From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.”
Elon pulling numbers (which happen to be what the markets want) out of thin site is nothing new. Delivery time of cyber truck? Price points?
He, like jobs before him, has morphed from a brilliant engineer to ruthless marketer. And like jobs before him justifies it versus his internal stunted moral compass
Appreciate him for fostering the electric car economy, admire his work ethic (space x), but hate the guy
Except he never was a brilliant engineer, he was fired for engineering incompetence at one point, and he’s been lying about having an engineering degree.
Both electric cars and spacex are government subsidized industries. He’s not competing on the free market. Elon excels at getting the government to make his business for him.
He’s not competing on the free market.
Those subsidies are exclusively available only to Elon’s companies?
Come on, he’s a massive douche; but Tesla/SpaceX are in the same market as all their competitors. They’re not special, they just chose to do things others weren’t. Why didn’t GM build BEVs sooner to suck up all those subsidies? Why didn’t ULA land their boosters to reduce launch costs and secure more launch contacts and grants?
All I am saying is that he built Tesla and SpaceX with government (taxpayer) money.
Totally agree but they would have been subsidized for anyone. It was Elon who did it
Reminder: I really hate him
But people saying that anyone could have done what he did IF they were born with money or IF government subsidies could somehow apply to them too. Plenty of born rich people out there who didn’t.
He’s a smart guy. Emotionally a child, sociopath and narcissist. But he actually deserves some credit.
And no one was ever surprised, except for people stupid enough to buy anything from Muskmelon in the first place.
My Tesla never ever got close to the advertised range. Usually 200 miles a charge. I went back to an ICE.
Good for you. EVs have a place in most households for quick trips and short errands. But that’s it. They have a huge set of issues that the anti ICE car brigade don’t wish to discuss. Face it, batteries are not a viable way to power the vehicles we all rely on and enjoy driving. Maybe as a second vehicle, yes but forget some big takeover. It’s so stupid.
Nah. The world’s burning; going back to build more fires ain’t the way.
(Edited as I no can grammar)
Lithium mining is very bad for the planet. ICEs are bad, but battery EVs are also horrible.
What happens to lithium after it’s mined? What happens to oil after it’s mined?
There’s no comparing how much worse ICEs are compared to EVs.
Unfortunately EVs aren’t in a place where they can be used by everyone. I owned a Model 3 LR and never got anywhere near the range it claimed. It was constantly recalculating my next stop to charge.
On long drives the range is a real problem. A 9 hour drive turned into 12 because I had to stop every 2 hours to charge for 20 minutes. I actually had to turn around go backwards an hour because it decided I couldn’t make it to the next charger. This wasn’t during extreme cold or heat… it was beautiful outside I was doing the speed limit without the AC on.
The range issues plus the dozens of phantom braking incidents on that trip caused me to trade it in for an ICE car as soon as I got back home. EVs are great for around town daily driving, but if you ever take long trips they are not ready yet. I want to own an EV and will certainly have one as my next car, but today is not that day.
Unfortunately EVs aren’t in a place where they can be used by everyone.
I would agree that it’s infrastructure that is not in a place where EVs make sense for everyone. The US is firmly behind in the race on this point, likely hampered by a battle of plug formats between CCS and Tesla. I’ve a 58kWh (useable) VW ID.3 hatchback - perfect for Europe or just 2 people, which we are. Had it for 2.5 years now, and the difference in charging infrastructure has changed radically. In March of 2021, driving from Amsterdam to Frankfurt or Paris, I did have to plan charge stops - but now, I don’t even think about it. Everything’s CCS, available nearly everywhere on the highway or in smaller towns (at least 50kW charging).
Just did a trip to the midlands to see my brother a few weeks ago (another ID.3 owner) and he’s got a bank of CCS Tesla chargers next to his Pizza Hut and an Ionity not far from there. On the trip I had choices between FastNed, Ionity and Tesla…never thought if I’d make it, only if I could possibly go farther before charging.
…the dozens of phantom braking incidents on that trip
Yeah, that’s a Tesla complaint I hear a lot. Don’t have that particular issue in the ID, although if the mapping database isn’t updated the car can slow down where it expects to have a exit lane or roadworks, but the swarm filtering that VW employs usually filters those exits out after a few weeks. Complete braking though? That’s scary.
Correct, and with better batteries or cheaper electricity, we can move forward. The current state of EVs is not useful for all people. Personally, I’m 5 years away from never needing a car again. In the meantime, I must commute.
Yup.
I need a cheap EV (<$10k) with >100 miles (160km) range to handle a 25mi (40km) commute year round (we’re consistently below freezing in the winter), and a long range family vehicle (minivan or SUV) that can go >400mi (640km) in the summer (100F, or ~38C, outside temp).
Current offerings either have too little range (e.g. older Leafs), cost too much and have excessive range (Bolt, Model 3, etc), or can’t fit my family (3 kids; carseat + booster) and don’t quite have enough range (need a replacement for our minivan).
The proper solution is a mix of better mass transit (so I wouldn’t need a commuter at all) and better battery tech. Even if charging stations were plentiful (they’re not), I don’t want to charge 3-4 times on one trip (e.g. visiting my parents is 850 miles, my brother is 650 miles, and we do one of those almost every year; both have crazy steep mountain passes at highway speeds).
In 5-10 years, I won’t need a commuter. In 101-15, I won’t need the family car. But for now, EVs are either too expensive or too inconvenient, or both.
The current state of EVs is not useful for all people
Again, nothing is useful to ALL people. The EV is far less polluting than the car, easier to drive, easier and cheaper to live with over time…but it doesn’t mean you go back to burning dinosaur juice (and all the pollution you need to create and ship it locally) as a solution for everyone.
If you have no life a PHEV is the best of both worlds. I went all of COVID without ever getting gas because I was able to just use the battery. And PHEVs have been increasing in range too. I got mine in 2019 and it only has 26 miles range, but the RAV4 prime gets 42 now. Maybe there is even something better, haven’t really been paying attention cause I don’t need a new car.
I can’t be the only one who read this and wondered what problems Teslas were causing to golf courses.
