Clueless NYT reporter manages to get stranded in Model S

The restatement from Broder was that Tesla didn't actually clear him, they only told him that he needed to charge for an hour. He wrote he had range anxiety, which makes me extremely skeptical that he actually thought at the time it was a good idea if his goal was actually to make it to the station.

Let's pretend it was a mistake by either Tesla or Broder or both. Why not caption the tow truck with went 51 miles when car said I could only go 32. Oops I lost, that bet and called a tow. Instead a different caption said the car over reported range, implying it was for this leg.

 

Guess he was miffed about range loss / cold soak and gage showing 25 mi in morning. It's something all owners should know how to combat before taking delivery of Model S. Needs to be emphasize, not hidden ...

keep Model S on juice overnight in freezing temps!!

 

Did he charge for an hour ?

 

I'm still unclear about this, and I figure (hope) I know a little more about EVs than Broder. Does the range return to pre-soak values when the battery is warm ?

 

According to Broder it did not. It is unclear how much range it lost at night, but it appears to have been substantial, that is why he should have filled the battery at the supercharger instead of leaving early. I would like it if tesla recorded the range loss. In this thread, I think it was Zythryn that said if you can plug it in you should condition it, if you can't you need to accelerate slowly until it warms up. It appears that tesla gave him bad advice to condition it at the hotel that morning. They may have assumed he was plugged in, which is a bad assumption and human error.

Yes from his statements and the logs he did. It was not enough. The car indicated only 32 miles with a conditioned battery. In hindsight he says he should have waited until it said it had enough for his trip. Again this would not nearly be as exciting, to talk about having to wait 2 o 3 hours at an L2, compared to a photo with a tow truck. You can decide for yourself if it was ignorance or the desire for a photo op.

 

They recorded and published both state of chage and rated range.
A Most Peculiar Test Drive | Blog | Tesla Motors
SOC dropped about 7-8% before the car started moving much. Which includes the time he 'preconditioned' the vehicle. That would correlate to about a 24 mile drop in range.
The rated range at than same time dropped about 55-60 miles (again, purely looking at the graphs).

 

Zythryn, would you expect the SOC to return to per soak values whe the battery has warmed up? Minus any traveled miles of course.

Can someone explain the physics of a cold soak on battery, and battery use in the cold. I'm having a very hard time accepting that the energy just evaporated. I can imagine the internal resistnce of the battery, and thus its internal voltage decreasing as the temp drops but am unclear how to salvage the second law of thermo here.

 

I am no physicist, buy I will do my best as I understand it and living with EVs through 3 winters.
I would not expect the SOC to return, however, I would expect almost, but not all or the rated range (minus distance traveled) to return as the battery returned to optimal temperatures. How long that takes can depend upon a number of things.

A cold Lithium battery can not provide the full power. The range estimates take this into account and shorten the range estimate accordingly.

Some power is lost while the car is parked as some systems stay somewhat active. The generally accepted number is 8 miles lost per day. Tesla is working on a better 'sleep' mode to improve this to 2 miles per day.

Some power may also be used by the battery management system if the temperature gets low, or high enough. This is done for the long term health of the batteries.

In the hour of charging at Norwich, it looks like the batteries recovered about 5% state of charge, which was about the SOC used to get to the charger, of course he then turned around and went back so it was a net loss. Very bad idea to only charge there for an hour regardless of who's idea it was.

I hope that helps?

 

Thanks Zythryn,
I do not follow why decreased power implies decreased range.

The parasitic losses are an eye opener. Do they increase in te cold above what temp control dictates?

How is the energy/time charging affected by the cold, to a cold battery ?

Sorry for all the questions, this is just so much more interesting than Broder's cold digits.

 

My pleasure!
As best as I can tell, the 'rated range' number uses both the EPA's rated range for the car combined with current available draw from the batteries. This is base just on my experiences owning the car for the past 4+ months.
So as I see it, the car says 'I can draw x amount of power, multiplied by the SOC and get this expected range'. As power improves, the result of the calculation improves.

Not from what I have seen. Unfortunately I don't yet have a way to measure the power use overnight in 5 minute increments (or even 1). I would like to and hope too soon. This would give me a better picture of if and when the battery management starts drawing power, for how long and how much.

Cold definitely cuts into the efficiency of charging the car. Again, based on full charge sessions, not minute by minute data which would be better, the efficiency seems to drop by 2-5% with very cold weather. It is difficult to isolate it as I take the rough efficiency (kWh reported by car divided by kWh read on the meter). Our outlet used to charge the Model S is the only device the meter reads, other that a standard 120V outlet which is never used.
The rough efficiency gives me a charger efficiency ranging from 81% in mid oct through all of Nov to 75% for January.
When I add an estimate of energy for 8 miles (which is not recorded in the cars dash) the efficiency ranges from 90% to 84%.
At this point I am guessing about half of that is due to the management system and half for lower charger efficiency, but it is a pure guess.

Not at all, I agree!
Sorry about the long answers. I am a data geek and love numbers and am more than happy to discuss the mechanics of it all.

 

I think it is more or less a stalemate between Broder / NYT and Musk, Tesla...

Broder has the fact the gage sunk from 90 mi to 25 the next morning, and this type of thing has been reported by CR and other owners. Tesla has not tried to refute this and I don't know how they could, except, 'plug it in, dummy'.


Tesla has that Broder turned up the cabin heat to 72, 74 while Broder said he turned it way down '68 miles out of Newark'.

Broder took it off Milford supercharger after 47 min, not the 'nearly an hour' he claims. We don't have the raw data, so have to trust Tesla on that.

Seemss safe to say you very likely won't get 300 mph at the supercharger.

Supercharger | Tesla Motors

 

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This is not a stalemate. Tesla does not dispute that the indicated range dropped. They disputed that Broder properely charged the car. Broder now admits to this. He said he did it because he didn't think he would need the range. He also said he didn't plug-in at night because he did not want to add power other than the super charger. Its pretty open and shut from Broder's responses that if he was an owner that he would not have acted the way he did. It is also quite clear that he left these facts out of the article.

It would be a he said she said but the logs are now public. Either the logs are wrong or Broder didn't turn down the heat until much later. He actually turned up the heat. He also drove faster than than he wrote about. You could chalk it up to a mistake but he said 54mph not around 55 when he was going 60.

I don't think the time is important. Broder may want to count the time he was circling the parking lot. He should have finishished charging up

Sure, but that is not a stalemate. You can get 150 ideal miles in 30 minutes, after that the charger slows down. Broder has been caught with numerous inaccuracies, and his explanations leave little doubt that he wanted a sensational negative story. Otherwise he would have included the missing information.

If the NYT has integrity they will print an apology stating that the reason the car needed to be towed had nothing to do with the car or the network, but how Broder charged the car. It does look however they are enjoying the extra web traffic and do not care much for journalistic ethics.

 

Oh no, he stated that pretty clearly...

"Instead, I spent nearly an hour at the Milford service plaza as the Tesla sucked electrons from the hitching post. When I continued my drive, the display read 185 miles, well beyond the distance I intended to cover before returning to the station the next morning for a recharge and returning to Manhattan."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Well you are correct, and he is an idiot, if he was thinking that was he right thing to do for the car. Somehow on this thread
Tesla Model S driven from DC to Boston, No problem for CNN journalist | PriusChat
We get the report that
What we learned from our Tesla Model S drive - Feb. 15, 2013

It took CNN only about hour to fully charge to maximum range that's 100%, not the 72% broder decided was just the right amount. I thought he was talking about the center display that is less optimistic. So he under charged the car before spending a cold night because......

Remember he was planning to charge the next day, so time saved by leaving early would just need to be spent charging the next morning.

I don't think Broder is an idiot though. Nor do I think this behavior is what a driver would expect. The worst you can say, is Tesla didn't explicitly tell him to charge it all the way up, so he didn't. If he had, it is doubtful that he would have had that photo op. Yay broder?
+1

 

I noted several interesting things in the CNN story.

Tesla had them somehow charge the battery initially to a higher than normal charge, a level that someone would not normally use because it would shorten the life of the battery.

CNN seems to have been calling Tesla even to ask about a suggested route as if they were trying to write a positive story by having a good outcome.

CNN couldn't take any side trips on a whim lest they not be in range of the next supercharger station.

Supercharging was supposed to take an hour.

Read those items and not think a negative story filled with range anxiety and inconvenience would have been more appropriate?

Shorten battery life, have to ask for the shortest route, no side trips and an hour fill up. All were in the CNN story, to their credit, just spun not the way I would see the same experiences.

 

They were actually trying to do a factual story, but it could be considered a puff piece that Tesla wanted. When you are going long distances you are suppoed to charge the battery to 100%. That is what CNN did. You are not supposed to charge it to 72% and hope that it doesn't make it. That is just common sense, but Tesla explicitly told CNN to do this. In Broder's case he charged it less and less.

Tesla is building more superchargers, but for now, someone on the trip needs to be mindful. It is what it is. CNN had range to spare, so they could have gone a little bit out of their way, but not much. Those two chargers are far apart, and tesla knows it, and is not keeping it a secret.

CNN did answer your question. These batteries are designed to be able to be fully charged for trips like this. They just shouldn't be for daily use when you are going 50 miles and recharging every day, that is what will shorten life.

What we learned from our Tesla Model S drive - Feb. 15, 2013

By the way when I am planning a trip, I plan the route also. They could have had google maps do it instead of tesla The key thing they did that was not normal is stay at 65 mph or bellow for the long leg.

 

This Tesla operating as intended.

 

Fair question. The correct way to handle the situation for both cars would be to fuel it up fully at each refueling, check both my calculations or the car's calculation. Safety first, reporting second. If the car reports that it is unable to make the trip fully fueled then report it to the world as unsuitable for the trip. It that case the ball is entirely in the car makers court since the driver followed good driving practices and followed the car's instructions. The 4 gal tank car would fail that test in adverse conditions. It certainly would have proven it shortcomings in that situation by not even being driven.

I would never put other people at risk knowingly driving a car that could run dry. >99.9% of the time, the driver (and passengers) are the ones inconvenienced. The other <0.1% of the time, running out of fuel in the wrong place or time has lead to deaths, injury or just big pile ups. It's not considered a big issue in this thread, but it's a big issue with me when someone does something potentially dangerous. He did. Fortunately, it was just a 99.9% case. Imagine the situation if it were not.

 

Not sure if this has been posted here or in another thread.
TMC Members Recreate NYTimes &quot;Failed&quot; Roadtrip - Blogs - Tesla Motors Club - Enthusiasts & Owners Forum

There's

. At Tesla Model S NYT Road Trip on Livestream, a Livestream at ~20:50 shows a car pulling to that area.

 

Good point, I did not know that, but what I am trying to say more generally EV/PHV requires quite a bit a few more electrons when you factor in winter driving in the Northeast. I am saying the potential for high CO2 is there, admittedly if you charge with solar that's carbon free.