Why Won't They Send Me a Tesla to Test Drive?
ericpetersautos.com
ericpetersautos.com
This is the issue I have with electric cars. Range is much poorer than ICE cars when not cruising at 70mph.
Someone took their Model S on the Nurburgring last summer. Other than overheating and going into limp mode just 5 miles into the 14 mile circuit, the car used over 30% of its charge. That’s about 45 miles on a full charge. Even the thirstiest twin Turbo V8s will do somewhere between 100 and 150 miles to a tank on this track. When I was there in the BMW M2, we used 1/4 of a tank doing four fast laps.
I can’t believe we’re not able to make electric cars more versatile in this respect?
70mph is way too fast if you want to optimize for range. According to Tesla's own number[0] you should be 'cruising' along at around 20-25 mph if you want to get as far as possible on a single charge. At 70 mph you're looking at a half your theoretical max range.
For me however, it seems somewhat ridiculous. I've always been baffled by people buying cars with tops speeds that are both illegal (in my jurisdiciton at least) and dangerous (probably true everywhere) and emphasising that figure as a sales point.
I believe for any kind of driving I, or the average motorist, will do, the EV will be better (sportier, more responsive, whatever adjectives car journalists use to describe high-end cars) EVs will deliver that better.
It'll be a rare commute which is mostly on empty, fast roads. Generally I find I catch up with the people going too fast at the next set of lights or traffic bottleneck, so little seems to have been gained.