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Comment by feld | Hacker News Reader

I commented in another similar post but it seems to be lost...

My friend did 438 miles with his P85 by drafting behind a semi the entire trip. With the extra range (efficiency!) of the P85D I'm certain he could have hit 500, easy. I don't recall how many Wh/mile he was doing but it was crazy low.

I'm not sure why he hasn't been contacted about his drive, but Tesla does have the data and he's asked a couple engineers to look up his car and confirm. :-)

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Truck drivers really don't like people driving close enough behind them to be in their slipstream. If you're that close, they can't see you.

They do this themselves, at least in Europe. It's scary like hell that they follow each other, neck by neck, hour by hour with the shortest possible tracking distance.

But can't they also talk to each other over CB radio? Seems like that would make it safer. And of course it's a lot easier to see a truck right behind you than it is to see a car.

My uncle did that in his car behind a truck when he realised he had little gas and maybe 50+ miles to the next gas station.

He used his CB to contact the truck in front of him, who welcomed him to draft him along.

During the trip, both my uncle and the driver heard many other trucks call his truck on the CB To warn there was a car tailgating in the draft.

Think he bought the driver lunch when they got to the next town with a gas station.

Still they block the exits for cars that need to merge. Happened once to me, a train of ten trucks slipstreaming right when I needed to take an exit. Couldn't slow down and merge at the end and the head was already after the exit.

Had to match carefully speed and merge the car in a space I wouldn't have used for parking. And the asshole even blew the horn at me!

Seriously, fuck those idiots doing it. Driven for years on highways and all scary things ever only came from truck drivers needing to save those 10 bucks/five minutes.

> Had to match carefully speed and merge the car in a space I wouldn't have used for parking.

> needing to save those ...five minutes

So you wouldn't have parked there but you have no problem squeezing between two moving objects 10x your weight/inertia at highway speed? All so you can take an exit (that you were inexplicably in the left lane when you realized you needed it) rather than just take an extra five minutes and turn around at the next exit?

Hard to imagine why he blew his horn.

The lorry driver was in the wrong he was driving with an illegally small space between him and the vehicle in front.

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing the intelligence of looking at a spot barely big enough for your car that is moving at highway speeds and sandwiching yourself between two vehicles, either one of which could kill you with inertia alone, and then wondering why you might get honked at for it.

not every state has 5 minutes between exit luxury highways

So? Distance between exits doesn't change the fact that what he did was reckless and dangerous.

Less than one second spacing is illegal in Norway and Germany. Three seconds is recommended.

At 90km an hour (maximum speed for lorries) that is 25m, about four times the length of my car. Is that close enough to get any useful effect?

Should I be concerned they can't see me when I'm behind them? I can brake quicker than they can and they can't really do anything negative toward me aside from braking hard. Really, you're assuming all the risk. If something happens up ahead you're going to be totally unaware (the main danger of following closely).

obvious tip: this works for gas cars too. if you're extremely low on gas and in the middle of nowhere, draft a semi ... very carefully. luckily they don't brake very fast.

i did this more than a couple of times during college road trips when i was broke as a joke.

Sometimes on long motorcycle rides you can take a few minute break behind a semi. Especially on a bike with no windscreen, your arms get really tired of pulling you against 60~ mph wind for hours. Pull up close behind a semi and the wind will disappear. Keep alert, like you said though.

It might be better to just take a break at a rest stop. A friend of mine was on a long distance ride across the U.S. and was killed doing this.

Sorry about your friend. While will get you more mpg, it's not worth it. When the truck hits their brakes you want enough time to stop. Other dangers are them kicking up rocks that can easily crack your windshield, and blown out tires (one hit my sisters car and took out a chuck of her bumper).

Can confirm, had to do this once only and I hated it. Got in to the next town and put 65.4L into my 65L tank. Never again.

It didn't help that the service station I had hoped to reach when I started getting low was shut because they had run out of petrol.

As I posted on the other thread (that didn't seem to get a lot of attention), the range is actually worse on the P85D (270 miles on the P85 and 253 miles on the P85D),

The P85D is rated at 295 miles. I don't know where you're getting 253 at.

The P85 is 275.

edit: ugh, this is weird. Even their site lists different ranges per car and they've added a calculator to estimate range based on speed, temperature, and whether or not you're running AC.

I guess the "rated range" is full of holes.

Isn't that just asking for rocks in your hood?

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