Firstly I don’t believe Rated and NEDC are in any way linked.
I agree Typical is closer to Reality, but still misses the target.
Rated Range is ONLY affected by capacity. It is a fixed consumption rate so it’s a simple 'how much is left in the battery' divided by that consumption rate. I have a feeling it’s about 295 ish Wh/mi, but I’m not certain.
The 100% figure is purely a reflection of the Vmax setting. Before batterygate capping my 100% represented 69 kWhs. That was when Vmax was set at 4.2V. After capping my Vmax was set at 4.09V and my 100% figure represented 59kWhs. Consequently my real world range reduced, my Rated Range reduced and my Typical Range reduced. The Why This Happens is explained fully in the WiKi on Page 1 of this thread.
There may already have been some variation of the numbers (constants) over the years. But back in 2015 when S85D was introduced here, the "rated" range on the display matched more or less exactly the NEDC range (528km). Does not seem like a coincidence to me.
Assuming around 77,5kWh usable capacity when new, the Wh/km constant for the rated range would have been ~147Wh/km. For the "typical" range (~420km when new, a -20% difference to "rated") the constant is ~185Wh/km.
Now, a reverse calculation using these constants and the currently CAN bus reported full usable capacity (70,6kWh) would result in "full typical range" of 381km and "full rated range" of 480km. However, the CAN values for these are 398km and 501km instead. Does not make sense unless the constant has been tampered with.
The tampering of the constant to hide the range loss due to capping is included of the class action lawsuit so it's nothing new. Just saying that unless you either directly read out the CAN bus numbers, pay close attention to the actual kWh consumption, or watch the difference of actual range vs. typical/rated range it's possible to miss the fact that you have been Vmax capped.
My take on the whole thing is that Tesla took too big of a risk back when they decided to charge the cells all the way to 4,2V after playing it reasonably safe with the Roadster voltage cap. Maybe they thought it would be enough to discourage charging to 100%, advice which many owners followed but wasn't enough with all the supercharging going on as well.
Now we are collectively paying back that which was borrowed and I'm not at all convinced that the real amount of affected cars is "small". It could actually be the majority of the cars when we start reaching the end of the 8-year warranty.
It's a common theme on automotive news sites that the absence of VMax capping (safety buffer size of the battery) is mentioned as an indication of Tesla's lead in battery technology compared to other manufacturers like Audi, Jaguar and Porsche that VMax cap their batteries already from the factory. The legacy car companies have long experience in managing warranties and would never take the kind of risk that Tesla took. Maybe the risk paid off by helping Tesla take off like they have done, but it would be a PR (and probably financial) disaster for Tesla to admit now that they didn't really know what they were doing back when they failed to put in a cap and that's why they now are trying to reintroduce it quietly.
