Lawsuit accuses Tesla of exaggerating driving range to boost EV sales | Hacker News Reader

Lawsuit accuses Tesla of exaggerating driving range to boost EV sales

washingtonpost.com

24 pointspg_123414 comments

I was considering a Model Y. My excitement has been waning though.

10 years ago, I thought that today I would be able to move 3 hours away and sleep in the car and commute to work because of self-driving. Clearly I had big dreams. But today, the range isn't any better than a gas car, they're not cheaper, sure they're quick cars, but most electric cars are. Charging them takes too long, can't be charged at a in a dense city. If you forget that you're close to 5% Battery, have a long trip in the morning, can't charge at your place in the city, but still have tons of stuff to do at home before the trip. Your only option would be to leave your car someplace charging for hours.

At least with a gas guzzler you can fill up 400 miles in a few minutes. The new hybrid concepts seem really interesting.

Just to respond to your city charging comment, I live in London and had my Model Y for almost a year. We have many on-street charging stations around town, which I use regularly. Sure it’s not as convenient as having either my own home charger or the speed of filling up a gas tank, but it’s definitely do-able, at least here.

https://archive.ph/UyqMR

I was wondering how long these would take to start appearing.

Be nice if the gov stepped in to talk about fraudulent advertising.

anybody have anecdotes about their range vs. expected?

Friends with the Model Y LR tell me to expect 200 miles on road trips per charge.

I've rarely ever gotten EPA rated range, but a portion of that would be because I don't drive like they do in those tests. It's a fun, fast car. I can absolutely get my efficiency to what the EPA rating is, but I doubt anyone would be able to do it consistently over the entire battery and on a road trip where you're driving and not focusing on the miles remaining meter.

I don't think anyone will ever get the rated range, because:

1. You don't usually charge to 100% (unless you're doing a road trip)

2. You don't drive like the EPA test requires, and varying terrain, weather, and other factors will influence your efficiency

3. You don't drive your car to 0 (obviously you have to stop at a charger before you hit that, or you'd be stranded on the highway...)

Now, I think this lawsuit is a bit silly because I'm fairly confident no one is looking at their gas car's estimated MPG and comparing it to the EPA rating across the entire journey. Those meters also fluctuate wildly, and (2) and (3) above still apply to gas cars.

The fact EVs just have a lower range per "tank" and it's not as easy to fill up means people will obsess over the "miles remaining" estimate for fear of being "stranded".

I have driven my Y with the battery meter set to show % and not miles, used the trip planner to determine when I need to charge on a long trip, and literally never worried about it.

I’ve consistently only gotten about 80% of what my mileage counter reports as available. And that figure drops significantly as the battery approaches lower percentages. It’s as if the battery starts “collapsing” below 60 miles remaining.

I wonder if this is normal behavior for them. I'm just curious and I have no skin in the game. But have you reached out to tesla about this? Is there some sort of battery diagnostic that you or they can run on the car?

At this point I’m worn out, owning this thing has been a complete nightmare and a mistake. An underperforming battery is the least of my problems so far. Also there’s no point because Tesla routinely lies about repairs on my car.

It’s been in the shop for many months for dozens of mechanical and software issues over the years, I’ve been lied to too many times. The value of the car has depreciated too much for selling it to make sense and there is some convenience and value to it so I keep it.

I’ve tried the lemon law angle but since they “fix” issues with software that introduces new issues and “fix” their “fixes” it’s a moving target so I can’t qualify.

Tesla, never again.

Even worse, the cars are so smart you can't force a lemon law without getting caught.

I had a friend who had two transmission burn up in his new diesel f250 10+ years ago. The second one, they gave him a remanufactured transmission even though the truck was only 1 years old or so. He put on a huge tow hitch, backed up against a huge parking structure wall, and put it in reverse for 30+ minutes until the transmission overheated and melted down.

Got the truck bought back.

how would leaving the truck in reverse burn up the transmission?

It is a normal behavior of the battery. As the charge decreases, the internal resistance is rising.

Here are some real world range tests versus EPA test cycle numbers. Some EVs outperform their EPA range, some underperform it. +\- 5% is about right, but some EVs are a lot better and some are a lot worse:

https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43657072/evs-fall-short-e...

Real world highway range is the best number to look at because it's the worst case scenario for BEVs in everyday driving. Cold weather and performance driving will also shorten the range.

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