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CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S
karlnyberg writes "Adding a third voice to the conflict between Tesla's Elon Musk and New York Times Reporter John Broder, CNN/Money's Peter Valdes-Dapena drove from DC to Boston (primarily to test the SuperCharger network). As he says in the article: In the end, I made it — and it wasn't that hard. ... As for the Supercharger network? Turns out that works, too.' He expands on this a bit: 'Looking back on the trip, it would be even easier if Tesla would install one of their fast-charging Superchargers along the New Jersey Turnpike. (These charging stations can fill up a nearly dead battery in Tesla's longest-range cars in about an hour, which is enough time to stop for a meal.) Tesla's working on that, spokeswoman Shanna Hendricks said. But the first priority was to install enough to make this trip, even if you had to take it easy most of the way. But I didn't have to take it that easy, which is good because the Model S provides a pretty amazing mix of smooth and silent performance along with brain-squishing acceleration. So even if you're not driving from Washington to Boston, it's an impressive car, all on its own.'"
The CNN reporter duplicated the test, charging it properly, and had 96 miles to spare at the end.
Traffic? Did he stop overnight?
I don't understand why everyone is so gaga over these Tesla's. Is it a beautiful car? Yeah. Is it well made? Yeah. But, the base price remains at $57,400. This is not a car for the masses. It's like writing about an all-electric Mercedes. Who cares?
As I understand it Tesla's buisness plan is to first make a high performance sports car (Roadster) to work out the bugs in the technology, then make a cheaper sedan to scale up production of components as the more components that are made the cheaper they get. Once enough production capacity is built they can then make cheaper cars using what will then be off the shelf components.
It's the chicken and the egg problem - if nobody mass produces electric cars they will never get cheap, so by mass producing lots of expensive high performance cars they build up the infrastructure to support making cheap ones.
Everyone is going gaga over Tesla because they are succeeding, and with each car they sell we get that much closer to having a cheap yet powerful electric car.
Man, if only there were some way for you to find data to support your proposition that "A gasoline-burning car is probably less polluting than a coal-burning electrical plant." Maybe we could create some sort of globally-connected network of computers, with advanced tools to search through all the data.
Oh wait. We have those things. You are wrong, and it would have taken about eighteen seconds to find that out. Economies of scale, man - your local power plant generates energy more efficiently and deals with pollution more effectively than your tiny little internal combustion engine. Even an electric car driven off of oil-burning power plants is less polluting (although only by about 1/3) per mile driven than an internal combustion engine.
As far as possible. It's highly unlikely that weather alone would account for the massive differential between what CNN got and what Broder got. Read the CNN's article and compare their numbers to Broder's. You'd have to probably warm stuff up to tropical levels on the same route to get the discrepancy meaningful enough to account for Broder's account.
You do realize that BBC won the court case because it argued that "top gear reviews are not actual reviews but scripted comedy skits" successfully?
As an EV builder, i can assure you, the weather really doesn't effect it. In the brutal, -10F weather, i only see a 10% drop in range...with lead acid batteries. 3% with LiFePO4. The simple fact is that the first article was a complete fabrication designed to hurt the image of the electric car.
I have a Tesla Roadster. If you leave it out overnight, at -10c, you will not lose more than 5% or so of your battery.
--- My dad's political betting
Absolutely and totally incorrect.
This reflects directly on the NYT, and if they don't hold their own journalists accountable for doing a bad job then it reflects directly on the NYT. Then again, this isn't the first time they've done a horrible job.
You do hold your own accountable, else your quality control becomes nonexistent. That is indeed why quality control aka editors are supposed to exist.
This has been discussed ad nauseum but apparently you missed all of the memos.
The battery READS differently when cold. But as it gets used, it returns to operating temperature (just like an internal combustion engine) and that charge - magically! (not really) - returns. It's a problem with how the current charge status is read by the electronics, NOT electrons bleeding away through the tires.
So, no violation of conservation of energy. Turns out chemical reactions happen slower in the cold, and we've known this for hundreds of years. Warm 'em up, and you are back to where you were.
Stop spreading the completely inaccurate FUD.
The speeds? Is that the "lie"? Teslas have 21" wheels normally. He was driving on 19" snow tires. If the system logging his speed wasn't calibrated for the wheel difference you'd see the logs indicate speeds about 10% higher than Broder was actually traveling. There's your discrepancy between the two.
You are only partially correct here and not where it is important. It's not the size of the wheel itself that matters, it's the overall size of the tire. A 21" tire (on this type of car) is going to have a significantly shorter sidewall than a 19" snow tire will. As such the overall size won't have changed that significantly and you are looking at far less than a 10% difference.
Additionally what they were reporting in those graphs was the information in the ECU which would be the same information given to the speedometer on the dash since that is where the dash gets it's information. So while the car may have said he was doing one speed and he was actually doing another based on tire size, what he thought he was doing was no different than what the ECU thought he was doing. The only way he could think he was doing a different speed than the car thought was if he was using another device (e.g. GPS) to track it and in that case most of any discrepancy is going to be due to the built-in overrating of the ECU/speedo (due to various laws and penalties around the world) which is typically in the 5-10% range.
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The speeds? Is that the "lie"? Teslas have 21" wheels normally. He was driving on 19" snow tires. If the system logging his speed wasn't calibrated for the wheel difference you'd see the logs indicate speeds about 10% higher than Broder was actually traveling. There's your discrepancy between the two.
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Uhhh, I don't usually drive the car on the wheels. I put tires on those wheels. Snow tires usually have more sidewall on them... .1" (27.7" - 27.8") which works out to 0.3%.
Stock available tire wheel combos for a Tesla S: 245/45R19 or optional 245/35R21. Difference in size is
Heating the cabin is a concern, but not as much as implied above. Once the cabin is warm, a mere 200 watts can keep it toasty.