Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s/

by ck2 • 13 years ago

182 97 13 years ago

money.cnn.com

ck22• 13 years ago

Live twitter logging of the trip with occasional photos

https://twitter.com/PeterDrives

https://twitter.com/AbigailBassett

spullara• 13 years ago

This is totally bogus. CNN didn't even try and break it!

ishansharma• 13 years ago

Yeah, they totally missed the circling in a parking part. And they did not call any towing service as well, whose people were experts in high end cars. :)

kylec• 13 years ago

It's been significantly warmer the last few days than it supposedly was when the first trip was done. Given that temperature has a big effect on the car's energy, both the battery capacity and use of the heater, I'd say CNN's results don't disprove the NYT article.

abat• 13 years ago

This doesn't really mean anything if the temp is much warmer now.

stcredzero3• 13 years ago

I hope people keep doing this until the weather turns.

ics• 13 years ago

The new Route 66– at the dawn of the 21st century, and the consumer electric car... Yeah, maybe.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

Not really a surprise - I don't think there was really any doubt about the performance of the Tesla in normal weather. The NYC area right now is well above freezing, approaching +10C in the daytime, nowhere near the deep freeze that occurred during the NYT drive.

This still doesn't put to rest the expected (but somehow controversial) concerns about lithium battery performance in cold weather. This concern IMO needs to be put to rest if electrics want to break into the mainstream market. Early adopters may be willing to plan judiciously around range and expected weather, but I doubt mainstream consumers will be so forgiving.

Having a car of (somewhat) limited range lose a large chunk of its battery just sitting overnight in a parking lot, in weather that is cold but hardly unusual for the region, is a problem. That both on-board software and human advisers seem poorly prepared to compensate for this is hardly a nail in Tesla's coffin, but does need to be sorted out.

ck22• 13 years ago

Is it possible and would it help to warm the batteries ala glow plugs for diesel?

NamTaf2• 13 years ago

I believe it presently does. In fact, I believe that's the reason why the battery charge level dropped overnight in Musk's presentation of data and why, according to some folk, plugging it in to a normal power socket isn't enough to actually charge it as the battery pack draws more power than the socket can supply simply keeping the thing warm.

Such a process will of course drain the battery which still achieves the end result of 'can travel less distance on a full charge'.

willvarfar2• 13 years ago

Teslas are big sellers in Norway and Switzerland, yet (and I travel there often and even looked in Zurich showrooms) I don't hear them concerned.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

Are they such big sellers that most of the buyers can't afford to treat them like toys?

skrebbel• 13 years ago

Coincidentally also the two richest countries of Europe. I'm just guessing here, but there's a chance the percentage of buyers in those countries who don't also have a sizeable conventional car might be smaller than in other countries.

Tloewald• 13 years ago

In Switzerland you're almost certainly closes enough to a decent sized town to stop and get rescharged at any time. Europe in general is just not as spread out as the US, nor are its cities defined by freeways. Different world.

Tesla's other challenge, i suspect, will be really hot spread out places like parts of Australia.

eli• 13 years ago

If you drove the distance from Boston to DC in Switzerland, you wouldn't be in Switzerland anymore. The whole country fits inside New York State.

chmars2• 13 years ago

Tesla sales numbers for Switzerland:

2010 = 44 / 2011 = 51

Source: http://www.auto-i-dat.ch/download/fahrzeugmarkt/Schweizer_Fa...

According to a media release from July 27, 2012, Tesla counted more than 130 Tesla cars in Switzerland:

http://www.presseportal.ch/de/pm/100020821/100722406/tesla-b...

j-g-faustus• 13 years ago

Number of Teslas registered in Norway: 15 in 2010, 48 in 2011, so they sold 33 Teslas in 2011.

Source: Statistics Norway[1], the official state agency for everything statistics.

Compared to say ~300,000 registered Toyotas (2011), I guess it depends on how you define "big" :)

But we do have a somewhat sizeable enthusiast "electric car" community. We deal with the cold by plugging in whenever possible, and most electric cars are used only for local transport.

There's apparently two Tesla S in Norway at the moment. It has generated interest here as well, and we have articles like "How to charge the Tesla Model S" [2] on a site that translates to "charging-stations.no",

[1] http://statbank.ssb.no/statistikkbanken/Default_FR.asp?PXSid...

[2] http://www.ladestasjoner.no/nyheter/75-hvordan-kan-tesla-mod...

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

I thought one of the benefits of electric cars was that since you had them plugged in overnight you could program them to automatically heat the car to a pleasant temperature for when you went outside to drive, taking energy for this directly from the charger, rather than the battery. And that if your schedule was a bit more unpredictable you could activate this via a smartphone app as well.

Does the Tesla not do that (yet)?

speg• 13 years ago

It can and does, but the writer in the NYT did not do that. Wherever he stayed overnight probably didn't have a charger? Although I've never seen a building without a standard outlet somewhere outside... perhaps it wasn't available or he just thought he didn't need it.

danielweber2• 13 years ago

Plugging in overnight would have made the NYT review a non-event. In fact, it doesn't look like the CNN review involved an overnight stop at all.

NB: Tesla claims you don't have to plug in overnight. Whatever other problems the NYT reviewer had, he wasn't cheating by leaving it unplugged overnight.

makomk2• 13 years ago

This probably works well when you're at home and have your own charging point in the garage. It doesn't work so well when you're in a hotel somewhere and the nearest charging point is a public one in the next town over. (Attempting 110V charging may actually make matters worse in cold weather, based on the experiences of other Tesla owners.)

analog4• 13 years ago

Diesel also needs special considerations in colder weather (the fuel becomes too viscous at lower temperatures). Just a different set of problems to petrol, not a dealbreaker imo.

prawks2• 13 years ago

As someone who had an 80's diesel car as his first, I can verify that even leaving them in a high school parking lot during a cold winter school day in Maine is a bad idea.

I had to wait about a week for the weather to warm up before the glow-plugs were enough to start it.

However, I believe a Tesla is a different case. I always keep my car's fuel tank above half-filled to preserve the fuel filter (and you should too). While the Tesla might lose some charge during the day in a parking lot or overnight, I can't imagine it would be a seriously substantial amount.

TylerE3• 13 years ago

Not really, any more. The fuel is winterized at point of purchase, so fuel geling is rather unlikely these days (and if it does, there are additives that will un-gel it.

Modern glow plugs are also much better. In my VW TDI, at 10F the glow plug cycle is only about 3 seconds, and then it fires right up. No glow plugs need at all above 35F.

jnsaff2• 13 years ago

We had most of december and january below -15C sometimes down to -30C and diesel cars had no problems. Most problems were caused by guess what: batteries not giving enough juice to start. Diesel cars, having bigger batteries, were actually more reliable.

millerc• 13 years ago

That whole debate is becoming utterly ridiculous. Either it works as Tesla Motors says, or it doesn't.

If it's so hard to get cold temperatures in the States, just send one unit up here a few miles North to Canada, we'll be back in the -20C during the week.

bconway• 13 years ago

Alaska is a popular place for cold weather testing among many manufacturers. Subaru, in particular, beats the crap out of their cars for extended time periods in sub-zero temperatures.

Shank• 13 years ago

It's worth pointing out that they're staying at the Milford SuperCharger quite a lot longer than Elon's data showed NY times did. They're charging it a lot more - and would even if it was too chilly out for the batteries to operate at optimal discharge rate, they'd still be in the clear as a result.

This is more of a PR move - of course if you calculate it out it's possible - the NY Times driver wasn't staying at SuperChargers long at all and missed mark by 30mi.

niggler• 13 years ago

Regardless of the "success" in the trip, the ultimate failure was in Musk's petulant response.

slantyyz• 13 years ago

Completely.

And I would say the secondary failure is in the advice given to Broder over the phone.

Had the people on the phone just told him to charge longer, anything Broder said about the extra time charging would have come across as a simple, forgettable nitpick. It's extraordinary events like getting stranded that readers remember.

Cushman• 13 years ago

If I were Tesla PR, I'd jump on this. Drop everything else about the article; just throw a big party in DC in the morning, and ferry people to Boston for a big party the same evening (with refreshments and entertainment available in Newark and Milford, naturally). Get owners' clubs involved, make it an annual pilgrimage.

Of course there may be a reason I'm not in PR.

DannoHung• 13 years ago

If I were Tesla PR, I already orchestrated the entire thing, including instructing the CNN crew to fully recharge at every station and not stop overnight.

hatcravat• 13 years ago

The overnight stop is really a red herring: The battery only lost about 5-7% of capacity overnight, which is much less than the difference between a standard charge (90% of capacity) and how much the Times charged the battery (72%). Actually, it's too bad CNN didn't stop someplace for the night just to prove this.

DigitalSea3• 13 years ago

Regardless of how much warmer the weather is than when Broder drove the car. If Broder had charged the car completely instead of partially regardless of the obvious drop in capacity in colder weather he still would have made it. CNN have just proven the car is capable, cold weather aside nothing would be much different here.

Are we forgetting the data from the NYT review clearly showed Broder driving around in circles in a car park? The CNN reporter even said he got lost and yet still made it with miles to spare in the batteries. When you consider the amount of on-board power drawing computing functionality, sensors and logging equipment on the Tesla 200+ miles is impressive.

If you're buying an electric car for driving 200+ miles in one go, an electric car is certainly not for you. Tesla fills a niche of drivers who commute to and from work, occasionally to meetings and maybe the airport but don't expect luxury taxi service companies to start buying and driving Tesla electric cars any time soon...

Quite personally I am sick of hearing about this whole situation. It's like watching a primary school fight, lots of name calling and accusation slinging, but no violence.

lloeki• 13 years ago

> Tesla fills a niche of drivers who commute to and from work, occasionally to meetings and maybe the airport

The niche is in the price, not the use case, because you're describing what about 80% of the population does with their cars 95% of the time.

DigitalSea3• 13 years ago

I believe the niche is partially the price and partially those who want to arrive to work in style. Manager, CEO, COO style employees are the kind of people who'd buy this for the attention and to reaffirm the statement, "Yeah, I'm rich, but I work for it"

TwiztidK• 13 years ago

> Are we forgetting the data from the NYT review clearly showed Broder driving around in circles in a car park?

It didn't. It showed him driving .6mi after exiting the highway but there is no proof that he was driving around in circles in a parking lot.

DigitalSea3• 13 years ago

It might not prove he drove in circles in a parking lot, but you have to admit there are discrepancies in the data that have not been explained fully by the NYT editor that don't prove he didn't deliberately try and drain the battery all for having the scoop review that tries and dispels Tesla's claims of efficiency.

peeters• 13 years ago

In fact, the author has explicitly confirmed that he had to do 1-2 laps of the parking lot to find the unilluminated charging station in the dark.

While that might qualify as "driving in circles", it did not appear to be intentional, and is a valid issue that one might have.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

Who are these drivers? My car gets 180 miles range on a full tank (less than the Tesla) and I fill it every week, maybe.

Yeah, if you need long range, don't play with electricity.

stcredzero3• 13 years ago

Or, at least plug it in overnight on a really cold day.

joshfraser• 13 years ago

Tesla are getting a ton of free press out of this story. Sometimes I think they pick these fights on purpose just to get all the free PR.

analog4• 13 years ago

I doubt they orchestrated the original article. Their choice is pick a fight or let the article stand. Picking a fight looks like the better choice to me, though personally I have no interest in reading someone else's bunfight.

OGinparadise2• 13 years ago

That mere 70 miles of buffer made me a little nervous, especially after I missed an exit and added a few miles to the trip. I followed Tesla's recommendations and kept the cruise control pegged to between 60 and 65 much of the way and kept the climate control at 72 degrees. And I minimized stops. But I made it

What's the point of having a car that costs north of $50K and as much as $90K if you have to worry about missing an exit? This whole thing is bad press for Tesla, they thought they had the "gotcha" moment ("he went in circles in the parking lot" for a whopping.......0.6 miles while trying to find the charging station) but it just showed a prospective buyer how fragile this very expensive car.

Let me repeat it: this car is very expensive and cannot be relied to go for a few hundred miles because it has so many variables. This is a niche car at best, a rich person maybe can brag about it while having other normal cars.

Hybrids would probably be best for me.

rdl• 13 years ago

I'd like a Model S (although, ideally, something more BMW 3-series sized, same performance, and slightly cheaper, and AWD), with the 300 mile range, specifically for daily use in the Bay Area. It is unlikely I would need to worry about range, and just plug in every night (although plugging in at the office would make sense, too)

Being able to periodically ferry it between locations using the supercharger would just be a bonus; I'd be fine with a car which could never leave a 75 mile radius of Palo Alto, provided I also either had a second car (ideally diesel, 45+mpg or a diesel truck), or could rent one whenever I left.

I suspect most people who can afford $100k cars can afford multiple cars, or don't do 400 mile road trips on a regular basis.

dkhenry2• 13 years ago

I see you have never missed an exit on the NJ turnpike. Even with a ICE you can easily run out of gas due to the large distance between exits and Service plazas. Thats one _more_ point towards the car, Even during a normal disturbance it can still work just fine if you you know actually charge it.

OGinparadise2• 13 years ago

they are a lot of differences:

You can exit and drive a few miles into a town to find a gas station and fill up in 2 minutes. If you filled your tank you know what you have inside, it will not drop due to temperature (relatively speaking)

A tow truck can ultimately bring you gasoline.

All these things rule the electric car out for me and many others, unless I am worth $20 million and buy one as a third car. I'd be scared of running out of power all the time.

Yes, for the record even with GPS I got lost.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

The constant back and forth on this issue (whether or not this luxury car can in fact drive further than the supermarket) feels absurd.

I have to honestly say the Model S is very, very low on my list of cars-I-wish-I-had. It screams conspicuous and vapid consumption to the nth degree.

bruceboughton• 13 years ago

>> It screams conspicuous and vapid consumption to the nth degree.

Unlike, say, gas-guzzling SUVs.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

Gas-guzzling SUVs can serve a legitimate purpose justifying their price point. Luxury electric cars don't, neither from a conservation, ecological or (apparently) practical standpoint.

Yaggo• 13 years ago

"I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking) that was later contradicted by other Tesla personnel."

The emphasized part makes no sense (vs. driving at constant speed), regen braking is not perpetual motion machine. Technology reporter should know that. Still amazing how such a foolish advice was given him by Tesla personnel.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

I kinda sit in the middle. We need this technology, and people like Musk pushing and investing in it. But equally, his attitude to criticism borders childish and is very off putting.

What I don't get about any of this, from both sides, is that this is the early days of the technology and its clearly work in progress. As usual, early adopters pretty much know what they are investing in and expect and accept that there are going to be problems and that the systems are far from perfect. I mean, imagine a review of the first petrol engined cars, a few years after initial conception. Musk should be constantly reminding people that problems will happen, and this is the beginning of decades of development and evolution, while motoring petrol head journalists need to stop trying to pretend Musk is selling a perfect petrol car replacement, and that it is indeed work in progress at a relatively early stage.

To me it is clear that the Tesla car is still problematic, but it is also clear that its improving at a decent rate. In a decade, I imagine the whole system will work flawlessly, ish.

Sadly all I see are two camps, Musk supporters and petrol heads almost raging at each other like political parties, while Musk stirs it, resulting in non partisan parties look on aghast, keeping wallets well closed.

As for the idea that this CNN review, just after a controversial one, would be anything other than perfect is a delusion. Even if we bin foil hat theories that CNN were soft on Tesla for what ever reason, Tesla would have done everything to ensure this test went perfectly and contradicted the previous one. What ever we are up to, if a test goes wrong, we would all make sure the next test was an improvement. If not, then we have no business in any form of development.

analog4• 13 years ago

The experience with Top Gear has probably influenced the reaction here. I don't find it childish to strongly defend your product if you believe a journalist has written a hack job on it.

taligent• 13 years ago

>I don't find it childish to strongly defend your product if you believe a journalist

Childish really is the best word for it.

It wasn't a measured, intelligent response. It came across as a "beat the journalist up" because they posted a bad review. Reminds me of the sort of thing you see bad restaurant owners do when they respond to diner's complaints.

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

"a route 30 miles longer that avoided New York City, and it's battery draining traffic congestion, altogether."

I would have thought that slow, stop-start traffic is the ideal conditions for an electric car, both in terms of driving pleasure and energy use compared with traditional cars.

mninja• 13 years ago

Sitting in traffic with your A/C and onboard computer on drains the battery more.

krschultz• 13 years ago

He's talking about taking the Tappen Zee Bridge vs the George Washington Bridge. I actually used to live in Groton CT (the terminus of both trips) after graduating from the University of Delaware (the origin of both trips). I would never ever use the GWB. The extra 30 miles is always worth it. You can sit on the GWB and associated roads for 3-4 hours on a Friday night to go 10 miles. Not a good situation no matter what kind of car you have (and ironically, there aren't a lot of gas stations in that area, definitely not well marked).

DanBC• 13 years ago

Tesla just needs to buy a bunch of gopros for all the people in Norway and Sweden who have Teslas.

Let's see Teslas commuting to work in arctic midnight.

brudgers• 13 years ago

Every time someone reads this, a kitten gets run over:

"Instead, I found myself maneuvering around slower cars. Now, I normally spend most of my time on the New Jersey Turnpike out in the left lane going at least 10 or 15 miles an hour faster than I was in the Model S. But sitting in the middle lane, I was keeping up with traffic. I certainly didn't feel out of place -- except for the fact that I wasn't burning any gasoline."

It's supposed to be a performance car. A proper review should imply hoonage and speeds likely to raise the author's insurance premiums. It shouldn't take the Consumer Reports first impression of the Nissan Leaf as it's model. The Tesla S is not a fucking Prius.

The only thing more dull than hypermiling stories are hypermiling videos, and the only saving grace of this story is that we are spared those.

How Musk can act incredulous over assertions that the Model S is impractical for US intercity travel while acknowleding one hour fuelings every three hours is beyond me.

AlexeiSadeski2• 13 years ago

>How Musk can act incredulous over assertions that the Model S is impractical for US intercity travel while acknowleding one hour fuelings every three hours is beyond me.

Bingo.

makomk2• 13 years ago

One and a half hours if you actually charge to 100% rather than 90% - which CNN presumably did since their charging stops lasted that long. (And that's with top-of-the-range Superchargers; standard 240V dedicated car chargers are basically useless for long trips unless you're planning to stop and leave the car charging overnight.)

sukuriant• 13 years ago

He was already going 60-65. He just admitted to going 70-80 on the freeway; and, given the other cars, the speed limit is probably 60.

I love speed as much as the next guy; but this was a review that, as far as I could gather, was CNN's version of peer reviewing the Time's article... and finding it wanting. A normal person isn't taking their car to the track. TopGear already did that test on an even more suited car. If you were testing the range of a Bugatti Veyron to see if it was useful as a commuter car, would you go flat out the whole way? Or, more realistically, if you were testing a Subaru WRX STi, or an Evo X, for its "normal driving conditions" range, would you be keeping your revs at 4-5k the whole way?

ghurlman• 13 years ago

The speed limit on the NJ Turnpike is largely 65, but traveling at 70 - 80mph on the turnpike is normal, often the speed to just keep up with traffic, depending on the day/where you are on the road.

Wanting to go 80 on the NJT isn't "taking it to the track", it's "driving from A to B".

BryantD• 13 years ago

Can we get the Tesla logs of this trip as well?

xwowsersx• 13 years ago

Man I want this car badly.

tjoff• 13 years ago

How well does the batteries in an electric car age?

Will anyone be able to do this drive, under any conditions, in a Model S with batteries that are 2, 5 or 10 years old?

Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S

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