That's not quite right. The power required to maintain a constant velocity v against a constant drag force of F is P = Fv. With air drag on a car moving at highway speeds, the drag force F actually depends on v: it's proportional to the square of v, i.e. F ~ v^2. All together then:
P ~ v^3
So doubling the speed will increase the required power by a factor of eight.
You are correct that power lost to aerodynamic drag increases with the cube of velocity. However, if you increase speed, the time spent is reduced. As a result, the total energy grows with velocity squared.
If the power is 8x higher and the speed is 2x higher then the energy per mile must be 4x higher, as he says.
Even this is a massive over-simplification. Driving the same speed with a 20 mph headwind is going to take lot more energy than with a 20 mph tailwind for example. There's lots of other variables and they may be certainly tracking some (like A/C current draw) but I doubt they track others (like rolling friction or road conditions).
Edit: I found this article [1] and it claims they track an impressive amount of weather and traffic data for the calculation. I'd be curious if this is based on car sensors (probably not?) or local weather stations.
[1] https://electrek.co/2022/03/16/tesla-accounts-wind-air-densi...
I’ve never driven a car to empty ever. I wouldn’t with a Tesla either.
Edit: someone else pointed out if you actually navigate then it will show remaining % more accurately. Still seems like false advertising..
Tesla - I literally never achieved the advertised range once. BMW - I exceed the advertised range during low-speed highway cruises in ideal summer conditions.
Tesla - the range it shows me in car (not in nav) is the never-achievable EPA range. BMW - the range it shows me in car (not in nav) adjusts ride to ride based on efficiency on most recent trips. So in the depths of winter it's showing me something 20% lower than in the peak of summer. This means it's factoring in driver behavior, drive mode used, speed, and temperature effectively.
It is reasonable to assume that your range on a trip is most similar to the range in your recent trips.
I can get in my BMW, look at the range meter, guesstimate the range on arrival and be correct to within 1% 9 times out of 10.
In my Tesla, I would constantly be doing mental math to discount the range it was showing me, to what I typically got, the weather, to see how big a delta it would be.
Sure, the nav range in Tesla got smarter over time and factored things in.. but this doesn't help on long round trips. It might tell me that I'm going to reach my destination with X% left, but I now have to do mental math to figure out if I am going to make it back or not.
With Tesla, I can't simply get in the car, see 300mi range on dash.. know I am making a trip 100mi each way so I'll be fine. Instead it's like - 300mi range, NAV says I'll have 58% remaining at destination.. OK so that means it's estimating X burn rate, which means I will make it home with... 17% instead of 33%.
Include weather, recent trips, lifetime consumption rates, type of road currently driving, etc.
Do anything other than the absolute simplest, laziest, most optimistic estimation which is "hey I bet you'll get the almost impossible-to-meet spec consumption rate!".
How is the car supposed to know how much energy you might be using in the future?
Last time I checked, no ICE car has the ability to predict the future.
Tesla COULD do that, but they don't on the main display because basing it on real data instead of garbage EPA data would produce a more conservative number and that would be harder to sell.
In my ICE car, all the places I can see range remaining have the same exact number, because doing anything else would be stupid and confusing.
How is that different from what Tesla does.
>> as well as your current energy efficiency.
How is that different from what Tesla does.
It shows you current battery percentage, it shows you live on the default screen what its discharge rate is, it also tells you in a side screen what driving habits are consuming extra energy from baseline and percentages from doing things like driving over 70 mpg, air conditioning, altitude changes.
So what exactly is an ICE car doing better.
Last time I checked, my fuel gauge wasn't telling me about the 15% drop in engine efficiency from going to high altitude areas. Funnily enough, the Tesla showed a large increase in energy use due to going up a slop, but otherwise is not affected by the drop in air density.
FTA: Musk and two local executives did so in a June 19 statement, acknowledging “false/exaggerated advertising.”