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Tesla Temporarily Boosts Battery Capacity For Hurricane Irma (sfgate.com)
Slashdot reader mikeebbbd noticed this in the AP's Florida hurricane coverage: Electric car maker Tesla says it has temporarily increased the battery capacity of some of its cars to help drivers escaping Hurricane Irma. The electric car maker said the battery boost was applied to Model S and X cars in the Southeast. Some drivers only buy 60 or 70 kilowatt hours of battery capacity, but a software change will give them access to 75 kilowatt hours of battery life until Saturday. Depending on the model, that could let drivers travel about 40 more miles before they would need to recharge their cars.
Tesla said it made the change after a customer asked the company for help evacuating. The company said it's possible it will make similar changes in response to similar events in the future.
Tesla said it made the change after a customer asked the company for help evacuating. The company said it's possible it will make similar changes in response to similar events in the future.
Or maybe Tesla could just stop artificially crippling the batteries?
I wonder if they are also doing this so the battery pack lasts longer. A larger pack has more miles worth of charge cycles, so if it's sold as a 60 but really is a 75 it'll be capable of the same total number of miles of use. I'd actually like that.
If anyone, you should know that there may well be a reason to "cripple" hardware despite its possible ability to function at higher spec. CPUs and graphics card anyone? What happens when an i7 CPU doesn't quite pass the QA tests? Switch off the cores that didn't pass and sell it as an i3. How many here have "unlocked" cores of cheap CPUs to turn it into a more powerful one? Do you think Intel does that because they enjoy making CPUs then sell them cheaply with some cores switched off for ... reasons? Or could it rather be that they switch off the cores because they fail inspection and can't be relied on, and it's still more interesting for Intel to sell it at a lower price than to throw it away?
I could imagine the same applies to other hardware.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hello,
With Lithium-Ion batteries, they last longer if you don't take them from 100% capacity to 0% capacity all the time. If instead you charge/discharge them from 80% to 40%, they last a lot longer.
I think it's likely that Tesla limits the batteries for lifetime purposes. And that this temporary software change is trading a little battery life, for, well, maybe saving the life of the Tesla car owner by getting him out of dodge?
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Thank goodness none of the companies in the computer business do this.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Obviously they can afford to ship those batteries at the lower price point
Why is that "obvious"? The people that pay a premium for extra capacity are subsidizing those who don't. That doesn't mean Tesla would make money on the batteries if no one paid the premium.
My wife has a Tesla with a 240 mile range instead of the 300 mile range. That was our choice. No one "cheated" us. Whether it is more cost effective for Tesla to make two different battery configurations, or to make one with a artificial limit, is their choice. Neither option is more "moral" than the other.
The proof is the fact that they did it.
Not really--suppose they are not turning enough of a profit on the cheaper model to justify turning out the line. Then the cheaper model lets them increase economies of scale and also make the car available to more people (driving down the production cost of the more expensive model and possibly its cost if the external market forces are right), while the more expensive model pays enough to justify having the line and gives you an economy of scale to knock down the price of the cheap model a bit. If you sold just the expensive model to everyone it might then need to be at a higher price point than the cheaper model, which would make it unavailable to people who would otherwise be able to buy the cheap one and reduce the number of consumers able to purchase the car.
Or suppose that they could sell the cheap one with a cheaper battery at the same price point, but by including the bigger battery they make it cheaper to produce due to economies of scale. The customer is still getting the cheaper car but with it being easier to upgrade than it otherwise would be, and the company is producing it more inexpensively. Because of the easy upgrade, the customer actually has a benefit as compared to if the company had decided to sell it with 100% control of a smaller battery.
I understand the urge to hate companies that introduce unnecessary structural monopolies into the marketplace and are unnecessarily hostile to the right to repair or the right to fully control your own property--but just because a decision sets off our radar about that doesn't mean the decision is necessarily harmful to consumers.
Real lawyers write in C++
You car is carrying battery weight it does not need and cannot use
The unused extra capacity increases the life of the battery. So it is not useless.
Or maybe because there is a warranty on the battery, Tesla is the one who gets screwed with a less reliable product, and they price it accordingly.
This happens also on regular petrol cars. The 1400 cc 16 valves turbocharged petrol engine made by Fiat is available in three versions: 120 HP, 145 HP and 170 HP. You can reprogram the ECU from a 120 HP to a 175 HP version quite easily and It will works for some time. But transmission, brakes, air manifold and exhaust are different. This is the official FIat upgrade kit So you can for a moment overboost the petrol engine power, but without changing other components you'' get a coffin on four wheels. I suppose that the power capacity difference could be linked to some different parts for the car that coul do the work ok for some times but can't be span the same lifetime if used on higher power.