Consumer Reports initial test of Model S in winter chills

Tesla touts 300 miles under "ideal" conditions.

Therefore, under real world conditions, the battery is only good for 60% of the range.

The best advice for long-range driving on the Tesla is to never drive past 60% of the battery's available power without recharging. This allows use of other features such as the heater or air conditioner. This gives you enough buffer for unforeseen circumstances.

Under real world conditions, this means 144 miles in warm weather.
This means 108 miles in freezing weather.

The Consumer Reports driver should have taken an hour along the trip to charge the battery.

Does the Tesla have a battery warmer for winter driving to restore its full driving range? Perhaps a small gas engine to warm the battery in cold weather would be highly useful. It could be something attached to the rear of the vehicle. It would obviously be something smaller than the gas generator on the Chevy Volt.

 

Please understand, no one is saying an EV behaves exactly like an ICE.
Consumer education is critical.
The point here, raised by Austin and others is that Broder showed either incompetence, or dishonesty.
The fact that an EV takes longer to charge is not in question, and if anyone wants to discuss the pros and cons of EVs I would be happy to do so in a another thread.

As to consumer reports, they displayed that cold weather impacts EV range. Who would have thought?? Oh, well who other than Nissan, Tesla, Toyota, any EV driver, etc.
Can they tell you exactly how much the affect will be? No, but they all tell you that temperature, as well as other factors affect range.

 

exactly.. you haven't worked with consumers. it's only obvious to you.. and until you work with consumers that's insight you'll never understand.

call the NYT reporter what you like.. it just confirmed that this car is not a road trip car. plug it in every night drive the 35 miles to and from work every day and you're good. When you're going on a road trip take your Prius. nuff said.

 

Nonsense. You should take into consideration your driving environment. I would also suggest basing your calculations on the EPA numbers rather than the perfect conditions numbers.

Someone's real world conditions in Southern California are dramatically different than someone else's real world conditions in Minnesota.

I expect to, under the worst conditions in winter, get 180 miles. In summer, under the best conditions, I expect to get over 300.

The battery management system in the Tesla will either heat or cool the batteries as necessary. But performing that duty requires energy, which is one of the reasons the Model S looses range.

I bought the Model S to get away from gas, even if such a generator were available, I wouldn't buy it. The Model S, as it currently exists meets all my needs wonderfully.

And in so doing, it allows me to not contribute to the trade deficit, putting our soldiers at risk, increasing our deficit because we have to send our army, navy or Air Force out to keep volatile areas of the world 'calm' or contribute to the local particulate pollution which causes many deaths a year, asthma, heart disease, and other ailments.

So yes, such a device is probably possible, but I have no need or desire for it for my uses.

 

No, he confirmed he doesn't know what 'charge to full' means.
Again, he could have made all the other errors he did, if he had filled the car up, he would have been fine.

 

exactly... plug it in every night.. it's a commuter car.. not a road trip car.

 

I wouldn't say either of those things. Consumer reports is tough on their mileage tests. You can see that from getting 43 mpg on the prius c and 44 mpg on the prius. These are bad case conditions, but not worst case conditions. Someone driving on a long trip will typically do better.

I would look at the EPA number of 265 mile range, not the tesla number. Consumer reports charged to 90%, which is a 239 mile range. I would expect that if you were planning to go over 150 miles you would charge to 100%. They also did a cold soak which killed some of the miles. I would expect a driver pushing it to plug it in at night and have a heated or cooled cabin preconditioned in the morning.

I would agree that you should plan to have charging stations around at those distances just in case, but the in vehicle gauge according to Consumer Reports proved quite accurate. That is the center gauge that started at 188 miles, not the optimistic one. 185 miles is a 30% safety margin from EPA, and probably fine for a fully charged car unless it is extremely cold, but as always have ability to plug in somewhere just in case.

Absolutely, but he wanted a little drama for the story. A typical driver would have fully charged for the trip and/or pluged in at night even at 120 volts. Still I can't fault the report as being any more pessimistic than Consumer reports does for other cars. They did want to dramatize some of the limitations. A cars owner just shouldn't do this.

No, it has an electrical warmer for the battery and for the cabin. Most owners will at least be able to plug into 240 Volts to condition the car. It is a limitation if you are often letting the car sit outside unplugged in cold conditions. Tesla owners normally have a garage.

 

I think you are being consciously daft here.

Broder claims he was testing the charging network, so he didn't plug it in at the hotel, because some hotels don't have plugs. Fair enough, but a owner would have plugged it in there.

If Broder had not decided to ignore Tesla's advice and fully charge the car at Milford, leaving it unplugged at the hotel would have been fine. A tesla owner did just this and successfully made the trip without incident. Broder's problem was he chose to not charge the car at Milford. This was a conscious decision. He left with the meter saying 185 miles, instead of 270. That is a conscious fail. You can choose to believe that a typical driver would do this, but don't expect us to believe you, or agree with you.

Ask some of your customers that you seem to have, whether they would do what Broder did and get back to us. Please do this poll ask 10 of them if they had free power and almost ran out of power would they ignore the manufacturers suggestion and leave early with just enough power. Or ask it anyway you want and report back to us how many out of 20 say they would leave milford with a partial charge. You seem to think I am clueless when it comes to your customer base. Do a poll? Prove me clueless.

 

No, it confirmed that Broder's a journalist, people suffer from confirmation bias and that a Supercharger would provide everything most people need. Long trips in a Model S just need:
1) Owners to charge normally
2) A supercharger network covering the main routes
3) Any one of the following at each exploration point and the destination:
- Supercharging
- L2 charging
- L1 charging and ambient temperatures not below freezing
4) Then any one of the following:
- No overnight stays
- An overnight stay at a hotel where the car can be plugged in at 120V or greater
- An overnight stay at a hotel close to a L2 charger
- An overnight stay at a hotel close to a Supercharger
- An overnight stay when the temperature isn't freezing

(1) is obvious, (2) is what Tesla is building. (3) and (4) keep getting easier.

 

+1

Yes, but we don't even need all those things. If the range is low enough all we need is 1 and 2. That was true of Broder's route. He didn't charge normally.

On point 3 he had both L1 available and L2 nearby. He chose to not use the L1 and to leave the L2 early. He needed to do all 3 things, undercharge at the super charger, not use the L1 at the hotel, and leave the L2 early to have his photo op. Again, I don't think typical american's would do all of those things unless they had an agenda.

Most Americans don't have or want to pay the money for a Tesla S. In shorter range BEVs this trip is much more difficult. There is a plug-in solution that is affordable to many, the phev. Like the Tesla S, most americans will not buy a phev or even a hybrid, but we should be honest about the capabilities and not assume a typical American is too stupid to charge one up.

 

he didnt chose to use them because Tesla told him its not needed because of superchargers.

its pretty simple.

If CR got 176 miles on their cold trip, how can you fault Broder anymore?

Tesla PR wanted him to experience Tesla "being normal car".

Its their mistake.

 

Which is true! All he had to do was wait at the milford Supercharger. But Tesla never told him not to plug in at night. They didn't tell him to stop for the night to try and reduce range. He chose to leave Milford early, then not to plug in. He should have fully charged, then not plugging in to simulate situations where he could not might have been appropriate. Here is a response that tells broder everything he did wrong. Blame tesla for lack of preparing him if you like, but it makes no sense to believe that the Network was not adequate, or that choosing to leave chargers early was tesla's idea.

A Response to The New York Times: Stalled on the E.V. Highway | PluginCars.com

It seems according to Broder's own assumptions he gave himself only 9 miles to spare at the milford charger, then ran upto 80 mph and left it unplugged at night. The left Norwich with a -29 mile buffer. Do you think he charged long enough?

If he wanted to do the drive he should not have unplugged early it is as simple as that. Tesla never claimed it would be as easy as a normal sport sedan. You needed to obey the speed limit and charge the car. That seems pretty simple though. He and consumer reports should have fully charged the car if they were testing maximum range. CR clearly was attempting to test a bad case range, not maximum range. Broder instead decided to test something else. hmm what could that be. Tesla definitely did not say to unplug early at Milford, that was all Broder, claiming he knew he had enough. Enough to try and make an exciting article maybe, but definitely not what a driver should do if he is trying to test the network as Broder claimed.

But let's say he didn't have an agenda to write an exciting story, why did he think it was a good idea to plan to run it to 0 range? That makes the idea that under charging was an innocent mistake quite unlikely.

Note that article was written before the logs came out showing Broder exaggerated on speed The seven items are true for many BEV trips.

 

no... Tesla built a nice commuter car. it's not a road trip car period. The NYT episode.. call it what you will... proved this is not a road trip car and shows you what happens if you don't charge it overnight. you run out of range.. you are towed. yeah you would not have been towed because everything is "obvious".. but to the average American who can get mixed up with the accelerator and the brake pedal.. nothing is obvious.

and if you're buying an EV car.. the consumer should know

1. how much a battery degrades by year.
2. how much range you lose by temp and hour if it's unplugged.

all are projections and nothing is perfect but these are things the consumer should be informed about. this is not an ICE vehicle. it's a battery on wheels. there is considerable battery performance degradation that consumers need to be aware of.. simple as that.

 

So I take it your poll of customers that would not fully charge at the charging station failed. hmm. I guess I know americans better than you thought, and your statements about most americans stupidly deciding to drive on empty might not be true.

All the NYT article showed was the MSM has Journalists with poor ethics, that will do what it takes for a photo op. If he had charged it, it would have been fine.

I think of a corolla and civic like your common commuter cars. They can easily make the trip but there is nothing special about them. They can't happily pass gas stations or fill up on sunshine. The Tesla S is a special car. Definitely not something you would buy if you drove past 150 miles most days. I wouldn't call the BMW M5 a commuter car either. With a little extra effort you can go on road trips with the Tesla S. The super charger network makes the Tesla S the BEV with the least compromises for trips like this, but there is always a compromise. Bottom line is you shouldn't drive a Tesla S or even a prius past empty. You end up looking foolish if you run out of electricity or gas.

 

Good lord! A couple of the that drivers that replicated the trip over the weekend intentionally did not plug into a 120 volt outlet (or any at all) while they were sleeping overnight in Groton, CT. They all made it back home and/or to the Milford, CT supercharger w/o issue the next day.

Someone who didn't plug in posted how much estimated range was lost, but I can't find the post. It wasn't an issue for them.

NONE of them did an overnight Supercharge. It wasn't even near where they stayed.

edit: I found the post at Recreating the NY Times Road Trip - We're on This Weekend! - Page 37.

 

Tesla = commuter car. nothing more.

anything else is conjecture.

 

Even if you think American consumers are too dumb to follow charging instructions, wouldn't more superchargers make the Tesla a perfectly fine road trip car?

Now I am not a patient person. I would not buy a car for frequent roadtrips that needed a 30 minute stop to charge. I get the argument about eating etc but I don't stop to eat - I eat on the road. But I also don't take roadtrips of 500 miles. I suspect most people who can afford a Tesla would choose to fly on longer trips. I just ran thru my roadtrips and I did 325 miles 5 years ago. So I could handle a stop for 30 minutes 2 times every 5 years. But I would probably take an ICE car - since I wouldn't have 240 at the hotel. We of course have 2 cars but a rental every 5 years isn't bad.

I'm not sure why some people choose to bash the Tesla. The predicted degradation numbers are there as are the range/temp curves. You don't see Toyota publishing MPG numbers when it is 20 degrees out and you make 3 mile drives. Everyone publishes EPA and nothing else. YMMV means that cold weather hits efficiency - anyone who knows anything about cars and how an ICE operates knows this. Just as most everyone knows that YMMV means 80 mph hurts efficiency. While not everyone knows about cold weather battery loss at night but doing due diligence makes it pretty obvious. Who parks outside at night regularly? Not someone who buys a Tesla.

 

Tesla is a commuter car. and it's trying to market it and convince folks it's a road trip car which it's not.

EV manufacturers need to show

1. battery degradation by year and it's affect on range.
2. range loss by temp and hour when unplugged.

that will avoid confusion on the part of the consumer... but of course Tesla won't publish it cause they are so interested on the road trip car dream... which is a fail.

 

spinaker87, are you a shill for the petro industry?