ve only seen an EV do that once. The 12V battery died about a week later. (Or, rather, I left it parked, and after pouring 10% (!!) of the high voltage battery into the 12V, it gave up and completely shut down.)
Anyway, I wonder if Tesla’s are missing the “if 12V is completely shot, give up” logic. Replacing it is cheap and might fix the car. Some models let you monitor the 12V charger with an OBD-II dongle.
There might not actually be a downhill return trip if the commute involves going over a bunch of hills as is common in a pretty well known city that both has a lot of teslas and fits the parent's description.
Of course, this is from Tesla, and they famously puff up everything.. but I would expect even if not as good as claimed here, for the downhill part to certainly help a lot still.
What may not help is if they fully charge at work and have no battery capacity to soak up the regen on the way home. Regen ability gets limited the closer you get to 100%.
Neither are Teslas, but our cars range from getting 10%-33% back when going back down a mountain (curves, no traffic, avoiding using the brake pads or switching between charge/discharge on the throttle).
The results they report are incomparable for two reasons:
- straight line steep mountain roads don’t exist. On curvy roads (like mine) they’d need to repeatedly round trip energy to and from the battery, and that’s going to eat about 5% each time.
- the article claims going up and down the mountain uses as much energy as driving one mile. During the ascend/descend they drive 500 miles. The wind resistance for one mile flat and one mile on the mountain should be comparable, so their 95% efficiency number must be subtracting that (and rolling resistance) out.
My Polestar 2 range is not great in the cold and on hills, but the real gotcha is charging it to 80% and then plugging in around 30%. Using about 42 kW / 100 U.S. mile that means 50% of a roughly 75 kW battery only gives me 89 miles between charges. (But some of that is self imposed.)
Still 180 mile range would be well under the advertised 260.
Now if I use 100% and I get closer to 35 kW / 100 miles in the summer, the range is about 215 miles. Curious how much better it'll be in the summer though.
> Electric cars being much, much heavier than petrol cars
This is one of those comments that continues to come up but has never added up. Certainly if you are comparing a Tesla compared to a compact or a Euro version of a compact. Absolutely there is a weight difference. The problem is if you did a like for like comparison..a Model Y is the same Weight as an X3. A Model 3 is a couple hundred pounds heavier than a Toyota Camry.
You’re right but the difference isn’t as big as from the advertised 270 to 90-120. Also electric cars suffer from battery degradation which hampers the range quite a bit.
I don't think batteries degrade that much that fast. I would imagine it's akin to gas cars, where you lose about 10% or so in efficiency after you put on a lot of miles, like 100k. (My EV6 seems to be as efficient as when I bought it in 2022, but my driving style is all over the place, so it's hard to measure from one charge to the next if I'm feeling a bit spirited in my driving that day)
Having road tripped from Florida to Washington and back in a big circle around the country, it is my firm belief that every single person complaining about the range estimates in a Tesla is speeding.
By altering my driving style, I can get more range than the estimate. It's extremely predictable and accurate, to the point where I can notice the power drain from the self driving computers/cameras, arrive at the next supercharger at exactly the 3% I aim for, etc.
There was a point in my road trip when I was on top of a mountain, and it said I would reach the next charger 100km away with 20km of range remaining, but I was only at 90km at the time. I made it with 17km of range remaining.
The estimates are really good and useful if you don't speed.
The article is talking not about the route planner, which I agree usually gives very accurate estimates for specific routes, but the advertised theoretical driving "EPA ranges", which are quite inflated.
However, from what I can tell, the EPA numbers from all manufacturers are quite unrealistic, because the methodology doesn't match real-world driving.
The problem with EPA range is that it's a compromise between highway range and city range, so it's almost guaranteed to poorly match your driving unless your daily driving mix equals the averages. This is a consequence of insisting on one number, not inflation.
Inb4 "just pick highway range and be conservative" -- no, because then you will buy a car with great aerodynamics and terrible regen and spend all day driving it around the city using the terrible regen and not using the great aerodynamics.
Yes, this is certainly true for ICE vehicles. The measurement methodology is spelled out in exacting detail, and yields highly repeatable results. Realistic? Nope, not at all. Nobody could claim that. But, it is repeatable and comparable, so that you can compare car A to car B. It gives you a strict rank order for vehicles that are driven exactly the same way, it just so happens that no person drives exactly that particular way. The utility is in providing a repeatable point of comparison. Is that useful?... forgive me for saying it, but YMMV.
When you understand how the EPA actually test this, it makes sense. "Highway" isn't anything like what most people think it is. It's not cruising at 75mph with no traffic on a major interstate. It's more like busy country road driving.
> The "highway" program, on the other hand, is created to emulate rural and interstate freeway driving with a warmed-up engine, making no stops (both of which ensure maximum fuel economy). The vehicle is driven for 10 miles over a period of 12.5 minutes with an average speed of 48 mph and a top speed of 60 mph
Further, the force of drag grows exponentially with speed. Going 75mph on the interstate is massively less fuel efficient than 48mph.
I have an old toyota camry hybrid. The estimated range is calculated based on the trip mpg, and as such is accurate when I'm going like a speed demon or cruising along at 90kph.
Displaying a marketing number on the dash is inexcusable, regardless of how fast or slow drivers are going.
Tesla advertises 350+ miles on its cars. I’d bet money that the cars can’t do 300 in normal weather, normal driving conditions without the AC/heater on, on a straight road with no elevation gain.
These are the things they blame when they say EPA estimates are different becase blah blah…
How can Tesla advertise a “more accurate” number if they are required by regulation to use EPA estimate?
EPA range estimates being inaccurate is a real problem. They do not, and are not designed to, give actual expected range. It’s meant to be an “average” of “mixed” driving.
Take latest Model Y as example. If you compare EPA range vs WLTP (commonly used in EU)
327mi EPA est. (526km) US version (long range) /
586km WLTP est. (364mi) EU version (long range)
The WLTP is “average” as well, so which of these is more accurate?
This problem is not unique to Teslas, and actually not unique to EVs either. It’s just more noticeable, as ICE vehicles usually advertise MPG and tank size, not total range. So EVs suffer from their own advertisement highlighting numbers that will never be accurate.
They are allowed to advertise lower numbers than the EPA, and are also allowed to use different tests. Tesla typically uses the test that is most favorible to their own range rating.
Some other manufacturers go to a lot of effort to make sure that they aren't overstating things (eg, Porsche), but you are right that this isn't the norm.
> EPA range estimates being inaccurate is a real problem. They do not, and are not designed to, give actual expected range. It’s meant to be an “average” of “mixed” driving.
Also, EPA ranges expect mostly constant speed and driving within the speed limit, neither of which matches real world driving
> How can Tesla advertise a “more accurate” number if they are required by regulation to use EPA estimate?
By also providing the worst case scenario numbers in addition to the EPA numbers. Tesla could simply do a highway range test at 70mph, ideally in Winter:
There's nothing stopping Tesla showing these things.
The one time Tesla did a towing demonstration those numbers turned out to be lies. Tesla never ran the quarter mile that they claimed to. When even your engineers lack basic honesty you've got a sick company culture:
The worst case scenario is pretty much unbounded. 80mph range will be worse than 70mph. But it's still better than range at 90mph or 100mph.
I guess you could use the highest legal speed limit in the US alongside the lowest temp and fastest headwinds ever recorded in Texas. In conjunction with the heaviest, least aerodynamic thing that the vehicle can physically tow.
But that may be annoying to replicate in a controlled setting and will be even less relevant to most people than the EPA distance.
You can review claims from some YTers here[0]. But I've copied the params and results over for the Model 3. They also have tons of other cars tested in similar params[1].
Testing procedure:
- Tire pressure set to manufacturer recommendation
- DCFC to 100% SoC to ensure optimal battery temperature
- Most energy efficient drive setting
- Climate control set between 68-72 on most eco-friendly mode that still allows A/C, on lowest auto fan setting
- 70 mph constant GPS-verified speed with gentle acceleration to reach speed
- Avoid drafting trucks or other vehicles
- Stay on highway at 70 mph constant for as long as possible, until power is cut or low single digit SoC
- Use frontage roads at low SoC, try to maintain 55+ mph until stated remaining range depleted
- Arrive at charger just as car crosses 0-1 miles remaining and 0% SoC
Route:
- Drive from Wellington, CO up I-25 to Cheyenne, WY. Then east on I-80 into Nebraska
- Route ensures minimal elevation impact, and any wind is documented. Wind typically blows easterly, so the long stretch along I-80 allows for headwind to become tailwind at turnaround.
Tesla Model 3 Performance:
EPA: 303 mi
Actual: 288 mi / 265 Wh/mi
Tesla Model 3 LR AWD Panasonic:
EPA: 341 mi
Actual: 365 mi / 215 Wh/mi
Tesla Model 3 SR RWD LFP:
EPA: 272 mi
Actual: 277 mi / 213 Wh/mi
Tesla Model 3 LR AWD LG:
EPA: 305 mi
Actual: 308 mi / 249 Wh/mi
Tesla Model 3 LR RWD:
EPA: 363 mi
Actual: 386 mi / 206 Wh/mi
> in normal weather, normal driving conditions without the AC/heater on, on a straight road with no elevation gain.
Another aspect of this debate from my own experience, Tesla's range estimates from the navigation system are much more accurate (which should be obvious because otherwise people would constantly get stranded when taking a road trip). Tesla would probably argue that is because all those factors you listed that impact range stop being assumptions when a defined time and route are known. But it is still no excuse for assuming the absolute best case scenario when defining the range used in marketing or displayed on the equivalent of the car's fuel gauge. If anything, the accuracy of those navigation estimates makes the other inaccuracies seem even more nefarious.
No different than fuel range numbers (fuel tank capacity x mpg) for ICE vehicles. They are under perfect conditions in a lab with no accessories.
It might not be realistic but it’s absolutely the best way to compare it to other vehicles.
No. They are still a pleasure to drive. It’s a great commuter car and depending on the electricity rates and whether you have solar panels, slightly more economical than ICE cars. And I’ve had lower maintenance costs. But that’s about it. Like all cars they have their own problems.
They are among the best in class when it comes efficiency so I don't understand where they are falling short. I've rented EquinoxEV(2024,Model 3(2022), Mach-E(2021 non heat pump) and Bolt EV(2023) for roadtrips and it seemed as if all except Mach-E were pretty good on their estimates. I guess I need to measure miles very closely. Maybe they were all just falling short and I didn't realize. :/
I know some of the lithium-sodium batteries behave differently now but my Model Y yells at me whenever I charge above 80% or go below 20%, saying it's bad for the battery. Not exactly inspiring if it causes more wear unless you sacrifice 40% of the range.
It isn't super harmful to occasionally use the full capacity for longer road-trip type situations, but it is indeed slightly better for long-term (100k+ mile) battery health to keep it in the 10-80% range most of the time. But it's also not a big deal if you constantly use 0-100%; it'll just be ballpark ~10% degraded at 100k miles.
Where's the sacrifice? Just charge it to 100% before you leave for a 200+ mile trip, there's even a setting in your app to make that happen automatically (it'll start charging at e.g. 2am or whatever is needed for your departure time).
Did you gas up your car every time you drove back from work? No, right? So why complain that the car doesn't sit at 100% all the time in your garage? Seems like a silly complaint to me.
The sacrifice is that you can't use 40% of what's supposedly the range.
> Did you gas up your car every time you drove back from work? No, right?
Right, you gas up your car when it needs more gas. You can't do that with an electric car for two reasons: (1) you need to fuel the car well in advance of trying to use it, because fueling is extremely slow; (2) you can't go low on fuel without damaging the car.
The only logical response to this state of affairs is to try to fuel the car whenever it's not in use.
> So why complain that the car doesn't sit at 100% all the time in your garage?
Capacity that you're not supposed to use is not capacity that you can usefully be said to have.
You shouldn't normally run a fuel powered car all the way to empty either. Fuel pumps tend to be cooled by the fuel they're pumping, running low means you might be pumping air in addition to fuel and air cooling isn't as effective as liquid cooling, so you will overheat your fuel pump (may not be a big deal depending on how long you can go with the tank critically empty). Fuel tanks also accumulate crud which is more likely to make it out of the tank when you run it low. And your fuel tank may be more likely to corrode when it has more air in it, which naturally happens when it has less fuel, so you should keep it mostly full when possible.
That said, it's usually not a big deal until your vehicle and its fuel tank has sat on the side of the road unused for a few years, and your fuel has degraded in place.
I think that's pretty fair on the side of the EPA, it's good for drivers to keep the estimate conservative. Imagine if the difference between "ideal" driving and "everyday" driving was like half. Someone who plans a road trip with the advertised range in mind is probably gonna have a bad day.
And because it's bad for batteries to be fully charged/discharged they should probably take that into consideration as well since "you could go further if you damage your car" isn't exactly a normal driving scenario.
I also own an EV. Mine is a Seik MG4 (long range) - a Chinese beastie with an old school British marque slapped on it. I went to school in Abingdon, Oxon, which is where the Morris Garage comes from. My car didn't!
There is a standard for range - WLTP - does the US subscribe to it? The W stands for Worldwide.
My car has a WLTP range of 323 miles. I've managed better than that. The standard itself is pretty decent and far better than the old one.
EVs are different to ICEs. Mind you they are both pretty efficient at around 50mph - funny that. EVs hate cold but if you pre-heat the battery, then its not so bad. An ICE can always have a bigger tank and you can easily pop a 15l can in the boot (trunk) to grab an extra 50 miles or so. EVs don't have that flexibility.
However, I pay 7p per KWh to charge my car and I fuel up at home instead of at Tesco. My "tank" costs about £5 and I can get about 300 miles out of it.
My other car (Renault Clio) costs about £70 at the moment (it has been far worse) to fuel up and I'll get roughly 700 miles out of it.
In Europe I think that EV vs !EV is almost certainly won but I do get that in the Americas, where it can get proper chilly at times and the distances involved can be huge means that an EV might not be indicated without a lot of caveats. EVs mostly do cost more too for the initial purchase, which isn't helpful.
Despite all that, do note I routinely pay roughly £5 for 300 miles, and I don't have to piss around with garages. My car plugs into my house!
The US uses EPA testing instead of WTLP. WTLP is closer to EPA than the Chinese standard but it's not uncommon for the EPA range to be 10-20% lower. Ofc people assume they'll get the EPA range if they're driving 80mph into a headwind which is when they run into trouble
Oh and I should probably ask how you felt when you first floored the pedal on your Tesla and realised it was sodding dangerous!
EVs have ferocious acceleration - no gears and no need to "wind up".
I used to own a Honda S2000 which was pretty funky - it could lift off in sixth gear and run up to around 150mph. EVs basically destroy ICEs - no gear box.
I did rather enjoy the S2000 when it hit 6500 rpm and then it decided to kick in and go a bit mental.
Dont cancel the appointment, insist they repair it, do 3-4 attempts even if they close it as “expected characteristic” or “education”, then request a lemon law buy back for failure to honor the warranty. Check your purchase agreement for where to send the lemon law request. Demand incident compensation during the buyback if they failed to provide loaners.
The fact is that WLTP is useless. I can do 2/3 WLTP range in summer and 1/3 WLTP range in winter on highway with long range Model Y. That’s bad joke. Luckily I drive long distances extremely seldom. Crawling at 60 mph all the time is not an option for me.
The article really focusses on range loss when cold, but as far as I can see that isn't really true.
The reality is there is lots of range loss when using the cabin heater, which obviously one is most likely to do when cold. All modern Tesla's use heat pumps for cabin heating, which ~halves the range loss, but it's still substantial.
Considering this, plus the fact that it's just annoying, it's strange that they don't let you turn the heated steering wheel or seat on without turning the heater on. It's literally not permitted. I have to work around it by setting the fan to 1 manually every time.
Unless you are in some wildly different version of a Tesla. My '22 Model Y does not have this characteristic. I almost all the time have my seat and wheel heat on without climate control on. I am guessing you are not using the seat/wheel option pinned to the bottom of the UI and going into the climate control.
Does the heater really use all that much energy? A home space heater is something on the order of 1 kW, which is a fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car.
The climate control in my (non-tesla fwiw) EV with a heat pump uses around 2kW when its going full-out. Anecdotally it also heats the cabin much faster than a space heater would.
Usually it's only pulling that much juice for the beginning of a drive and after a few minutes it reduces when it finds a steady-state.
2kW is about the same amount of juice that the drivetrain pulls when driving 35mph, so it can make a pretty big difference in the efficiency of shorter drives.
Sidenote: even though resistive heating is less efficient in heat per watt, using the heated seats is usually more efficient in terms of comfort per watt than heating the entire cabin
>A home space heater is something on the order of 1 kW, which is a fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car.
How are you getting "fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car"?. Wikipedia says the model 3 (long range, RWD) has 82 kWh capacity and 363 mi range. If you drive at 40mph that's 9hrs of driving, meaning the car consumes 9kW at that speed. 1kW is not "fraction of a percent" of that.
Yes - for a non-heat pump it's 2-3kw, all-in.
The car is not using more than ~10kw, all-in.
Today, it's closer to 1.5kw, all-in, accounting for heat pumps, etc.
Cooling is less intensive.
Keep in mind:
Homes are also often well-insulated, at least, much more so than a car. Most car insulation is designed for noise/etc, not for temperature control. The glass is usually R-1 or worse.
So if you want realism:
My wife's office, no more than 150 sqft, built in 1923, and with no real insulation in the walls (and no space for it), and a bunch of older windows, can't be kept at 68F by a 1500 watt space heater running 100% of the time on a cold day (IE 30deg F).
This is in GA, so not exactly a super-cold climate, eiher.
Meanwhile, my workshop, same property, built a few years ago, 2000 sqft, and amazingly well insulated, can easily be heated/cooled to 72F by a 1.5kw minisplit running basically never.
Consider that your typical older long range model 3 had a 75 kWh battery in their first day, and one might typically charge it to 80%. So that 1kW, for one hour, is far more than a fraction of a percent of the practical battery capacity.
Mine doesn't have a heat pump, so I can definitely notice range decreases. Also consider that the battery likes to be at a good temperature, and that isn't going to be free if your car is parked outside for 8 hours. That changes range too
Tesla's used to, not sure if they still do, had a four way valve that could be used to route coolant around the system in the right direction. High wear and failure rate part.
EPA is a cycle of speeds with a max of about 60 MPH. The EPA range is accurate if you drive the EPA cycle in your car - which obviously no one does. I feel like everyone knows this by now.
kind of odd article to post, just feels like rage bait
My 2022 EV6 comes pretty close to its advertised range: advertised as 310 miles, and I regularly get 240 out of an 80% charge (assuming I'm driving responsibly lol)
Driving range can be estimated well: my VW ID.4 is pretty good at it, and the range estimate that it shows can be relied upon after correcting for things like headwind or driving uphill.
The max range I get is pretty close to the advertised one, too.
So do not believe when somebody says it can't be done.
Oh looks like there a lot of people in this boat. Things have been degrading over time for sure. My car seems to be consuming “battery miles” at more than twice the regular miles.
May be this is why musk got into politics, so he can kill any regulatory body investigating Tesla battery complaints.
i own a tesla and range is very annoying, though some of the comments here are a bit sensationalist. for me, fsd more than makes up for it. if i had to buy a car today, i'd have to get another tesla because there's no alternative to fsd.
I recently purchased new Y long range with “337” miles . Apparently EPA also applies a 0.7 handicap factor — a policy added in 2017 to address misleading range listings. My first 180m test drive completed within expectations , so things seemed great.
I then did what should have been an easy 270 mile drive and the planner warned it would not make it . I stopped in for a 10 mile top up and arrived with just 16 miles remaining. Thinking the return trip would be better due to the topography, I had about the same bad experience .
I’ve since learned that supercharger preconditioning kills 15-30 miles , so you need to fill up 50+ or you actually end up with less than if you hadn’t stopped. Even with this loss, the range doesn’t meet expectations .
Sure I did everything I could , including driving below the speed limit , using “chill model , preconditioning , departing at a scheduled time, avoiding climate control. I usually exceed EPA gas estimates due to my chill approach .
I was very disappointed for my brand new car to come up 20% short in what seemed to be nearly ideal conditions .
My car doesn't get anything near the advertised mileage but that's because of speed and driving style. I'm thrilled with it. On long road trips I fill (charge) to about 1.5X my expected driving mileage, and don't have any problems. If, however, I was worried about the number, I would drive a different car… but then life would be no fun.
I hear you, but during my testing I’ve been driving like a grandma , and I usually drive tame enough to exceed Gas EPA estimates by 15%, so I was really shocked to have terrible EV range. In my 270 mile test I was under 60 for 85% of the trip, and never over 75
My 2020 S has a lifetime Wh/Mi of ~260. When the battery was new it was 96 kWh, that's 369 miles. And I floor that sucker all the time for fun, blast the stereo, and run the A/C constantly. Luggage rack on the roof.
At the end of the day, I've never had a real problem with the range. I definitely don't feel lied to. I wouldn't trade it for any other car in the world.
I flew by a Cybertruck on the highway the other day like it was sitting still. It really should have had its hazards on, but I assume the additional power draw would have compounded the problem. Imagine spending all that money to compensate for your dominance anxiety, only to add range anxiety to your list of problems.
It feels less like "horseshoe theory" to me, and more like projection: accuse your opponents of doing the things you do. Your supporters believe it because that's what they want to do so you must want it too.
The horseshoe theory can at least be honest, albeit ironic. This is just plain deceit and manipulation.
I have a model 3 (from 2023), that is rated 270 miles. I can get at max 120 miles, more like 90 miles from it. My drive to work involves going steeply uphill, not very cold. The only reason I don’t care is I have free office charging. If I didn’t I would be pissed by the range I observe.
Also Tesla servicing is famously bad, and the way the employees treat service requests (as described in the article) explains a lot
Slightly more nuanced: the "range"/battery level listed constantly is always bunk. When I enter a destination the final battery level is very accurate. This counts in cold weather or hot, with terrain effects or not. Sometimes even weather. It's quite good and I imagine there's some data driven process from past performance of the vehicle.
So, if you plan to test drive a Tesla, evaluate its range this way. If you're curious for me the listed range is often around 300, and the effective drive range tends to be around 250 200, seldom less except in cold weather.
Counterpoint:
Our BMW i3 gets EPA range on my round trip commute in the summer. It starts at the top of a mountain with a “100%” (actually 90% according to reverse engineering) battery (a tesla couldn’t regen in that situation, the bmw can).
It can be as low as 80% of EPA range with the heat pump cranked up in low 30F’s weather.
I’ve carefully measured two other EVs (not Tesla) on that route. One gets 110% of EPA, but can’t regen at 100% (so, it is similar to the BMW model without the hard 90% charge cap). The other gets EPA in the winter and does not have a heat pump.
FWIW, Tesla drivers that live up here complain about bogus range estimates.
I agree with the “type in destination and let the computer estimate” approach. That works well on all three cars, despite the mountains.
Getting only 30% of the advertised range would be very unlikely unless you always drive uphill and in the cold. I've had a Model 3 and a Model Y, and would get at least 80-85% of the advertised range in average California weather.
If they were traveling uphill to work you’d think they would gain some of that back coming back downhill. But I’m guessing it might be very hilly terrain where the roads are not level at all. The crazier thing is that their commute is 60+ miles one way (based on saying they are lucky they can charge at work).
GP wouldn't notice effects of uphill and downhill averaging out if he starts at the bottom and charges at the top. And GP is implying he do.
Looking at Tessie, my Model Y's lifetime average is 83% (289 Wh/mi at ~40,000 miles) and my Model 3's average is also 83% (280 Wh/mi at ~53,000 miles).
Most of my driving is in the Washington/PNW, so a bit more hilly and colder than California.
I have 2014 Tesla S and 80-85% is just about right
If the gradient is steep enough then you would not be recouping most of the energy going back downhill because your brakes will be burning off the energy. Uphill and downhills is a combination where the estimated range might be thrown off entirely, depending on situation.
Regardless, even with a small gradient, the kinetic energy can never need 100% converted back into stored energy into the battery. There will always be a loss.
> I have a model 3 (from 2023), that is rated 270 miles. I can get at max 120 miles, more like 90 miles from it. My drive to work involves going steeply uphill, not very cold. The only reason I don’t care is I have free office charging. If I didn’t I would be pissed by the range I observe.
Were you mislead about or unaware of the range claims when you bought the car?
I don't own an EV or have any real interest in them, but I know the range is highly dependent on driving conditions and automobile condition (often to a much greater degree than ICE vehicles) and I'd assumed that was made pretty clear in advertising materials and sales pitch. I could easily see unscrupulous companies and salesmen or just unaware 2nd hand buyers being caught out by the range claims though.
The 270 actually 120 is a bit dramatic, but it does highlight a lot of the fundamental problems with range in EVs, especially the "200 miles is enough" crowd.
1) for battery preservation, you generally do not fully charge every night. So, lose 10% from that
2) battery degradation, things are better, but 10% max loss is common I would say
3) people drive faster than testing. Knock off about 10% for that
4) cold? hot? AC? heat? another 10% off
5) there isn't a charger around every corner, so you have to plan ahead and to be safe get a charger when you're at like ... 10% left
Holy crap, 50% loss of range! And if you are in a scenario where you are recharging on the road, you are doing the "80% charge" which really is a loss of 10-20% more effective range. Ok, the poster isn't being that dramatic.
This is why for non-city non-commuter scenarios, especially in midwest/rural areas, a PHEV with a 50 mile all-electric range would simnply be a far better car, for far less battery supply. Daily city driving rarely exceeds 50%, the engine can do range extension on the rare long distance trips, and it can also help with heat/cooling that heat pumps can't help with. PHEV drivetrains will still have regen, peppy acceleration, and good torque if done correctly.
I'm hoping the Dodge Ramcharger does really well. 100 miles almost in all-electric, and an engine to recharge it for really long ranges and towing capacity.
A truly peer range EV will probably need another 50% density, so
I have a model 3 from 2019 that is not quite as extreme, but gets similar issues. It should have 350 km of range. I see some people posting insane wh/km numbers, but I think I'm doing a pretty decent job (130-140 wh/km or ~225.31 wh/mile average outside of the winter); I barely get 270-280km, max.
The issue isn't the driving range, but rather the unexplained loss of range. I'm talking about losses of 7.5% if I leave it parked in front of my house for an hour or two. I have photos too; if you reach out to Tesla, they curtly tell me the battery is fine.
A vague "you need to keep your car plugged in" is frankly insane, what if I went on a 100km trip, left my car outside for an hour or two, and came back without enough range to go home? I've heard people say to disable the app on my phone, but that frankly seems like a Tesla problem, not a "me" problem.
I still enjoy driving the car. I just wouldn't trust it for long range driving. I probably will buy Hyundai or BYD (if Canada lets them in) next time.
Idle draw is a pretty common complaint for Teslas.
Yes, I think that's a definite issue for the generation of Model 3 that I have. I had to disable sentry because it was taking a significant chunk too (and I didn't even bother putting a disk inside).
While the idle draw is relatively high on Teslas compared to other EVs (even without sentry mode enabled), 7.5% is quite high. I track my stats with Teslamate and it estimates typical SoC loss of 1% over a day.
What I have seen is that the BMS may update its SoC estimate after driving, and I've seen it adjust the estimated SoC up or down by as much as 5% in some cases.
I get that from a planning perspective, it still stinks to have range than you thought you did an hour ago, but it's not all that different from the variation you might get with an analog dial on the gas tank, just that it's much easier to notice and track when it's digital and showed as a precise number.
5% to 7% is pretty normal for me - in both summer and winter. This is just leaving the car in front of my house for a few hours (let's say I don't want to park it in the separate garage).
https://imgdrop.io/image/IMG-2984.ADiI7
It's not the end of the world for driving around town with less than my whole family (which is 90% of my driving) but it's definitely annoying to come back to a car with 50% charge and see it with 43. I imagine it would be terrifying for a 20 -> 13, especially with the lack of supercharging infrastructure where I live (Calgary).
Huh, that's quite a bit more than I would expect. You already ruled out the 12V battery in the other thread, but there could be some other factors that would keep your car awake.
Does it only happen when you park in front of the garage at home, or does it also happen if you go out somewhere? For example, it might be struggling to connect to your WiFi at home (if you set it up with your home WiFi credentials) to download updates or upload telemetry, which would keep it awake longer than normal as it tries to make do with kilobits per second of usable bandwidth.
I’ve only seen an EV do that once. The 12V battery died about a week later. (Or, rather, I left it parked, and after pouring 10% (!!) of the high voltage battery into the 12V, it gave up and completely shut down.)
Anyway, I wonder if Tesla’s are missing the “if 12V is completely shot, give up” logic. Replacing it is cheap and might fix the car. Some models let you monitor the 12V charger with an OBD-II dongle.
That’d let you prove me right or wrong.
Just to be clear, I actually had Tesla replace the 12V last year because I was worried that was the cause.
The problem did not improve.
what's the mileage like when you take into account the downhill return trip? Unless your commute is uphill both ways through the snow :)
There might not actually be a downhill return trip if the commute involves going over a bunch of hills as is common in a pretty well known city that both has a lot of teslas and fits the parent's description.
If so, they'll get much of the energy expended going uphill back on the downhills, thanks to regenerative braking.
In the Tesla Semi announcement, they showed pretty impressive data on exactly that. Here's a shot of the graph and some data: https://kilowatt.page/tesla-semi-regen-roundtrip-efficiency-...
Of course, this is from Tesla, and they famously puff up everything.. but I would expect even if not as good as claimed here, for the downhill part to certainly help a lot still.
What may not help is if they fully charge at work and have no battery capacity to soak up the regen on the way home. Regen ability gets limited the closer you get to 100%.
Neither are Teslas, but our cars range from getting 10%-33% back when going back down a mountain (curves, no traffic, avoiding using the brake pads or switching between charge/discharge on the throttle).
The results they report are incomparable for two reasons:
- straight line steep mountain roads don’t exist. On curvy roads (like mine) they’d need to repeatedly round trip energy to and from the battery, and that’s going to eat about 5% each time.
- the article claims going up and down the mountain uses as much energy as driving one mile. During the ascend/descend they drive 500 miles. The wind resistance for one mile flat and one mile on the mountain should be comparable, so their 95% efficiency number must be subtracting that (and rolling resistance) out.
Are you going from 100% battery down to like 10%?
My Polestar 2 range is not great in the cold and on hills, but the real gotcha is charging it to 80% and then plugging in around 30%. Using about 42 kW / 100 U.S. mile that means 50% of a roughly 75 kW battery only gives me 89 miles between charges. (But some of that is self imposed.)
Still 180 mile range would be well under the advertised 260.
Now if I use 100% and I get closer to 35 kW / 100 miles in the summer, the range is about 215 miles. Curious how much better it'll be in the summer though.
Take a picture of your energy screen and post it.
i have a model s 2022 and get 250 miles going 80 miles/hour.
Do gas cars get advertised mileage on steep hills? I don't believe so.
Electric cars being much, much heavier than petrol cars do have a disadvantage going uphill.
I'd still reckon that range estimates should ignore these extreme edge cases, though.
> Electric cars being much, much heavier than petrol cars
This is one of those comments that continues to come up but has never added up. Certainly if you are comparing a Tesla compared to a compact or a Euro version of a compact. Absolutely there is a weight difference. The problem is if you did a like for like comparison..a Model Y is the same Weight as an X3. A Model 3 is a couple hundred pounds heavier than a Toyota Camry.
You’re right but the difference isn’t as big as from the advertised 270 to 90-120. Also electric cars suffer from battery degradation which hampers the range quite a bit.
I don't think batteries degrade that much that fast. I would imagine it's akin to gas cars, where you lose about 10% or so in efficiency after you put on a lot of miles, like 100k. (My EV6 seems to be as efficient as when I bought it in 2022, but my driving style is all over the place, so it's hard to measure from one charge to the next if I'm feeling a bit spirited in my driving that day)
Are you sure about that? If you go only uphill in a gas car you will use a lot more fuel per km, just like an EV.
How fast do you normally drive?
Having road tripped from Florida to Washington and back in a big circle around the country, it is my firm belief that every single person complaining about the range estimates in a Tesla is speeding.
By altering my driving style, I can get more range than the estimate. It's extremely predictable and accurate, to the point where I can notice the power drain from the self driving computers/cameras, arrive at the next supercharger at exactly the 3% I aim for, etc.
There was a point in my road trip when I was on top of a mountain, and it said I would reach the next charger 100km away with 20km of range remaining, but I was only at 90km at the time. I made it with 17km of range remaining.
The estimates are really good and useful if you don't speed.
The article is talking not about the route planner, which I agree usually gives very accurate estimates for specific routes, but the advertised theoretical driving "EPA ranges", which are quite inflated.
However, from what I can tell, the EPA numbers from all manufacturers are quite unrealistic, because the methodology doesn't match real-world driving.
The problem with EPA range is that it's a compromise between highway range and city range, so it's almost guaranteed to poorly match your driving unless your daily driving mix equals the averages. This is a consequence of insisting on one number, not inflation.
Inb4 "just pick highway range and be conservative" -- no, because then you will buy a car with great aerodynamics and terrible regen and spend all day driving it around the city using the terrible regen and not using the great aerodynamics.
Yes, this is certainly true for ICE vehicles. The measurement methodology is spelled out in exacting detail, and yields highly repeatable results. Realistic? Nope, not at all. Nobody could claim that. But, it is repeatable and comparable, so that you can compare car A to car B. It gives you a strict rank order for vehicles that are driven exactly the same way, it just so happens that no person drives exactly that particular way. The utility is in providing a repeatable point of comparison. Is that useful?... forgive me for saying it, but YMMV.
When you understand how the EPA actually test this, it makes sense. "Highway" isn't anything like what most people think it is. It's not cruising at 75mph with no traffic on a major interstate. It's more like busy country road driving.
> The "highway" program, on the other hand, is created to emulate rural and interstate freeway driving with a warmed-up engine, making no stops (both of which ensure maximum fuel economy). The vehicle is driven for 10 miles over a period of 12.5 minutes with an average speed of 48 mph and a top speed of 60 mph
Further, the force of drag grows exponentially with speed. Going 75mph on the interstate is massively less fuel efficient than 48mph.
https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/...
I have an old toyota camry hybrid. The estimated range is calculated based on the trip mpg, and as such is accurate when I'm going like a speed demon or cruising along at 90kph.
Displaying a marketing number on the dash is inexcusable, regardless of how fast or slow drivers are going.
Makes me wonder how it is stated. Normal driving conditions for many (most?) drivers is faster than the posted speed limit.
Speeding is a given, even a necessity on most US highways. Everyone is speeding by 10 maybe even 15 mph as a baseline.
Yes every person who doesn't have your exact experience is both lying and morally bad.
Tesla advertises 350+ miles on its cars. I’d bet money that the cars can’t do 300 in normal weather, normal driving conditions without the AC/heater on, on a straight road with no elevation gain.
These are the things they blame when they say EPA estimates are different becase blah blah…
(I own a Tesla)
How can Tesla advertise a “more accurate” number if they are required by regulation to use EPA estimate?
EPA range estimates being inaccurate is a real problem. They do not, and are not designed to, give actual expected range. It’s meant to be an “average” of “mixed” driving.
Take latest Model Y as example. If you compare EPA range vs WLTP (commonly used in EU)
327mi EPA est. (526km) US version (long range) / 586km WLTP est. (364mi) EU version (long range)
The WLTP is “average” as well, so which of these is more accurate?
This problem is not unique to Teslas, and actually not unique to EVs either. It’s just more noticeable, as ICE vehicles usually advertise MPG and tank size, not total range. So EVs suffer from their own advertisement highlighting numbers that will never be accurate.
They are allowed to advertise lower numbers than the EPA, and are also allowed to use different tests. Tesla typically uses the test that is most favorible to their own range rating.
Some other manufacturers go to a lot of effort to make sure that they aren't overstating things (eg, Porsche), but you are right that this isn't the norm.
> EPA range estimates being inaccurate is a real problem. They do not, and are not designed to, give actual expected range. It’s meant to be an “average” of “mixed” driving.
Also, EPA ranges expect mostly constant speed and driving within the speed limit, neither of which matches real world driving
> How can Tesla advertise a “more accurate” number if they are required by regulation to use EPA estimate?
By also providing the worst case scenario numbers in addition to the EPA numbers. Tesla could simply do a highway range test at 70mph, ideally in Winter:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
They could also show towing range:
https://insideevs.com/news/713690/tesla-cybertruck-range-dro...
There's nothing stopping Tesla showing these things.
The one time Tesla did a towing demonstration those numbers turned out to be lies. Tesla never ran the quarter mile that they claimed to. When even your engineers lack basic honesty you've got a sick company culture:
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3H8--CQRE
https://x.com/wmorrill3/status/1746266437088645551
The worst case scenario is pretty much unbounded. 80mph range will be worse than 70mph. But it's still better than range at 90mph or 100mph.
I guess you could use the highest legal speed limit in the US alongside the lowest temp and fastest headwinds ever recorded in Texas. In conjunction with the heaviest, least aerodynamic thing that the vehicle can physically tow.
But that may be annoying to replicate in a controlled setting and will be even less relevant to most people than the EPA distance.
You can review claims from some YTers here[0]. But I've copied the params and results over for the Model 3. They also have tons of other cars tested in similar params[1].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmn7gpuAp9E[1]: https://outofspecstudios.com/70-mph-range
> in normal weather, normal driving conditions without the AC/heater on, on a straight road with no elevation gain.
Another aspect of this debate from my own experience, Tesla's range estimates from the navigation system are much more accurate (which should be obvious because otherwise people would constantly get stranded when taking a road trip). Tesla would probably argue that is because all those factors you listed that impact range stop being assumptions when a defined time and route are known. But it is still no excuse for assuming the absolute best case scenario when defining the range used in marketing or displayed on the equivalent of the car's fuel gauge. If anything, the accuracy of those navigation estimates makes the other inaccuracies seem even more nefarious.
No different than fuel range numbers (fuel tank capacity x mpg) for ICE vehicles. They are under perfect conditions in a lab with no accessories. It might not be realistic but it’s absolutely the best way to compare it to other vehicles.
On any ICE I've ever driven, the range number displayed on the dash is calculated from the current trip's average mpg.
Subtracting the politics but including the actual range, do you regret the purchase?
No. They are still a pleasure to drive. It’s a great commuter car and depending on the electricity rates and whether you have solar panels, slightly more economical than ICE cars. And I’ve had lower maintenance costs. But that’s about it. Like all cars they have their own problems.
They are among the best in class when it comes efficiency so I don't understand where they are falling short. I've rented EquinoxEV(2024,Model 3(2022), Mach-E(2021 non heat pump) and Bolt EV(2023) for roadtrips and it seemed as if all except Mach-E were pretty good on their estimates. I guess I need to measure miles very closely. Maybe they were all just falling short and I didn't realize. :/
I know some of the lithium-sodium batteries behave differently now but my Model Y yells at me whenever I charge above 80% or go below 20%, saying it's bad for the battery. Not exactly inspiring if it causes more wear unless you sacrifice 40% of the range.
It isn't super harmful to occasionally use the full capacity for longer road-trip type situations, but it is indeed slightly better for long-term (100k+ mile) battery health to keep it in the 10-80% range most of the time. But it's also not a big deal if you constantly use 0-100%; it'll just be ballpark ~10% degraded at 100k miles.
Where's the sacrifice? Just charge it to 100% before you leave for a 200+ mile trip, there's even a setting in your app to make that happen automatically (it'll start charging at e.g. 2am or whatever is needed for your departure time).
Did you gas up your car every time you drove back from work? No, right? So why complain that the car doesn't sit at 100% all the time in your garage? Seems like a silly complaint to me.
The difference is that I can fill my gas tank to 100% in a few minutes almost anywhere, no planning is necessary.
The sacrifice is that you can't use 40% of what's supposedly the range.
> Did you gas up your car every time you drove back from work? No, right?
Right, you gas up your car when it needs more gas. You can't do that with an electric car for two reasons: (1) you need to fuel the car well in advance of trying to use it, because fueling is extremely slow; (2) you can't go low on fuel without damaging the car.
The only logical response to this state of affairs is to try to fuel the car whenever it's not in use.
> So why complain that the car doesn't sit at 100% all the time in your garage?
Capacity that you're not supposed to use is not capacity that you can usefully be said to have.
You shouldn't normally run a fuel powered car all the way to empty either. Fuel pumps tend to be cooled by the fuel they're pumping, running low means you might be pumping air in addition to fuel and air cooling isn't as effective as liquid cooling, so you will overheat your fuel pump (may not be a big deal depending on how long you can go with the tank critically empty). Fuel tanks also accumulate crud which is more likely to make it out of the tank when you run it low. And your fuel tank may be more likely to corrode when it has more air in it, which naturally happens when it has less fuel, so you should keep it mostly full when possible.
That said, it's usually not a big deal until your vehicle and its fuel tank has sat on the side of the road unused for a few years, and your fuel has degraded in place.
You can use the extra 40% when you need it (road trips), but you shouldn’t be using it when you don’t need it (daily commutes).
> The sacrifice is that you can't use 40% of what's supposedly the range.
I do it all the time, just not every day. Going skiing? Set the car to charge in the morning. 40 minutes at 90%+ isn't going to hurt anything.
I think you've badly misunderstood that warning.
I think that's pretty fair on the side of the EPA, it's good for drivers to keep the estimate conservative. Imagine if the difference between "ideal" driving and "everyday" driving was like half. Someone who plans a road trip with the advertised range in mind is probably gonna have a bad day.
And because it's bad for batteries to be fully charged/discharged they should probably take that into consideration as well since "you could go further if you damage your car" isn't exactly a normal driving scenario.
[dead]
I also own an EV. Mine is a Seik MG4 (long range) - a Chinese beastie with an old school British marque slapped on it. I went to school in Abingdon, Oxon, which is where the Morris Garage comes from. My car didn't!
There is a standard for range - WLTP - does the US subscribe to it? The W stands for Worldwide.
My car has a WLTP range of 323 miles. I've managed better than that. The standard itself is pretty decent and far better than the old one.
EVs are different to ICEs. Mind you they are both pretty efficient at around 50mph - funny that. EVs hate cold but if you pre-heat the battery, then its not so bad. An ICE can always have a bigger tank and you can easily pop a 15l can in the boot (trunk) to grab an extra 50 miles or so. EVs don't have that flexibility.
However, I pay 7p per KWh to charge my car and I fuel up at home instead of at Tesco. My "tank" costs about £5 and I can get about 300 miles out of it.
My other car (Renault Clio) costs about £70 at the moment (it has been far worse) to fuel up and I'll get roughly 700 miles out of it.
In Europe I think that EV vs !EV is almost certainly won but I do get that in the Americas, where it can get proper chilly at times and the distances involved can be huge means that an EV might not be indicated without a lot of caveats. EVs mostly do cost more too for the initial purchase, which isn't helpful.
Despite all that, do note I routinely pay roughly £5 for 300 miles, and I don't have to piss around with garages. My car plugs into my house!
The US uses EPA testing instead of WTLP. WTLP is closer to EPA than the Chinese standard but it's not uncommon for the EPA range to be 10-20% lower. Ofc people assume they'll get the EPA range if they're driving 80mph into a headwind which is when they run into trouble
Oh and I should probably ask how you felt when you first floored the pedal on your Tesla and realised it was sodding dangerous!
EVs have ferocious acceleration - no gears and no need to "wind up".
I used to own a Honda S2000 which was pretty funky - it could lift off in sixth gear and run up to around 150mph. EVs basically destroy ICEs - no gear box.
I did rather enjoy the S2000 when it hit 6500 rpm and then it decided to kick in and go a bit mental.
Dont cancel the appointment, insist they repair it, do 3-4 attempts even if they close it as “expected characteristic” or “education”, then request a lemon law buy back for failure to honor the warranty. Check your purchase agreement for where to send the lemon law request. Demand incident compensation during the buyback if they failed to provide loaners.
Discussed at the time:
Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36891642 - July 2023 (746 comments)
I have found Volkswagen’s range estimator and I think it’s trustworthy: https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/en/electric-and-hybrid/charging... I think, the range from here could be estimated for similar Tesla models too.
The fact is that WLTP is useless. I can do 2/3 WLTP range in summer and 1/3 WLTP range in winter on highway with long range Model Y. That’s bad joke. Luckily I drive long distances extremely seldom. Crawling at 60 mph all the time is not an option for me.
> Use our useful tool to get an estimated range based on factors such as your driving style, battery size and Volkswagen electric vehicle model.
That’s such a VW sentence.
The article really focusses on range loss when cold, but as far as I can see that isn't really true.
The reality is there is lots of range loss when using the cabin heater, which obviously one is most likely to do when cold. All modern Tesla's use heat pumps for cabin heating, which ~halves the range loss, but it's still substantial.
Considering this, plus the fact that it's just annoying, it's strange that they don't let you turn the heated steering wheel or seat on without turning the heater on. It's literally not permitted. I have to work around it by setting the fan to 1 manually every time.
Unless you are in some wildly different version of a Tesla. My '22 Model Y does not have this characteristic. I almost all the time have my seat and wheel heat on without climate control on. I am guessing you are not using the seat/wheel option pinned to the bottom of the UI and going into the climate control.
The article focuses on the censorship by "free speech" champions.
Does the heater really use all that much energy? A home space heater is something on the order of 1 kW, which is a fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car.
The climate control in my (non-tesla fwiw) EV with a heat pump uses around 2kW when its going full-out. Anecdotally it also heats the cabin much faster than a space heater would.
Usually it's only pulling that much juice for the beginning of a drive and after a few minutes it reduces when it finds a steady-state.
2kW is about the same amount of juice that the drivetrain pulls when driving 35mph, so it can make a pretty big difference in the efficiency of shorter drives.
Sidenote: even though resistive heating is less efficient in heat per watt, using the heated seats is usually more efficient in terms of comfort per watt than heating the entire cabin
>A home space heater is something on the order of 1 kW, which is a fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car.
How are you getting "fraction of a percent of what is needed to move the car"?. Wikipedia says the model 3 (long range, RWD) has 82 kWh capacity and 363 mi range. If you drive at 40mph that's 9hrs of driving, meaning the car consumes 9kW at that speed. 1kW is not "fraction of a percent" of that.
Yes - for a non-heat pump it's 2-3kw, all-in. The car is not using more than ~10kw, all-in.
Today, it's closer to 1.5kw, all-in, accounting for heat pumps, etc.
Cooling is less intensive.
Keep in mind: Homes are also often well-insulated, at least, much more so than a car. Most car insulation is designed for noise/etc, not for temperature control. The glass is usually R-1 or worse.
So if you want realism:
My wife's office, no more than 150 sqft, built in 1923, and with no real insulation in the walls (and no space for it), and a bunch of older windows, can't be kept at 68F by a 1500 watt space heater running 100% of the time on a cold day (IE 30deg F).
This is in GA, so not exactly a super-cold climate, eiher.
Meanwhile, my workshop, same property, built a few years ago, 2000 sqft, and amazingly well insulated, can easily be heated/cooled to 72F by a 1.5kw minisplit running basically never.
Consider that your typical older long range model 3 had a 75 kWh battery in their first day, and one might typically charge it to 80%. So that 1kW, for one hour, is far more than a fraction of a percent of the practical battery capacity.
Mine doesn't have a heat pump, so I can definitely notice range decreases. Also consider that the battery likes to be at a good temperature, and that isn't going to be free if your car is parked outside for 8 hours. That changes range too
When I floor my non-Tesla EV, I can see an instantaneous power consumption of 80kW. That's when flooring it. A smoother drive is more like 10kW.
I don't own a Tesla but driving most any speed in winter at near snow temperatures is going to be hard to work against!
It's not the same as an immobile insulated house.
> A home space heater is something on the order of 1 kW,
2kW in the civilized world.
I'm wondering, why the battery coolers are so sophisticated but never heat the cabin.
You need to heat the battery when it's cold too.
Tesla's used to, not sure if they still do, had a four way valve that could be used to route coolant around the system in the right direction. High wear and failure rate part.
If I’m not mistaken some or all also have battery heaters that consume a lot of energy.
EPA is a cycle of speeds with a max of about 60 MPH. The EPA range is accurate if you drive the EPA cycle in your car - which obviously no one does. I feel like everyone knows this by now.
kind of odd article to post, just feels like rage bait
My 2022 EV6 comes pretty close to its advertised range: advertised as 310 miles, and I regularly get 240 out of an 80% charge (assuming I'm driving responsibly lol)
IANAL but this seems like false advertising at best and fraudulent at worst.
In related news, wltp range estimates today are even worse than epa estimates back then.
And the EPA standards have changed since then, so that newer Teslas are much closer to their rated ranges than they were back then.
Kind of weird to see this here now.
Driving range can be estimated well: my VW ID.4 is pretty good at it, and the range estimate that it shows can be relied upon after correcting for things like headwind or driving uphill.
The max range I get is pretty close to the advertised one, too.
So do not believe when somebody says it can't be done.
Oh looks like there a lot of people in this boat. Things have been degrading over time for sure. My car seems to be consuming “battery miles” at more than twice the regular miles.
May be this is why musk got into politics, so he can kill any regulatory body investigating Tesla battery complaints.
i own a tesla and range is very annoying, though some of the comments here are a bit sensationalist. for me, fsd more than makes up for it. if i had to buy a car today, i'd have to get another tesla because there's no alternative to fsd.
I recently purchased new Y long range with “337” miles . Apparently EPA also applies a 0.7 handicap factor — a policy added in 2017 to address misleading range listings. My first 180m test drive completed within expectations , so things seemed great.
I then did what should have been an easy 270 mile drive and the planner warned it would not make it . I stopped in for a 10 mile top up and arrived with just 16 miles remaining. Thinking the return trip would be better due to the topography, I had about the same bad experience .
I’ve since learned that supercharger preconditioning kills 15-30 miles , so you need to fill up 50+ or you actually end up with less than if you hadn’t stopped. Even with this loss, the range doesn’t meet expectations .
Sure I did everything I could , including driving below the speed limit , using “chill model , preconditioning , departing at a scheduled time, avoiding climate control. I usually exceed EPA gas estimates due to my chill approach .
I was very disappointed for my brand new car to come up 20% short in what seemed to be nearly ideal conditions .
Driving style and speed also factor into it.
My car doesn't get anything near the advertised mileage but that's because of speed and driving style. I'm thrilled with it. On long road trips I fill (charge) to about 1.5X my expected driving mileage, and don't have any problems. If, however, I was worried about the number, I would drive a different car… but then life would be no fun.
I hear you, but during my testing I’ve been driving like a grandma , and I usually drive tame enough to exceed Gas EPA estimates by 15%, so I was really shocked to have terrible EV range. In my 270 mile test I was under 60 for 85% of the trip, and never over 75
Over-promise and under-deliver seems to be the base of any Musk controlled org.
With self-driving it's more like fraud than over-promising.
This nonsense again.
My 2020 S has a lifetime Wh/Mi of ~260. When the battery was new it was 96 kWh, that's 369 miles. And I floor that sucker all the time for fun, blast the stereo, and run the A/C constantly. Luggage rack on the roof.
At the end of the day, I've never had a real problem with the range. I definitely don't feel lied to. I wouldn't trade it for any other car in the world.
Why is this down-voted?
The Tesla team also spys on their customers [1] but there was way more pearl clutching on HN about Mozillas ToS change.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
I flew by a Cybertruck on the highway the other day like it was sitting still. It really should have had its hazards on, but I assume the additional power draw would have compounded the problem. Imagine spending all that money to compensate for your dominance anxiety, only to add range anxiety to your list of problems.
This company is a total dumpster fire. It will be amazing if their stock is above $50 this time next year.
And this guy is now in charge of America
What a fucking con man
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It feels less like "horseshoe theory" to me, and more like projection: accuse your opponents of doing the things you do. Your supporters believe it because that's what they want to do so you must want it too.
The horseshoe theory can at least be honest, albeit ironic. This is just plain deceit and manipulation.