Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of Consumer Reports Recommendation (cnbc.com)
Consumer Reports published their review of the Tesla Model 3 today. The product review site liked the vehicle's range of the battery and agile handling, but had issues with braking, controls, and ride quality. Overall, it failed to get a recommendation. CNBC highlights the key shortfalls: "Our testers also found flaws -- big flaws -- such as long stopping distances in our emergency braking test and difficult-to-use controls," said a review in the publication. In particular, the car's stopping distance of 152 feet from a speed of 60 miles per hour was slower than any of its contemporaries, including the Ford F-150, a full-size pickup. The location of almost all of Tesla's controls on a touchscreen and the vehicle's ride quality were also factors in the group's decision. Tesla issued a statement in response to Consumer Reports' stopping distance claim: "Tesla's own testing has found braking distances with an average of 133 feet when conducting the 60-0 mph stops using the 18-inch Michelin all season tire and as low as 126 feet with all tires currently available. Stopping distance results are affected by variables such as road surface, weather conditions, tire temperature, brake conditioning, outside temperature, and past driving behavior that may have affected the brake system. Unlike other vehicles, Tesla is uniquely positioned to address more corner cases over time through over-the-air software updates, and it continually does so to improve factors such as stopping distance."
Most people buy Tesla's to be cool, not to be practical.
Table-ized A.I.
CR doesn't accept manufacturer-provided samples for testing. They pose as a buyer and buy the product just as a regular customer would. This includes cars. So the car they test in their review is a true random sample. If Tesla is getting 133 ft stopping distances in their internal testing, while CR got a 152 ft stopping distance, that would suggest a QA problem at Tesla is resulting in large variability in the effectiveness of the brakes. Which given all the problems they've had with their Model 3 production wouldn't be that surprising.
Unlike other vehicles, Tesla is uniquely positioned to address more corner cases over time through over-the-air software updates, and it continually does so to improve factors such as stopping distance."
Eyeroll. I'm sure you'll be able to make major changes to stopping distance via a software update.
Fly my pretties, fly!
From MotorTrend's testing:
They measured an average braking distance of 119ft, vs. 123 ft for the BMW 330i.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against CR. But their testing mechanisms often seem really poorly controlled. Which can go either way - they found a 350 mile range for the Model 3 LR with 18" wheels, which is well further than normal. Their range measurement isn't a drive cycle, it's just a guy driving, which is obviously going to introduce a lot of randomness. One likes to hope that their braking tests are better controlled, but somehow I doubt that. They got hugely divergent braking distance results on the Model 3, with their first measure being around 130 feet, but others much higher dragging the average up.
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.
I see another flaw right there, but this one is not Tesla's fault.
#DeleteFacebook
Teslas probably use some combination of regenerative braking and traditional friction brakes with brake pads. This smells like the automated system isn't aggressive enough in engaging the friction brakes when the pedal is hit hard -- they probably prioritize using the brakes to recharge the batteries and not wearing out the brake pads. Maybe the software needs to be rewritten to prioritize friction braking when the pedal is pressed "suddenly."
As far as the giant LCD, it's abominable. It intrudes into the passenger and driver seat spaces and is likely easily broken due to its design. I've often put furniture or even lumber into a car's front passenger seat -- in the Tesla, this would virtually guarantee damage to the screen. It's also not tactile and hard to use with gloves on in winter.
The 2018 Leaf has a much more practical interior, even if it's not artsy-fartsy minimalist.
The location of almost all of Tesla's controls on a touchscreen
I want controls you can adjust without looking, and with gloves in the winter. Why is every car getting away from usability? It is a horrible trend.
Also if the brakes are simply under sized, how is that fixed with a firmware update?
Hydrogen? Really? You know, we've been there, done that. We had hydrogen powered cars driving around in the late '70's and '80's - gov research programs after that little oil embargo dust up. We even had cryogenic liquid fuel tanks that could keep most of the fuel from evaporating away for weeks at a time, and when a little did evaporate away it went through a nickel catalyst and was converted to harmless water.
Don't even think about compressed gas storage or porous adsorption techniques. The volumetric efficiency of the cryogenic liquid is bad enough. Compressed gases and adsorption storage in a typical vehicle might rival the range of a bicycle day trip. Maybe.
A minor change in metallurgy was required to keep turbo charger vanes from failing due to hydrogen embrittlement. Any internal combustion engine can be converted (hint - change your ignition timing to about ZERO degrees before tdc, and reduce or eliminate the vacuum/throttle advance. Hydrogen burns so much faster than traditional hydrocarbons that any timing advance will result in a broken crank). They burn cleaner, last longer, and don't need oil, right? And fuel cells are even better, right?!
Wrong!
Without truly massive investments in nuclear or other power plants to make hydrogen, and an equal investment in all new distribution systems for hydrogen, hydrogen is otherwise made by reforming natural gas and coal flue gas. Yeah, let's do that!
Except lots of studies and research has shown that converting a hyrdrocarbon to hydrogen, then pumping and shipping it around, is far less efficient and far more polluting than just charging batteries. Fuel cells don't change this reality. Also, how come we don't see fuel cell power plants? Hmm, that's curious!
Hydrogen is an Exon Mobile unicorn. Oil companies _love_ the prospect of a "hydrogen" economy.
I know, hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the Tesla haters. It's sad, really. I want you to have your unicorn, I really do, so here you go:
http://pbfcomics.com/comics/th...
Since the original went over like a lead mod point, let me rephrase it: "Most people buy Tesla's to try to be cool, not to be practical."
Table-ized A.I.
A long time ago I saw a joke in either Car & Driver or maybe it was Road & Track. In the background were several bespectacled men in white lab coats with clipboards making notes as cars were being driven off a cliff. In the foreground are two guys. One says to the other, "Oh, that's just Consumer Reports testing cars again"
And as for their "statistical analyses" they are a joke. They only survey CR subscribers. They won't disclose their numbers. They won't disclose their methodology. They seem to feel it is all proprietary. And it goes without saying they have no numbers at all on the Model 3. It's too bad people take these jokers seriously.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Claims, meet facts.
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.
1) No, you don't have to plug your car in every night unless you're driving hundreds of miles per day. Most people *choose to*, but that's an entirely different story.
2) (10 hours/yr * 60 minutes/hour) / 365,24 days/year = 1,6 minutes to plug in and unplug? Way too long. Try 10 seconds to plug in and 10 seconds to unplug. 2 hours per year.
3) The average American drives ~13476 miles per year and the average US passenger vehicle is 24,7mpg; that's 546 gallons per year. Let's guess an average tank size of 18 gallon, with the average person filling up at a third of a tank, or 12 gallons per fillup. That's 45 1/2 fillups on average per year. I've timed a "rush" fillup, from "when you leave the road" to "when you get back on it": the shortest possible detour to the station, not out of way on my trip, small tank car, driving fast, stopping fast, zero line, paying at the same time I remove the gas cap, etc. From "off the road" to "back on it" it was 3 minutes. The average fill is probably at least 5 minutes. 4 hours per year.
4) An EV is charged in the comfort of your garage. The gasoline car requires randomly diverting from your daily routine and standing outside in whatever weather on a dirty concrete platform to pump carcinogens.
5)You have to really struggle to strand yourself with a Tesla in a country which has a supercharger network. Your gasoline car doesn't try to keep you from doing something that will get you stranded. It has precisely one safety: the gas light. Which is entirely context insensitive to your location. Teslas know all charger locations in their network, calculate which ones you can reach, calculate if you need to stop at one and warn you, start repeatedly cutting your power to extend your range as you get near the bottom, etc. A gasoline car does none of this. Is it even worth mentioning that you can literally charge at any plug, no matter how remote? Or that you start every day with a full (as full as you choose) charge, so it's essentially impossible to run out in your normal daily life?
We've done polls on the Tesla forums, asking people whether they've ever run out of charge (and if so how often), and comparing that to how much distance they drive - and then comparing that to statistics of how often people run out of gas. The latter is much more common.
6) I have no clue what you mean by your "wait 15 minutes" comment. If you're talking about overnight charging, it's a lot more than 15 minutes to fill up, but it's entirely irrelevant because it's while you're sleeping. If you're talking about superchargers, if you're not stopping for 15 minutes at regular intervals on long trips, please burn your license right now for the safety of everyone around you.
7) You do not "pay a premium for all this". Model 3 - without subsidy - beats its class competitors (BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes C350, etc) in almost all stats. Ignoring the energy cost savings, which for US drivers averages about $1k per year, European drivers about $2k a year, and where I am, about $3k per year.
8) You can't figure out why people would want low operating costs, a full "tank" every day, no standing around at gas stations, superb performance, silence, clean operation, the ability to preheat / precool the vehicle on grid power, etc, etc? Try harder.
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.