
Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway - jfb
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?hpw&_r=0
======
nlh
So I run a luxury car rental company and one of the most common questions I
get from folks these days (especially those in the tech community) is: "When
are you guys getting a Tesla?"

This article is _exactly_ why we're not getting one for the fleet anytime
soon, and it's basically the answer I've been giving people since the Roadster
came out (and the questions started).

Tesla is an awesome, awesome company. I'm a fan. I'm thinking of getting a
Model S for myself. I think (and hope) they're going to be huge.

But they're not ready for the truly mass-market quite yet - and car rental
customer (even luxury car rental customers) are the mass market.

I could see the exact scenario outlined in the article happening to renters
constantly - except for one difference: We would be yelled at by the
customers, not Tesla ;) ("Why is my car saying 'battery dead'? I did nothing
wrong. Send a truck to pick me up or I'm writing a bad review about you
guys.") Sigh.

Anyway, I'm still a fan despite the headaches - and I know they'll grow out of
it.

~~~
bengl3rt
Off topic, but...

Luxury car rental company? Please tell me more (like do you have a website??)

I ask because I know of a couple of luxury car rental companies, but there is
one ore more things about each of them that make them exceedingly unpleasant
to deal with. I would be interested to try doing business with a luxury car
rental company that is run by people who also read HN - seems to be a good
signal for not-totally-fucked-up business practices.

~~~
MJR
A little googling later... <http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/>

------
tokenadult
Very worth reading if you want to know what it's like to drive a Tesla Model S
on an actual road trip. The New York Times reporter John M. Broder finds out
that the gauge in the Model S to estimate remaining mileage before the next
charge is badly confused by temperatures below the usual temperatures in
California.

I remember back when I used to have a travel-intensive job that I was flying
into airports all over the United States and getting into unfamiliar models of
cars rented on the corporate account. That was sometimes no fun at all. But
all of those cars fit everyone's familiar mental model of displaying fuel
remaining. The Tesla Model S, by contrast, reports miles still able to drive
in a dynamic model that can rapidly get out of touch with reality. And of
course it takes a good bit longer to fully recharge a Tesla, even with high-
speed recharging, than to pump gasoline into any other kind of car. This will
take some major getting used to for most drivers.

~~~
purplelobster
For sure. The lack of charging stations will eventually be solved, but longer
charging times and unreliable readings might be with us forever. Hopefully the
cost offset for fuel will make it worth it.

~~~
bwhite
Gas stations are incredibly common. Public EV charging stations will never be
as common unless a different business model is adopted.

If EVs become common, people will have home charging stations. Demand for non-
at-home charging stations will come from (1) folks who drive a lot and need to
charge intraday (and who cannot charge at work) and (2) road trippers. The sum
of both of these categories is fairly small and less demand means less supply.
So if you do fit into one of those two categories, you will need to plan your
driving carefully instead of figuring that you'll be able to pick up some gas
when you need it. This can be overcome by arranging for the proliferation of
public EV charging stations even absent the demand. Perhaps the manufacturer
or municipalities will subsidize it.

~~~
glenra
Making people sit and wait for an hour whenever they need to recharge is just
plain nuts. It makes the "road tripper" use case untenable. The right way to
handle this for road trippers is to swap the battery packs or swap their
contents. Don't make the driver _wait_ while his battery is recharged - swap
in a full pack and send him on his way. Charge the battery that was left
behind slowly and at leisure, then give it to the next driver who pulls in
needing a charge.

I don't care how many charging stations there are - adding multiple _hours_ of
charging time to a short trip like that is just not going to work.

Although there's one other conceivable option for a technical solution - if
you could add charging circuitry to the freeway and recharge _while_ driving,
that would be a game-changer.

~~~
rm999
There's a company that's been working on swappable car batteries for some time
now:

<http://www.betterplace.com/>

I agree with you that this is the only realistic mainstream future of electric
vehicles as long as batteries remain in their current low-density state.

------
peteforde
As a fan of Tesla's efforts, it pains me to read this; no matter where the
blame lies (physics, bad planning, poorly tested diagnostics software) this
article will haunt the company for years. Every oil lobbyist will eat this up,
and it should become the foundation of any EV-haters argument.

And that sucks.

However, I'm annoyed that Tesla's UX people let a car with this much design
intelligence leave without connecting range estimations to a simple
thermometer.

I understand that to HN readers batteries in the cold is "simple physics" but
if the battery indicator jumps around like a BitTorrent download time
estimation, people will quickly learn to not trust what the car tells them.

Consumers that are highly neurotic about the road trip problem are much more
likely to remember these sorts of horror stories when making a purchasing
decision.

~~~
fernly
But if I read the article right, the car IS adjusting its display for
temperature. When the temp went down, the calculated available miles went down
also -- and almost accurately, that is, the car went dead about when the
miles-left display went to zero.

The question I'd have is, how much current would they have to divert to keep
the batteries warm? It seems like the juice expended to hold the battery pack
at 20C might be less than the capacity lost by letting the batteries go down
to an ambient -5C.

Or, they could provide what a lot of east-coast cars have, a built in engine-
block heater that you plug in to a 110V extension cord overnight. Except in
this case it would be a battery pack warmer, but the same idea, keep the
important bits toasty over a cold night.

~~~
chrisbolt
_When the temp went down, the calculated available miles went down also -- and
almost accurately, that is, the car went dead about when the miles-left
display went to zero._

Showing that the range is zero when the battery is dead is not hard. The
problem is when the displayed range drops faster than you're traveling, and if
that wasn't the problem, he wouldn't have been stranded. If it was adjusting
its display for temperature, it wouldn't have been wrong.

 _Or, they could provide what a lot of east-coast cars have, a built in
engine-block heater that you plug in to a 110V extension cord overnight._

Had he plugged the car into a 110V outlet overnight, the battery would have
been charged in the morning.

------
stcredzero
My friends think I'm dowdy. Until recent years, I was very conservative about
estimates. Every "event" in a trip adds 5 minutes, no matter how "nothing" it
seems. I was often too early, but never late.

A Tesla S with the 260 mile battery, I would treat like a car with 130 miles
range. Plenty for an around town commuter and errand vehicle. A Leaf, I would
treat like a 50 mile range car.

Also, why don't those things come with a propane heater? Electric heat makes
no sense.

~~~
michael_miller
Knowing nothing about heaters, I'm curious: why does electric heat make no
sense? My intuition would be that an electric heater would require far fewer
components (especially considering the battery is already in place), be less
dangerous, and require less maintenance. What is the relative efficiency of
electric heaters to propane heaters?

~~~
danielweber
Electric heat via resisters is very simple, but very inefficient. ( _EDIT_ :
Thermodynamically space-heaters are 100% efficient, since they always convert
their source energy into heat. They are inefficient from a monetary point-of-
view.)

You can do electric heat via heat pumps, but it requires more equipment and it
doesn't work if it's too cold. You can get about a 4 to 5 advantage over plain
resistance heat.

Gasoline engines lose a lot of energy to waste heat -- but sometimes that
waste heat is exactly what you want.

~~~
stcredzero
_> (EDIT: Thermodynamically space-heaters are 100% efficient, since they
always convert their source energy into heat. They are inefficient from a
monetary point-of-view.)_

They're a disaster from a range point of view.

------
saulrh
This blog post states the obvious: early adopters better know what they're in
for and what they're doing. The author _isn't_ an experienced early adopter
and _doesn't_ know what they're doing, and rightly concludes that the
technology isn't ready for universal mainstream use. Unfortunately, the
article entirely fails to address the point and is aimed squarely at an
audience that won't get it either. It will be used as ammunition against
electric vehicles for months. This subtle, yet thorough, misrepresentation is
irresponsible and quite annoying.

~~~
malloreon
Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be
different?

Would he have been able to get where he wanted to go, or would he have not
tried to go as far as the car said he could go?

~~~
labcomputer
>Replace him with "an experienced early adopter." How would the article be
different?

So, I've been reading the forums at teslamotorsclub.com recently, and there
are a lot of questions (and answers) about the Model S's range. From what has
been written over there, it sounds like the car's speed has the biggest impact
on range. In the NYT piece, I notice that the only time he mentions his speed
is _after_ it started to look like he might not have enough range to make it
to his destination--and then he only mentioned how slow he had to drive. I
would submit, then, that an "experienced early adopter" would know that his
driving speed matters and therefore not try to drive down the expressway
"upside-down at mach 3 with his hair on fire."

I also notice that the author made no attempt to charge the car at his
destination in Connecticut. Instead, he planed to rely exclusively upon
Tesla's "Superchargers" for the entire trip. Again, an "experience early
adopter" would know that the Model S can be plugged into a clothes dryer
outlet and fully charged overnight (i.e., no waiting). He could have started
his second day with a fully-charged battery, if he chose to. Actually, the
author probably would have had enough range for the rest of his trip if he had
even plugged into a standard 120V domestic outlet in Groton.

Frankly, it sounds like the author was trying to make his life difficult.
Almost a third of the verbiage is devoted to range problems that were a direct
result of his decision not to charge in Groton. When drivers choose not to
fill up before driving across Death Valley, do we blame the driver or the car?

This isn't to say that the car is ready for prime-time. After all, the author
may be representative of the general public. However, I think that anyone with
even a modicum of curiosity about his new car--and more importantly, someone
who, by purchasing one, had some sort of incentive to make things work instead
of writing a diatribe in the NYT--would have no trouble figuring out these
things, and avoiding the range problems described in the article.

~~~
rdouble
If he stayed at a hotel there would be nothing to plug into.

~~~
labcomputer
I have no personal experience with this, but several forum members of the site
I mentioned above have written that they have never been refused a 120V plug-
in (which, again, would have been enough for the author to complete his trip--
provided that it wasn't fueled by amphetamines and a mason jar). The have also
written that hotel managers are often amiable to allowing 240V charging when
there is an available socket.

I also just checked plugshare.com: there are at least half a dozen public
J1772 charging stations (which are relatively high power) near the route
segment where the author plausibly had range anxiety. Why he chose to charge
at Butch's Lunchonette when there was a high power station nearby is baffling.
What is doubly baffling is that he launched on a 209 road-mile trip with 185
miles of estimated range, and then made no attempt to recharge the car until
he was nearly stuck (if you believe the numbers on the little map inset). So,
I'm afraid that I can't escape the conclusion that this is a problem of the
author's making.

------
noonespecial
Here's a hint from the usability department:

Underestimate the remaining miles. Even if that makes you look bad up front.
Its an eerie form of cognitive dissonance when your reserves are dropping
faster than you consumption and the wheels in your mind spin wondering "will I
have enough". You never forget this feeling. Even if its just a test drive,
you'll associate Tesla cars with that feeling forever after.

~~~
rogerbinns
> Underestimate the remaining miles

I suspect they already do, hence the comment that he'll still have some range
even when it says zero.

The problem is what number to display after a full charge. If it doesn't
strongly resemble the specification range then people won't be happy.

------
thrownaway2424
This is why electric cars are not magical fairies and can't solve the
structural problems around transportation in the USA. They suck for long-haul
travel, but nobody should have to have their own car for long-haul travel. It
should be possible to travel around by train, using a rented car for only the
last short leg of the trip, if it happens to be rural, or local public
transport otherwise. Electrics would be just perfect hired cars if you only
needed to go ten miles and back or something like that.

------
agwa
Is there anything to be gained by making the parking brake electrically
actuated? Such parking brakes are becoming increasingly common in cars of all
types and it bugs me. From an engineering perspective, it seems like it's just
introducing a complex dependency that can fail to a critical part of the car.

------
danielweber
I used to be excited about electric cars, but lately I've been wondering if it
wouldn't be better to use the power source to manufacture fossil fuels using
an environmental source of carbon and ship that to customers. That would make
the fuel carbon neutral.

Because the world understands completely how to store and handle and deal with
liquid fossil fuels.

~~~
stcredzero
There's also something elegant about the technology. If you compare the
complexity and expense versus the energy density of a lithium-ion battery pack
and _a metal can_ , there's no comparison.

However, in an ideal world, I would think that carbon neutral hydrocarbons
would become a niche fuel for things like long haul trucks and bulldozers.
(And for auxiliary space heaters in people's electric cars.)

------
cromwellian
Why did the reporter have to rope Steven Chu into the article? Even if all the
facts are 100% right, it seems lame to try and make this a political issue.

I know people who have done family road trips with the Tesla S already and
didn't have those problems in normal weather. One could surmise that pushing
the edges of the range AND pushing extreme weather conditions might be risky,
and in an EV it is certainly riskier than in a gas car, but like the Top Gear
"driving a roadster on a race track drains the battery horrendously", it
somewhat reads like an attempt to intentionally push an EV to the breaking
limit, and then write a negative article about it. The political angle of
trying to make Tesla look like a Steve Chu/DoE failure increases my
suspicions.

Could you imagine a reporter writing an article about a gas car that he
intentionally drove at the limit of its mileage, got stuck on an interstate,
and then turned around and roped in government loans to General Motors?

The Tesla S deserves criticism in order to shake out bugs and improve the
software to reduce customer surprise, to better predict battery life, no doubt
about that. But this should not be used by the anti-EV crusaders who have an
axe to grind to score points against ex-Obama administration officials.

~~~
goodcanadian
I agree with your comments about the politics, but I have one nitpick. 30F
does not sound like extreme weather. Where I grew up, below freezing is normal
for half the year. I am really curious how they are going to solve the problem
of making electric vehicles work at -40F.

------
CamperBob2
In a rational world, every one of the gas stations he passed would have had a
rack of fully charged swappable batteries, ready for installation in less time
than it would have taken to fill a conventional gas tank.

Why nobody seems to understand how stupid charging an EV in real time is, is
something that I find _astonishing._

(To clarify: I can understand why most people don't understand why non-
swappable batteries are stupid, but I can't understand why someone like Elon
Musk doesn't understand that. I'll admit that it makes me wonder if I'm
missing something.)

~~~
bpc9
The article mentioned that the top-end battery weighs in at half a ton --- not
exactly hot-swapping material. Also, when it comes to safety, center of
gravity, chassis rigidity, etc --- I'm sure there were a myriad of engineering
decisions beyond weight that go against hot swapping. And that's not even
getting to added cost and logistics of maintaining a network of skilled
battery swap experts, "ownership" over the batteries (e.g. who is responsible
for replacing failing units if they are shared around the community of Tesla
owners).

I'm probably just scratching the surface with a minute of thought. I'm sure
that the folks at Telsa have been over this ground, and much more.

~~~
CamperBob2
You're right, those are all drawbacks. They all pale in comparison to the
advantages, though.

Swapping my car's battery should be as big a deal as swapping the propane
cylinder on my gas grill.

And yes, batteries these days are perfectly capable of monitoring themselves
in a leased-usage scenario. Your laptop battery has its own CPU and EEPROM,
for instance. To understand why, see any recent news story on the Dreamliner.

~~~
eropple
It would be nice, sure, but your propane cylinder doesn't cost thousands of
dollars or weigh half a ton. There are physical realities to contend with.

~~~
CamperBob2
_There are physical realities to contend with._

Yes, and we've just read about them in the New York Times.

------
toddasmith
Filling up a Toyota Camry with gasoline (say 15 gallons) adds about 90 pounds
of fuel. A lithium-ion battery with the same energy content would weigh about
5,800 pounds. Clearly electric vehicles will have a difficult time competing
with gasoline vehicles no matter how much charging times are reduced or how
much better the software gets. It seems that without some breakthrough the
sweet spot for battery-electric vehicles is urban driving done after charging
overnight at home.

------
codex
It sounds as though the problem is simply that the car loses range
unexpectedly depending on the weather, so you can't necessarily count on the
range you thought you had the next morning, and the degree of mile loss can be
extreme. I imagine this is a problem for road trips, the occasional camping
trip or overnight at a friend's house, or even when using an outdoor parking
lot for eight hours (e.g. when at work or at an offsite). However, for daily
commuting, it's not an issue, because presumably there is sufficient buffer if
you charge every night.

What's a bit disturbing about this article isn't the laws of physics, but that
he was being coached directly from Tesla. If Tesla HQ can't coach a reporter
1:1 out of a devastating result, what hope does the average early adopter
have? Either the reporter twisted the facts, or the car has horrible
temperature problems, or the Tesla coaches seriously screwed up.

I hope it's not a real issue. A hotel manager might be able to let one Tesla
plug in overnight, but there isn't infrastructure to let ten or twenty Tesla
owners do the same--yet. However, just as wifi became a competitive advantage
to offer at hotels, so will EV charging stations. Perhaps even pay parking
lots will begin to offer them.

------
evck
Worked at Tesla and never got to see the 'recharge now' warning. That would be
quite alarming.

------
jacobn
Electric cars are second cars - the commuter one, not the road trip one. They
currently don't make sense for road trips, absolutely. But they make a ton of
sense for commuting, most likely even in cold climates.

It's an interesting and broadly relevant article, but it feels like we're
having the wrong discussion - we might be single males, but the target market
for the time being is well off families considering a new second car... ;)

------
jswanson
Elon musk is claiming that the article is misleading:

    
    
       NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn't actually charge to max & took a long detour.
    

source: <https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/301049593385340928>

------
zdgman
It seems like the charge right before he stalled was the issue. I know he
wasn't at a super charging station but he probably should have spent a couple
of hours re-charging it instead of an hour.

Cold weather and running something that is power intensive (the heater) will
drastically effect your mileage if you are relying on a battery to power your
car.

Tesla probably should do a better job of communicating this but it doesn't
seem like a flaw with the car.

~~~
freehunter
If the battery meter can't cope with typical American temperature ranges yet
it being sold in these areas, yeah, it's a flaw. If it says 100 miles left and
after 10 miles now tells you 50, yeah, it's a flaw.

Can the flaw be corrected? Maybe, maybe not. But it's still a flaw.

~~~
zdgman
I wouldn't call this a flaw, it happens to batteries when they are exposed to
temperatures like this. The gauge for the battery is accurately trying to show
you your usage in real-time.

I bet he probably could have gauged it by jumping in the car turning it on and
then starting the heater as well. His mileage would have declined before he
even started driving.

Think of it this way, batteries always improve in 2nd / 3rd gen devices (look
at apple) and I am sure that is what Tesla will start to address.

~~~
alexqgb
The flaw (and it is a very major flaw) is in the reporting system, which is
unable to give drivers planning their drives reliable information with which
to plan their drives. That is flawed almost by definition. The reasons why are
utterly irrelevant. A flawed fuel reading is a fundemental flaw in a product
that is essentially useless without fuel.

------
revelation
If you're staying somewhere, plug it in. Even a 110V will be able to keep the
battery warm enough to avoid these losses.

No, its not perfect. Neither is the choke on your motorcycle or the people in
siberia waking up every 2 hours to start their combustion engines because
blowing up what was generated in thousands of years refuses to happen in a
cold engine block.

But I guess everyone with a modicum of knowledge has by now realized that a)
we can't keep blowing up that stuff and b) there won't be another magic energy
material like oil, ever again.

------
uslic001
Not ready for primetime is an understatement.

------
andyl
I just drove by some dude who was running down a pitch-dark freeway with a
small child at his side. They were carrying a can of gas to refill at the
station a couple miles ahead.

Damn gasoline engines - so unreliable! You'd think after 100+ years of
development they'd have sorted this stuff out.

~~~
CamperBob2
Hardly the same thing, unless the guy's gas gauge lied to him.

~~~
outworlder
Which happens sometimes.

~~~
CamperBob2
And can be fixed when it does.

------
joonix
I don't understand why we're not trying to run our cars on natural gas.

------
ngvrnd
Well, that could have gone better.

------
notdrunkatall
As a TSLA shareholder and as a general fan of the company, this is
disappointing. TSLA's been doing everything right, which is what has given
them so much momentum so early in the game, and if they are going to be the
big disruptor that I'm betting on, they cannot afford to lose that momentum.
If they start mis-stepping, they won't last long, and this is a misstep that
many, many people at TSLA should have seen coming from many miles away.

Batteries suck in the cold. Did no one think to test the Model S in the east's
freezing temperatures before they turned one over to a journalist?

What gives, Elon?

~~~
revelation
There is no magic fix for this. It's like asking to turn off gravity and
friction so you can have a more comfortable trip.

The reason for the big losses in the cold is the battery management system
that is trying to keep the pack warm and has to expend energy to do so. You
can opt not to do any battery management, but then you get thermal runaway and
a life-threatening Boeing situation, or (in the cold) your battery pack is
damaged.

They picked the best option there is under the circumstances.

~~~
nickv
Possible valid fixes:

\- Have the reporting system look at current temperature and change the
reported range.

\- More supercharger stations closer together. (200 miles apart for a reported
range of 268?! Ballsy. Especially in the extreme cold of the northeast.
Reckless when you are giving a car to a NYTimes reviewer.)

\- Don't have the parking brake LOCK so you can't even move the car without a
flatbed truck.

\- Have the car warn/inform the driver when they park somewhere cold to keep
it plugged in to warm the battery up

and that's off the top of my head.

Many things can be done. This isn't necessarily a 'physics problem.' It's
communicating and setting expectations. When the car says "100 miles" and you
are stuck at the side of the road after 50 miles, it doesn't matter that "the
physics make sense". What matters is you were screwed by completely false
information.

The fix is simple. In fact, it's so simple, I would be SHOCKED if the TSLA
guys aren't already including it in a future firmware update.

~~~
notdrunkatall
Even better would be to fetch the local weather forecast, and when
temperatures are predicted to drop, to warn the driver and ask him to take a
look at a line graph of temperature/charge as a function of time. At least
that way, the driver will have an idea of what he should do.

