Tesla's "optimistic" range estimates now face federal scrutiny

31 August 2023
Is Tesla's electric vehicle range as rosy as the dashboard suggests? Federal prosecutors are on a quest to find out.

Sort by:

This is completely bogus, for two reasons. Tesla doesn't come up with the range projections for it's vehicles. The EPA does. That's why it's called "EPA range".

Secondly, Tesla provides multiple options for predicting the remaining range while driving. Only one of them uses EPA range numbers.

Every Tesla owner I know uses the Energy screen on long trips. It's very accurate, and takes into account your speed, driving style, weather, grade and other factors.

This is just Tesla bashing, and not even smart Tesla bashing.

Fearghast, 01 Sep 2023Every manufacturer pretty much does exactly that, it is a part of CoC (EC certificate of confo... moreUnfortunately I couldn’t find anything about how CoC works with electric cars. But I found a bit about WLTP and it’s not the same what I have written. What I meant is measuring the range at a given speed by driven the car till no energy is left. WLTP doesn’t work like this. They are measuring the range based on dynamic cycles which last only 30 minutes. The highest measured speed is only about 130km/h.
Based on this they then calculate the range. This may be a good example of an average drive but not in specific cases like driving on a highway at a constant high speed (in electric cars the range drops significantly). Also they don’t include speeds like 140km/h (Poland max highway speed) or in Germans autobahn with no speed limit. Bjørn Nyland sometimes tests electric cars at 200km/h and the result show that the range difference is huge. For example Kia EV6 GT can drive 400km at 90km/h, 287km at 120km/h but only 126km at 200km/h!! At the same time the WLTP range is 424km. So even at 120km/h range doesn’t match. So how can a client know if a car meets their requirements?

So in the end all those test don’t show any important data for a potential buyer.

  • E.V. believe

Interesting information 🤔. I am assuming that the writer is a ev owner as well as the commenters. As a ev owner (2018 tesla m3) we have no problems traveling across the state of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, California, Arizona, Nevada. Etc. Point being with 280 miles max range it makes traveling 👌 as far as I am concerned anything over 3 hrs and its time for a pit stop anyway. The real problem is that climate conditions change range dramatically at times. But you can always get 3 plus hours of driving time.

AdrianM, 31 Aug 2023Instead of optimistic range and other nonsense, every electric car manufacturer should test th... moreEvery manufacturer pretty much does exactly that, it is a part of CoC (EC certificate of conformity).
But it still is just a WLTP number that is hardly all that useful in real conditions - like rain, snow, going up the long hill etc.
That is where AI predictive consumption based on destination or supposed destination would help tremendously.

Instead of optimistic range and other nonsense, every electric car manufacturer should test they vehicle at specified speeds. For example 50km/h, 90km/h, 120km/h, 140km/h and 200km/h. Based on this everyone can tell if a car meets their requirements.

But something like this will never happen because it would only show that electric car aren't suited for highway's.

Last First
Prev 1 of 1 Next