Featured Tesla has been cheating EPA on mpge and range numbers

I appreciated those who brought empirical data … even if I’d seen similar data before.

Bob Wilson

 

data is aways helpful, emotion is a waste of time, but fun for chat rooms.

the article was basically all data

 

From what is in this article it is not at all what you said.

Original Owner bought a S60, but had a free warranty replacement on the battery pack. At that time they put in the 90 kwh battery pack (likely they didn't have 60kwh replacement parts and now are at 100 kwh on the model S). Battery packs shouldn't need to be replaced so good customer service giving the owner a better pack with more range. It still was a S60, and there is nothing that said that tesla could not decrease the range when software or hardware was replaced to the original spec.

The original owner likely got more for his S60 because of the unfortunate hardware replacement. I have no idea if he conveyed the information to the next buyer but should have. The second owner sold it again. hmm. The third owner upgraded the computer and when they installed it configured it for the car a S60. That is better than most big auto dealership repair work. They should have allowed him to use more of the battery pack, but they simply reduced it to the original warranted part's range, they didn't make it worse than when sold.

I'm sure this is rare, but given how dishonest many dealerships are with repairs this is hardly a case against tesla. They eventually made it right after a twitter tantrum. It is sad that in some cases tesla acts as badly as the older big car companies, but which car company hasn't done this. We shouldn't put up with it, but don't know why you are singling out tesla here. Honda when their hybrid batteries were dying downgraded software and didn't pay damages until a class action lawsuit in 2012.

Toyota MCC over charged customers on loans and is paying back $59M in a lawsuit that settled this year. That seems like a bigger problem than setting back a replaced battery pack to its original warranted capacity on one car.

 

The article highlights at the beginning did call Tesla out for not reaching the EPA range, without mentioning Toyota or Lucid. I know it was to get people to read further, but didn't need to single out Tesla for it. I find Toyota not reaching the EPA worthy of more attention. Teslas falling short of the EPA range rating in such tests isn't news.

If the reader does scroll down, they'll see that the cars not reaching their range are missing it well within the Your Mileage Will Vary disclaimer of any EPA figures on a window sticker. The fact that many other cars exceed their rating is interesting. The manufacturer is either 'sandbagging' the numbers for whatever reason, something not unheard off with MPG numbers on other cars, or they chose the cheaper testing option for the marketing adjust factor, which gives more conservative results. Whatever the reason, it is not a reflection on Tesla's, Toyota's, or Lucid's posted results.

That is the error the OP makes. They compare Tesla's marginally worse than EPA results to the others much better than ones, and uses that difference to claim cheating on Tesla's part.

But Tesla didn't lock the pack range at the time they did the replacement. Maybe that was a mistake on their part, or maybe it was a goodwill gesture to the customer over the failure of the original pack. All we know is that they locked the battery up years later, while telling the current owner they were making a fix after he got the car back from service.

We don't know if the replacement 90 pack was an unfortunate hardware replacement, or was Tesla's intent to give the original owner an unlocked battery. Now, I don't think Tesla would bother changing the badges. But this potential fraud by a previous owner is besides the point of how Tesla treated the current one.

As a 60, this car can be ten years old. It recently coming into a third owner isn't suspicious.

If you take a car into a dealership, and pay them to upgrade the head unit computer, they aren't going to say anything about an engine swap that someone had done in the past. They aren't going to check that an older car is 100% equipped to factory specifications. Did the Toyota dealer hassle you about the Lexus wheels on your Prius?

Again, Tesla did this 'fix' years later. After the owner brought the car in for an upgrade he was paying for. This isn't a good look with their stance against right to repair laws.

There are shady dealers out there, as well as third party shops. There isn't any of the former for Tesla, and they seem to discourage the latter, so these events are a direct reflection on them. Honda's reputation rightfully became mud in the hybrid community, maybe beyond, after their handling of those battery issues. The fact they had to pay damages for after the sale software changes does set a president for the legal view of such

It shouldn't have taken going to social media to fix it, and it seems it isn't a lone case.
More details are in the twitter thread linked in the article.

 

We do know something ;-) They replaced 60 packs with 90 packs when they stopped making the S 60, so didn't keep those spare parts.

Actually when i wanted a replacement key on the lexus I bought used, the dealer told me the computer had been replaced (records showed by lexus) improperly. They wanted to replace the computer to properely make me a second key that I had lost (still had one regular key and the valet key). Big charge. I was able to go to a locksmith and have him copy my key, it didn't have the pretty Lexus logo but I had my spare without the dealership charging me for a new computer that seemed to work fine other than being able to program keys. This stuff happens all the time.

I don't think tesla should have done it, nor lexus but tesla after social media pressure reversed it. It likely was initially an oversite or goodwill to the original owner, for a part failing before it should.

Did you read the thread. The author who was a tesla aftermarket shop put this in also after being quite mad then realizing what was going on.

From the thread it looks like 2 cases, who knows maybe 10, it is not a big number, and it looks like tesla corrected the policy.

There are electronics differences as well as pack size on the S 60 versus S 90, the S 40 was a S60 with a software limited pack.

Do we really think this is a reason not to buy a new tesla, that if they give you something for free as an upgrade, they may take it back from a later buyer?

 

I think you have the meaning of that first line reversed from what you meant.(included the first post below)

You may not have fully looked at Edmunds results. If you had, you would see that their range results do not equal their efficiency results. Over what was presumably the same or similar route, they got 27 miles of EV range in a 2020 Prius Prime and 63.3mpg fuel economy on gas. Declarations about efficiency can't be made from comparisons of the ranges.
2022 Toyota Prius Prime Prices, Reviews, and Pictures | Edmunds

"Now, is this cheating or taking advantage of loopholes?"
This ignores two other probable possibilities.
The first is that manufacturers have two* choices for determining the adjustment factor to determine the window sticker number from the raw results. They can choose to run all 5 test cycles. The city and highway are always run, and they provide the raw results for the perspective rating. The results of the other three tests(A/C, cold, and high speed) are used to to determine the adjustment factor. Since running three more tests isn't cheap, manufacturers can use a mathematical method to adjust city and highway results. The results from this are more conservative, that is lower.

The second is the fact that manufacturers are only legally required to not overstate the adjusted figures. They are free to list something lower for the official public figure. It might be better for marketing for customers to do better than EPA than worse.

Your conclusion for Tesla cheating or abusing on the EPA figures assumes that the others are 100% honest with their published results.

*There is a third SAE test for EV range. I think it uses 3 of the EPA test cycles. Don't know if it is an option for the official numbers though.

I do. I also wouldn't buy a car that required a subscription service for a steering wheel heater. The practices only differ in scale, but both exist upon the premise that the car never truly leaves the ownership of the manufacturer.

When Tesla was putting unlocked 90 packs into 60 cars, were they telling the owners that it would be unlocked only for their ownership? That they were going to lock it after they sold the car to a neutral party? If an oversight, it should have been fixed before the car left the original owner.

 

I'm not quite sure where all the upset and misinformation is coming from.
Original owner bought a car with 60 kwh battery (likely really this one because some of them failed early) and features that required 3G cellular connection.

Tesla on warranty repair replaced the battery with a 90 kwh battery and either mistakenly or on purpose did not software limit it to 60 kwh. This made the car better than it was before.

In February of this year AT&T stopped supporting 3G. Tesla stopped putting those modems in cars in 2015 or so, and this car was built, like many toyota's with a 3G modem. They offered to install lte modems that would work for $200 (likely less than it cost them in labor and parts), or customers could update to the newer computer with more features and speed and lte. The 3rd owner opted to replace the computer for the new features. The technician that replaced it probably did not know that the car had been non software limited.

The internet, you, and me think the mechanic should have changed the software lock when informed that is what was on the car. Tesla corrected it. Do you think they needed to give the 3rd owner a free new modem when the cell service changed? Things change. I am the original owner and tesla pays for my lte on the car for as long as I own it. The next owner, well tesla isn't going to cover it, they have to either use the one on their phones and have the wifi connect the car, or they will have to pay at&t for the service. It is not a huge deal. It is not like tesla doing monthly charges option for autopilot features.

 

Sure you can. You can trust that both got the results they stated using a particular methodology.
Tesla’s methodology is the EPA’s using the second test method.

If what you really meant was “It looks like I can’t trust Tesla nor Edmunds to get identical results to my experiences”, then I agree. The tests are not meant to duplicate every individual’s results.

 

You are talking about the modem?

The efficiency and range values don't correspond for virtually all the BEVs they have listed in that article.

You still haven't presented evidence as why Tesla can't be trusted here.

On Fuelly, only one year of the gen4 Prius beats the combined EPA 52mpg, and that was by just 0.1mpg. The amount Edmunds missed Tesla's posted range is within the range most Prius owners on Fuelly missed the combined EPA by. The others having under reported EPA numbers is irrelevant to Tesla's numbers relation to their EPA results.

"Edmunds begins with full battery charge and drives an electric vehicle on a mix of city and highway roads (approximately 60% city, 40% highway) until the battery is almost entirely empty. (We target 10 miles of remaining range for safety.) The miles traveled and the indicated remaining range are added together for the Edmunds total tested range figure."
That right there is reason not to trust Edmunds test. How many posts here have referred to the Prime's remaining range gauge as a guess-o-meter? Edmunds did nothing to verify the accuracy of the car's display. Maybe the Tesla's were pessimistic. Maybe the others were wildly optimistic. In the small test were Edmunds did run the cars down to a flat battery, the Teslas went the farthest after the display reached zero.

 

Yes that was the change, the loss of functionality that the 3G modem would lose with at&t changing, that caused the third owner to decide to change the mcu instead of just the modem and get the new features and faster response the better hardware provided. This takes about the same amount of time since you need to remove the "computer" to change the modem. This "computer" holds the software, and the installer put in the appropriate software for the car (when you use the app for service it looks at what car you have.

The mistake or bad was not changing that software, it can be done remotely by Tesla but not 3rd party shops, when the owner told Tesla that the car had the battery upgraded by Tesla in the old computers software. The third party shop couldn't change it because Tesla has security as they charge to upgrade the cars.

 

right ......... and no one's ever been stranded in a gasser. We have put over 100k miles on our 3 all electric plugins - recharged from our roof thow-fully amortized PV solar. please explain how our wallet was hurt. So get back to us when we can put a refinery on our roof that Pays for the gas it manufactures without smog.

 

Will you claim all piston driven, internal combustion engines have the same efficiency.

The report is that he drove home from the service with an unlocked battery, and the lock was later pushed while the car was parked at home.

Regardless of when the lock happened, Tesla won't fix it afterwards. It shouldn't take public pressure for any company to fix a mistake.