So I'm REALLY curious to know now - in all those road tests where people testing the car gave the 60kWh cars such glowing reviews, was Tesla flipping the switch for more range, the way ISPs flip the switch when you run speed tests??
Consumer Reports buys cars anonymously to avoid just this class of issues. I don’t know which other reviewers do this – it’s obviously more effort and expense than testing a car that the manufacturer gifted or lent you, or even that they knew the intended use of.
The 60 watt model s has the same battery as the 75 watt model s. It's well known that you can pay tesla $200 to upgrade your 60 to a 75. If the road testers were testing the 60 watt model, they'd be testing it with the software lock on.
considering that the ONLY thing it changes is the range.. and the ranges are public info... wouldn't that be pretty obvious to the person reviewing it?
I would normally hope so, but Tesla cars have definitely had a bit of "fanboy blindness" happening where they don't really think too closely about things.
This also could apply to the battery's overall lifespan - by releasing more capacity with software as the battery degrades, they can make their "60kWh" battery seem to last far longer than any other competing battery. While this is nice for the consumer, it is very disingenuous if they do it and claim "we have better batteries"
Edit: To clarify I'm not claiming they do this, but just bringing up another possible use of this "software switch" that they could use maliciously. We just can't possibly know because there's zero way TO know...
Mechanically, the battery is better yes. However since it's becoming rather obvious that the general population had no idea how this battery limit worked, it means that Tesla could say "our battery is better" and be lauded for making the better "60kWh" battery. They don't have the "better" battery, because you're comparing an apple to a bigger apple and saying the bigger one is better at being an apple.
Sounds like a perfectly valid strategy to me. You can create a longer lasting battery by investing in R&D or spending more on the battery itself.
No consumer is buying batteries by looking at what technology was used to create it. They're buying it for X range, X recharge cycles, for X dollars. Those are all of the variables. So giving them more recharge cycles for the same money IS better.
This is exactly the way the SSD market works btw.. in fact its worse, because the largest manufacturers are actively investing money to make shorter life (but denser MB/area) cells (SLC > MLC > TLC), while building more spare capacity into each drive to meet their reliability targets.
If a 75kwh battery downrated in software to act as a 60kwh battery performs better, isn't that still "better" than a cheaper "real" 60kwh battery? Is that really different from using a more expensive cell design in the "better" battery?
Range depends a lot on driving conditions. Someone test-driving a car is unlikely to get anywhere near the published range, as they'll be pushing it a lot harder than typical conditions.
You still have to plug it in and charge the battery to 75kw.. if they were driving it, and they upgraded it, it wouldn't change anything. So when they started the test on a full battery, it either had the estimated range of a 60kw battery or a 75kw battery.
This has some pretty serious implications...