Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

So I run a luxury car rental company and one of the most common questions I get from folks these days (especially those in the tech community) is: "When are you guys getting a Tesla?"

This article is _exactly_ why we're not getting one for the fleet anytime soon, and it's basically the answer I've been giving people since the Roadster came out (and the questions started).

Tesla is an awesome, awesome company. I'm a fan. I'm thinking of getting a Model S for myself. I think (and hope) they're going to be huge.

But they're not ready for the truly mass-market quite yet - and car rental customer (even luxury car rental customers) are the mass market.

I could see the exact scenario outlined in the article happening to renters constantly - except for one difference: We would be yelled at by the customers, not Tesla ;) ("Why is my car saying 'battery dead'? I did nothing wrong. Send a truck to pick me up or I'm writing a bad review about you guys.") Sigh.

Anyway, I'm still a fan despite the headaches - and I know they'll grow out of it.

Off topic, but...

Luxury car rental company? Please tell me more (like do you have a website??)

I ask because I know of a couple of luxury car rental companies, but there is one ore more things about each of them that make them exceedingly unpleasant to deal with. I would be interested to try doing business with a luxury car rental company that is run by people who also read HN - seems to be a good signal for not-totally-fucked-up business practices.

A little googling later... http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/

I think that people are blaming the wrong thing here.

The car works great.

The problem is that there are very few places to charge it.

If there were more than two cities in the whole area to charge, he could have stopped sooner at one of those.

The car works great when it isn't cold. If the mileage estimates aren't taking temperature into account, that seems like something Tesla should be addressing in software.

A relative gauge or percentage would be one thing, but if you tell the driver it's going to get 100 miles, they need to know it can make that to the next charging station.

From what I can glean from the article, it may not be possible to completely address the problem in software, because weather prediction is inexact, and it's hard to account for all eventualities. The software can say, "100 miles of range unless the temperature drops more than 5 degrees from forecast, or unless it turns out your hotel has no indoor parking, or if you have to stay late at work and your car spends an extra four hours outside, or your flight is cancelled and your car spends an extra day at the airport." That's not to say it can't be improved, though.

because weather prediction is inexact, and it's hard to account for all eventualities.

-- why not engineer a stable micro-climate for the battery?

That is sort of what I was wondering but recognize such systems are tricky given the feedback. Also turning electricity into heat is hugely inefficient on cold drives, if I were Tesla I would consider a 'cold weather' kith where you could put a bottle of propane in the trunk or something which could run a catalytic heater without consuming any battery power except for recirculating fans.

I was thinking of software only solutions, but I think a hardware fix may be best.

I wonder if Tesla chose to optimize for other scenarios in the design of the car: Tesla distributes the battery across the entire body, which makes for great handling, fault tolerance, and safety, but may make it more difficult to insulate than in other cars, which typically just lump the battery in the back, surrounded by insulation.

An "inside" battery also takes advantage of the solar greenhouse effect from the glass-enclosed interior. On cold-but-sunny day, a parked car will heat up substantially simply due to the ~1kw/m^2 of solar energy delivered to the vehicle. Of course, you don't want the battery getting to hot, either. In addition to better thermal insulation, perhaps Tesla could add solar panels to the roof to aid in heating and cooling.

I hope this problem is solved, as it would be a bummer not to be able to take a Tesla on a ski trip.

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