
Consumer Reports Calls Tesla Model S The Best Car Of 2014 - josh-wrale
http://business.time.com/2014/02/25/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/
======
tlb
I've got nearly 20,000 miles on mine. One thing I just discovered is that the
tires, 21" super-soft compound high-performance Michelins, only last 20,000
miles and cost $2900 to replace. This works out to $0.145 / mile, which is 3x
more per mile than electricity costs me. And about what you would spend on gas
for a 25 MPG car.

I didn't really buy it for the savings, though.

~~~
bri3d
You could easily switch to a high (but not quite extreme) performance tire
like Continental ExtremeContact DW in the stock 245/35R21 size, which would
run you only a little over $1000/set for a much better cost per mile without
compromising performance to a high degree.

Or you could switch (maybe another Tesla owner would trade) down to a rim size
with a more reasonable sidewall profile. I frankly don't understand the trend
towards lower and lower profiles for street cars. The improved cornering
characteristics are offset by the substantially harsher ride and propensity
towards rim damage, and on the performance Tesla I believe even 19" wheels
will easily clear the brakes.

~~~
masonhensley
I highly recommend Continental's ExtremeContacts. I'm on my second pair on my
5 series* and I think my dad has used them on multiple vehicles as well.

*My 530 isn't nearly as fast as the Model S, but it is a stick and I tend to drive in a spirited manner, yada yada yada...

~~~
esw
Seconded. I had these on both of my 5 series and they were great.

------
k-mcgrady
Here's a link to Consumer Reports article on it.
[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/04/top-
pick...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/04/top-
picks-2014/index.htm)

Edit: They split it into categories a pick a winner in each and then somehow
pick a 'best overall'. I like the Tesla but I don't understand how they can
pick a 'best overall'. It doesn't seem like something that can easily
quantified fairly. It's also worth noting the Tesla is over $30,000 more
expensive than the most expensive winner out of the other categories.

~~~
psaintla
Do people take anything consumer reports says seriously anymore? I was under
the impression they started losing all credibility when they had a series of
reviews where they ranked name brand products higher than their generic
counterparts then it turned out the generic and name brand products were
exactly the same (in some cases having come right from the same assembly
lines) but with different badges.

~~~
Crito
Not that it was necessarily the case in the situation you are thinking of, but
I believe that different brands often come off the same production line after
QA is done.

So a factory for Duracell AA batteries might simply rebrand the batteries that
to not meet their QA bar as "off-brand" batteries. The slightly defected or
substandard batteries could then be sold to the consumer for a much lower
price than the Duracell branded batteries, without risking damage to
Duracell's brand.

~~~
larrys
I agree with that thought.

In fact at times I have purchased OEM hard drives through the Apple store
instead of on Amazon.

My theory being that a manufacturer would (and this is important) be _more
likely_ to send their "A" production to Apple and do a better job of screening
defects.

Might not be important for a laptop bag but a mission critical part I'm
willing to pay a few extra dollars.

It's not a new concept in business that the better and more important
customers [1] get better product and service.

[1] Ever try to hire through a temp agency? You don't get the same crop of
people that the big guys get who give them a lot of business.

~~~
jotm
Doesn't really apply to HDDs or any other electronics manufactured in large
numbers. They can't screen every item and they will try to use the best
components in all of them. So you get the same DOA percentage from Apple
branded HDDs and OEMs...

And LG, for example, assembles worse monitors than their competitors, who are
using the same panels LG sells them as an OEM...

------
SilasX
Wow -- no matter what car is available over the next 10 months, it can't
possibly be better than this one!

Anyone else hate "year inflation"?

~~~
MartinCron
This is hardly a new thing with model years.

~~~
MBCook
That was the entire _point_ of model years. They needed way to make people
want to upgrade their 'old' car. So instead of making the Ford Focus for 10
years there is the 2013 Focus and the 2014 Focus and....

Now your Focus is only a 2012 Focus. You're behind.

~~~
MartinCron
The fact that the 2014 focus goes on sale in 2013 only serves to accelerate
this.

Not all vehicles are produced this way, some motorcycles are literally
identical from model year to model year and get "blessed" with the year they
happen to be sold.

~~~
MBCook
They basically make up updates to cars. Just little tiny tweaks to justify the
new number. Fully new generations still only come every couple of years or so.

------
deletes
But isn't the result at least somewhat biased, as the car is mostly sold to
environmentally conscious consumers, who might knowingly or not ignore car's
potential problems to promote the nature friendly aspect of it.

~~~
bal00ns
"Electric cars aren't green" is a myth spread by a few op-ed pieces written in
the LA Times and WSJ. The production of a battery is a tiny constant in
comparison to the lifelong use of fossil fuels.

Electric vehicles become more environmentally friendly as grid power becomes
more renewable, and grid power is becoming more renewable every day. When you
invest in an electric vehicle you're investing in the future of renewable
energy.

~~~
morsch
> When you invest in an electric vehicle you're investing in the future of
> renewable energy.

Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch. Renewable energy doesn't need electric cars
to take off, buying an electric car is not an investment in renewable energy
in any real meaningful way. In the meantime, the US grid is currently 12.x%
renewable, so you're running on 85+% non-renewable (2012). Not to mention the
fact that running all those vehicles off electric would mean adding a huge
amount of capacity.[0]

So yeah, powerful electric vehicles that enable you to continue to drive
around like mad people while actually feeling smug about it is terrible for
the environment. Buying non-powerful, non-oversized cars and using them a
little bit (or a lot!) less is. We're much better of using the renewable
electricity we manage to generate in other ways.

[0] To elaborate, electric power makes up about 40% of the total energy budget
of the US, transportation makes up about 28% (2008 figures).

~~~
bal00ns
> the US grid is currently 12.x% renewable

Overall US power consumption has gone from 8.9% renewables 10 years ago to
~12.2% today. Vehicles that use fossil fuels as their primary source of energy
will always make very little use of renewable energy. Electric vehicles have
the potential to use solely renewable energy, which is the direction grid
power is heading.

So should we invest in electric vehicles now, or should we use fossil fuels
sparingly and settle with transportation that's unable to tap into renewables?

EDIT: 8.9% in 2002

~~~
morsch
Where are those numbers from? Wikipedia[0] states 8.90% in 2002 to 12.22% in
2012. (Edit: I see we're agreed on that.) Again, that's percent of the total
_electrical_ energy generation, not the entire energy budget, which is much
higher.

I'm fairly optimistic that we'll end up using electrical vehicles down the
road. But it's a long way off from becoming a sensible alternative; it'll take
a long time to satisfy the current electrical energy requirements by
renewables, and adding the transport budget essentially doubles the amount
required.

And people are deluding themselves if they think they're being environmentally
responsible by driving around a Model S. Maybe if you buy a Model S and don't
drive it.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States)

~~~
bal00ns
> But it's a long way off from becoming a sensible alternative

Electric vehicles aren't going to flood the market overnight, just as
renewable energy isn't going to suddenly become our primary source of energy.
These things take time and money. The more traction we give them, the more
attainable they will become.

Environmental responsibility isn't possible when you ignore hard facts about
the future. By the time I reach old age there will be 2 billion more people on
this planet. They are capable of much more damage than we are.

------
goeric
Tesla will reach $500 per share within 3 years, if not sooner. When Gen3 comes
out, it'll basically be the iPhone of cars. Everybody will want one.

The stock does seem a bit overvalued currently and I wouldn't be surprised to
see some drops in the coming weeks. But regardless, $500 within 3 years. Mark
my words.

~~~
kudu
> Everybody will want one.

How many people do you think can afford a ~$100k vehicle?

~~~
catshirt
the argument when the iPhone was released was similar

~~~
smackfu
And they did drop the price (via subsidies), and it got way more popular...

~~~
catshirt
yep. and they get cheaper over time as the market provides competition and
technology advances. there will also be a larger pre-owned market and more
supply.

------
mrfusion
So here's what's been bothering me about electric cars. The battery life. I'm
lucky to get 2 or 3 years of battery life out of a laptop or iPhone battery.
So it scares the bejezess out of me to have similar technology as half the
value of my car.

Can anyone re-assure me? Is there anything that lets car batteries last
significantly longer than phone batteries?

~~~
DEinspanjer
Most smartphone batteries have only a single cell in them. Laptop batteries
vary more, but you could expect around 4 to 8 cells in many of them.

The individual battery cell has a pretty hard limit on the number of times it
can be cycled (i.e. discharged and recharged). Your typical AAA NiMH
rechargeable has a lifetime rating of about 100 cycles I believe.

If a battery pack has multiple cells, they can be connected to each other in
parallel or in series (and any combination of the two choices). In series
gives you more voltage (i.e. kick), in parallel gives you more amperage (i.e.
duration).

If the electronics hooked up to it are "smart" then any parallel sets of cells
in the battery can be charged separately. This means that the laptop might
drain parallel set A down to 30%, set B down to 50% and set C down to 90%
leaving you at an overall percentage of roughly 56%. If you then hook the
charger up, the laptop will charge the lowest set A first, then B, then
finally C. If you stop charging before it gets to C then you've saved an
entire charge cycle on that set which means it lives a little longer.

So.. now on to the Tesla. It has 8640 individual cells wired into 16 parallel
sets of 540 in-series cells. The car will selectively drain and charge each
individual set to maximize the life of the battery.

By default the car also does not charge the battery to 100%. The default is
80% which gives you a typical range of about 230 miles. That leaves more
choice to the charger about which parallel sets to charge without reducing the
life of sets that are nearly full by topping them off.

If you are going on a long trip, you can put the car in "range charge" mode
which will force it to top off to about 260 miles of rated range.

The predictions based on modeling so far is that the battery should retain
over 80% of its total capacity even after 8 years of typical use.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Follow up question. How does the regenerative braking affect battery life? It
seems like you be charging and discharging quite a bit just during normal
driving?

~~~
DEinspanjer
Regen is factored into their calculations of battery life. While no one but
Tesla knows the actual details of their recharging strategy, I suspect that
the regen also selectively charges certain cells/strings of cells to reduce
the overall amount of charge cycles. Hypothetically, maybe the car drains one
string down to a low level and then each time the regen kicks in, it goes to
that discharged string until it is full then that string will be put back into
use and another discharged string will be the recipient of regen.

------
bane
thetruthaboutcars.com calls the 2014 Accord Hybrid the best car of 2013 if
that matters.

[http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/review-2014-honda-a...](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/review-2014-honda-
accord-hybrid-with-video/)

~~~
r00fus
Impressive. Still, reading the review and the comments, I'm still a bit
concerned about a) the fact that it uses more of a series-hybrid approach to
battery charging while b) having only a 1.3kwh battery.

Ride and cabin noise are very important, but even the Accord doesn't have air
suspension like the Tesla Model S or many Mercedes models.

~~~
Shivetya
Well lets be real shall we, the Accord Hybrid plug in starts at 40k. It is
priced within the reach of far many more households than the Tesla or Mercedes
are. Then to top it off, I doubt the tax payers are ponying up 7500 dollars
towards its purchase, so its a double win.

~~~
r00fus
My 2005 Prius has a 1.3kwh battery. A 2014 hybrid can do much better - not to
mention the fact that it doesn't sound like it's aggressively managing battery
life like my Prius does (which still gets 53 MPG highway).

------
ck2
Now please make a $10k model so I can get one.

Either that or I'll have to wait a decade for one with a depleted battery and
rebuild the pack myself.

~~~
kreek
Not a Telsa but my Chevy Volt lease payment after rebates etc. is less than my
cable bill; plus I get carpool stickers which down here in SoCal are
priceless. My first American car after many Japanese and one German, and it's
the most solid of the lot.

~~~
dmd
How high is your cable bill? I don't see the Volt leasing for anything under
$200. My cable bill is $80. What am I doing wrong, or what are you doing
right?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> after rebates etc.

------
larrys
I wondering how many people on HN own a Tesla?

HN appears to have true love for any story surrounding Tesla.

~~~
lutusp
> HN appears to have true love for any story surrounding Tesla.

That might have more to do with the fact that the Tesla is largely software-
driven than that it's relevant to HN's readers as Tesla owners.

Also, it's a model for a future environmentally friendly car. I say it that
way because driving a Tesla using present-day coal-generated electricity isn't
a huge improvement from an environmental perspective, but a future power grid
that's more reliant on wind, solar and nuclear, greatly changes an electric
car's environmental impact.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I think it's because its a revolutionary auto maker that iterates like a
software startup. They innovate like we want to innovate.

~~~
lutusp
Yes, that sounds likely too.

------
goggles99
Well how political...

