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Tesla Model Y range estimate reduced by 6%, becoming more realistic (electrek.co)
32 points by nickthegreek on Jan 5, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 113 comments


I've owned a Model Y for about a year now, and range anxiety isn't a big deal on road trips as long as you're using the built in nav for your destination. The nav calculated estimations tend to be very accurate, within a few percent when it determines the battery remaining, and it'll add in supercharger stops as needed.

I definitely have to stop more in the winter time on road trips, but that's just the nature of how EVs work. On the upside Tesla puts superchargers in spots that make it easy to take a break for a rest stop anyway.

I do miss how quick gas station stops are with ICE cars when doing a road trip, especially if you're on a constrained schedule, but the benefits of having the EV have outweighed it so far, especially with most of my daily miles being in the city (where the EV really shines).


This is key, because not every mile driven is the same. If you see "Model Y has a range of 300 miles" and set out to drive 300 miles you are going to have a problem. The temperature, wind speed/direction, humidity, pressure, cloud cover, altitude, uphill/downhill driving, vehicle weight, battery quality, tire tread, AC use, average speed... all make a huge difference. The nav system does take these into account and gives you a much more realistic number.


It's impressive how well these estimates work, given the outsized impact many of these factors can have. These things are more negligible in an ICE as the denominator of energy stored in a gasoline tank is 4-5 times more than an EV. I believe a typical EV has to make do with the equivalent of just 2-3 gallons of gasoline in energy on a full battery charge.


The energy density of the fuel isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. The chemical energy stored in gas is much harder to use. ICE cars typically get around 20-40% efficiency. Electric motors typically get 80-90%.

In some sense, they do that by moving the losses to before the battery/tank; so this isn't as big of a gain in terms of total energy usage. However, in terms of the effective capacity of the energy storage device, we don't really care about losses in refilling it.


Do we know it doesn't cheat?

We know the range estimates used to (?) be gamed[1], I don't see why this part wouldn't be, too.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-ba...


If I say I want to go to X destination the car says I will arrive with Y battery percent left.

This is accurate to me within about 5% of the battery, even driving at fast highways speeds and in cold weather.

If it was "cheating" I think I'd notice an issue when the car said I had 5% left but the real battery charge was empty.


It would hurt the brand to cheat the sat-nav based range, it would mean the car wouldn’t make it to a charger when it said it would. You’d have a lot of unhappy customers.

Think of the sat-nav range as closed-loop and the other testing based ranges as open-loop.


Claim: "The nav calculated estimations tend to be very accurate"

> Do we know it doesn't cheat?

Then the nav won't be accurate then would it? Also: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-pannone-3a414610/


> I believe a typical EV has to make do with the equivalent of just 2-3 gallons of gasoline in energy on a full battery charge.

The 57.5 kWh battery in the base Model 3 has the same energy content as just ~1.18 US gallons (4.46 liters) of pure gasoline. Electric motors are a lot more efficient than combustion engines, though.


It's much more like the range on a small private plane. It might be rated for 500 miles on a tank, but that involves so many factors that you have to take into account, because there aren't gas stations in the sky.

Once you learn how to take the factors into account, you get a "feel" for what you can and cannot do.


Do you live in a warm state or a cold state? I live in Michigan and during the winter range is reduced considerably. This is fine for my local commute, but is quite painful when you want to drive “up North” to go skiing. There isn’t a lot of charging infrastructure and coupled with the reduced range, longer trips can be inconvenient.


Driving around the midwest in the winter time I find I get about 200 miles to the full charge. The cold weather, increased wind speeds, and need to run the heater all eat into the range substantially.

I hear you about wanting to drive up north for outdoor winter sports. It requires a lot more planning once north of Grand Rapids to make sure you won't end up stranded.

Many times I'll stop at a supercharger early just to take advantage of the battery heating the charging provides. That alone makes the rest of the trip more efficient, and I can get back below 300 wh/mi. The heated seats and steering wheel also make a big difference and allow the heat pump to not have to do so much work.


You missing how quick it is to fill up on a road trip is one huge reason of few I'm not an EV buyer present day. Once the experience is road trip driving experience as an ICE of today then I'm an EV buyer.


I've done 4 3000 km trips (there and back twice) in an EV. Each trip was about 15 minutes longer because we had an EV rather than a gas vehicle. We charged while we were sleeping, eating, buying snacks and bathrooming. Granted we were a family so those took longer than a couple of 25 year old guys would spend doing them. The car spent far more time waiting for us than we spent waiting for it.

Other than those trips, almost all of the charging has been done at home which means in the last four years we've saved about 20 minutes a month in gas station visits.


How many times a year do you do road trips? I don’t do any (most places I want to go are a plane flight distance away), but I’m still buying an ICE car because I want to give the BEV market more time to evolve; the quality of interior I want is $20,000 higher for BEV compared to ICE at the moment but I think it’ll get more reasonable over the next 2 years.


A Few times a month


Why does it have to be perfectly equivalent?

Do we only need to reduce emissions if doing so is not just feasible or workable but perfectly convenient for everyone in all situations?

For reference my road tripping charges on interstate highways tend to look like ~3-3.5 hours of driving on the first leg (starting with 90-100% charge at home) followed by 15 minutes of charging every ~2 hours of driving after that.

It's not perfect or quite as good as ICE, but I usually find that the car is almost ready to go after I use the restroom and get a bottle of water or something and get back to the car.

I make this great sacrifice of horrific inconvenience the two times per year or so that I take trips that actually require multiple charging stops, in exchange for zero gas station visits the rest of the year due to home charging.


Why not a PHEV?


Tesla oversells and under delivers on many things. Range is one and the other big one is the autosteer, FSD etc. which has gotten worse not better with subsequent releases. Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software. LOL.


> Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software. LOL.

Not only will they appreciate in value, Teslas will earn you money while you sleep. [1]

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/ride-hailing-tesla-elon-musk


I can't find the Telsa Network App on the Apple Store, can't you provide a link for me?



>Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software.

Meanwhile, Teslas are some of the fastest depreciating cars on the market. And Trevor Milton is going to jail for four years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/18/nikola-founder-trevor-milton...


>Meanwhile, Teslas are some of the fastest depreciating cars on the market

Because they dropped the prices of new cars by a lot after supply chain issues resolved, price of lithium and other supplies went down. Why is that a bad thing?

Meanwhile Mercedes-Benz CEO said that residual value is more important to them.

Musk: "So I just can't emphasize again how important cost is," Musk said. "It's not an optional thing for most people. It is a necessary thing. We have to make our cars more affordable so that people can buy them."

Why is cheaper EVs a bad thing? Isn't this the exact thing that's making housing super expensive, that rich homeowners are restricting supply so their home(s) keeps appreciating, leading to folks getting squeezed with home costs and rents going up exponentially.


>Why is that a bad thing?

If you were told by the CEO of the company that your car would appreciate, and instead it depreciated at a rate beyond normal, you don't see an issue with that?


What does a new EPA testing methodology going into effect have to do with Nikola again?

Comparing Trevor Milton to Elon Musk is also wild. I still vividly remember the Tesla short seller crowd praising Milton as a genius while declaring Elon as a charlatan.

> "The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."

- Trevor Milton

Source: https://www.truckinginfo.com/330475/whats-behind-the-grille-...


>Comparing Trevor Milton to Elon Musk is also wild.

Why is it "wild"?

Milton is going to prison for, basically, lying about the functionality of their truck. It didn't work like he claimed it did, when he claimed it did. But it's not like they don't have a real truck or a real business; they are testing vehicles right now. Nikola still exists. They have trucks on the road.

So why is that such a stretch to compare things he claimed to things Tesla has claimed? You can perhaps argue about the scale or severity of the different claims, but I'd say exaggerated range claims and full-self-driving are also pretty bad:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-ba...


Milton was sentenced to jail because he was found guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. That's why.

Also, from your linked article:

"One of the experts, [Gregory Pannone], co-authored a study of 21 different brands of electric vehicles, published in April by SAE International, an engineering organization. The research found that, on average, the cars fell short of their advertised ranges by 12.5% in highway driving. The study did not name the brands tested.."

> The study did not name the brands tested..

I was curious why that is. So I did some digging and found this very reassuring info. I'm sure there's no bias right?

[Gregory Pannone]

-Sr. Engineer General Motors

- Engineer/Intern Engineer/Intern BP p.l.c. British multinational oil and gas

- FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles logo Head of Fuel Economy, Performance, and P/T Synthesis Chrysler LLC

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-pannone-3a414610/


Was Milton’s securities fraud something like a claim that he had “funding secured” for a private buyout of the company on an official company communication medium when he knew he did not? (That’s something that Musk did.)


>Milton was sentenced to jail because he was found guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. That's why.

Yes, those were the crimes he was convicted of. What's your point?

It's because he lied about the operability of the truck and it cost investors money.

>I'm sure there's no bias right?

Yes, it's all a big conspiracy. Tesla zealots are so thick.


> Tesla zealots are so thick.

What a very nice and compelling ad hominem argument. It's clear that you're very uninformed.

> Yes, it's all a big conspiracy

Questioning about a possible bias is conspiracy talk now? What ever happened to healthy discourse? It seems the level of your knowledge does not go beyond the news headlines.


>Questioning about a possible bias is conspiracy talk now? What ever happened to healthy discourse? It seems the level of your knowledge does not go beyond the news headlines.

Buddy, you started this thread calling me "intellectually dishonest", so don't start crying about "healthy discourse" now.

But sure, lay it out for us: you think that the author of the study is biased. So, what does that mean? Did he fabricate the data? What exactly are you implying?


> Buddy, you started this thread calling me "intellectually dishonest".

Because you were and it must have struck a nerve. :)

> So don't start crying about "healthy discourse" now.

But I thought "itsoktocry" is that not true anymore?


> Tesla oversells and under delivers on many things. Range is one and the other big one...

Isn't it illegal to overstate official EPA results? Maybe I'm missing something here.

Moreover, this affects ALL 2024 model year battery electric vehicles. There is a 6-page document here that explains it:

https://dis.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=55592&fla...

This was enacted in 2022 but goes into effect this year:

This new policy is applicable to new testing for 2024 model year and later vehicles. It may be applied to new testing for 2023 model year vehicles. *Vehicles utilizing carry-over data may continue to use data generated under previous policy* for as long as the tests are valid (i.e., no changes to the vehicle requiring new MPGe/range testing are required). *Manufacturers who add a new configuration to a test group for 2024 and later must present new test results using this policy*, but existing data can still be used if it is representative".


Promises notwithstanding, model 3 and Y are some of the most efficient EV's on the market, getting more mile/kwh (or less kwh/100km, or however you measure it) than their competitors.

Don't have a tesla myself, (kia e-niro), but weather will have an enormous impact on range, did a ~400km loop last week, 200km up north, used only 14.7kwh/100km, and the 200km back used more than 21.7kwh/100km. (Tailwind vs headwind)


>Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software.

They were also going to appreciate because Tesla cars would operate as autonomous robot taxis by end of 2020, and it wouldn't make sense to sell a car to a consumer for $35,000 when you could have it earning money 24/7 as a taxi.


It would make sense to sell it at that price if you had competitors. So Musk was essentially saying "we are going to create a monopoly and then milk the market for all it's worth". I found it weird that nobody criticised him for that back then.


Well, the competitors in this case would've been taxi companies, not other car companies.

The case was basically that for every $35k Model 3 that comes off the lot can be sold for a profit up to $35k, or be added to the robotaxi fleet where it can generate whatever revenue it can produce. For example, if every Model 3 could generate $5/h of profit, then running it 24/7/365 would be $44k.


I suspect 24/7 use of a tesla would consume most of it's useful life in 1 year.

Also electricity isn't free so that's going to be a substantial code and likely several sets of tires.


> Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software.

This may turn out to be true. Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day[1], this is with Powerwalls, 13.5KWH capacity. Teslas have 80KWH+ capacity, equivalent of 6 powerwalls. Tesla's have a potential to make a decent amount of money from participating in VPP (Virtual Power Plants).

Coupled with the $25/month plan[2], VPP participation will take advantage of cheap power when its available, supply power back to the grid when its extremely profitable.

Will this work for everyone, no, it won't. Some people are fanatic about using fossil fuels. Will it work for a fraction of the people who might be interested in getting paid. It just might.

[1] Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo...

[2] With the Tesla Electric Home Charging Plan, you will: Pay a fixed fee of $25/month for vehicle charging sessions between 10 PM and 6 AM: https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-electric/vehicle


And yet, they overdeliver compared to everyone else.

Tesla continues to trounce every other car manufacturer because despite the fact that us fanboys (and bitterboys) are regularly disappointed at underdelivering on the hype, they still produce the most compelling EV for the price when compared to everyone else.

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."


>they still produce the most compelling EV for the price when compared to everyone else.

Yes, and? If that was their claim, there'd be nothing to talk about.

Instead, we have all kinds of wild claims, from rocket cars to full-self-driving to amphibious trucks to battery swaps. None of which exist.


> Yes, and? If that was their claim, there'd be nothing to talk about.

That's not even close to reality and not intellectually honest. It's a fact that anything with "Tesla" on the headline gets clicks. A Tesla gets t-boned by another vehicle and the next day will get headlines like:

"Telsa involved in a serious accident" While make/model of other accidents is never mentioned in other accidents even when there's a fatality.


>That's not even close to reality and not intellectually honest.

You're just making things up.

We are talking about very specific claims in this thread.

>A Tesla gets t-boned by another vehicle and the next day will get headlines like: "Telsa involved in a serious accident" While make/model of other accidents is never mentioned in other accidents even when there's a fatality.

Show me this article.


> You're just making things up.

I made all of these headlines up?

https://news.google.com/search?q=Tesla%20accident

Find me the same amount of headlines where another make/model of the vehicle involved in a serious accident is mentioned on the headline itself.



> Show me this article.

Here's one on our very own Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38806707

Also incidents blaming autopilot get hundreds of upvotes and comments blaming Tesla, and when it turns out months after police investigation of that incident that Autopilot wasn't involved, that article never gets upvotes.

When it's bad news about a different car brand, we just get a headline like this talking about an "electric vehicle". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38741228

Same with recalls, Tesla's software update recalls are given disproportionate attention, and don't mention it's a software recall in the headline.


This is literally the exact opposite of what you are claiming.

It doesn't "blame" anything on the Tesla; instead, it seems to be praising it for lack of damage and injury to the passengers.

Is this interesting news? Not to me. But I suppose it's relevant being as how the Cybertruck is the most hyped vehicle of all-time, and there are only a handful on the road.


Look at the framing, as if it's surprising that it's "only" a minor injury.


A perfect and most recent example.


> And yet, they overdeliver compared to everyone else.

Which means they could publicly promise to do better than everyone else and still meet those promises.

So promising things that are unrealistic (ie Level 5 FSD 5 years ago) is an unforced error, an own-goal that could be avoided but they have chosen not to avoid this over and over.


One way to get more done than others, is to set the goal out far enough that if you miss it you will do more than others.

Tesla and Space X have accomplished more than any other company in the last 70 years within their respective industries.


Goals and targets don't have to also be claims made to your customers.

> Tesla and Space X have accomplished more than any other company in the last 70 years within their respective industries.

That's absolutely not in contradiction to my point.


The disadvantage is that you lose all credibility. If Musk says something factually true tomorrow, my first instinct is to not believe him. That's kind of bad.

I believe Musk is also tarnishing the Tesla brand by his antics. I noticed that the association to Musk is kinda turning some left-leaning liberals away from Tesla.


> they overdeliver compared to everyone else

Tesla delivers. That’s above par for the current course. The problem is Musk’s antics create opportunity for competitors. If he could have the discipline he does with SpaceX, Tesla’s long-term prospects would be stronger.


Yea... their only real competitor is a single Chinese company (BYD).


> their only real competitor is a single Chinese company (BYD)

This is short sighted. Their threat profile from new entrants (whether de novo or legacy) is massive. Most people I know considering EVs are not prioritising Teslas. They haven’t ruled them out. But it’s an even comparison between the Tesla on the lot and whatever they need to put a deposit down on for delivery in a few months or even years.


Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you'll enter low earth orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.


Musk oversells everything..he's like a used car salesman.

One of a few reasons i won't be buying an EV anytime soon.


An equivalent statement would be “I bought some pills from the guy on the street corner and they didn’t contain what he said they would, so I’m never going to the pharmacy ever again.”


My maximum range on my 16 month old Model Y is down 10% from when I first purchased it. I don't know if that's "normal" but it sure feels like I got scammed, that's for sure.


Degradation is supposed to be 12% after 200,000 miles: https://electrek.co/2023/04/25/tesla-update-battery-degradat...

But, like all batteries they degrade fastest at the beginning. Not sure how typical your situation is. How many miles?


25,000 miles.


Is that displayed range (including maybe software updates to change what is displayed) or is that "when I bought it, I could drive this far before it died" compared to "now I can't get that far"?


Displayed range. If a software update changed what is displayed to be more accurate, that is equally as deceitful.


Some good fleet data: https://www.tessie.com/stats


My Model Y LR is roughly the same age (24K miles) and I lost about 8.5% capacity.

Pretty sure this is the nature of current lithium battery tech, according to many Tesla owner reports. From what I have gathered, the loss rate will slow and gradually level out above 70% for much of the ten year battery warranty, as long as you follow Tesla’s guidance on battery health.


> In fact, nothing changed on the vehicles themselves, except the way range is now calculated. Specifically, the EPA now mandates that all EV manufacturers test acceleration and ride height modes in both best and worst-case scenarios. This makes almost all EVs lose range and efficiency, although the changes were introduced to better reflect real-world range performance.

> The new system is applicable to vehicles testing for the 2024 model year and later.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-my2024-updates-less...

This is a slight improvement but still EPA testing is both a poor match to actual road tripping (where people often care about EV range) and can be very inconsistent between vehicles due to the number of options automakers have in choosing which cycles they will test with and how they use those results. The EPA's standard "highway" driving cycle averages 48 mph.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/heres-how-the-epa-calcu...


It's worth pointing out that the only international alternative to the EPA efficiency cycle for EVs is WLTP, which produces even more optimistic range numbers.

We can't win. If you ask the average person on the street the right way to measure "EV range", they'd give you an answer (e.g. "drive like you do in the real world") that looks very much like what the EPA tests. If you ask that same person if their car goes as far as it claims, they'll say "no", because they're thinking about highway range at 75mph.


My understanding is that WLPT is more consistent across manufacturers but as you say provides higher range numbers that won't match 70mph+ highway driving.

ICE cars are rated in City MPG and Highway MPG, and both are displayed on the window sticker. The EPA does test and compute City and Highway efficiency for EVs but then distills this into one combined range number for the sticker.

My suggestion would be to display separate City and Highway range figures for all EVs, adjust the Highway cycle to reflect 70mph highway driving, and combine all of the current options into a single set of test cycles that all manufacturers must use.

The current situation where different manufacturers use different test cycles and adjustment factors doesn't seem good for consumers at all.


The longest I've gone on a single charge was ~270 miles in my Model 3 while it was under a year old. I don't remember how much range I had when I got home, but if I was going anywhere further I would have stopped to charge.

The big issue that I have with range in my Model 3 is tires: I thought the tire shop was putting on the same tires that the car came with, but they didn't. My 2nd set of tires really killed the range. (I should have argued with the tire shop when I picked up the car, but I didn't.)


Wheels and tires make a huge huge difference on the margin for cars that are already pretty efficient. But Tesla doesn't ship particularly efficient wheels and tires from the factory, do they? When I was shopping for them they seemed to universally ship all-season performance tires, not the kinds of efficiency tires you see on other EVs and hybrids. I assumed that they were doing that because the rest of their platform is already so much more efficient than others.

The big wheel package available on my hybrid kills the MPG, and I am happier with the 16" wheels. But Tesla doesn't offer anything under 18" as I recall.


Perhaps worth pointing out that the big direction depends on each jurisdiction's guidelines for claiming range. The EPA in the US and Canada seems closest to reality, while the long range version in Germany still shows 533km/331mi, Japan shows 605km/376mi while China has 688km/427mi.


How does one "jump" a tesla - can a Tesla be used to jump-charge another tesla?

One thing that would be kind of cool would be a slide-in Jump battery - a small battery cell that can be physically swapped between two teslas to give them N-miles range - so if your tesla dies, another tesla can swap this battery with you. (the charging priority is to the swappable suitcase battery)

((What if your nav would alert you while driving you EV that another car needs your power and is in vicinity/on-route-you-are-driving... if you jump them you get credits for whatever such credits can be used for - and another EV driver can "venmo" you credits for the jump -- or create an "uber" market for driving around credits - make a mobile charging semi. Like the aircraft refueling fleet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tanker_aircraft ))

These can be carried by AAA tows and swapped to get you going.

It should be the floor of the FRUNK and lif out like a suitcase.


If you mean the 12V battery, same as any other car.

If you mean using one Tesla to charge another when its main battery is empty, currently only the Cybertruck supports such power output.

https://www.tesla.com/powershare

Some services like AAA do provide roadside charging via generator or battery pack onboard their service vehicles.

Personally I haven't run out of charge in 4.5 years of driving an EV in all sorts of places. I never ran out of gas either.


> Some services like AAA do provide roadside charging via generator or battery pack onboard their service vehicles.

> Personally I haven't run out of charge in 4.5 years of driving an EV in all sorts of places. I never ran out of gas either.

I think that's true of a lot of drivers but I bet if EV makers threw in 5 years of AAA recharging for free it would alleviate a lot of range anxiety for first time EV buyers. It wouldn't even be that expensive for the EV makers since the actual incidences are probably pretty low.


>>>"Personally I haven't run out of charge in 4.5 years of driving an EV in all sorts of places"

Neither have i, but if the cybertruck is any dystopian-minded-MadMax types' "bug out vehicle" -- this is going to suck.

The cybertruck should come with a built in generator that can consume gas to charge your thing?

One can take a cybertruck-type vehicle out into the woods of Alaska, and carry a bunch of extra fuel, but you can't bring an additional 5,000 LBS of batteries...

I' dont have the energy (pun intended) to do it, but it would seem that one could make a simple spreadsheet to compare miles per gallon to miles per battery weight, such that you know that if you get 20 miles per gallon and a gallon weighs 8 pounds, vs you get how much distance out of the EV per weight?


Where will you find refined unexpired gasoline in your MadMax apocalypse?

A pack of solar panels you can set out in your bug-out camping zone seems more feasible to me. No dependency on ongoing supply chains. Just look at how quickly gas shortages start when a hurricane is aimed at Florida.

And Tesla does sell a bolt-in range extending battery pack for their truck for $16,000 https://insideevs.com/news/699262/tesla-cybertruck-range-ext...


> Where will you find refined unexpired gasoline in your MadMax apocalypse?

You get vehicles that can burn expired gasoline (or more likely, diesel and diesel-like derivates in a multi-fuel engine).

For true apocalypse you want to go back to steam engines, those can run on water and wood.


> A pack of solar panels you can set out in your bug-out camping zone seems more feasible to me.

I wonder how big those would have to be to be practical.


Depends on how long you can wait to charge.

10kW seems like a capacity that could be carried in the truck bed and then set up on flat ground while camping out.

A realistic daily average output would be 30-40kWh in a day, or about 1/4 of the truck's battery capacity. Sunny days in summer would do better, cloudy winter days would do worse.

Recharging fully in 5-7 days seems reasonable. Assuming you actually had drained the battery to near empty and were needing to charge it back to full.

By some comparisons that seems slow. But it might be faster than waiting for a gas truck that never comes.


> The cybertruck should come with a built in generator that can consume gas to charge your thing?

This is called a "plug-in hybrid". [Depending; some, like the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, have a dual drive train so the engine is an engine; others, like the Chevy Volt, have an all-electric drive train and the engine is just a generator.]

In you're post-apocalyptic setting, you're looking for a solar panel array you can tow behind your electric vehicle to charge it periodically; you wouldn't be able to haul a large enough array to charge at the rate you deplete your batteries, on the go, and depending on the size of your panels and your battery and the weather it make take several days or a week to reach a full charge, but where are you going in a hurry at the end of the world?


>>>"a solar panel array you can tow behind your electric vehicle to charge it periodically; you wouldn't be able to haul a large enough array to charge at the rate you deplete your batteries"

Power plant idea:

- Dig a giant Pit Mine

- Put a bunch of mechanically driven generators in the bottom.

- Build a F-TON of gearings to accept rotational inputs from Solar Paowered-ly Charged motors into a network of gears to drive the huge alternators... this will require Area-51 sizes of desert - Hey, Africa has a huge free space for this.


F150 Lightning also provides power output from its onboard big battery system


Wow. That's actually a great idea.

Perhaps Tesla maintains ownership of it so that you never have to worry about whether someone you're swapping with is unloading a bad battery on you. At a certain degradation, they just give you a new one.

It's not even dead weight! Just extra battery capacity that's removable.

Standardize the form factor and turn it into a uniform standard that every manufacturer can adopt.


If you extrapolate this to the whole pack you get Nio's swappable battery system.

I don't see this scaling out well especially with trying to get multiple manufacturers onboard with standard packs.

Every EV can accept 120V or 240V power, and that can be obtained in a lot of ways including generators, portable battery packs, or inverters on ICE or EV vehicles.

A 240V output from one vehicle and a standard charging cord seems like a more universal solution to me than moving 100lb battery packs around.

https://ir.lucidmotors.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...


Fully swappable batteries seems untenable for a number of reasons.

a) It seems unlikely that you can standardize the battery form factor between different models. You'll still have a handful of different standards between small, full size, and truck/suvs, and semi truck forms. It's been hard enough getting manufacturers to standardize on a single charging port. Battery form standardization would be another order of magnitude hard.

b) Even if you somehow manage to do it, you're forever stuck on that form. Limits the experimentation and flexibility you have to develop for new use cases. Upgrading battery tech, like Tesla's switch to the bigger and more efficient 4680 in the cybertruck, would also get added friction since it wouldn't be compatible with older standards.

c) Tesla at least is starting to turn the battery pack into a structural element to reduce mass. Unlikely you can do this and be swappable at the same time.


You can add that an EV's battery is the most expensive part of the car and that a user can easily damage the battery if they drive/charge in a non optimal way.

I really do not want some other yahoo's battery after I take care of mine meticulously.


If you ever see Jason Statham replacing your battery - RUN.

If you are a diplomat in Iran, dont buy these cars.


I've often thought that EVs with "adjustable range" would be nice, you can buy it with the stock battery that gets you X range, and maybe that's all you need, but you can buy add-on packs that give you more range, or rent them.


>"Perhaps Tesla maintains ownership of it so that you never have to worry about whether someone you're swapping with is unloading a bad battery on you. At a certain degradation, they just give you a new one."

Someone Call Google and give them all the details! (reference required)

--

>Standardize the form factor and turn it into a uniform standard that every manufacturer can adopt

ANYtHING that requires power from the utility grid should have a standard plug.

Imaging buying a washing machine or refridgerator and having to update the wiring in your home because you want an LG washer and a GE fridge?

Oh wait, thats how cell phones seem to work and basically you cannot be a modern human without this tether.


Cell phones are pretty much all USB-C at this point.

EVs are either SAE J1772 or SAE J3400 which are adapter-compatible.


Yeah, dork... you know how many FN years it took and the impact of the mountains of e-waste before we could beat politicians with a stick from eating that corporate donut?


Agreed, but I don't get the point in complaining about the thing that's mostly fixed now.


JUST HOW LONG IT TOOK TO GET TO AN OBVIOUS result (ignore the caps... I wasnt yelling - just typing with eyes closed.)

ASIDE - WHY IS ther no KEYboard Key THAT sill shift BTWN caps and SMALL CAPS for a highlighted line??


“At this point” is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a phone launched barely three months ago.


It's a neat idea but I think you're really underestimating how large the battery would need to be to provide any useful range. I have a Toyota RAV4 hybrid whose battery only provides < 1 mile range and its battery is basically suitcase sized. I'm not having any luck finding dimensions or weight but you can get some sense of the size from the pics in this eBay listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266168009857


The Tesla S "small" size battery is 57KwH.

A MX FUEL™ REDLITHIUM™ FORGE™ HD12.0 is a bit below a KwH, and is 10x5x7 and weighs 13 pounds.


With the Cybertruck, you can charge another EV with it it. And plugin some other equipment. Earlier Teslas don't have this. Apparently that's something that they are going to do more of going forward. Also, using your vehicle to power your home is becoming a popular use case. It's a big reason Ford's F-150 is so popular as well. And there are a few other cars that can do this.

Anyway, the only way your battery would run out is if you willfully ignore all the helpful warnings and guidance to the nearest charger. Mostly people are smarter than that. There actually are a lot more cars getting stuck without petrol/diesel than EVs with dead batteries because EVs tend to give you more feedback on energy levels and usage. With a petrol car if you drive uphill or downhill, the indicated fuel levels actually change to be even less accurate than they normally are. When the needle hits zero, you might have 10 miles left or 20. Or just half a mile. Impossible to tell. That's how a lot of drivers get into trouble. The normal way to mitigate with both EVs and ICE cars is to just don't use the full range of the car and top up long before you get close to hitting zero.

But if it does happen, then yes the solution is usually somebody with a portable battery driving up to you and giving you a few kwh; or just towing you to the nearest charger or power outlet. If that happens to you, you should feel a bit stupid and embarrassed for letting that happen. Absolutely no need for mitigating that. It's a problem you shouldn't have and the fix if you do is low cost and easy.


>>Mostly people are smarter than that.

Now you listen hear - I am SO smart that I have designed these devices to do the thinking for me.


It'd be nice if they just published real data, the median (& quartiles perhaps) range drivers are actually getting.


You can get 20%+ more mileage than EPA on a single charge when doing city driving.

I consistently get 380 miles+ on my Model Y long range.


AIUI they have all the data to break it down like that too?


Gamify it, so you can compete with other drives to get better range/mileage!


My diesel Mercedes SUV has a 900 km range and filling up takes 5 minutes, why would I ever buy an EV.


Because I've gone 6 months with my EV charging only in my garage. I have never needed to go anywhere to "fill it up".

Also, where I live I have to drive 15 minutes each way to do the 5 minute fill up. I am saving 35 minutes every week by not having to go somewhere to fill my gas.


Don't you need to have a 220V circuit put in? And if you go anywhere that's more than 120 miles away, now you have to plan for a charging stop and make sure there's one on your route right? With ICE I don't have to worry about any of that.


> With ICE I don't have to worry about any of that.

You don’t really do that with EVs either. The navigation system takes all of that into account, including live metrics such as temperature, wind, weather, and elevation. It takes the guesswork out of non-trivial tasks.

The only valid issue is the poorly maintained Electrify America chargers for non-Tesla EVs.

But that’s about to change in the U.S., since pretty much everyone is adopting the NACS/SAE J340 Standard. This will make them compatible with Tesla Superchargers.

Apps like ABRP also exist, which are even compatible with level 2 charging:

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/


I can add about 50 miles of range overnight on a standard 120V outlet which is more than enough most of the time. For longer trips back-to-back, a 220V circuit would be really nice to fully re-charge overnight but its absolutely not necessary.


On what car? My brother in laws Rivian gets about 1-2 miles per hour, pulling 12A@110V from our garage.


My EV takes 0 minutes to fill up. Plug in at night, unplug a pre-heated / defrosted fully-charged car in the morning. All for 1/5th of the price of my old diesel per mile. Haven’t used a public charger for months.


> All for 1/5th of the price of my old diesel per mile.

How many years before you pay off the premium that you paid when you purchased the electric vehicle? Will the battery still be in good shape by then?


I’m on a lease. There are currently tax incentives for EVs in my country for this so it’s currently comparable.

There’s lots of FUD about battery life, but there are already 10 year old Teslas out there. There are Teslas with 250k miles on the clock with 15% degradation. The car would have to degrade 50% for it to affect my usage pattern.




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