Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

ecotourist said:
Our whole area in Edmonton had underground electric supply. Maybe the whole city.

Our immediate area on Vancouver Island has underground electric supply - though there are wires on poles in part of the neighbourhood. In defense of the electric company we're built on rock and underground lines would be very costly. But I'd like the power company to put them all underground anyway (and put the cost on our bills) - as we have a few power outages a year when tree branches contact power lines during wind storms.
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That worked fine on Long Island for many years in a community I did a lot of work in. Then came Sandy. All the wires were underground, transformers were sitting on concrete slabs. Three feet or more of water went through the streets during high tide. Everything got wrecked and had to be dug up. As it turns out replacing wires and poles would have been cheaper, faster, and easier.
 
pbm said:
Maybe electric vehicles aren't all they're being cracked up to be. We certainly don't have the electric infrastructure to support them.
Speaking of 'electric infrastructure'....a European friend of mine was surprised to see that most of America still has a 1900s overhead wire electricity supply network. He said that most of western Europe has underground electric supply. I don't know if this is totally true but shame on our 'leaders' if so.
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100% true, very few overhead wires. The cables run under the sidewalks not the road so if they do need access the street is not being ripped up creating next winters potholes. The electrical system in the US is close to or worse than sub Saharan Africa, seriously.
No way this grid can handle high a/c use never mind massive ev charging loads, yet they keep telling that bald faced lie that the grid can handle all of it with ease and even have excess. I am thankful I have a large automatic generator, it is in use many times a year when the crap grid goes down. This is interesting.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...trical-grid-operator-warns-fail-heatwave.html
 
Trav said:
100% true, very few overhead wires. The cables run under the sidewalks not the road so if they do need access the street is not being ripped up creating next winters potholes. The electrical system in the US is close to or worse than sub Saharan Africa, seriously.
No way this grid can handle high a/c use never mind massive ev charging loads, yet they keep telling that bald faced lie that the grid can handle all of it with ease and even have excess. I am thankful I have a large automatic generator, it is in use many times a year when the crap grid goes down. This is interesting.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...trical-grid-operator-warns-fail-heatwave.html
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Our mainstream media should be reporting what you speak of but they have so much BIAS that they no longer report things truthfully. In times past the MSM outed the 'establishment' lies....now they cover for them.
 
demarpaint said:
That worked fine on Long Island for many years in a community I did a lot of work in. Then came Sandy. All the wires were underground, transformers were sitting on concrete slabs. Three feet or more of water went through the streets during high tide. Everything got wrecked and had to be dug up. As it turns out replacing wires and poles would have been cheaper, faster, and easier.
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Maybe the solution is not to put wires underground so close to the coastline but do so everywhere else.

I went on duty the morning Hurricane Sandy hit NYC. The early part of the morning was pretty uneventful but by noon we were evacuating people by rubber boat in the shore areas of the Bronx. By late afternoon I saw several fires...many on electric polls....I responded to a multiple alarm fire at a restaurant and marina (where millions of dollars of boats were at risk due to embers flying) but had to send units (apparatus) back to the mainland before the rising waters made it impossible to get off City Island...early the next morning I responded to Breezy Point which was decimated. I was shocked to see boats up on the Belt Parkway as I responded. Hurricane Sandy was the second most memorable day of my near 40 year career....second only to 9/11/01.
 
pbm said:
Maybe the solution is not to put wires underground so close to the coastline but do so everywhere else.
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That makes sense, in areas where flooding is not a concern. The area I'm referring to is in Island Park. I had customers who had fish in their living rooms. FTR as I'm sure you already know, Sandy didn't have much of a punch from the wind, however the storm surge and tide were timed almost perfectly.
 
pbm said:
Maybe electric vehicles aren't all they're being cracked up to be. We certainly don't have the electric infrastructure to support them.
Speaking of 'electric infrastructure'....a European friend of mine was surprised to see that most of America still has a 1900s overhead wire electricity supply network. He said that most of western Europe has underground electric supply. I don't know if this is totally true but shame on our 'leaders' if so.
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Europeans also pay massively more than we do for electricity in North America. Even California is cheap compared to Germany for example.
 
UncleDave said:
Accurate range estimates are super hard on EV's.

Spend some time on the Mach E forum.

That group has their own nicknames for the range meter. They call it the LOM.

Lie-O -Meter.
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Thats what the mpg/miles remaining estimates have been called on a lot of ice powered vehicles. It can be adjusted on ford's with a little work - mine read about 7% high on my F150, and is consistently 5% high on the explorer...
 
OVERKILL said:
Europeans also pay massively more than we do for electricity in North America. Even California is cheap compared to Germany for example.
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per kwh in usd
residential 0.632business 0.936

of course their average power use is way lower per household... mine would be too at that price.
 
OVERKILL said:
Europeans also pay massively more than we do for electricity in North America. Even California is cheap compared to Germany for example.
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When they were using nuclear it was cheap, but as per usual the people take it right in the shorts so they can have their green agenda. People are having a hard time keeping the lights on and now they mandate EV. There is something really wrong with this picture.
 
The beginning of the issue is using the range estimate anyway. Do any of you watch the projected range on your ICE cars? They've been stupid optimistic on every car I've owned, but we really pay attention to MPG, not range left. I don't even use the readout in mileage on the Tesla, I leave it on percentage. It's a more accurate assessment, no matter how I'm using the vehicle at the time.
 
Astro14 said:
Buffered coolant temp gauges first showed up in the 80s. They’re not new.

They’re not exclusive to BMW, either. Many manufacturers use them. Very, very few don’t use them.
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I seem to remember that Ford and Toyota were the originators on that.
 
Astro14 said:
Buffered coolant temp gauges first showed up in the 80s. They’re not new.

They’re not exclusive to BMW, either. Many manufacturers use them. Very, very few don’t use them.
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Right but they were new for BMW owners and at the time many thought BMW was up to something nefarious.
 
BMWTurboDzl said:
Right but they were new for BMW owners and at the time many thought BMW was up to something nefarious.
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BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche - I would expect their gauges to be actual gauges. Not buffered.

But, and this is a commentary on the average driver, the Mercedes forums are filled with posts about “my car runs too hot” because the temp gauge moves up 5 or 10C in the summer. My two Mercedes run about 85C in the winter, and 95C in the summer heat. Exactly as you would expect.

But people think the needle should be glued to one spot on the scale regardless of heat load… 🤦‍♂️
 
MNgopher said:
Thats what the mpg/miles remaining estimates have been called on a lot of ice powered vehicles. It can be adjusted on ford's with a little work - mine read about 7% high on my F150, and is consistently 5% high on the explorer...
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My 2001 Dodge Ram 1500 Club Cab v8 is rated at 20mpg highway, driving normally you get 15mpg, driving 45mph you get 18mpg.

In the winter you get 10mpg

The EPA should have always provided a short/long trip winter rating
And should list the EPA crossover speed.
(Crossover speed is the steady state speed needed to achieve the rating, many Dodge/Ford vehicles are only 45mph, some Toyota’s as high as 75mph)

Providing this information would actually help people to understand the differences between a sedan and a CUV with the same “EPA” rating and could motivate OEMs to do better on the winter cycles which are absolutely abysmal on many newer vehicles.
 
I see this topic (EV range) as no different than that of fueled vehicles.
There is a difference between "range" and "remaining energy available".


Range, whether EV or a fueled vehicle, is an ESTIMATE of how far the vehicle will have remaining to drive, based on some algorithm taking into account past usage factors, etc.

Remaining energy (EV would be volts and fuels would be a fractional view of a full tank ("1/2 tank" or "3/4 tank") is just a report of a physical condition.


It is very common in fueled cars today to have a DTE display (distance to empty) to indicate remaining "range". How do they know how far you can drive? It's an estimate based on math; your avg fuel economy multiplied by the measure of gallons in the tank via the fuel gauge. The DTE can be very accurate if your driving style and other factors don't change much. Or, it can vary wildly if your driving habits and other inputs change often. I would assume the EVs do something similar; they estimate a range based on some nominal volt consumption multiplied by the remaining energy potential left (volts).


Now, if Tesla had a team of folks trying to suppress the info and defraud customers by cancelling appointments telling them "there's nothing wrong", to a point where it may have affected the outcome of a formal investigation, well ... that's another issue entirely. According to the linked story, Tesla was actively cancelling people's appointments by telling folks "it's all good; we checked the telemetrics data", leading them to believe there's nothing wrong. If the facts are true in the story, it's just reprehensible. I'll not own an EV, but I don't begrudge those who do. If I did own one, I'd want some form of government standard for testing and then hold the OEs accountable for making those claims hold true. It is a VERY controlled system for fueled vehicles. Shouldn't it be so for EVs as well???
 
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