Journalist runs out of power in a rented Tesla and writes a review.

[Krugerrand]

People do find it hard to think in new ways. That doesn't mean the behavior should be encouraged. New car, new way of fueling, new way of thinking. In time, discussions like this will be forgotten other than as distant senior memories: Remember in the good ole days when people struggled to transition from gasoline powered cars to battery powered cars? How they didn't understand rated miles, ideal miles, possible miles, imaginary miles...

I agree that it's not Tesla's job to foolproof the car. Those who can learn, will learn quickly, and be fine. Those who are a bit slower on the uptake will require multiple incidents, but they too will finally get it, or not, and simply keep tow truck drivers and the like in business.

 

[JRP3]

Maybe there should be a default screen for rental fleets that strongly recommends a full charge for any trip more than 100 miles, or something like that. People renting cars will likely not understand the nuances of the vehicle.

 

[SFOTurtle]

Maybe there should be a default screen for rental fleets that strongly recommends a full charge for any trip more than 100 miles, or something like that. People renting cars will likely not understand the nuances of the vehicle.

People who lack common sense like this supposed journalist (how convenient to post a picture of the MS on a flatbed -- gee, that's pretty "neutral" ) are still likely to have the same results even with such a warning. If someone cannot appreciate that driving at high speeds and climbing won't result in considerable less range than over flat terrain and at moderate speeds, it is inevitable that some of these morons will run out of charge/fuel whether they have the warning or not. Then they'll say the warning wasn't specific enough.

 

[qwk]

When discussing the new things the battery warranty will cover, didn't Elon say something along the lines of: "If you have to read the manual, it's broken"? Also, I didn't spot the author of the article putting any blame on Tesla. Seems a bit defensive.

The thing is, if you drive normally, the Model S gets rated range easily. Rated range is actually a very good estimate. Will it work every time? No, but nothing is foolproof. That is my point.

Tesla has made plenty of mistakes, but this isn't one of them. I guess I'm sick of hearing about stories of people not taking responsibility for their own actions. It sure is becoming much more common.

BTW, thanks for the negative rep AO, I hope it makes you feel like a man.

 

[SFOTurtle]

When discussing the new things the battery warranty will cover, didn't Elon say something along the lines of: "If you have to read the manual, it's broken"? Also, I didn't spot the author of the article putting any blame on Tesla. Seems a bit defensive.

Well, including a picture of the MS being towed on the flatbed accomplishes the same thing as more direct criticism of Tesla and the visual is more damaging.

 

[Vger]

Actually I did just join tonight after seeing that article. I thought it was pretty ridiculous and hadn't seen anyone post it on the TM site and this one so I thought I'd post it. But I'm getting my S85 delivered soon and thought this was a forum I should be a part of.

Was that wrong?

My brother sent me the article, and I could barely get through it without clenching my teeth.

Nonetheless, it is important for all of us to keep up with the FUD, so we can talk prospective buyers off the ledge, and back into the Design Studio.

Thanks, Kilowut (cool handle), and absolutely you are in the right place. Sorry for your somewhat rude intro.

 

[Matias]

So in your mind, if one doesn't read the instructions/directions for a table saw, and off goes a finger, it's the saw's fault?

Car that needs special instructions to drive from A to B is not very good car for mainstream market. In ICE you start engine and start to drive. If warning light illuminates and tells gas tank is soon empty, you drive to gas station and fill the tank and continue your trip. As someone pointed out, this was not alien spaceship you found in desert. It was a car you rented from Hertz.

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blaming the person who foolishly expected to drive 209 miles when the car said they could drive 247....

Hear Hear!

 

[dsm363]

Car that needs special instructions to drive from A to B is not very good car for mainstream market. In ICE you start engine and start to drive. If warning light illuminates and tells gas tank is soon empty, you drive to gas station and fill the tank and continue your trip. As someone pointed out, this was not alien spaceship you found in desert. It was a car you rented from Hertz.

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Hear Hear!

I understand this and Tesla does need a better way to communicate this to new drivers. What if someone was going up a mountain pass with no gas stations and their ICE 'miles to empty' before they started their climb stated 300 miles but they only made it 200 before running out and they wrote an article with a picture of the car on a flatbed. Would that be the ICE car manufacturer's fault for not giving accurate enough information?

 

[mknox]

If I'm on a trip where there's any concern, I'll keep the Energy display up showing the Average over the past 30 miles and will compare that number with how far the Nav is telling me I have to go. I know, I'm preaching to the choir here. But I usually keep the smaller Energy display up on the dash and my only wish is that this dash Energy display also show the Projected Range so that I don't have to keep the big 17" app open. I think this would fix it.

 

[moollar]

Car that needs special instructions to drive from A to B is not very good car for mainstream market. In ICE you start engine and start to drive. If warning light illuminates and tells gas tank is soon empty, you drive to gas station and fill the tank and continue your trip. As someone pointed out, this was not alien spaceship you found in desert. It was a car you rented from Hertz.

Don't know about in the United States (or Finland), but if I'm travelling long distance in Australia late at night (like this reporter was), your scenario doesn't work at all. There are very few petrol stations open after about 10pm outside of cities and very large rural towns. You have to be very careful about planning your trip in this scenario, so that you can make it to the next petrol station that is open. This makes the scenario pretty much the same, whether driving with an ICE or electric drivetrain. Actually, it's not the same because there are countless more places to "fill up" an electric car in comparison to the number of petrol stations (almost any electrical outlet would do) where he could have spent about 10-20 minutes charging to get those extra 3 miles of range that he needed.

If you check out this story, it gives some more colour on what happened:

Tesla Model S: Yes, Writers, Higher Speeds Use More Energy In Electric Cars

From the GCR article:

Berg ended up just 3 miles short on a 209-mile trip that may have been driven at an average speed of more than 80 mph (109 miles at 100 mph or more, then 87 miles at 63 mph).

109 miles at 100mph or more!!! How can he be doing those speeds and not be keeping track of his range (actually, how can he sustain those speeds for such a distance and not be pulled over is mind baffling in itself). That's about 160km/h! If you drove ANY car at this speed (not just electric) for a considerable distance, you would almost be able to see the fuel gauge dropping while you watch. At those speeds, the wind resistance pretty much hammers efficiency on ANY vehicle.

Nope, he Brodered....

 

[tonybelding]

Unlike Broder, I don't think this guy set out to run out of juice on the side of the road. As a reporter though, I expect some professional interest in the topic one is writing a story about. Simply renting a car and going on a joy ride and writing about it is something any blogger can do.

This.

A journalist is supposed to do a little basic research and seek out the facts in order to pass that knowledge along to his readers. When you undertake writing for the public, there's supposed to be some element of education involved, as opposed to merely putting your own ignorance out on display. So... He may not have been malicious, and he may not have been an idiot, but surely we can at least say he was lax in his job.

I've also got to say, not realizing that going faster would require more energy seems rather startling to me. Isn't that grade school science? Maybe I'm biased because so many of my hobbies involve some element of aerodynamics... Or maybe it's because I lived through the long dark age of the 55 MPH speed limit, which was justified on the basis of saving gas. (It's estimated to have reduced fuel consumption by a whopping 0.5% to 1%, depending on which study you accept! It might have been more effective if most people hadn't continued driving 80 MPH on the highway anyhow.)

And then of course, after realizing he was running out of juice, he says that he *did* reduce his speed, which sort of undercuts his whole argument about not understanding that speed matters.

 

[TsRocket]

Islandbayy: what an adventure.
GADS!

 

[TsRocket]

No system will ever be 100% accurate, but "interactive circles" that shrink as you drive and grow as you charge should help owners visualize their range - but yes - ascending a long steep incline (say) will shrink the circles faster which could be unexpected for new drivers. But hopefully the lower speed/wider circle will point them to the "obvious" solution - reduce speed to extend range.

Or turning on the heater to maintain a certain cabin temperature in winter would cause a sudden reduction to the range circle diameters. So an alert chime could sound and a pop-up message could appear: "Tap YES to swap from cabin heater to seat heaters (increases range compared to fan heater)"

These sorts of Interactive messages / tool tips / pop-ups could be used to educate drivers as they use the car. Obviously there is the important issue of driver distraction so these messages would need to be limited to "things the driver does without realizing they have a big effect on range". (Should these sorts of messages appear on the dash rather than on the touchscreen? Or both?)

And there would be a settings option to turn these notifications on/off. Or for sales to rental companies, loaners or Press cars, Tesla could remove this option to force these messages to remain on :wink:

@ dsm363 a TMC Connect project would be great

Great idea in nav mode, doesn't need to show unless you activate. The long pulls up would show and shrink the circle, could attach to plugshare or recago for charging opportunities. If traveling at night with dwindling range, its a calculated risk whether to charge at 110 somewhere for 2-3 miles as a single woman. Slowing down, ducking behind a truck, even driving behind a truck, for fear of not seeing anything in road, these are all discomforting. This would be a great service tesla could program.

 

[efusco]

Don't know about in the United States (or Finland), but if I'm travelling long distance in Australia late at night (like this reporter was), your scenario doesn't work at all. There are very few petrol stations open after about 10pm outside of cities and very large rural towns. You have to be very careful about planning your trip in this scenario, so that you can make it to the next petrol station that is open. This makes the scenario pretty much the same, whether driving with an ICE or electric drivetrain. Actually, it's not the same because there are countless more places to "fill up" an electric car in comparison to the number of petrol stations (almost any electrical outlet would do) where he could have spent about 10-20 minutes charging to get those extra 3 miles of range that he needed.

If you check out this story, it gives some more colour on what happened:

Tesla Model S: Yes, Writers, Higher Speeds Use More Energy In Electric Cars

From the GCR article:



109 miles at 100mph or more!!! How can he be doing those speeds and not be keeping track of his range (actually, how can he sustain those speeds for such a distance and not be pulled over is mind baffling in itself). That's about 160km/h! If you drove ANY car at this speed (not just electric) for a considerable distance, you would almost be able to see the fuel gauge dropping while you watch. At those speeds, the wind resistance pretty much hammers efficiency on ANY vehicle.

Nope, he Brodered....

While I suspect the sentiment of that article is on target, I have no idea how he arrived at his numbers...they can't be extrapolated from the original article.

 

[pbleic]

Note this from Wikipedia. The power to overcome drag is related by the cube of velocity.

The power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by:

(Equation at: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

Note that the power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of the velocity. A car cruising on a highway at 50 mph (80 km/h) may require only 10 horsepower (7.5 kW) to overcome air drag, but that same car at 100 mph (160 km/h) requires 80 hp (60 kW). With a doubling of speed the drag (force) quadruples per the formula. Exerting four times the force over a fixed distance produces four times as much work. At twice the speed the work (resulting in displacement over a fixed distance) is done twice as fast. Since power is the rate of doing work, four times the work done in half the time requires eight times the power.

 

[dsm363]

I don't see how they for 100+mph either. If he did then there really isn't anything to this article.

I do like how he didn't start with a range charge (Broder did that as well and worse) and he dropped to 63 mph and never reevaluated things. Even going to 60 probably would have got him there. He also didn't have to run past zero until the car stopped. If I was renting a $100,000 car I'd want to pull off somewhere safe and figure things out.

 

[scaesare]

I don't see how they for 100+mph either. If he did then there really isn't anything to this article.

I think the idea is that he states his destination was 209 miles away, and then "an hour outside of barstow" he had over 100 miles to go. If the assumption was that it was just over 100 miles to go (perhaps valid if he had lost roughly half of his 38 mile buffer), then he had covered about 100 miles already when he had only been driving an hour...

 

[dsm363]

I see. Makes sense. If he took 'imprecise notes' like Broder did then an hour could have just been an estimate and he was really going 80mph or something. Anyway, another one of the I ran out articles down.

 

[Vexar]

OK, this reporter had a Tesla rental, so he probably *enjoyed* the car a bit too much. There's driving fun and then there's respecting your energy consumption. I just did Green Bay, WI to Eau Claire, WI, which is 193 miles. I had to get to an activity before my drive, so I pulled out of my parking space and started the trip *with* 193 miles on the rated range (60kwh). I was very gentle with my dear Livewire, and I arrived with 3 miles left of range. It's rather hilly in spots, I was facing a cross-wind, and the rain did not help. I've had my Model S for over a year, so I can do something like that. The reporter has never drained a battery on an EV before (my guess), so driving emotionally with the semi truck driver incident does cost range. Wind moves those trailers more suddenly than the driver in most cases.

Some tips for new Tesla owners on a road trip:
Make sure you've got the map up with your destination. Know how many miles are left.
Have the trip meter up on one of the dash displays. Use one of the trip counters (I prefer B) for every trip. It will also show energy consumption not just for the trip but since the last charge.
Drive it like it has the engine of a Ford Fiesta (the old one from the 1980's). Don't accelerate faster than 60 kW, don't go faster than 75.
If you calculate your range coming up short, work the numbers and drop 5mph. Or more. You may look odd driving slowly, but you will get there. I was passed by an old person in an Oldsmobile on my drive. It was a humble moment. You will still look cool driving a Tesla at any speed, but you will not look cool waiting for a tow truck.
The AC fan is a major range killer. If your temperature demands constant use, spin it down to a setting of 2-3, and punch it up only periodically.
Pay attention to the weather on your entire route before driving. I'm pretty sure driving in a hailstorm will impact your range considerably.
Have contingency stops in case you can't manage the full leg. This forum is great for finding folks, just post in the region where you are driving. None of us want you on the side of the road!
Live at a different pace. It's about getting there. The World Record team from Tesla confirmed my estimates that with stops, they were averaging between 45 and 49 miles an hour. You can't travel faster than that in a Tesla for a long trip and expect to get there (until battery swaps are out there).

 

[brianman]

Displaying estimated range instead of rated range would be more fool-proof, i.e. avoid situations like this journalist, on the other hand, that can also lead to bad press. Just think about it: journalist tries out Tesla, floors the pedal to test out the famous acceleration, drives around like a madman for a few dozen miles and suddenly sees the remaining range drop to double digit miles => reports the Tesla has no more range than the Nissan Leaf, bummer! Point is: there is way to get bad publicity no matter what TM does...

People will find a negative way to spin anything. That's not the concern.

Taking care of the driver is the concern. Projected-in-the-instrument-cluster in old firmware did a far better job of that than Rated has.

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The thing is, if you drive normally, the Model S gets rated range easily. Rated range is actually a very good estimate.

Wrong. Your climate and roads may very. To get rated range reliably in my climate, elevation changes, and street conditions I'd probably have to sell my car since I would be a traffic hazard (going too slow, impeding traffic).

And, yes, I have tried. It usually involves going 5-20 below the speed limit.