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.
No gasoline car uses the EPA fuel economy to do it's range estimation, EVEN WHEN IT WOULD BE BETTER FOR THEM TO DO SO, because it's wrong enough often enough to make a range estimation using it lose significant value.
Tesla has made a choice to stray from normal industry practice. If they have done so in an attempt to sway customers with the incorrect numbers, that should be considered fraud. That's pretty damn difficult to prove as a crime, but not hard to make likely in a civil case.
Do you have more convincing evidence of this because I have used many Toyota vehicles and they do not use EPA figures to do their range estimation, and can be conclusively shown to be using their internally measured "average mpg" figures to estimate range.
I'm mostly commenting on all manufacturers being conservative with fuel/energy use/metering. Even older vehicles I've had (carbureted pickup truck) usually have a gallon to so left in the tank on empty.
Hell, my previous car was a 2016 Subaru BRZ manual, EPA estimated at 24 city/30 highway. Despite the occasional launch, I still averaged 32 mpg.
That said, I'm not upset by it, despite only getting 240-270 miles depending on the weather (Out of the 300 mile EPA range). I know the reality of the difference in how an ICE and an EV use their energy.
Tesla is doing nothing wrong. If the range estimations are inaccurate, it's the EPA that needs to change.
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?
I agree the test needs a redesign. No one drives 55, and speed has a big impact on EVs due to wind resistance.
Tell me when highways, bridges, and streets are not paid by gas taxes -- you won't.
Tell me when I can trade money for reliably sequestered CO2 -- you can't.
edit: I didn't downvote them btw
We’ve decided collectively how to fund infrastructure and engage in climate action as a society. If you don’t like it, feel free to lobby your neighbors and representatives to change the law.
Why do people need to drive fast? The gains are minimal even if you stay exclusively on a lightly-trafficked freeway. In more realistic scenarios, the gains are almost nothing. You'll just be the first one to the light or traffic jam.
If there aren't a lot of trucks around, then going 55 in the right lane has less of an impact on other drivers. But if there are many trucks (which there usually are, IME), then going 10 MPH under the limit will cause a lot of headaches for all the other drivers around you.
That’s 20-25mph faster than you. At that point you’re practically impeding traffic, and having a big truck pass you is terrifying.
Just because you can legally drive 55 or maybe even less doesn’t make it safe.
Generally, you actually can't legally drive that much slower than prevailing speed.
Where these signs aren’t present, I think you’d have to be going more than 10 under the maximum limit to get a ticket.
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.
1. Other companies have more accurate estimates than Tesla.
2. Tesla uses a different and more accurate algorithm when charge is low.
3. Tesla's estimates used to be more accurate.
It doesn't make sense to argue the problem is intractable when it has supposedly been solved by many companies, including Tesla itself.
>Why would you expect it to factor in _potential_ weather when giving a range estimate?
I wouldn't expect that. The cars have thermometers.
This is different from ICE vehicles where fuel efficiency is more variable and does affect range more.
> 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 are bending over backwards to come up with an excuse for Tesla, when they quite clearly made a choice to either be lazy or misleading.
When my gasoline car says "You have 12 miles left", I KNOW I can drive 12 miles minimum, as long as it isn't at wide open throttle. The car has mountains of data at it's disposal, but in reality this technique has been used ever since a car could figure out how much gas was flowing into the injectors. The assumption is that how you have driven for the past ten minutes is a reliable indicator for how you will drive over the next ten minutes, and for most ten minute periods that is an accurate assumption.
Which concept more useful for drivers, the concept of remaining range if you keep driving the way you’ve been driving, or “how many miles the car can get in the EPA test cycle”?
But the car can use your recent driving experience to get a good estimate. After all, if you've spent the past 10 minutes driving at 70 mph into a strong headwind, there's a decent chance that your next hour will be spent doing that. (Although this does get amusing on I-68 where my range estimates are markedly different after cresting the hill versus bottoming out in the valleys).
Sure, it's not the best estimate possible. But it's trivial to implement "assume recent past", and it's a far better estimate than "synthetic estimate that relies on a weighted average of two very different driving conditions."
And it's good that it's designed to produce a characteristic value that is useful for comparison.
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?