Posted By: alsetalokin

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.

I sure hope so.

Apparently Tesla has some folks from Island Whackado working for them if they are advising people to modulate speed as a way of conserving battery capacity in their cars. The Tesla powertrain regenerates anytime the driver lets back on the gas pedal. Since regeneration is far from 100% efficient, modulating the pedal position just wastes energy. That Tesla's moronic technical staff don't know that is an indictment of the organization.

Posted By: joshsApparently Tesla has some folks from Island Whackado working for them if they are advising people to modulate speed as a way of conserving battery capacity in their cars.

Whako indeed. If it worked, then they would have a regenerative braking system that gave over unity performance.

What should be pretty clear is that the extra low "fuel" cost you get for pure electric isn't worth the inconveniences and an efficient diesel or hybrid-gasoline (or hybrid-diesel) is much better choice, especially the plug in versions of the hybrids.

@Al. If you drive in reverse you start with a flat battery and end up fully charged.

sounds too good to be true:D:D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QEqiUZ21Zic

this car , can do 0 to 100kmh in 2,9s , to 200kmh @ 6 sec , and have 1000km reserve if you are driving @ 125km/h

Posted By: maryyugoWhy would an NYT reporter deliberately attempt to sabotage a test run and in addition lie about all of it? What sense does that make?

I can't tell if you are being naive or ironic?

Posted By: cwattersI can't tell if you are being naive or ironic?

Neither, actually. I don't understand why a reporter would lie about such a test when the lie can be so easily refuted. The guy must be nuts if that's what he did. He will end up looking like a fool. Anyway, why would anyone want to damage Tesla? At the moment, they are hardly a threat to anyone. How much do they sell, again?

See for example:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415525,00.asp

Here's what happened when a bunch of Tesla S owners tried to make the trip and prove that Broder is just a dumb guy who pays attention to bad advice from, er Tesla:

"Still, despite the drivers being well in tune with their EVs, the drive wasn't 100-percent easy. One Model S plugged into a Supercharger just stopped charging and wouldn't fill up past 180 miles of range (the target at that point was 270). Strassenversion reports that two special firmware updates (delaying the driver by an hour) were required to set things right."

Oh, boy! The shiny $100,000. toy has to get firmware updates in order to refill.

180 miles was BTW about the same range that Broder said his car reported when he left the same charging station.

As anyone can guess I'm a huge fan of using objective metrics instead of anecdote but the way Musk interpreted the data and then published without consulting Broder. It makes me think that Musk has some kind of persecution complex. To me anyway, it's not that someone would or would not falsify data or a review** BUT that someone would consider a deliberately sabotaged review as a likely hypothesis.

**I can't say how to bound those probabilities even though right now Broder seems to have the upperhand

Hmmm.... a large, complex and sensitive battery won't take a full charge from a computer-controlled charging system.

So.... because it's an important publicity jaunt.... we change the "firmware" so that whatever fault was keeping the charge low is ignored... this takes two separate "updates" that the other cars of the same type didn't need..... and now the Supercharger can stuff more charge into the battery than it wanted to take before, and the publicity jaunt can continue.

What could possibly go wrong?