Battery meter at the top is EPA range - ie. the official range measurement method, in basically ideal conditions.
The routefinder 'learns' from your previous driving habits. Driving style easily has a 50% impact on range between "drives 50 mph slipstreaming behind a truck" and "drives 90 mph and brakes aggressively at every corner".
No reason it has to show the EPA range. My family’s Subaru has “learned” that it lives in the mountains and the range estimates reflect that. And I’m pretty sure it’s a simply looking at what kind of gas mileage it got recently. When we have kayaks on top of the car, it readjusts the mileage estimates down pretty quickly.
All these comments about ICE vehicles being the same ignore that when ICE vehicles have estimates to empty, they take basic steps to try to get the estimate correct.
My BMW even calculates "alternates". When I have under 50 miles of range it checks the internal (no Internet service needed) database and offers a route to the nearest known gas station.
With your system, if I live somewhere flat and I go to the mountains, I will be out of juice during the climb. Tesla has a battery indicator in percentage and the navigation which is pretty accurate. Your ICE car has a gauge for the tank and an estimation of range.
Tesla should probably not allow you to show the battery as range as it will always be inaccurate and people will complain. But if they only show percentages, people complain as well.
"Battery meter at the top is EPA range - ie. the official range measurement method, in basically ideal conditions."
I guess I'm flabbergasted by this, as that's not how my Chevy Volt (and I presume many other BEVs) work. The range value ('guessimeter' people call it) on my Volt takes something like a rolling average of your last few drives and that's what it shows you. So if it's winter, it shows you less range because your last few drives had less efficiency. It's not always accurate (if there's, say, major temp fluctuations), but it's way more useful than what you're describing.
To me, what you're describing is borderline dishonest marketing, and technically unnecessary.
What I'd like to see is two numbers: estimated range as I've described, and beside it a kWh # (which I can guesstimate from the battery % gauge visual, but not precise).
EDIT: Not sure why car manufacturers in general hide the kWh remaining-capacity of the battery so much. They seem to think consumers are too stupid to understand such technical terms? But they're clearly aware of it every time they use a public charger, and it's the closest equivalent to litres/gallons in an ICE.
There's no reason why Tesla can't calculate the accurate range in both places, is there? My 2022 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid has a "distance to empty" number that "learns" based on your driving habits and typical mileage. It's not perfect, for example going on a road trip can throw it off (the hybrid gets significantly lower highway MPG than around town), but most of the time it's very accurate.
Yeah, there's no reason they couldn't do that, and most other BEVs do that. The fact that Tesla doesn't is I'd say, disappointing? and likely to give EVs a bad name in the long run.
But could also reflect that this is a California company where they don't really have weather.
They do have a range estimate based on recent driving, it’s just in a separate Energy page.
“Accurate range” is difficult. It could be accurate based on recent driving, but that number could be very inaccurate if there is a change in weather or you are taking a different kind of drive than your last one.
The only way to show the most accurate estimate is to know where the driver is going, and many drivers don't always input their destination.
It can also vary dramatically based on how you drive, and in fact, if you do have a destination, it will give hints if relevant (e.g. "keep speed below 70 mph to reach destination").
You can switch the EPA-rated miles for a battery percentage indicator by just tapping it in the UI.
Let's say you live in a state with a 55mph speed limit.
The car has a lifetime average of 0.300 kWh/mi over 4 years of driving.
It's December, ambient temperature is 20F and it is snowing.
Your last 10 drives consumption rate was 0.400 kWh/mi because its cold out.
There's A LOT of smarter things the car can do than use its factory set 0.250 kWh/mi consumption to spit out the range on dashboard.
Erring on the side of caution would also always be better, whereas it is erring on the side of showing the absolute best state that I as an individual never experienced in 4 years of ownership.
It's not erring on the side of the absolute best state. The EPA-rated miles represent a standardized mix of highway and city miles.
The best state would be over 600 miles [1].
It's erring on the side of consistency, as it's also representing the battery's state of charge. It would only serve to confuse users to try and guess whether the current trip is a highway or city drive, will end in the next minute or two hours from now, which way the wind will be blowing and whether or not you're driving uphill, etc. It'd just be a useless guess, instead of an at least consistent one.
If you tell it where you're going, it already gives you a great estimate, as it doe stake into account all of those factors.
Look, I get it, some people love these cars and will stand no criticism, fine. I had one, they are lovely. We are allowed to want things we like to be better.
But all the "just use nav estimate" arguments miss that some people drive more than one place?
If I am driving out an hour to do some shopping, visit my parents, and then drive back.. it may be a total of 90mi but the first leg is 30mi. Do I need to pre-enter my round trip as multiple waypoints to get an accurate view of whether I will make it home or not?
Seems silly.
Just guesstimate a more accurate dashboard view range like you do in other place sin the UI.
I get it, too. I've seen some people that resort to ad hominems online. We are allowed to evaluate suggestions critically.
The other places in the UI are either based on either the destination you've entered or the last 5, 15, or X miles driven. They only make sense in that context: Just using one of those numbers on the dashboard would be misleading and inconsistent.
Guessing based on the Wh/m of your last ten drives might be a closer estimate, but would be wrong if your next drive isn't like your last ten. It might even be more accurate when guessing your last nine drives, so then you learn to trust it, but those were city miles, and for the next drive, it's highway miles. And now the estimate is way off.
It's just meaningless. We'd quickly learn that the number given is a bad estimate that can't be trusted and needs to be adjusted based on the way you'll actually be driving and other real world conditions... and that's where we already are. The only difference is that currently it's at least consistent, both between trips in the same car and from one car to another. This additional guesstimate would just add more confusion.
Look I don't really care about Teslas so I don't really have any idea, but the article says that Tesla does NOT use the standardized EPA-mix, but instead does their own testing and gets those tests EPA approved. The EPA spokesperson said they were following the rules, but only technically. Do you have alternate information showing that it actually is the standardized mix to produce the estimate?
The data alone should tell you that Tesla is up to something.
Almost every real world range test shows that Tesla systematically underperforms in the real world relative to spec, worse than substantially all other carmakers.
It's a shame too because Tesla are towards the top of the the real world range pack, so they don't really have to lie.. but it's like a compulsion for some people.
What is mind boggling and hilarious is that there's a Porsche rated EPA 225mi and a Tesla rated EPA 348mi and they both end up achieving 280mi.
Notably the Model 3/Y seem to have a wider EPA-to-reality delta than the Model S in the 75mph test.
This seems to align with my 4 year ownership experience. Tesla Model 3 LR rated 310mi but only hits 200mi with C&D. It's interesting how much the 3/Y range seems to drop from 70 to 75mph.
Most accurate by what standard? Range depends on a bunch of factors. The range you got going to the store yesterday is not the range you will get driving to your friend’s house tomorrow.
The car doesn’t know where you are going, whether it is city or highway driving, whether or not there is an elevation change, unless you tell it by navigating somewhere.
It could take a guess, but that guess still has plenty of chances to be wrong if your next X miles of driving is not going to be similar to your previous X miles of driving.
Why should the car use an average .250 kWh/mi hardcoded rate on a car I have owned for 4 years when it knows my lifetime average is 0.300 kWh/mi?
There's plenty of smarter things it can do by default other than "its hard, meh".
They are gonna figure out how to do coast to coast self driving this year but can't project a reasonable battery range estimate given temperature/driver history/weather? Do they need more GPUs?
That might be a useful metric but it won’t always be the most accurate.
If you mostly drive around town, that estimate will be way off when you get on a highway to go to Grandma’s house.
There’s probably a better way to do it, but Tesla seems to be optimizing for avoiding the “why does the website say 300mi but my car shows 200mi fully charged” support question, in exchange for a different set of support questions.
I think ideally the car would give a best guess estimate, along with a clear breakdown of why this is more or less than the rated range. I just don’t think that’s clearly the “most accurate” option. Most accurate requires knowing where you are going.
So make it a menu option - range estimator: best/worst/spec.
It feels like one of those Muskisms where one bending of the truth requires more and more stuff down the line.
If they weren't over optimizing for the EPA test to give almost unachievable range, then they wouldn't need to have the car range meter lie as well. But if you fib once, you need to keep fibbing and keep the fib straight.
It really does not learn. I have driven the same route to and from Richmond, VA as a range test over and over again since 2018.
My range is approx. 180 miles, in favorable conditions (summer, AC off). If it was actually accurate, as soon as you hit 70-80mph you would see your range half. Clearly that doesn't happen, so the estimator is off by ~40% for highway conditions, i.e. complete bullshit.
Yeah I think that Tesla of all the EV makers uses the most optimistic EPA range for ads and display.
I got 260mi range max on my 310mi rated car. If it was winter or a road trip in which I could truly go fast, it easily got below 200mi.
For a 310mi car, going to visit my parents or in-laws only 75mi away for Christmas should not have made me worry about making the round trip on one charge, but it frequently drained the battery below 20 or even 10%.
Are you talking about the battery meter? That is just EPA range * battery percentage.
The precise estimate is in the navigation system, when you navigate to a destination and it says you will arrive with X% left. This takes into account speed, traffic, elevation, temperature, wind, etc. and is usually pretty accurate for me.
Ah I see. I will check on that but you would think that as soon as you get on the highway that estimator would change. It is also the first place someone would look for range, not inside navigation so I would call that false advertising…
I leave the battery meter set to percentage, the “miles” option is really just percentage dumbly mapped to miles.
The golden number in a Tesla Is absolutely the navigation route estimate. While navigating you can open the Energy app as well to see more detail, how you are doing compared to the estimate, and specific factors affecting consumption.
I also use percentage. It's not something that I usually think about. I just know that my "real range" is 180 miles at highway speeds. That's not something they tell you when you buy a Tesla.
I also just don't use navigation if I've been somewhere more than once. Just navigate with my head..
Tesla advertises EPA range which is a mix of city and highway driving with an average speed way below normal interstate highway speeds.
I use the navigation all the time,
even when I know the way, because it knows about traffic jams and so I can get a good range estimate for longer trips. It even gives you a round-trip estimate back to your starting point.
Percentage seems to be the general consensus amongst Tesla owners. The real numbers are in the navigation. We've been looking at percentage based range on gas cars forever. I would argue that gas cars with "mile" range estimates are not that accurate either. At least, that's my experience.
>This takes into account speed, traffic, elevation, temperature, wind, etc
Can you expand on this? You say etc, what else is included? Where is it documented that this calculation is actually happening, versus something far simpler?
“The calculation that predicts how much energy you will use is an estimate based on driving style (predicted speed, etc.) and environmental factors (elevation changes, wind speed and direction, ambient and forecasted temperatures, air density and humidity, etc.). As you drive, Model 3 continuously learns how much energy it uses, resulting in improved accuracy over time. It is important to note that Model 3 predicts energy usage based on the driving style of the individual vehicle. For example, if you drive aggressively for a period of time, future range predictions will assume higher consumption.”
Also if you open the Energy app in the car it will show you which of these factor(s) are contributing to higher or lower consumption than the navigation’s estimated range as you go.
EPA range is a mix of city and highway range. City range is > highway range, thus EPA range will over estimate highway range and underestimate city range.
>The routefinder 'learns' from your previous driving habits.
I'd like to see evidence of this, but I'm skeptical. Sounds like something Tesla fans claim is happening, like when you report an error at an intersection it gets fixed manually. And, even if true, I'm not sure how useful it'd be.
I have a model 3. I recently took a trip of 196 miles but lost almost 270 miles in battery. I wasn’t driving like a maniac, I was on 65 mph cruise control the entire time with no traffic.
How were the Tires inflated? are they stock tires? are the rims the aero dynamic ones? were you using climate control, was their wind? Hills? Any roof cargo? All these have a big effects.
Wind can easy be a 3mpg hit for my car, that’s about 10%. Not all the difference but a couple stacked effects could get yours
Annoying all these things matter when range is constrained. Next gen batteries can’t come soon enough.
>How were the Tires inflated? are they stock tires? are the rims the aero dynamic ones? were you using climate control, was their wind? Hills? Any roof cargo? All these have a big effects.
True. But none of this should matter if your Tesla actually "learns", as other comments claim, right?
I think it's basically some PM taking a stand at Tesla with the fact that there's just no good estimate possible without knowing the route, so they will always show EPA estimate.
Any sane a Tesla driver changes that to show percent battery instead of range.
As others have said the trip planner is excellent, within a percent or two even in winter conditions driving over passes etc..
Note that range changes a lot more due to elevation, speed, cold etc, compared to gas cars because electrics are so much more efficient.
My initial thought is that it's a mitigation to litigation. Maybe the thought was as long as you show the "legal" mileage calculation, you can't be held responsible for anything bad that happens? I don't think we apply that to ICE but I could see where a lawyer thinks it's necessary.
I think you need to give consumers some vague idea of how much range you'll get in the car, and EPA-rated miles is at least a clear standard by which all EVs can be compared.
A percentage indicator is fine for a car you already have, but not useful for comparing between cars. It could show kWh, but that isn't good, either. What consumers actually care about is range, and whether that comes from more kWh, better aerodynamics, or a lighter car, the range is the bottom-line number. We wouldn't want consumers buying a car with a bigger battery just because it has more kWh if it doesn't get better range.
I think EPA-rated miles is the best of available options--it just needs to be understood by consumers. And I think cases where it isn't are a bit overstated. I suspect very few consumers genuinely believe they'll get the same range in miles regardless of their driving speed, headwinds, or whether they're going uphill or downhill.
The article says it was a mandate from Elon Musk. Not sure I believe the claim, but I'd also be surprised if he wasn't aware just how optimistic the EPA estimate is.
When you say “learns” is it actually factoring in the route or is it just using the historical average miles per… what, kWh, and multiplying it across the distance
Haven't seen the code, so I don't know how it works. It certainly looks at the route though, because different destinations both 100 miles away give different estimated power usages.
When you use the navigation system in a Tesla, the estimated energy usage for that trip takes into account the specific route, your projected speed, elevation changes, traffic, temperature, wind, and adjusts based on what speeds you actually end up going.
What? How did you arrive at that conclusion. Even if the laws of thermodynamics and entropy took a holiday, and you recovered 100% of the energy when you brake, at best you would break even and not hurt your range (vs not braking aggressively).
Regen breaking increases range over no regen braking, but braking aggressively will always be worse than not braking aggressively.
No? Accelerating and decelerating are both lossy, and for the brief intervals when you're going faster you're also taking additional wind friction loss.
Most EVs (including Tesla) do have regenerative braking, so some of your energy is converted back into electricity when you brake, but nowhere close to all of it, so people who have a smoother, less aggressive profile will get more range.
Also if you brake really aggressively, you're dissipating more energy than can be successfully harvested and the rest is converted to heat, losing the energy you paid for and also increasing maintenance costs.
Braking doesn't increase range. Rather the natural foot off pedal regen braking increases range. If you physically slam on brakes, I'm sure that doesn't help range.
I'm sure that if you "slam on the brakes" (per GP), your car will take region to the max and the apply the real friction brakes, causing lots of kinetic energy to be converted to heat and "wasting" energy...
(Also, Tesla cars do have blended braking between region & friction...)
That is an accurate meter, it is not a Tesla problem. My PHEV works the same way, but that fact isn’t really relevant.
The meter is presenting you the regeneration “rate” but what you’re thinking of is the regen rate integrated over time, I.e the amount of charge recovered during the process of stopping, which the meter is not showing you.
Maybe, I don't really care about regenerative rate, I just notice my meter going to max when braking hard. I only use the battery for city driving and hard acceleration on the motorway anyway. It's great for merging onto the Spanish motorways.
The routefinder 'learns' from your previous driving habits. Driving style easily has a 50% impact on range between "drives 50 mph slipstreaming behind a truck" and "drives 90 mph and brakes aggressively at every corner".