[OGinparadise]

Would that work with traffic police?

who cares, but usually yes, at least in US (you go fast, you slow, fast...and police are looking for the worst offender) . My point is: a car that has to be driven with a gazillion, million, billion specific instructions or else it's a brick, maybe it isn't for me or many others. "Your car died and you're in the middle of nowhere because you went 5mph over the recommended by Tesla speed," isn't for me. Isn't this an expensive car too?

[bigiain]

No, the car died because it clearly didn't get charged adequately.

I find people's claims that the car is somehow "inadequate" because it needs a full charge every 200 miles to be strange. I guess probably because I ride a motorcycle which gets pretty much exactly that range from a tank, and when I'm riding I've always go a pretty good idea of how much further I can go, and while I'm on a long trip I've always got in my head not only the furthest possibles fuel stop I could make, but also the "sensible" stop before that - on the off chance tha the max-range fuel stop is closed or empty. (and that happened a few weekends ago the other way round - my intended "second last" fuel stop had a blackout so the pumps weren't working, so I safely made it ~20 miles to the next town. No problem.)

[stcredzero]

In the US, people run out of gas and feel like they're the victim of bad luck. In Germany, the officer tisk-tisks you for poor planning and writes you a ticket.

[DanBC]

> My point is: a car that has to be driven with a gazillion, million, billion specific instructions or else it's a brick,

You know that cars need to be filled with gas, right? And that using diesel in a regular (or vice - versa) is a big problem? And they need you to check the oil, and top up the oil? And that not topping up the oil is a big problem, right?

> "Your car died and you're in the middle of nowhere because you went 5mph over the recommended by Tesla speed,"

Well, no. "Your car died because you didn't charge it. You didn't charge it even though you knew you had a journey of X miles to go, and you knew you didn't have enough charge, and you were given strong advice (from the car, and from the car makers) that you hadn't charged it enough". Plug the car in - that's not a gazzillion million billion specific instructions. It's just one. Plug it in, let it charge.

[zevyoura]

You're arguing a straw man point; while the speed difference may have contributed to the discharge, I don't believe anyone's arguing it made the difference.

[OGinparadise]

Not really, if you look at Tesla's blog post, they even highlighted that went at 80mph for a while or once.

Why did they do that? To prove that he didn't write a book (a story wouldn't fit it) and detail every speed he drove or because they speed matters?

[zevyoura]

No, they did it because he said that he set the cruise control to 54 mph (a very specific number), which is clearly refuted by the data. In other words, it destroys his credibility.

[waterlesscloud]

Speed affects ICE cars range too, and at 80 it can be a significant effect.

[DanBC]

They did it to prove that he lied about the speed he was driving.

He claimed to be driving at one speed. He was driving not at that speed, and sometimes significantly faster.

[bjourne]

Because of air drag which is proportional to the square of the velocity. At highway speeds, a large part of the energy consumed by the car to move at constant velocity is spent overcoming air drag. I think that's also why they are calling him out on going 60 mph on cruise control instead of stated 54 mph.