Featured Fall of Tesla

I wondered about that because the wipers on my Volt and my Bolt kept the windshield clear in front of the cameras.

 

Toyota could have just disabled them upon wiper activation. Silly, IMHO....

moto g(7) power ?

 

It also uses the front facing camera for pedestrian detection

 

And they could have turned on the lights when the windshield wipers were activated. It is required here by state law but maybe 25% of the idiots (no that is wrong, it is 25% of the drivers are idiots) don't have light on in a downpour where you can't see 50 feet.

 

Slightly on topic:

Today I traveled from central Oregon to Central California. I'm quite attuned to the presence of EVs in general, so as I drive I keep a rough tally of the makes I see.

Today I noticed an oddity: I'm used to seeing a dozen or two Teslas on our monthly trip from the east bay area to southern California. But today I only saw TWO teslas in the first 235 miles of the trip. I was evaluating the AT&T vs Verizon data coverage along the I-5 corridor so I stopped periodically to check signal strength and speeds. That exposed me to more cars than normal as I'd pull over and the rejoin a different group of cars as I merged back into traffic.

The area covered in that 235 miles was typical pacific northwest. Tall mountains, valleys, civilization every 10 to 30 miles. 100 degree weather. Ok... such hot weather is atypical but it really was that hot.

It was not a matter of light traffic. I spotted dozens and dozens of hybrids and an occasional EV from other makers. There were half a dozen Primes on the road in that 235 miles too. The only conclusion that came to mind was that most people who have long range EVs are not using them for long range driving.

Do we have statistics available that show what percentage of users really use those Teslas with 400 mile range for regional travel as opposed to hopping between nearby cities?

 

@dbstoo I think your comparison of the PNW to SoCal traffic can be explained with a screenshot of PlugShare for the areas. There are a lot more charging stations in your SoCal route vs Cal to Oregon.

Tesla keeps raising the Y Long Range AWD prices. It’s prohibitively expensive to consider changing our Y LR RWD reservation to AWD with the significant hike. Wonder how Y sales are doing….

 

Unsure if we have statistics on that. We only have 240 mi EPA range with our SR 3+ Model 3, but you can add us, however to the 400+ mile range club. We're taking another trip down to L.A. tomorrow.

 

A technical view on why radar was removed:

Sorry if link is dead. I was able to watch it and the problem is the radar stream has dropouts that can not be detected.

This also explains some of the phantom braking events.

Bob Wilson

 

That link takes you to what looks like a 8 hour live broadcast. Correction, it's a capture of a day long broadcast.

Any other links to that data? Or the timestamp for where they talk about dropping the radar?

 

I found the discussion of vision VS radar at the 7 hour, 58 minute mark.

 

Certainly appears to be a good correlation there. As they say, build it and they will come.

Also, most Teslas out there are Model 3s. A couple of our family friends have Model 3s and a second ICE SUV and preferred the space of SUVs for long trips. One of these families picked up a Model Y last year and now take that on trips instead.

Can't personally speak for I-5 and PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) north of the Bay Area and Sacramento, but we are wrapping up our trip down to L.A.. Took I-5 down and PCH back up in our 240 mi EPA range SR 3+ Model 3. Saw many dozens of Teslas making the haul, numbers that continue to grow compared to our prior trips along those stretches.

 

so ..... you're aware that the BMW plugin SUV is not distinguishable between the ICE? .... or the Volvo SUV plugin? .... or the Subaru? .... or the Hyundai? or the Kona?
gee . . . that's pretty good !!

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'tesla ranked most american made car'

 

Very quick turn over after manufacture date. Consider this:
Rav4Prime - if you want it without slow 3kW charging - you pay typically over $50K after obscene dealership markup !!! Really? for a Rav4?!? fine.
now compare that w/ a Y that's stock AWD?
your choice

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You're really reaching there, aren't you? A quick google search indicates that the BMW iX3 was not sold in the US market during at least the 1st quarter of this year. I guess that's not an issue.

It looks like the Volvo XC40 Recharge was opened for pre-orders on Jan 2020 but I'm not seeing figures for the number sold in the USA. I doubt that I missed identifying any of them either.

Yes, a car without a grill or that has multiple ports for fueling are both dead givaways, as are the words "electric" emblazoned across the side or trunk.

 

There were Volvo PHEVs before the Recharge going back to 2017 or so. Nearly the entire model line up in the US had three drive train choices. The T5 was a turbo 4 cylinder. The T6 added a supercharger, and the T8 added a PHEV system. The T8 badging might include Twin Engine or eAWD to hint that it's a hybrid, or it might not. There was nothing saying plug in.

The charge port flap is easy to pick out, but on the opposite from the gas one. If you didn't know that the T8 models were PHEV to begin with, you'd have to see both sides of the car to get the hint from number of refueling ports.

I think a former mod here got one of the earlier PHEV models. The name I recall isn't coming up as an @ option, but they had a Cylon as an avatar.

 

I found a nice graphic that shows cars sold by model in the US. All these comments about the "other cars" made me wonder why I'd never seen them advertised, much less on the street. The graphic shows how many of each model were sold in recent years. The Volvo PHEVs that were mentioned??? The Diesel hybrids never made it to the US. The others barely sold here. If you don't see many of the top selling BEV (Tesla) on the open road, that speaks to the viability of the long range BEV on the cross country trips. The predominance of HEV and PHEV also speaks to the suitability of that design to urban, commute and long distance driving.

<iframe style="width: 900px; height: 601.533px;" src="Alternative Fuels Data Center" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

 

No, it doesn't.

In a normal year, about 17 million new cars are sold in the US. There are 276 million cars registered here.

Since its introduction, the Model 3 has sold about 535,000. Sales of the car have been constrained by production limits. Anybody not seeing one on the open road at any given time says nothing about its long trip viability. It is just because they currently make up just 0.2% of the US car fleet.

 

I'll assume that those stats are valid. I live in Alameda County, where the EV (BEV and PHEV) is among the highest in the nation. ( AFDC TransAtlas ) The market penetration for PHEV+BEV is close to 10% here. ( Plug-in models nearing 1 of 10 new-vehicle sales in California )

The point was that I saw a LOT of hybrids on the trip, and very few Teslas outside of the bay area. Once I reached northern California the Teslas were very rare. Despite a large Tesla population around Portland, there were very few spotted in south or central Oregon.

Of course, that may be an artifact of the fact that 95% of all trips are less than 30 miles. Alternative Fuels Data Center: Maps and Data - Share of All U.S. Vehicle Trips by Length (miles) .

Either way, sooner or later I expect that the huge battery packs will fall out of favor and the smaller ones will be found to be adequate when combined with short stops at the fast chargers.

 

Seems each time we're up around our Montana property - it's easy enough to find plenty of teslas - and this is one of the least populated states per mile that there is in the United States.













This - from the land of Subarus and pickup trucks. Speaking of Subarus, as mentioned earlier - yeah they have a plug-in you may not have spotted .... as well as - for example our own minivan. It too is plugin - 33 miles electric, though it's only badged as a hybrid.



Maybe there's a mental block going on where the unconscious just doesn't want ya to see so many of them.


But if we can stop deflecting from the op issue, where he seemingly glories in the notion that there is a "fall of Tesla"
That's what many of the shorts tried to claim when the braking distance of Teslas wasn't top-notch - according to some of these safety organizations. Tesla sends out an over-the-air update ... then BAM ... their stopping distance is shortened. End of drama.

Are there other manufacturers that get blamed for such safety matters? Yep - & that's a good thing.
I wonder how many other manufacturers the OP finds to be experiencing their "fall" - once their safety issues are noticed. None? You mean manufacturers just find a fix? And the company doesn't "fall" after all? wow.
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