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."

Comments

Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending

[Rei]

.. range. For example, more charging stations and/or a better locator (perhaps with a partnership with a nationwide chain of stores or two), better range calculation, a service to have charging trucks come out to you to you should you run out of charge (maybe even heading to the point where you would run out of charge before it even happens so that there's no wait), or all sorts of other possibilities. There's no guarantee that it actually means more range.

Of course, it could mean that.

Re:Or, it could be unrelated to actually extending

[itsdapead]

Of course, it could mean that.

No - your suggestions are all better. Unless they're going to download new laws of physics to the cars, the sort of incremental range improvement that a software update might bring is hardly going to end "range anxiety". Range anxiety isn't so much about the absolute range - its about the scarcity of recharging stations c.f. petrol, the time taken to recharge, the uncertainty of the quoted range and the need to be towed to a recharge station if you do run out.