The DOJ Tesla probe has expanded to include EV driving ranges

[gt2690b]

It's never been a secret that Tesla doesn't try to be accurate.

i dont blame them.. if they can tweak the EPA tests to show as high as possible range why not do it.. they get blasted with anti EV propaganda at every corner

i.e. im gonna have range anxiety if i go EV... im gonna have to wait hours to charge if i go EV... im gonna have to replace my battery every 5 years for $25k ... etc etc etc

they are just fighting back IMO

 

[3sr+buyer]

All manufactures overrate mileage. I’ve owned a lot of new cars in my life, none of them get near the mileage on the sticker.

I‘m not defending Tesla, I think Tesla’s are overrated across the board. All Estimated EPA Mileage needs to be fixed.

In other words, you drive less efficiently than the EPA test. Not everyone does.

 

[SSonnentag]

Over 190,000 miles I've averaged 315 Wh/mi. I believe the rated Wh/mi is around 293 Wh/mi. So 92% of the EPA rated range isn't bad for real world experience.

I certainly can't complain. It's better than I got with any of my gas vehicles.

 

[Unobtanium]

All manufactures overrate mileage. I’ve owned a lot of new cars in my life, none of them get near the mileage on the sticker.

I‘m not defending Tesla, I think Tesla’s are overrated across the board. All Estimated EPA Mileage needs to be fixed.

Most of my cars have exceeded their rated mpg. My current vehicle for example is an ev6 GT. Driving normally, in good weather, I get 250-260mi of ramge. Rated is 206. I have 18k miles on it with a lifetime average of 3.0mi/kwh. This of course includes some of last winter, and all of my shenanigans. Usable battery pack is about 74kwh. That comes out to 222mi of range for lifetime average.

 

[Darmie]

Seriously, Tesla is also being investigated on personnel decisions? Give me a break. I don't trust this DOJ's intentions. It's no secret that this administration does not want Tesla to succeed. Remember, Mary Barra electrified the entire auto industry. In their mind, there's no room for Tesla.

 

[zoomer0056]

Seriously, Tesla is also being investigated on personnel decisions? Give me a break. I don't trust this DOJ's intentions. It's no secret that this administration does not want Tesla to succeed. Remember, Mary Barra electrified the entire auto industry. In their mind, there's no room for Tesla.

Yup, I remember those days when Biden and scary Mary said GM is the EV leader.

 

[mongo]

I’ve never been able to get anywhere close to 263 miles on my 2021 SR+ at highway speeds. The best I can do is a little over 200 it seems. Our 2023 Model Y also comes up well short.

The DOJ Tesla probe has expanded to include EV driving ranges

Tesla says the DOJ has asked for information related to EV vehicle ranges and "personal benefits" afforded to senior management, company directors or major shareholders.

www.engadget.com

Main source here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/business/tesla-justice-department-investigations.html

Seems as though some of the blowback that caught the DOJs attention was from CR testing, which shows the Model Y underperforming in all conditions compared to the competition.

CR Tests Show Electric Car Range Can Fall Far Short of Claims - Consumer Reports

Over the past year, Consumer Reports sought to answer this question by conducting seasonal testing on popular, new EVs: Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Tesla Model Y, and Volkswagen ID.4.

www.consumerreports.org

CR has issues:

This is just plain wrong, unless you belive in perpetual motion:
"An EV, on the other hand, isn’t at its optimal efficiency when cruising on the highway, with limited opportunity to benefit from regenerative braking—energy that’s recouped from braking and coasting that gets directed back into the battery."

And then they go and do this:
"The regenerative braking mode was set to its lowest setting for each car to level the playing field."

So CR think cars get best range with lots of regen, and then take away the regen...

Methodology:
"The EVs were fully charged overnight before each of the runs and were allowed to precondition the cabin to 72° F while still plugged in outdoors."
Super, what was the capacity of the outside connection? Did it still require pack power? Was the pack preconditioned like it would be if the owner set a departure time?

But let's look closer, what was their cycle?
"The cars were taken on the road concurrently and driven on the same 142-mile round-trip route of Connecticut Route 2 and I-91."
Wait, only 142 miles? So they used less than half the range?

"Once back at our Auto Test Center, our engineers didn’t just record the remaining range indicated in the cars. They applied the ratio of miles of range used vs. miles driven throughout the trip to extrapolate what would be the total range for that specific trip. We also checked that ratio against the miles driven per each percent of state of charge (SOC) as extra validation of our methodology."

Ohh, maths... Mixed loop extrapolation instead of driving the cars till flat like the EPA does. Why?

"We intentionally didn’t drain the batteries until totally empty to reflect the typical owner experience."
So they purposely test differently than the EPA and then complain when numbers don't match the EPA...

For reference, the EPA drives (on dyno) until the car stops and they use full regen.

 

[mongo]

EPA data:
Charge depleted range UDDS, HW, advertised, ratio UDDS, HW
Tesla LR Y: 446, 409, 326, 0.73, 0.80
Mach-e extended: 371.5, 338.9, 270, 0.73, 0.80
Ioniq 5 standard: 357.7, 265.4, 256, 0.72, 0.96
VW ID4: ???

Tesla and Ford applied the same adjustment factors. Ioniq used the same with UDDS, but highway range takes a hit.
And I can't find the ID.4 ...

 

[Cosmacelf]

CR has issues:

This is just plain wrong, unless you belive in perpetual motion:
"An EV, on the other hand, isn’t at its optimal efficiency when cruising on the highway, with limited opportunity to benefit from regenerative braking—energy that’s recouped from braking and coasting that gets directed back into the battery."

And then they go and do this:
"The regenerative braking mode was set to its lowest setting for each car to level the playing field."

So CR think cars get best range with lots of regen, and then take away the regen...

Methodology:
"The EVs were fully charged overnight before each of the runs and were allowed to precondition the cabin to 72° F while still plugged in outdoors."
Super, what was the capacity of the outside connection? Did it still require pack power? Was the pack preconditioned like it would be if the owner set a departure time?

But let's look closer, what was their cycle?
"The cars were taken on the road concurrently and driven on the same 142-mile round-trip route of Connecticut Route 2 and I-91."
Wait, only 142 miles? So they used less than half the range?

"Once back at our Auto Test Center, our engineers didn’t just record the remaining range indicated in the cars. They applied the ratio of miles of range used vs. miles driven throughout the trip to extrapolate what would be the total range for that specific trip. We also checked that ratio against the miles driven per each percent of state of charge (SOC) as extra validation of our methodology."

Ohh, maths... Mixed loop extrapolation instead of driving the cars till flat like the EPA does. Why?

"We intentionally didn’t drain the batteries until totally empty to reflect the typical owner experience."
So they purposely test differently than the EPA and then complain when numbers don't match the EPA...

For reference, the EPA drives (on dyno) until the car stops and they use full regen.

Good god. CR's "test" isn't indicative of anything. Nerfed regen (Why? "fairness" isn't a good answer), extrapolated results from a guessometer (If car A has a less accurate guess than car B, it'll get a better range result). As usual, CR constructs a brain dead methodology to show what it wants to show. Usually it does this via ranking weights into categories that no one cares about, but in this case, they made up a testing methodology which isn't indicative of anything real world and used that.

 

[SSonnentag]

I have found CR to be useful for things such as appliances. I have not found any of their vehicle reporting useful or trustworthy, even in the ICE world. They weight a broken volume knob just as heavily as a blown engine for determining reliability.

 

[cdub]

I’ve never been able to get anywhere close to 263 miles on my 2021 SR+ at highway speeds. The best I can do is a little over 200 it seems. Our 2023 Model Y also comes up well short.

The DOJ Tesla probe has expanded to include EV driving ranges

Tesla says the DOJ has asked for information related to EV vehicle ranges and "personal benefits" afforded to senior management, company directors or major shareholders.

www.engadget.com

Main source here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/business/tesla-justice-department-investigations.html

Seems as though some of the blowback that caught the DOJs attention was from CR testing, which shows the Model Y underperforming in all conditions compared to the competition.

CR Tests Show Electric Car Range Can Fall Far Short of Claims - Consumer Reports

Over the past year, Consumer Reports sought to answer this question by conducting seasonal testing on popular, new EVs: Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Tesla Model Y, and Volkswagen ID.4.

www.consumerreports.org

Tesla still has the best range of the bunch in real world!! Sigh.

 

[Unobtanium]

Tesla still has the best range of the bunch in real world!! Sigh.

View attachment 985183

It does, but also consider that its just right there with the others. People can be tempted to buy a Tesla thinking it does a lot better than it really does. For example, real world, my car gets 250-260mi. Yet its epa rated at 206mi, and eeeevvverrryyyy review whines aboit3it without testing that, and many buyers on the forum avoided it for that, only to be shocked when people like me post our real world experiences, so Tesla is absolutely guilty of bottom line altering false advertising. Just like Mazda was with the first RX8 horsepower ratings.

 

[SSonnentag]

It does, but also consider that its just right there with the others. People can be tempted to buy a Tesla thinking it does a lot better than it really does. For example, real world, my car gets 250-260mi. Yet its epa rated at 206mi, and eeeevvverrryyyy review whines aboit3it without testing that, and many buyers on the forum avoided it for that, only to be shocked when people like me post our real world experiences, so Tesla is absolutely guilty of bottom line altering false advertising. Just like Mazda was with the first RX8 horsepower ratings.

The CR chart is false testing and reporting.

 

[cdub]

Tesla is absolutely guilty of bottom line altering false advertising.

Is it though? I mean aren't these the EPA test results? Seems like the fault is with the tests?

 

[SSonnentag]

Is it though? I mean aren't these the EPA test results? Seems like the fault is with the tests?

The grey EPA bar is the ONLY bar that was tested under scientific conditions.

 

[Olle]

CR has issues:

This is just plain wrong, unless you belive in perpetual motion:
"An EV, on the other hand, isn’t at its optimal efficiency when cruising on the highway, with limited opportunity to benefit from regenerative braking—energy that’s recouped from braking and coasting that gets directed back into the battery."

And then they go and do this:
"The regenerative braking mode was set to its lowest setting for each car to level the playing field."

So CR think cars get best range with lots of regen, and then take away the regen...

Methodology:
"The EVs were fully charged overnight before each of the runs and were allowed to precondition the cabin to 72° F while still plugged in outdoors."
Super, what was the capacity of the outside connection? Did it still require pack power? Was the pack preconditioned like it would be if the owner set a departure time?

But let's look closer, what was their cycle?
"The cars were taken on the road concurrently and driven on the same 142-mile round-trip route of Connecticut Route 2 and I-91."
Wait, only 142 miles? So they used less than half the range?

"Once back at our Auto Test Center, our engineers didn’t just record the remaining range indicated in the cars. They applied the ratio of miles of range used vs. miles driven throughout the trip to extrapolate what would be the total range for that specific trip. We also checked that ratio against the miles driven per each percent of state of charge (SOC) as extra validation of our methodology."

Ohh, maths... Mixed loop extrapolation instead of driving the cars till flat like the EPA does. Why?

"We intentionally didn’t drain the batteries until totally empty to reflect the typical owner experience."
So they purposely test differently than the EPA and then complain when numbers don't match the EPA...

For reference, the EPA drives (on dyno) until the car stops and they use full regen.

Indeed.

So hilarious that CR uses a completely different method than EPA and then pretends to be surprised that the results differ.
Btw, when others than CR test, Tesla knocks the socks of everyone else and even beats WLTP, let alone EPA; here is an example: Tesla Model S satte ny sommerrekord

CR is partly owned the Ford Foundation, that's all you need to know.

 

[Unobtanium]

Is it though? I mean aren't these the EPA test results? Seems like the fault is with the tests?

If Tesla can build a car around the epa testing, it may be honest, but its also kindof dishonest. I have a feeling we might end up seeing similar to VW Dieselgate with them out of this.

 

[Olle]

CR is partly owned the Ford Foundation, that's all you need to know.

Not that we needed more case in point, but I just saw this: https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1717203053986582550?s=20

And this:

Then consider how these two cars ranked in CR report again:

 

[mongo]

If Tesla can build a car around the epa testing, it may be honest, but its also kindof dishonest. I have a feeling we might end up seeing similar to VW Dieselgate with them out of this.

They didn't. Look at the numbers I posted above, Tesla is using the same correction factors as Ford.

CR is doing the EV version of estimating distance based on the first half of the fuel gauge movement with the choke on. All Tesla needs to do to game the CR test is remove 0% buffer and shift SOC reporting upward. Instead of reporting a conservative value for SOC at the high end.

 

[Unobtanium]

They didn't. Look at the numbers I posted above, Tesla is using the same correction factors as Ford.

CR is doing the EV version of estimating distance based on the first half of the fuel gauge movement with the choke on. All Tesla needs to do to game the CR test is remove 0% buffer and shift SOC reporting upward. Instead of reporting a conservative value for SOC at the high end.

So I just want to confirm, you get your epa rated range, in real life, in your tesla, yes?