If an example car can achieve 700 miles on the EPA test, but normal usage averages 150, is it fraud to advertise 700? To show 700 on the screen at full charge?
I agree it’s an interesting question. If the difference was 5% I’m not sure people would care. But at 25% off I think it is a very a fair question.
Porsche reportedly tends to outperform its EPA number significantly. They chose to lower it (a choice automakers have) to provide a more realistic picture given their customers seem more likely to use the performance at the cost of raw range.
I feel like your example uses numbers that are so aggressive one has suspect that they are not real. I don’t have a stake in this or knowledge beyond a quick Google but the EPA test does not look obviously flawed.
The more pertinent question to me would be whether the Tesla range can genuinely achieve those EPA numbers with a typical car.
This is 100% truth. It is an estimated EPA range.
What's more it's often actually measured by an EPA. The Reuters article that spurred this lawsuit said that EPA, not Tesla, tested 6 Tesla cars since 2020. That's at least half of them (Tesla has only 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 10 different models on sale in U.S. although they have to re-certify if they change the battery).
So it probably was a fraud, by my standards.
I'm considering buying Starlink access, but now I have to rethink what it really offers - maybe they use some different than common metric, which is 'technically true' but miscommunicates the actual performance?
1. Tesla's estimates are not "highly accurate". They are alleged to use a deliberately optimistic estimate when the battery is near full, then gradually switch to a more realistic estimate as the battery drains. In particular they are alleged to incorrectly account for the weather. This means the car will always display nearly the advertised number at full charge (and on a test drive). Supposedly Tesla used to use a more accurate estimate but then got orders from on high to fudge the numbers.
2. For other car manufacturers, the range estimates are not terribly inflated. The report from Edmunds claim that most EV models meet or exceed their range estimates, and cars that miss their estimates don't miss by anywhere near as much as Teslas.
I agree the test needs a redesign. No one drives 55, and speed has a big impact on EVs due to wind resistance.
> The complaint cited testing that found three Tesla models fell short of their advertised ranges by an average of 26 percent. In addition to alleging false advertising, the lawsuit said that range estimates provided by Tesla vehicles during car trips fail to account for temperature and other factors that reduce range.
I’ve heard people on HN talk about this saying there are two separate values the car shows you and one is wildly and consistently wrong. The one that’s wrong, by the sounds of it aligns with their marketing materials.
I won’t buy a Tesla, but to me, their advantage is range. Right now their only competitors in range are more expensive (though quite a bit nicer imho). I imagine if I had bought a Tesla and the range wasn’t as good as it should be, I would be quite pissed…
The idea of a single value for "range" is fundamentally flawed. Is it Tesla's fault that people don't understand basic physics?
You will get less than "the range" if you drive 90mph on the highway until the battery is depleted. Where is Tesla lying anywhere in there? The consumer was just ignorant of what the EPA rated range means.
At least, at some point.
I'll try to get the filing and paste from it, give me a few.
It's "Porter et al v. Tesla, Inc.", in case someone beats me to it.
I recall reading over and over in car reviews how the other EVs had low EPA estimates and during tests got an avarage above the EPA range. Why is that?
There are absolutely other times when I'll get substantially less range, but it's understandably when I'm driving faster of more aggressive, or it's colder outside, or it's primarily uphill, or there's a strong headwind, etc.
There are a lot of different factors that can affect a car's range (regardless if it's an EV or ICE), and it seems like Tesla has decided to show the EPA range on the dashboard because there's no way they could magically know where you're driving if it's not entered in the navigation system. Once you start navigation however, it's able to factor in all these externalities and give a very accurate estimate. On the first leg of the above trip, I arrived to charge within 3% of Tesla's estimate.
If only they could use some of that data and processing power to back out someone’s standard commute, driving behavior, and local temperature.
Porsche isn't lying about their max speed either, just because you can't reach it with 300kg of load and bad weather.
Hypothetical Porsche didn't setup customer service teams to lie to customers on a mass-scale when the complaints came in though.
We have evidence of Tesla service-cancellation teams. We have evidence of Tesla's software purposefully being inaccurate when above 50% charge, and then slowly becoming more accurate when reaching 50% or less charge.
This is literally and precisely, a conspiracy perpetrated by Tesla and its executives to trick users into thinking Tesla cars have more range than they truly do.
Is that alleged? I saw only the support telling customers that this is expected. "There is nothing wrong with your car, don't bother comming. It is expected that sometimes your car gets galf the range." is not a lie at all. It seems absolutely truthful and in fact the total opposite of exaggerating the range of the car.
>We have evidence of Tesla service-cancellation teams. We have evidence of Tesla's software purposefully being inaccurate when above 50% charge, and then slowly becoming more accurate when reaching 50% or less charge.
The algorithm claim seems extremely weak. Unless you can get some actual developer to testify that he was explicitly ordered to build the algorithm to report a range which he knew was impossible to reach or something similar, this seems practically irrelevant.
The "service-cancellation teams" seem somewhat stranger. I don't think cancelling a service appointment is damning in any way, though.
Teslas appear to always show the EPA range at full and it sounds like they stay very optimistic for quite a long time, giving drivers a very unrealistic picture.
That’s lying to the customer. They’re not trying to be useful but to look good.
And in every EV range comparison I’ve ever seen, teslas are the ones that can’t meet their claimed range by a fair margin. Other brands are almost always close to accurate or in some cases do noticeably better than claimed.
Only Tesla does this.
Take a look for yourself. EPA range vs a "real world" test is all over the place depending on vendor, and even depending on the car. Rivian, Kia, Nissan all have ranges that are under by similar percentages as Tesla. Only Porsche seems to heavily sandbag here.
What's your source? Cause I don't think that's true... [1][2]
The question is if it is illegal.
I agree that reporting a maximum possible range is meaningless and might be misleading. But it is still a truthful metric making it a quite dubious legal claim.
>other EV tries to give a realistic range based on the temperate and your driving habits.
What I saw was specifying the test conditions under which the range was achieved and including disclaimers about possible factors which can reduce the range. Certainly more honest.
EDIT: wait, I don't see it. I think there was a setting in older software?
I swear there was a range calculation setting that was like "average" and "ideal"
Take the 911 GT3, a car I picked at random. Car and Driver testing found the following:
>The GT3 offers both a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic (a.k.a. PDK) or a six-speed manual. ... At our test track, the automatic managed a 2.7-second 60-mph time while the six-speed manual test vehicle snapped off an impressive 3.3-second run to 60 mph.
https://www.caranddriver.com/porsche/911-gt3-gt3-rs
Porsche advertises 0-60 times of 3.2 seconds for the PDK and 3.7 seconds for the manual. They undersold the car by 10-15%.
I'm more cynical than most, but it actually isn't normal to over-promise and under-deliver to the extent Tesla does.
That's not to say there aren't other class actions that ought to be considered, such as the whole FSD debacle. Now that is one I would definitely join.
If you did ONLY low speed city driving you would do even better!
If they removed the 'Miles remaining' number and only showed a percentage, you would end up having to do the exact same conversion in your head anyways. "Oh I have 43% remaining of my 330 mile battery, how much is that?" so this is really just a quick shortcut.
Tesla has a separate screen with very clear range estimates that the user can toggle (based on last n miles or based on current exact 'instant' reading). In addition, when navigating to a destination, the nav tells you the estimated battery % on arrival, which is also based on current driving and is generally quite accurate. In addition, it will tell you during & after the trip exactly why the estimated and actual range differed. Eg "0.5% extra battery used due to a 5.6mph headwind, 2% extra battery used by driving over 70mph", etc.
Having a count-down 'Miles remaining' on the dashboard doesn't always make sense, particularly when you haven't entered a destination, or if you're switching between highways and back rounds a bunch. Either way, it's never going to actually be accurate down to the last mile. In reality, you just have to know that the miles on the dashboard are "EPA miles", meaning if you're driving on a flat surface in good conditions at ~55mph, that's what you'll get. If you change your speed, or conditions get worse, you know you'll need to adjust it in your head (or use the dedicated in-car screen to automatically figure it out for you!).
It is common sense to take conservative estimates when you are missing data. The range indicator on the dashboard is a "will I make it" indicator. To help me decide if I need to plan a refuel/recharge. I don't want a best case scenario, not even an average, I want something like a 90 percentile.
In good conditions, the "enhanced" estimate (with nav) should be more than the baseline, as some of conservative estimates can now be replaced with more accurate data.
Good thing Tesla is not doing airplanes.
My Chevy Volt has a 15kwh pack, and only lets you use 10kwh. The bottom 2 and the top 2 are never accessible. Which means the batteries are never depleted, and never fully charged. I bought it knowing I have 10kwh to use around town or on trips (afterward the gas engine turns on). I use those 10kwh every single day, for all 177k miles of the cars life so far. I still get the same 10.3kwh I got on day one I made my purchase decision based on.
Tesla should advertise their packs the same way, explaining that the outlier 10kw are for emergencies too.
Indeed, Tesla recommends to charge to 100% at least once per week.
https://insideevs.com/news/557527/tesla-model3-lfp-charging-...
edit: read response below
https://www.torquenews.com/15475/battery-charging-behavior-t...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/yh5ts5/m3_lfp_...
(They still degrade much less than the other kind of battery Tesla uses, however).
Many consumer goods work like this. Lots of cheap power tools are sold with the understanding that the consumer will use them a few times and no claims will be made during the warranty period. Many (most?) gym memberships are sold with the understanding that many clients will come a few times, then never return.
No sane company wants to deal with the possibility of paying for battery replacement if they don't absolutely have to.
Using the "whole battery" at the expense of its lifespan is not only worse for manufacturers, but it's worse for the environment as well. I think responsible charging and usage is critical for current battery technology.
It's very easy to exceed EPA estimates in the city. The optimal speed to drive a Tesla is about 15mph. At that speed a Tesla will exceed EPA range by about 20%.
Driving at 80mph on a highway will greatly reduce the range of any EV, compared to 45 mph. Using high-draw features like heating (also depends on the type of heating used) will also drain the battery faster.
Cold temperatures also reduce range, but it depends on the EV. Teslas cool or heat the battery to keep an optimal battery temperature. Nissan Leaf uses air cooling, which means repeated supercharging in hot weather overheats the battery, so they cannot make long trips. So Teslas are less affected by hot and cold temperatures than some other EVs. So it depends on the EV.
EV users need to educate themselves on how electric cars operate regarding range. It's not unique to Tesla by any means.
ICE, and hybrid ICE, can all be more efficient depending how well you match its optimal driving profile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LWL90paufE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynCaTDR4rDQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFB6hsYXDiA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvwOa7TCd1E
Spoiler alert: Tesla models fare about as well, if not better, than their EV cousins, hitting around 80% of the stated range in the wild.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say Tesla lied to customers here. I’d probably say Tesla didn’t carefully enough explain the laws of physics to uninformed customers is more accurate a statement.
I would not be surprised that Tesla over-optimized everything with the EPA test as an utility function. (reminds anyone of the VW scandal?)
* Some restrictions apply; not valid in CA, MT, AK; must take delivery of existing stock; not valid with other rebates and discounts; value of coupon reported as income to IRS....It's pretty dang high on the list in actual real world tested range.
In Edmonds testing the difference was really only 13mi. Really not that significant in the end.
Tesla is the only odd one out. Surely Tesla employees have driven cars before right? Surely they should understand that.
There’s a difference between “sued” and “committed fraud”.
> Tesla developed algorithms for estimating the range of its electric vehicles, which would display to drivers “rosy” projections for the distance the vehicle could travel on a full battery. However, once the battery reached 50% capacity, the algorithm would change and begin showing the driver more realistic projections. This would cause the estimated range of the vehicle to fluctuate drastically from that point.
According to the lawsuit, this was something Musk asked for:
> The decision to include these algorithms to present inflated range estimates came directly from Tesla’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk. As the Reuters report indicates, “Elon [and Tesla] wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged....When you buy a car off the lot seeing 350-mile, 400-mile range, it makes you feel good."
Hard coding a range algorithm to make new customers "feel good" is pretty on brand for Elon. When coupled with the establishment of a dedicated "Diversion Team" to cancel service appointments from complaining customers (because they already knew nothing could be "fixed"), this is all pretty scummy and lends legitimacy to the lawsuit IMO.
These are not mental trade offs I’m willing to make. I owe a debt to the early adopters who sacrifice their sanity for alpha/beta testing this kind of tech. A solemn and respectful nod from me to those that have lost their lives due to this technology.
In my ICE, I have to think "dang, getting low on gas, I better leave a bit earlier to make sure I can get gas next time" and then take time out of my day every other week to get gas.
In my EV, I practically never stop at all because I leave the house every day with a full tank.
Lots of folks don’t have those privileges.
That being said, in the closest thing I will ever muster to a defense of Tesla... I think the thing that the articles might be missing on this, is this: Would people have adopted electric cars that work for them in all of their usecases, if Tesla hadn't lied about range to alleviate fears of range anxiety?
People overly sample issues with electric cars based on how far they can go, without ever acknowledging the part about them not actually needing the full range of the car. And Teslas still work for the majority of long drives as well, just with more frequent stops than they should have.