Multiple people in the auto news sector have written articles saying that Tesla really needs to STFU about this. By harping on the reporter’s mistakes, they just keep reminding people that a Tesla might well leave them stranded if they do any of the following:
[ul][li]Drive over the speed limit[/li][li]Want to drive somewhere on a cold day, and would like to use the heater (heat isn’t “free” in an electric car)[/li][li]Get impatient and don’t wait until the car is fully recharged[/li][li]Take an unplanned detour[/li][li]Fail to rigidly ahere to the shortest route between charging stations[/li][li]Run into a traffic jam.[/li][/ul]
Basically, Tesla shoots themselves in the foot every time they bitch about this.
Well yes but the early products you described delivered something that didn’t exist. Batteries take too long to recharge to make a battery-only vehicle competitive with a market that already exists.
It’s the same battery issue regardless of which car you drive. The test conditions given to the NYT were below what granny would drive to church on Sunday.
So basically you’re saying that the car sucks because it can’t make the long distance trips you would insist on making with it. Which you earlier stated that NO ONE was saying.
I’m saying it has limited appeal based on the cost of the car and what it delivers. It narrows it’s utility and thus the number of people who will buy it. But since they only produce a handful a day that should only be a problem if the cost to produce it exceeds the current selling price. They’ve already sold out the Sportster.
If you live in an area where all your driving needs are met in a 25 mile radius then these cars are a cool novelty. They offer a unique experience if not a bit pricey. It would be like a Mazda Rotary car that sells for $60,000.
Here is a follow-up blog posting by the Public Editor at The New York Times (basically the paper’s ombudsman). Her conclusion is that John Broder was at fault, partly for not reading the manual (where he would have learned about the max range feature).
I think this is a very distorted account of what the ombudsman concluded. To wit:
There is nothing here about reading the manual, and it falls far far short of opining that “that John Broder was at fault.”
In general, your summary is of a piece with the gravamen of our complaints about the original Tesla retort: it substantially overweights certain discrete facts (entirely out of proportion with the evidence as a whole) in the service of deriving extremely unsupportable inferences about fault and malfeasance.
Sorry for the distortion, but the bit about reading the manual came from the reader she quoted. I assumed that in quoting the reader, she was endorsing his opinions.
The ombudsman said her own findings “were not dissimilar” to those of that reader: that Broder should’ve charged up the car regardless of the supercharger element of the story because that’s what Tesla drivers are supposed to do, and he perhaps should have used the Range Mode setting. I believe Broder commented on the Max Range feature in his response to Musk’s blog post: he said he didn’t use it because it shortens the overall battery life. So he was aware of that feature and made a logical decision not to use it, but maybe the Range Mode feature would have been suitable. And it goes without saying that Broder’s notes weren’t that precise, which created mistakes and opened him up to some of the criticisms Musk tried to over-exploit.
Well, the car is priced for wealthy individuals. It is most certainly not aimed at the middle class. Making cost comparisons of one Tesla equals three Mustangs, plus some five shitty econoboxes are, frankly, ridiculous concepts. People who are willing to plunk down $100 grand on a car are making different comparisons, like to other BMWs, or Audis, or what have you. For $100gs you could also buy 20 kickass mountain bikes, or 1000 shitty Walmart bikes, or 2000 pairs of sneakers. All these are equally ridiculous cost comparisons.
But in all this conversation, we should deal a little bit with the raw physical numbers.
The 85kWh battery is equivalent to 2.6 gallons of gasoline, measured as the total potential chemical energy. An internal combustion engine however is 20-35% efficient in converting potential chemical energy to mechanical energy. An electric motor is about 96-98% efficient in converting chemical to mechanical energy. So a fair rough number is to multiply 2.6 gallons times three: therefore, a fully charged Tesla is like having 7.5 gallons in the tank of a regular small sedan. That’s the reality of it. Is it a small number for most average folk now? Yes. What is happening now, the early adopters are financing reaserch and development into batteries that are faster charging, have higher energy density capability, and are investing into the infrastructure of quick recharge stations. Eventually, battery technology will advance to the point where a 1.5 ton car will have a 200kWh battery and will be made of components and technology that is highly commoditized.
So, frankly, I don’t get why folks are hating on a car which is not aimed or marketed at them (and they would never afford it), but it has the potential to get the ball rolling on a market of cheap, reliable electric cars.
BTW, I don’t think Tesla will ever be in a position to make cheap reliable electric cars unless they scale up production now. All the major car manufactures have cars ready to go when battery technology catches up to expectations.
Well, I figure that since a typical cell phone battery holds 5 Wh of energy, that means that one 85kWh Tesla is the equivalent of 17000 typical cell phones. Granted, Tesla has barely now just started production, but eventually when their Fremont plant is running at full capacity they will be consuming a not insignificant portion of the battery market. Of course one would hope that if the technology is viable more plants would come online to produce more vehicles at cheaper rates. In theory, market forces will show which newer battery technologies will supplant the existing ones.
If the above statement seems too esoteric, then let me point out that Tesla is financing battery design by designing batteries that can be packaged and survive the mechanical environment that a car subjects them to, which is very different than what a typical cellphone in a buttpocket might feel.
Maybe I misunderstood what Tesla was doing but I got the impression they were taking off the shelf batteries and stuffing them into a car. I may poo poo the current state of electric cars (because of today’s batteries) but make no mistake the Tesla cars are a remarkable achievement. Starting a car company from scratch doesn’t seem possible. I would hope that they get bought up and not stomped out of existence down the line.
The Tesla approach has been to take already commoditized laptop batteries and add their secret sauce packaging. Batteries cheap; packaging not so cheap and a lot more than “stuffing them in a car.”
Another major electric vehicle battery approach is the large format battery. This is where development is ongoing – different anode and cathode materials for example – to develop different power and energy densities and durability profiles. This is also where there has not yet been production economies of scale yet.
Manufacturers have been aiming for battery life that would match “life of the car” and claim that batteries should achieve that but no one really knows how long they will last in various real world environments. Plus “life of the car” may be a smaller number than how long the car other than the batteries would actually live. Call it 10 years? 15? 20 is likely more realistic for many cars today, especially one primarily powered by an electric motor. At this point I’m guessing one battery pack replacement seems likely over the 15 to 20 years that one of these vehicles should otherwise last.
My ICE vehicles run much worse mileage in winter and when I gun it. No one runs an ICE in winter all out and runs an article complaining that the car did not meet advertised mpg. Why does anyone expect an EV to be different?
Yes. If you plan on driving over 200 miles at a crack with a Tesla you need to plan accordingly, not driving it like you do when your range is likely going to be shorter. The NYT writer was a bit of a doofus, very sloppy and embarrasses his newspaper, not the car. Others make that same trip without any problem and most who buy the car are not going to use it for long range trips, especially in winter.
Generally because you’re not likely to wind up stranded or stuck for an hour and a half “trickle fueling” so you can make it to the “SuperFueler” when your ICE car needs to gas up 30 miles earlier than expected. You stop at the next convenient gas station, spend 5 minutes getting refilled, and you’re on your way.
The need to schedule your pit stops is more a function of the time needed to recharge than the ultimate range of the car. Additional stops due to shorter than expected range come at a high cost.
It is your belief that heat needs to be on at 72 or higher else one freezes one’s ass? That driving the speed limit on cruise control is a poor idea for distance driving?
Cheesesteak,
Correct. No pure battery EV can beat the energy density, fast refill capability, and wide extant refill infrastructure of an ICE. If being able to drive hundreds of miles in a day is your high priority this vehicle is a stupid choice (and other EVs stupider yet). Hell, I mainly drive 15 to 30 miles a day but still have a week end day in which I ended up putting 90 miles on without going out of town. If I had bought a Leaf instead of a C-Max Energi plug-in I would have been in trouble that day, especially as it was frigid cold.
Tesla’s trying to claim to be able to do everything an ICE can do is foolish.
Yet unlike the Porsche Panamera Turbo S or the BMW M5 it can cart a ton of stuff as well and seat 5 adults and two kids … yeah, it doubles as a minivan with style.
Day in day out driving needs its range, even in frigid cold weather with heat on and driving it hard, will suffice. Going out of town? Okay, drive your other car or at least don’t pull a Broder, i.e. think some about how you are going to do it and understand the vehicles limitations; drive it smart. This purpose is not its strength. This is not the 500 mile road trip car.
I can’t afford this car but if money was no object, dayum! I don’t think I’d be using the Porsche Panamera Turbo S for the family road trip either.
Yes on the temperature and yes driving 55 mph on a highway. Nobody is going to spend $100K on a car with the expectations of these limitations. Heck, nobody is going to spend $1k on a used piece of crap and expect this.
Welcome to the world of people who don’t like to freeze while driving in the 21st century.
The Porsche Cayenne Turbo would do nicely for the family road trip.
But the article in question was never meant to be a test of the car. That’s not what Tesla wanted anyway. They wanted to demonstrate the free charging stations that come with the car. The reporter was suppose to write about the 100 fueling stations Tesla plans on building by 2015.