Featured Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

Quite the slant in that piece.
For this prior Tesla owner, I often got the rated range, and never noticed a difference between the top and bottom half.

 

Not my experience and I had to get my first tow ... ever.

Instead of getting a fast DC charge on reaching Nashville, I went to pickup some papers, reason for my trip. I had 8 mi indicated when I parked and only 5 miles to go. What I did not appreciate is the 90 F weather even parked in garage shade continued to draw power. Foolishly, I tried to reach the Supercharger and came up 1/2 mile short.

EV ownership is 'different' and drivers have to learn new skills ... including me. So I share my 'lessons learned' here and other forums.

Bob Wilson

 

i read that article. it makes sense that tesla does not want the service center appointments tied up with range questions, when there isn't a problem based on their over the air diagnosis, and it's all in peoples heads because they expect to get the epa rated range in any and all conditions.

wehave the same problem with prius prime as seen here. people can't understand why heat/cold/terrain reduces their expected mileage. but if they call the dealer, they have to pay to have it diagnosed. and for those that do pay, they are told there's nothing wrong with the battery.

one poster here said he traded his m3 for a prime because he once drove over a mountain pass in the dead of winter in high winds and only got half the rated range. but at least he realized there was nothing wrong with the car, he just didn't like the range loss.

plenty of videos online showing range tests, even at sub freezing temperatures at 70mph the whole way.

 

There's slant, and also certain purportedly factual things.

Not that I don't care about slant, but I care more about whether those things are true, or not true.

 

I don’t believe it, rigging the range. These are cars people often boast about and use the acceleration they have. The call center appointments that could be true if they are inundated with calls. That isn’t rigging the range. Not sure rigging range even makes sense.

 

I find that on my Prime, I think I have enough to go charge, but a few blocks away the engine kicks on. After stopping then restarting later, the charge is a little lower. Now I leave some extra, as I don’t like the engine turning on cold then stopping in one minute. Too bad on full ev’s they don’t have a way to dip into the buffer for a mile or two in an emergency. I thought maybe some do have some kind of reduced power mode to get to the “gas” station.

 

Maybe it could just play obnoxious ice cream truck music the whole while.

 

An 'un-named' source, they say. LOL, yeah I suppose it's possible. Then again you have all these Auto bloggers and YouTubers get on and confirm the range. We had both the model S and the model X before 2019. If anyone should complain about shady things? yea there may well have been other issues like double vision through the massive windshield of the X. Or the shudder from accelerating hard because your cv joints wore out prematurely. That being due to not wanting to have to re-engineer CV joints.
.

 

I foolishly believed the "press car" reviews that often claim more range than the car specifications. As I was running out of charge, I actually thought it 'was a thing.' Perhaps with new press cars but mine had ~113,000 at that time.

Knowing the speed-vs-range tradeoff, I had reduced my speed to 55 mph on an Interstate with a 40 mph minimum. But local elevation changes may have contributed my mistake. Regardless, it was my screw-up.

There were perfectly fine L2 EVSE half a mile from the parking garage I could have easily reached. With a quick lunch at a known, quality restaurant, reaching the SuperChargers would have been trivial. (shaking my head)

So my EV error rate is:

0.5 mi / 114910 mi ~= 0.000435%.​

My reputation is destroyed!

Bob Wilson

 

like the double vision windshields on gen 4 prius? i forgot about those

 

this reuters article is just click bait trash, very few facts

 

How does the range prediction know it is going to rain? Or the temperature is going to increase? Or the driver is someone who uses more HVAC than normal? It just might be that it has to learn those things over time and thus improves its range prediction.

And how would you like it if your car had a real problem and some overly concerned owner took several hours of a TeslaTech's time dealing with an imagined problem.

 

no i would not, but reuters probably doesn't care

 

Seems kind of far fetched claim for a car that is constantly being pushed software updates... Tesla could literally change the math in a single line of code to fix this problem and I'm sure they did more than once. They don't need a flipping committee to solve customer concerns that are extreme enough for someone to want to schedule a repair about a range calculation problem, especially because Musk hates mettings and committee oriented stuff.

 

Hummm, call it the "Karen" bit:

• "Let me check your car."
• "Ah HA! I see the problem. Fixing it now."
• Flips the "Karen bit"
• "See how it works now."

Bob Wilson

 

Lol indeed....Karen and Brandon are two names we won't see new babies being named for.....awhile.

 

Just today on a walk picked up a golf ball with the Brandon mime emblazoned. Noticed its brand and model were not listed in the recent top 20 rated balls test results. And the owner didn't keep in in bounds.

 

Actually, if you use the more detailed energy screen, rather than just the miles or percent full on the main screen, you get a more detailed estimate that includes the estimated battery drain for just the driving/speed as well as elevation changes, climate usage, battery conditioning and other. It plots it over time and shows you if you are doing better or worse than the estimate for each category. It also gives you hints, such as if you slowed down 5 mph you can save 10 miles of range or changing the A/C temp to 72 will save you 4 miles.

This new feature was added about a year ago via OTA updates

See here:
https://electrek.co/2022/10/12/tesla-new-energy-app-gives-range-advices-more/

Mike