With respect, I disagree.Showing % would mean you’re unaware of calibration drift and the cells becoming unbalanced, or other degradation, something you’d benefit from knowing. The suggestion is like saying the answer to high blood pressure is to stop measuring it.
The reason I advocate for percentage display is because it’s consistent with every other variable load device I own (e.g. phone, laptop, battery backup unit, etc)
The range the Model 3 shows is an arbitrary number based on environmental conditions (temperature) and an arbitrary calculation of battery voltage times a “typical” distance unit per kWh. As such, it’s a lab conditions measurement that will be inaccurate for anyone in the real world.
The obvious problem with that is that “miles remaining” is a meaningful measurement that could easily induce owners to think they can travel further than they actually can. People see a range in miles and think that’s how far they can actually travel.
What happens when the car tells you that you have 50 miles left, and you decide to pass a supercharger because there’s another one 35 miles further on the journey, and then you find 25 miles in that you didn’t actually have 50 actual miles that you could physically travel, you had less, because your driving style changed, the conditions changed, or whatever? People get stranded or get to the next location on the EV equivalent of fumes.
With percentage - because it’s not meaningful in the same sense as miles are - you can make a decision to supercharge at a certain SoC, and you’re not convincing yourself you have an actual amount of miles further you can travel. It’s safer and less anxiety inducing.
Just like my phone and laptop doesn’t tell me how many minutes remaining there is on my charge, because they don’t know how hard I’m going to push it from just point on, neither should my car be telling me how many actual miles I can travel on the remaining charge. I know it’ll only be vaguely accurate, and I don’t want to incorrectly start relying on that number.
The other benefit of % readouts compared to miles is that 100-0 is a much more progressive scale than <rated range>-0. This means the range (%) will go down in a naturally slower and more predictable way, than the “miles remaining” will. You might travel 1 actual mile and the onscreen display drops 3, for example.
With an 8 year warranty I don’t give much thought to degradation. If/when it gets to a point where I can’t travel a distance I previously could on a charge level, then I’d seek assistance. Until then it’s just even more stress, wondering “why I lost 5 miles since last month”, etc when that might not even be true.