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Elon Musk Pledges To End "Range Anxiety" For Tesla Model S
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk has used his Twitter account to announce a press conference on Thursday which he claims will end "range anxiety" for Tesla's Model S sedan. Whatever change they're making will be implemented through an over-the-air software update to the cars, affecting the entire fleet. Range anxiety is the term for a fear that your vehicle won't have enough fuel/charge to reach its destination. It's a common reason for people to avoid buying electric cars, given the much smaller infrastructure build-out compared to gas stations. If Tesla is improving the Model S's range through a software update, then it likely involves optimizations to the battery and to the ways in which power is used. Tesla has also talked about developing a feature called "torque sleep," which puts one of the drive units to sleep while not needed. They say it can wake up and begin delivering torque again "so fast that the driver can't perceive it."
Base load coal plants, even including all the losses, are still more efficient than burning gasoline in a car. And obviously, electricity has many sources, so with very little impact to the overall energy infrastructure, you can replace a coal plant by nuclear or wind.
They rolled out an update to their almost forgotten Roadster that took the range from 245 to 400 miles recently.
That wasn't just software, though, that was new batteries. Probably some new software too.