> [one customer] ultimately concluded there is nothing wrong with his car. The problem, he said, was that Tesla is overstating its performance
As I read this, either his car was defective or he was lied to to convince him to make a $XX,000 purchase. It seems that Tesla should be facing some form of fraud-based lawsuit over the lies selling the car or treating it under warranty, right?
Most normal Tesla owners I'm familiar with just come to accept that the website range claim is complete horseshit. They go on with their lives and just don't worry about it. For around town, it'll get somewhat close to rated range anyway, and road trips aren't that common for most people. The supercharger network is pretty good, and if you have to stop every 200 miles instead of the rated 358, then so be it.
Personally I think the EPA should revamp the rating system. I want to see every manufacturer forced to admit what range to expect if we use 90% of the battery capacity, at 70 mph, in 32F ambient temperature with climate control set to 68F. The only time people really care deeply about range is on the interstate, so the range numbers really ought to reflect that.
No. Sorry. Making the claim that most tesla owners do X is in my opinion horseshit. Tesla should be ashamed of themselves and should be sued into oblivion for false advertising. This is not a +/- 5%. This is a massive lie and a coverup.
Those seem orthogonal, and not related. I assert that yes, most Tesla owners just deal with it. But yes, it's unacceptable and Tesla should be held to account for it. Both can be true.
Sort of. The official process comes in a couple different flavors, and there are absolutely ways to game it. It's not like EPA is running the tests themselves, they just write the rules. Also, AFAICT there is no penalty for sandbagging (see also Porsche). Tesla could give realistic numbers but instead ran the tests in the most optimistic way possible and chose the best numbers they could plausibly claim to be EPA formula.
The EPA recommended system is pretty accurate and conservative, according to the article. Mercedes is supposed to use it and has more accurate estimates. Tesla is still using their own math from before the EPA had a plan.
Meanwhile, what difference does it make if most Tesla customers do X? Tesla now has enough customers that hurting 10% of them is a major impact.
EPA should also add multiple range estimates say at 70mph, 80mph. Lots of people drive 80mph+ on the highway.
And buyers should be made aware they will be using only 70% (10 to 80) of the battery between highway charger stops. Charging gets really slow after 80%.
I agree on both counts. More data would be better. And for fun they could just mandate it across-the-board. It would be halfway interesting to see the impact of heating/cooling and speed on ICE vehicles too.
Tesla advertises the EPA rated range. The car not actually achieving that range in real world conditions (which are more varied than the test conditions) is not necessarily defective or false advertising.
Now I do think that the EPA ratings are inadequate and inconsistent. Those could use some improvement to better reflect real world driving conditions.
There is a way to act against that too: "whatever is decided in court, if anything deviates from the spirit of this contract's full enforcement for any reason within either party's control, both parties are fully liable for undoing every part of their performance, including refunding all the products and services."
> [one customer] ultimately concluded there is nothing wrong with his car. The problem, he said, was that Tesla is overstating its performance
As I read this, either his car was defective or he was lied to to convince him to make a $XX,000 purchase. It seems that Tesla should be facing some form of fraud-based lawsuit over the lies selling the car or treating it under warranty, right?