The routefinder 'learns' from your previous driving habits. Driving style easily has a 50% impact on range between "drives 50 mph slipstreaming behind a truck" and "drives 90 mph and brakes aggressively at every corner".
All these comments about ICE vehicles being the same ignore that when ICE vehicles have estimates to empty, they take basic steps to try to get the estimate correct.
Tesla should probably not allow you to show the battery as range as it will always be inaccurate and people will complain. But if they only show percentages, people complain as well.
I guess I'm flabbergasted by this, as that's not how my Chevy Volt (and I presume many other BEVs) work. The range value ('guessimeter' people call it) on my Volt takes something like a rolling average of your last few drives and that's what it shows you. So if it's winter, it shows you less range because your last few drives had less efficiency. It's not always accurate (if there's, say, major temp fluctuations), but it's way more useful than what you're describing.
To me, what you're describing is borderline dishonest marketing, and technically unnecessary.
What I'd like to see is two numbers: estimated range as I've described, and beside it a kWh # (which I can guesstimate from the battery % gauge visual, but not precise).
EDIT: Not sure why car manufacturers in general hide the kWh remaining-capacity of the battery so much. They seem to think consumers are too stupid to understand such technical terms? But they're clearly aware of it every time they use a public charger, and it's the closest equivalent to litres/gallons in an ICE.
I leave the dashboard meter set to percent because the “miles” option is just the dumb EPA rated range mapped to percent anyway.
The real way to predict range in a Tesla is to use the nav system which takes many factors into account and has been very accurate in my experience.
But could also reflect that this is a California company where they don't really have weather.
Many here complain about how inaccurate Tesla's range calcs are driving to Tahoe. It's not the state, it's the amoral response to incentives.
“Accurate range” is difficult. It could be accurate based on recent driving, but that number could be very inaccurate if there is a change in weather or you are taking a different kind of drive than your last one.
We are HN tech crowd here so its all fun & games hobbyist stuff.
But normies do not want to get into these types of inane subtleties.
Arguably the front & center, always-there range display should be the most accurate, not the least accurate.
The car doesn’t know where you are going, whether it is city or highway driving, whether or not there is an elevation change, unless you tell it by navigating somewhere.
It could take a guess, but that guess still has plenty of chances to be wrong if your next X miles of driving is not going to be similar to your previous X miles of driving.
There's plenty of smarter things it can do by default other than "its hard, meh".
They are gonna figure out how to do coast to coast self driving this year but can't project a reasonable battery range estimate given temperature/driver history/weather? Do they need more GPUs?
If you mostly drive around town, that estimate will be way off when you get on a highway to go to Grandma’s house.
There’s probably a better way to do it, but Tesla seems to be optimizing for avoiding the “why does the website say 300mi but my car shows 200mi fully charged” support question, in exchange for a different set of support questions.
I think ideally the car would give a best guess estimate, along with a clear breakdown of why this is more or less than the rated range. I just don’t think that’s clearly the “most accurate” option. Most accurate requires knowing where you are going.
It feels like one of those Muskisms where one bending of the truth requires more and more stuff down the line.
If they weren't over optimizing for the EPA test to give almost unachievable range, then they wouldn't need to have the car range meter lie as well. But if you fib once, you need to keep fibbing and keep the fib straight.
It can also vary dramatically based on how you drive, and in fact, if you do have a destination, it will give hints if relevant (e.g. "keep speed below 70 mph to reach destination").
You can switch the EPA-rated miles for a battery percentage indicator by just tapping it in the UI.
There's A LOT of smarter things the car can do than use its factory set 0.250 kWh/mi consumption to spit out the range on dashboard.
Erring on the side of caution would also always be better, whereas it is erring on the side of showing the absolute best state that I as an individual never experienced in 4 years of ownership.
The best state would be over 600 miles [1].
It's erring on the side of consistency, as it's also representing the battery's state of charge. It would only serve to confuse users to try and guess whether the current trip is a highway or city drive, will end in the next minute or two hours from now, which way the wind will be blowing and whether or not you're driving uphill, etc. It'd just be a useless guess, instead of an at least consistent one.
If you tell it where you're going, it already gives you a great estimate, as it doe stake into account all of those factors.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17405906/tesla-model-3-hy...
But all the "just use nav estimate" arguments miss that some people drive more than one place?
If I am driving out an hour to do some shopping, visit my parents, and then drive back.. it may be a total of 90mi but the first leg is 30mi. Do I need to pre-enter my round trip as multiple waypoints to get an accurate view of whether I will make it home or not?
Seems silly.
Just guesstimate a more accurate dashboard view range like you do in other place sin the UI.
The other places in the UI are either based on either the destination you've entered or the last 5, 15, or X miles driven. They only make sense in that context: Just using one of those numbers on the dashboard would be misleading and inconsistent.
Guessing based on the Wh/m of your last ten drives might be a closer estimate, but would be wrong if your next drive isn't like your last ten. It might even be more accurate when guessing your last nine drives, so then you learn to trust it, but those were city miles, and for the next drive, it's highway miles. And now the estimate is way off.
It's just meaningless. We'd quickly learn that the number given is a bad estimate that can't be trusted and needs to be adjusted based on the way you'll actually be driving and other real world conditions... and that's where we already are. The only difference is that currently it's at least consistent, both between trips in the same car and from one car to another. This additional guesstimate would just add more confusion.
Highway 70mph - https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ Highway 75mph - https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32603216/ev-ra... Mix - https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons...
It's a shame too because Tesla are towards the top of the the real world range pack, so they don't really have to lie.. but it's like a compulsion for some people.
What is mind boggling and hilarious is that there's a Porsche rated EPA 225mi and a Tesla rated EPA 348mi and they both end up achieving 280mi.
Notably the Model 3/Y seem to have a wider EPA-to-reality delta than the Model S in the 75mph test. This seems to align with my 4 year ownership experience. Tesla Model 3 LR rated 310mi but only hits 200mi with C&D. It's interesting how much the 3/Y range seems to drop from 70 to 75mph.
How can you know this without repeatedly running your car out of fuel?
My range is approx. 180 miles, in favorable conditions (summer, AC off). If it was actually accurate, as soon as you hit 70-80mph you would see your range half. Clearly that doesn't happen, so the estimator is off by ~40% for highway conditions, i.e. complete bullshit.
The precise estimate is in the navigation system, when you navigate to a destination and it says you will arrive with X% left. This takes into account speed, traffic, elevation, temperature, wind, etc. and is usually pretty accurate for me.
The golden number in a Tesla Is absolutely the navigation route estimate. While navigating you can open the Energy app as well to see more detail, how you are doing compared to the estimate, and specific factors affecting consumption.
I also just don't use navigation if I've been somewhere more than once. Just navigate with my head..
I use the navigation all the time, even when I know the way, because it knows about traffic jams and so I can get a good range estimate for longer trips. It even gives you a round-trip estimate back to your starting point.
Can you expand on this? You say etc, what else is included? Where is it documented that this calculation is actually happening, versus something far simpler?
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_gb/GUID-01F1A58...
Also if you open the Energy app in the car it will show you which of these factor(s) are contributing to higher or lower consumption than the navigation’s estimated range as you go.
I got 260mi range max on my 310mi rated car. If it was winter or a road trip in which I could truly go fast, it easily got below 200mi.
For a 310mi car, going to visit my parents or in-laws only 75mi away for Christmas should not have made me worry about making the round trip on one charge, but it frequently drained the battery below 20 or even 10%.
I'd like to see evidence of this, but I'm skeptical. Sounds like something Tesla fans claim is happening, like when you report an error at an intersection it gets fixed manually. And, even if true, I'm not sure how useful it'd be.
Wind can easy be a 3mpg hit for my car, that’s about 10%. Not all the difference but a couple stacked effects could get yours
Annoying all these things matter when range is constrained. Next gen batteries can’t come soon enough.
True. But none of this should matter if your Tesla actually "learns", as other comments claim, right?
Any sane a Tesla driver changes that to show percent battery instead of range.
As others have said the trip planner is excellent, within a percent or two even in winter conditions driving over passes etc..
Note that range changes a lot more due to elevation, speed, cold etc, compared to gas cars because electrics are so much more efficient.
A percentage indicator is fine for a car you already have, but not useful for comparing between cars. It could show kWh, but that isn't good, either. What consumers actually care about is range, and whether that comes from more kWh, better aerodynamics, or a lighter car, the range is the bottom-line number. We wouldn't want consumers buying a car with a bigger battery just because it has more kWh if it doesn't get better range.
I think EPA-rated miles is the best of available options--it just needs to be understood by consumers. And I think cases where it isn't are a bit overstated. I suspect very few consumers genuinely believe they'll get the same range in miles regardless of their driving speed, headwinds, or whether they're going uphill or downhill.
Also, its still better to arrange to not need to brake at all, than to regen, since regen is not 100% efficient.
Most EVs (including Tesla) do have regenerative braking, so some of your energy is converted back into electricity when you brake, but nowhere close to all of it, so people who have a smoother, less aggressive profile will get more range.
Also if you brake really aggressively, you're dissipating more energy than can be successfully harvested and the rest is converted to heat, losing the energy you paid for and also increasing maintenance costs.
The meter is presenting you the regeneration “rate” but what you’re thinking of is the regen rate integrated over time, I.e the amount of charge recovered during the process of stopping, which the meter is not showing you.
(Also, Tesla cars do have blended braking between region & friction...)
Regen breaking increases range over no regen braking, but braking aggressively will always be worse than not braking aggressively.