Tesla discloses DOJ probes over vehicle range, personal benefits and more | Hacker News Reader

Tesla discloses DOJ probes over vehicle range, personal benefits and more

cnbc.com

42 pointssschueller48 comments

How do electric car ranges get determined? It’s called “EPA Range” so I figured that the company gives a car to the EPA and the agency runs it from 100-0 under fixed conditions. Is that not the case? Or would Tesla be doing some kind of VW-esque cheat here?

EPA mileage ratings, gas, diesel, and electric are all submitted by the manufacturers themselves. Sometimes if the car is similar enough to another car (Toyota Avalon and Camry) they won't even test it and just give it the same number.

Car and Driver have a very thorough breakdown of published range versus their "real world 75mph highway test". https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44676201/ev-range-epa...

Mercedes' worst car only gets 3% over the published range. Most Porsche's are above their range.

Tesla's best vehicles are only 20% below their rated range. The worst Teslas are 30% below their stickers. Easily the worst in the entire industry. Their average for the BEV industry is 13% below the sticker range. So Tesla is 2-3x worse than average.

For comparison against gas vehicles. Across all of their tests, ICE vehicles tend to perform 4% better than their sticker.

Any idea which are the best there?

Check the Car and Driver link. They are very thorough, scientific, and realistic with their testing. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44676201/ev-range-epa...

I wish EVs would prominently also publish their efficiency (miles/kw). MPGe isn't a useful value for an EV. My Bolt has a 60kw battery, depending on my driving I get between 3.5 to 4.5 miles per KW - 210-270 miles.

This notion that your car gets 240 miles, even if the conditions are adverse, is silly. Gas cars are impacted by cold weather too. My car got 20% worse gas mileage in the winter when I lived in the Midwest. If you drive really fast you won't get as good of range out of tank as if you drive slower.

Sorry, but does it say somewhere which model is which besides the S performance being the worst?

It is a bit more complicated than that, car makers do the test themselves, EPA can spot check, and manufactures can choose between two methods, one of which comes up with a bigger number, and is reflective more of city driving than highway driving.

imho, I fault the EPA for not having a sensible highway range/city range as a standard, then none of this would be an issue

The EPA isn't calculating the range displayed on the dashboard.

on the tesla, they are as the baseline, the multiplied by estimated capacity remaining

Is the argument then that what Tesla is doing makes sense?

The EPA range estimate is designed to generate a number that is comparable between vehicles, for some definition of typical driving. It isn't all that reasonable to expect it to always apply to the various conditions that vehicles might be operating in.

Is that a typo for "personnel benefits"?

Nope. The article gives a concrete example:

> The Wall Street Journal reported in August that federal prosecutors were investigating whether Tesla used company funds to design and build a “glass house project” for Musk. Last year, Reuters reported that a federal criminal investigation was underway concerning Tesla’s claims that its cars were self-driving.

Architectural trolling? Buys twitter so he can throw all the stones he wants, and then..

Glass houses have practical uses.

https://www.intelligentliving.co/swedish-couple-builds-green...

Potential self dealing from the company. "Elon perks" or similar.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self-dealing

Did you read the article?

It is considered most improper, on this website to _actually ready the article_. You're _supposed_ to read the headline, and imagine what you think the article is about. Or at least this is the only conclusion I can come to from 15 years on this website.

Assuming that the headline is a typo is an unusual one, granted.

We knew this was coming - there’s no other reason Musk would have pivoted so hard into Republican politics if he wasn’t looking for allies to push back on investigations

Could there be any other explanation?

Could be he actually strongly believes in those ideologies, like millions of other people do.

For better or worse, Elon seems to be an extremely smart person. Notably I’m not a fan and purchased a Rivian over a Tesla due to his antics, in addition to signing out of Twitter and not using it for months.

https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958

"He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets."

Cute. Except SpaceX's rockets are demonstrably the most advanced in the world.

(Hint: Musk didn't program them himself.)

Musk is the only person to get shit for not doing literally everything by hand himself. People are like 'sure but he didn't design, build, program and launch the rockets by themselves' therefore he is pointless any even a brick could have done his job. Strange world we life in.

You bought an 8500 lbs pickup truck over some tweets?

As I suggested in another comment recently, I'd refrain from buying a Tesla simply out of concern for what Musk might tweet. He has flooded the zone with so much BS that I have no idea what he actually stands for at this point. How do I know he's not going to come out as a white supremacist or as a genuine fascist? There goes half the resale value of my car, if he does.

He has already alienated a big chunk of the company's most loyal fan base. It seems clear that he's not getting more rational or less erratic with time.

Now you're making me want him to go genuine white fascist so I can get a Tesla for half-price ...

Principles, as the other poster mentioned. But I was in the market for a vehicle with certain properties, including being an EV. The Model Y checked a lot of boxes but couldn’t pull the trigger after Elon’s slide. It’s not as if I went and purchased an SUV because of tweets.

It’s a bad time for being in the market for a car.

ICE cars don’t make sense. Tesla is a no because of Musk. The other brands are not there yet in EV(in terms or range or charging network).

I concluded the best car to buy today is a Prius. If you can find one…

ICE cars make plenty sense if you care more about personal convenience than the environment. Even if gas stations eventually become impossible to find, that's many years off in the future. By the time that comes to pass you'll probably be looking for your next car again anyway.

No, over principles.

Those principles apparently don't include very strong environmental beliefs because there is absolutely no weigh (see what I did there) that the Rivian, which actually weighs ~7500 lbs, about 1.5x the Tesla X, the heaviest Tesla vehicle, is not significantly worse for the environment both in a one off (producing all the extra material that makes up those nearly 2400 lbs) and in an ongoing manner (moving those extra 2400 lbs takes more energy, which requires more of everything in the energy pipeline).

Presumably, if they were considering a Tesla at all, they didn't actually need a large pickup. So, to spite Elon over some political beliefs, he produced several extra tons of CO2 and is going to be emitting more CO2 on an ongoing basis, even if his energy source is 100% renewable (unlikely) as even wind and solar still (and for the forseeable future) have non-zero CO2 emissions due to mining and production of materials.

I understand why people don't like Elon. He's pretty unlikeable, even if you don't disagree with his politics. I just dont' understand why they let it influecne their purchasing decisions.

Why this focus on the weight of the vehicle? It weighs what it weighs, just like a Tesla SUV or Cybertruck - if and when they are delivered - will weigh what it weighs. People factor in all kinds of stuff when they make their purchasing decisions including whether or not they want their funds to go towards subsidizing someone they'd rather not see gain more power. That's a principled decision and it should be applauded.

That they could have chosen no vehicle or a non-pickup/non-SUV isn't part of this discussion, the decision was 'Tesla or something else' and it went to 'something else'.

> Why this focus on the weight of the vehicle?

Because more weight requires more energy.

> they want their funds to go towards subsidizing someone they'd rather not see gain more power

Rivian subsidizes Ford and Amazon. Ford 100 year influence on politics has been far worse then anything Musk has ever done. And Amazon is arguable the most influential company in the world, far more so then Tesla. Amazon principle concern is to have low skilled workers.

But I guess Musk had some tweets somebody didn't like that much.

SUV. Rivian makes more than a pickup. (:

He had a kid come out as trans, and a girlfriend leave him for a trans person right before he made this shift as well.

Sleep deprivation, excessive attention, too much success.

Too much validation does weird things to people.

Drugs? Before Musk was first seen smoking pot, he seemed to be sane. It's been downhill since then. Now he says he's using ketamine and may be bipolar.[1]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-sha...

The GP post is a bit simplistic, but it's roughly right.

Trump inspired politics is about personal exceptionalism for the very rich, reassigning blame to others, especially the bureaucracy, but also anyone who disagrees, objects or regulates, breezily brushing off any sense of accountability and treating people with less power or privilege poorly, often to the point of cruelty.

Trump hardly invented this; in particular it's more or less status quo in most less developed countries (and indeed reducing it is normally an important milestone in becoming a developed country). He was certainly unusually _blatant_ about it, though.

Insanity.

America is so weird. To someone on the outside it just seems like the two parties just take turns getting into power and ordering all the agencies in their control to harass their 'enemies'.

Or, one corrupt party ignores illegal activity because they personally benefit from it, and the other chooses to enforce laws when they're in power.

It's hilarious to me that it's hard to determine which you believe is which.

> the other chooses to enforce laws* when they're in power

* except the ones that would affect them.

The DOJ is supposed to be independent. Even if you don’t think that it is, it consists of mostly civil servants who remain across administrations.

Our institutions are not perfect but there are enough good people working for them that I think it’d be tough to do what you suggest at a large scale.

> Even if you don’t think that it is, it consists of mostly civil servants who remain across administrations.

Mostly consists sure but the people at the top are all political appointees [1] so they can nix any investigation (say into Epstein [2]).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Department_of_Justice_...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Jeffrey_Epste...

FWIW, that is also how it feels to a lot of us who live inside it as well.

In a sense; yes. On the other hand, there are a surprising number of aspects where the parties inexplicably agree to do something, or not do something, when their constituents don't agree ("Uniparty" behavior). Note that I am not talking about what they vocally support, but what they choose to do or not do.

Examples: Right to Repair. Housing affordability. Inflation. Surveillance state. TSA ineffectiveness. China. Etc.

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