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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem here is squarely with the EPA. Their setup is downright silly (never exceeding 60 miles an hour? I live very close to a highway with an 85 mph speed limit), but I think more to the point they should publish more than one estimate, maybe a "low", "middle" and "high" range. The problem now is that they really only publish the high range, not even the "middle" range.

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Better yet, the range display in every car should display as a spectrum of values that adjusts in real time to driving style and conditions. Ironically, many ICE cars designed during the 1970s oil crisis had an analog dial that did this (probably just geared to the tachometer).

The Tesla has a really cool range vs battery graph that includes an accurate range prediction.

Tesla has a several ways to display accurate battery ranges for current driving conditions. It's useful to be able to compare expected range to the nominal range. Removing the nominal range would be a disservice to customers.

Geared to vacuum cause that pulled in more gas via the carb.

> Their setup is downright silly (never exceeding 60 miles an hour? I live very close to a highway with an 85 mph speed limit)

It was designed to emulate the median highway mile traveled for the purposes of gasoline consumption estimates, not to guess at what customers understand "a highway" to be, semantically. And it actually does a pretty good job. To first approximation, the kind of open-freeway-wind-in-your-hair kind of travel is noise. Most "highway" miles are on urban commutes.

It's a horrible metric for EVs. I own an EV (not a Tesla) and probably average 75% of the stated range, and much less than that when I'm in situations where it matters.

Most importantly, the "wind-in-your-hair kind of travel" that you call "noise" is exactly the kind of travel where EV owners care most about accurate range estimates.

It may be, but I repeat that it's not "silly" for a metric concerned with aggregate consumption to reflect driving conditions that match aggregate reality and not vacation travel. Should there be a metric for EV owners to yell about that measure "Road Trip Range"? Maybe! But that's not what the existing efficiency measures were designed to do.

Even just having the gas car "city" and "highway" ranges would be a huge step up! Most EVs get much higher than their rated range in the city and lower on the highway, but most drivers are only concerned with highway range.

Tesla competitors don't fall nearly as short of the EPA estimates.

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