Elon "About to end range anxiety"

[deonb]

No range anxiety is not a product of uncertainty and it wont be solved by a slick navigation system. These statements are basically ignoring the elephant in the room: Range anxiety is a product of lack of range and slow recharging times. They are a product of knowing that a trip that takes gasoline cars 5 hours, will take electric cars 8 hours.

Sometimes I have the feeling that people are trying to kid themselves, by ignoring the huge hurdles electric cars still face.

Also its not about educating the public about electric cars. They know what electric cars are about, and until Musk can increase the range drastically and improve charging times, Tesla will stay a niche producer.

Thus if Thursdays announcement is about a navigation system, his statement will sound quite silly. Almost as silly as he thinks hydrogen cars are silly .

5 hours in a gasoline car will get you 350 miles @ 70mph. That means in a Model S, that will take 30 minutes longer - not 3 hours. And you'd probably be filling up that gasoline car as well at some point, so it will actually only take 20 minutes longer, and that assumes you want to drive for 5 hours without eating or even having coffee.

It does indeed seem that the problem still is educating the public on "what electric cars are about"...

 

[Gwgan]

This just happened.
A take on the general population perspective of range anxiety:
Me-Tesla cap (thanks Jerome)
Counter Guy-"do you have a Tesla!?"
Me-"not yet", wry smile
Counter Guy-...Brother has done contract work in Fremont..."people buy those as city cars. What's the range? 200 miles? They don't use them for trips"
That last part was not a question.
This wasn't the time to get into the details about supercharging--he had more customers--but I gave him my phone number in case his brother has anything else to say and I'll be driving by to show him the Tesla someday, maybe on my way back from a trip.

 

[mzpolo]

Why has no one figured out that this is a software update to the seats? They already have been wired but now they can capture the static electricity you generate from wiggling around as you get anxious!

 

[PaulusdB]

Thanks, on behalf of all of us, for reaching out. I think that "eco" mode cruise would be a welcome feature for many owners. But I still believe what Mr. Musk is targeting (and SHOULD be targeting) are the potential buyers of the car. And, by and large, they see changing driving behavior as a barrier to buying the car. So, saying "hey, look at this, the car now helps you double range by driving 20 up hills and 80 down hills" is just too radical for most drivers. It's only after owning the car for a while that you become an EV geek and open up to some of these techniques. If this announcement is totally targeted at EV geeks, it will do nothing to help Tesla's mission.

I guess I'm the other guy talking to Malik.
He feels that his idea wasn't fully explained yet. After speaking him, I read Tomas' comment and think Tomas got the idea very well.
As far as I understand Malik, he proposes a smarter (ECO mode) cruise control setting. The key being to try not to regenerate any energy at all. Malik's graph is an example of that, with him driving his car on a return trip to his gym, so home-gym-home. He eliminated regen by putting the car in N and letting it coast to decelerate in very gentle way. Only at the 2 km mark you can see some regen taking place.

It has been written here before, that the best way to conserve energy is to drive as slowly as you can and avoid using the break pedal. Malik's addition to that is to try and eliminate regeneration as well.

Sound idea IMHO, but not what Tesla Motors is going to announce tomorrow, though. I'm with Tomas on this one; it projects the wrong image to prospected owners.

 

[efusco]

I wonder if Elon will have a Press Conference to end "Future Announcement Anxiety"? :scared:

 

[Gizmotoy]

I guess I'm the other guy talking to Malik.
He feels that his idea wasn't fully explained yet. After speaking him, I read Tomas' comment and think Tomas got the idea very well.
As far as I understand Malik, he proposes a smarter (ECO mode) cruise control setting. The key being to try not to regenerate any energy at all. Malik's graph is an example of that, with him driving his car on a return trip to his gym, so home-gym-home. He eliminated regen by putting the car in N and letting it coast to decelerate in very gentle way. Only at the 2 km mark you can see some regen taking place.

It has been written here before, that the best way to conserve energy is to drive as slowly as you can and avoid using the break pedal. Malik's addition to that is to try and eliminate regeneration as well.

Sound idea IMHO, but not what Tesla Motors is going to announce tomorrow, though. I'm with Tomas on this one; it projects the wrong image to prospected owners.

It would be interesting if true. It would essentially amount to an admission Tesla screwed up when they tied regeneration to the accelerator rather than the brake pedal, thereby making it very difficult to coast.

 

[ivengo]

Is there a link to the press conference? How do we listen/watch it?

 

[dirkhh]

I guess I'm the other guy talking to Malik.
He feels that his idea wasn't fully explained yet. After speaking him, I read Tomas' comment and think Tomas got the idea very well.
As far as I understand Malik, he proposes a smarter (ECO mode) cruise control setting. The key being to try not to regenerate any energy at all. Malik's graph is an example of that, with him driving his car on a return trip to his gym, so home-gym-home. He eliminated regen by putting the car in N and letting it coast to decelerate in very gentle way. Only at the 2 km mark you can see some regen taking place.

It has been written here before, that the best way to conserve energy is to drive as slowly as you can and avoid using the break pedal. Malik's addition to that is to try and eliminate regeneration as well.

Sound idea IMHO, but not what Tesla Motors is going to announce tomorrow, though. I'm with Tomas on this one; it projects the wrong image to prospected owners.

This would be horrible. Teslas are built to be cars that are FUN to drive. This sounds miserable. Please, let's hope this isn't it.

 

[DriverOne]

I like the line of thinking though, for example if they did something with starwood hotels, that's 9 different chains: Sheraton, Westin, W etc. There's 700+ in North America alone. That would be an amazing partnership.

Also ties in with the cheaper twin charger, are they anticipating greater demand?

 

[malikmrz]

This would be horrible. Teslas are built to be cars that are FUN to drive. This sounds miserable. Please, let's hope this isn't it.

Well you need decide either wild acceleration with wild battery consumption or more sedate acceleration ( lets say regular city car dynamics) with more range. I could get almost 90 watts per km ratio. it would make almost 900 km distance on a single charge with average speed 40 mph ( limits by local law)

 

[liuping]

Also ties in with the cheaper twin charger, are they anticipating greater demand?

Twin chargers were $1500, now they are $2000. That's not really cheaper (unless you did not buy them with the car originally)

 

[MassModel3]

It has been written here before, that the best way to conserve energy is to drive as slowly as you can and avoid using the break pedal. Malik's addition to that is to try and eliminate regeneration as well.

Wouldn't it be a step in the same direction to simply set regen to the less aggressive mode (not Standard -- can't think what they call it)?

Edit: Standard or Low (duh!)

 

[HillCountryFun]

This would be horrible. Teslas are built to be cars that are FUN to drive. This sounds miserable. Please, let's hope this isn't it.

Well, I understand your position and this could also be what Tesla Motors thinks but I would welcome an option to dramatically increase the vehicles range with reduced driving performance. I would only use it when needed which I believe would be predominately on road trips. I don't know why it couldn't be user selectable or dynamically switched by the vehicle's systems. I don't believe an Eco-Mode would detract from the vehicles "fun to drive" personality.

 

[RichardL]

There were loads of discussions on 'Intelligent CC' when I first came onto the board in 2013 - I recall one fellow in Norway who did all kinds of hyper-miling using just these techniques and avoiding regen by using N etc. It seems like a good idea to have such an 'Eco CC' mode and it could be applied to all cars, not just TACC (which could be even better).

It is impressive to see the results that Malik can get using that technique - I would not want to crawl along, but I would use an EcoCC on long runs if it was marginal

On another point - I recall discussions about the D packs having 18650B spec batteries, which in theory had more potential capacity, so nothing new under the sun, apparently!

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It would be interesting if true. It would essentially amount to an admission Tesla screwed up when they tied regeneration to the accelerator rather than the brake pedal, thereby making it very difficult to coast.

All you need is an easy-to-find and easy-to-hold zero. It can either be foot off or on the go pedal.

 

[malikmrz]

There were loads of discussions on 'Intelligent CC' when I first came onto the board in 2013 - I recall one fellow in Norway who did all kinds of hyper-miling using just these techniques and avoiding regen by using N etc. It seems like a good idea to have such an 'Eco CC' mode and it could be applied to all cars, not just TACC (which could be even better).

It is impressive to see the results that Malik can get using that technique - I would not want to crawl along, but I would use an EcoCC on long runs if it was marginal

On another point - I recall discussions about the D packs having 18650B spec batteries, which in theory had more potential capacity, so nothing new under the sun, apparently!

Elon's tweet says "affects all Tesla Model S fleet", so not only D version

 

[PaulusdB]

All you need is an easy-to-find and easy-to-hold zero. It can either be foot off or on the go pedal.

Or a third regen mode: Standard - Low - Off
Sometimes things are really as easy as 1-2-3.

 

[dirkhh]

Well you need decide either wild acceleration with wild battery consumption or more sedate acceleration ( lets say regular city car dynamics) with more range. I could get almost 90 watts per km ratio. it would make almost 900 km distance on a single charge with average speed 40 mph ( limits by local law)

You drive 40mph on many US highways and your car will be riddled with bullet holes (OK, that may be a minor overstatement).

I am not interested in a clown car. There are a lot of people around here who carry their environmental consciousness on their sleeves and consider it a badge of honor to be in the left lane of I5 going 52mph. I'm the one passing them on the right, giving them the finger.

If you need to go 900km and there's no way to charge, please buy (or more likely, rent -- how often do you need to do that?) an ICE.

 

[Gizmotoy]

All you need is an easy-to-find and easy-to-hold zero. It can either be foot off or on the go pedal.

Not to be overly critical, but isn't that essentially "all you need is <extremely difficult thing>"? How do you convey that information to the driver in a way that doesn't require them to have their eye glued to the energy gauge? Even now, it's essentially impossible to discern even if you do watch the gauge: the zero point actually includes enough regeneration to combat the AC/electronics power consumption. In contrast, coasting in any other vehicle is simple and intuitive: you're not accelerating, and you're not braking, so you simply don't push the accelerator or brake.

If the goal is to replace regeneration with coasting, inventing a new feedback mechanism for the driver to do so with the accelerator seems like overkill when the alternative is not only dead simple, it's also something every driver is already familiar with.

Or a third regen mode: Standard - Low - Off

Sometimes things are really as easy as 1-2-3.

Exactly.

Edit: I don't know why the forum is splitting that up into two quotes. If I manually combine them, it just splits them up again. Weird.

 

[malikmrz]

You drive 40mph on many US highways and your car will be riddled with bullet holes (OK, that may be a minor overstatement).

I am not interested in a clown car. There are a lot of people around here who carry their environmental consciousness on their sleeves and consider it a badge of honor to be in the left lane of I5 going 52mph. I'm the one passing them on the right, giving them the finger.

If you need to go 900km and there's no way to charge, please buy (or more likely, rent -- how often do you need to do that?) an ICE.

Having Tesla doesn't mean you have to drive like a crazy and I think mostly people use Tesla in city where speed 40 mph quite enough
in my opinion most Tesla drivers will like having option to choose "ECO mode" with low dynamic (10 sec 0-60 mph) but with doubled range (600 miles)
And plus you always can go back to "INSANE mode" and punish everyone.