Tesla Driving Logs Contradict NYT Claims

Yes, it takes a very high degree of education to comprehend 'fill the tank to full'.
Throw insults around all you like, I thought the point here was what the Model S in particular and EVs in general are capable of.

 

the car showed it had enough range to make it despite only being charged 90%..

obviously you have to be an engineer to drive this thing.. because what is says on the dash is not to be believed. LOL

 

Again, your basic premise is incorrect. The car was not charged to 90%, it was charged to 72%.
If the instruction 'fill the tank' requires an engineer...

 

That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn't - NYTimes.com

yeah of course things didn't work out so obviously the reporter was lying.. please.

it's called the world driving conditions. it loses a lot of power in the cold and the battery performs differently in the real world vs the lab of palo alto.

 

That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn't - NYTimes.com

“For his first recharge, he charged the car to 90%. During the second Supercharge, despite almost running out of energy on the prior leg, he deliberately stopped charging at 72%. On the third leg, where he claimed the car ran out of energy, he stopped charging at 28%. Despite narrowly making each leg, he charged less and less each time. Why would anyone do that?”
I stopped at 72 percent because I had replenished more than enough energy for the miles I intended to drive the next day before fully recharging on my way back to New York. In Norwich, I charged for an hour on the lower-power charger, expressly on the instructions of Tesla personnel, to get enough range to reach the Supercharger station in Milford.

 

So you see your mistake now stating he charged to 90% on the second charge?

No question he didn't follow the directions that would have allowed him a comfortable, pleasant drive.
Did he lie about the advice he was given? I have no idea. He misrepresented and was wrong about some things he printed, but I have no idea what guidance he got from Tesla.
It is possible he got bad information, in which case the focus of his story should have been how lousy the guidance he got was. But many things are possible. And from my experience, his story doesn't fit with what I have experienced with Tesla.

 

Tesla's logs do show Broder turning the climate control heat way down to low 60s as he was trying to make it to Milford night before and back next morning.

I've suspected recharging time as a root cause of ills for some EVers charging 'on the road'.

 

if the car says it will go a certain distance and it doesn't that's called a TESLA problem.. not a reporter problem.

 

charging on the road is the problem because of the limitations of the battery. and why range anxiety is very very real for EV cars. and if you do make to a super charger (turning off the heat, driving slow and babying the car to the next supercharger when it's low on charge) and it's occupied by another Tesla? and there's only 1-2 spots. duh! watch the vid on youtube about TESLA in the real world. an overall positive piece but there were some scenes in there where he almost ran out of charge. not good. that's why it's not a road trip car. it's a commuter car that you plug in every night.

 

All CNN had to do was drive 65 mph. It is a restriction. you need to wait to charge, but its a totally distortion that you need a flat bed or to turn the heat off if you follow some simple rules.

I don't think a prius or a tesla is a good road trip car. They also are not great for hauling or towing. That doesn't mean you can't go on road trips with them

 

I don't think it's such a big issue that the car

Do you not see that 50 miles into his 2nd leg out of Norwich he kept cranking up the cabin heat, up to 74F?

Anyone notice the reporter says nothing about using seat heaters?

 

We have a couple of details about the really bad advice he claimed, that tesla cleared him to continue on with 32 miles showing. In his subsequent response he said they told him to charge it for an hour and that would restore range. That sonnds likely to be what really happened. Tesla employees did not know how low the battery was but Broder did, and seems to confirm that he saw 32 miles on the display. You leave a gas station on empty, you run out of gas, its your own damn fault. The same goes for leaving a charger with 32 miles showing and 61 miles to go. Fault Broder, 100%. There is no way out of this one. Those of us that are pilots know the rules because they have been drilled into us.

There is a Broder distortion that may be accidental in the article about the drive that morning. He says the graphic that says the range was faulty makes it sound like he ran out of power because the meter was off. He actually went 51 miles on 32 indicated. What Broder claims the graphic is about is lost charge between parking at night and starting with a cold battery in the morning. Here the car really did lose charge, but the graphic implies something quite false.

It seems they did give him bad advice that morning about waiting half an hour to condition the car. Tesla owners please chime in. It seems like he would have done better driving to the charger after a much shorter time, then conditioning the car at the charger, waiting for it to charge to 75 miles before leaving. Tesla or NYT could have bought him coffee and a membership and he could have complained about his wait and the stupidity of not fully charging at the quick charger.

Telsa seems to have not been clear enough for Broder on two things. Charge to Maximum Range. Don't turn off the car when waiting for a tow truck. The first seems like common sense, but let's give Broder the benefit of the doubt and blame tesla. The second seems clearly Tesla's fault. That extra 20 minutes for the tow wasn't a big part of the story though.

Turning off cruze control, clearly not a good idea looking at the logs, and bad advice unless the driver knows what he is doing and wants to get better mileage. This clearly was bad tesla advice also.

 

I agree much of that advice was bad IF it was actually given.
As you mentioned, if I understand correctly, when Border originally said Tesla cleared him at that last charger, they really didn't. They told him to charge for an hour but he didn't tell them how low the range still was. I suspect there are more of these cases where Border didn't outright lie, but implied things which weren't accurate.

I strongly suspect the advice he got in the morning to 'precondition' the car was one of those cases.
When the car has been 'cold soaked' the available range will be cut by quite a bit. As a Minnesotan that has done this a number of times and seen the behavior of the car and range estimates here would have been my suggestion for someone that had 90 miles showing last night, 30 in the morning and had 50 miles to go.
IF the car is currently plugged in, preheat the cabin of the car.
This would heat the car, and somewhat the battery. This would return some of the regenerative braking which would increase the displayed range. The warming of the battery would increase the displayed range, and the heating of the cabin would help as you won't be using the battery power to heat it.
However, if it was not plugged in, I would check to see if there was a charger on the way (in this case there was), then recommend the person get in the car and drive it. Try not to make any jack rabbit starts, use the seat heaters only if possible, take county roads or highways, not city streets and don't go faster than the speed limit.
Odds are good they would make the 50 miles without the need of the charger, but I always like to have a fall back plan.
As they drive most of the range will return.

As for the cruise control 'advice', I have never heard that advise. I suspect Broder either misheard, or the Tesla employee misspoke and the advice was/should have been to turn off the climate control and use the seat heater.

 

Yes, that was what Broder said in his last post, when told that it was against their advice. He did follow their advice to charge for an hour according to his post. He also gave names, but did not say he told them his charge level. What he claims is he thought somehow they knew his charge level. At best if we believe him its as if someone said to walk a mile on a road, you see the bridge is broken, but you keep walking until you fall through the broken bridge, because you have confidence they have satellites monitoring the bridge. I can see how you can become embarrassed and blame that guy telling you to cross the bridge, but come on. We know you should not go, and Broder, himself says in response that he should have stayed and charged more.

Yes, and I think this is a failure of the Tesla support crew. I don't expect that they will respond, but I bet they didn't even think to ask if he was plugged in and should have given your advice. Accelerate slow, use the seat heaters not the heat, and drive to the nearest charging station and condition there. They also should have given their guess for about an hour, but given him instructions on how many miles he needed to see before driving off. It sounds like 2 hours at the L2 were needed, and maybe 3 to be extra safe and drive fast

 

Agreed, I definitely think there were mistakes made by both sides. I tend to think more mistakes were made on Broder's side the more data we get, but the biggest questions may go unanswered.
And I do hope Tesla will look at this as an opportunity to improve on some things.
I suspect they will soon have either a video or written instructions for reporters so they can document the exact instructions given.

 

My Volvo will regularly show I have 1000km of range, yet I run out at 600km. Lets blame Volvo instead of the temperature, city-driving-instead-of-highway, traffic-jams, etc.

or gasstation...

Which is exactly what I do with my Volvo (or Prius) whenever the range drops faster than the traveled miles...

Apart from the well-known fact that chargers are not as widely available as gasstations, you are trying to make a point about a 'fault' of EV cars that goes for all cars, EV, diesel, gasoline, CNG, hydrogen, etc.
Estimated range depends in most cars on past driving combined with energy/fuel left in the tank. If conditions change, so will the predicted range. Why would you get so pissed about an EV not being much different from a normal car?
My Prius used 10% more in winter. Everybody knows and accepts this even though I haven't seen this printed on the first page of my owners manual.
EV batteries have less stamina in winter: lets hang Tesla for not shouting this from the rooftops.

 

Tesla vs. New York Times: The 45 mph problem

 

i don't have to drive slower.. I don't have to turn off the heat in my Prius because I'm not worried one iota about range. I get 420 miles a fill up and there's a gas station on every corner. and it takes me about 2 minutes to fill it up.

and actually if you go on the Tesla forums the Tesla owners themselves are surprised about how much range is lost by parking their car in the cold overnight. and many of them suggest that Tesla needs to do a better job of educating their own customers about how the battery does not live up to its billing in the real world. these are from Tesla's owners.

tesla is a commuter car that needs to be plugged in every night. Tesla needs to seriously rethink their whole road trip marketing. it ain't a road trip car.. and never will be as currently constructed. and that's why you're going to see more articles hammering home this point. it's Tesla's own doing.

 

You should never drive an EV. You are obviously a gasoline addict with a bad habit of repeatedly reposting the same dribble over and over and over and ...

 

Guys can we please stop feeding the troll already