Tesla Cybertruck gets less than 80% of advertised range in YouTuber’s test::A YouTuber took Tesla’s Cybertruck on a ride to see if it can actually hit its advertised 320-mile range, only to find out that its could only reach 79% of the target. When YouTuber Kyle Conn…
I hate Tesla and especially the Cybertruck as much as the next guy, but this was a highway test and that sounds like a completely normal result.
I own a Bolt EV which is rated for 259 miles of range. On the highway, that’s more like ~220. That sounds bad, but the other side of it is that I get ~300 miles of range during my normal work commutes through the city. This is just how EVs are, the estimated range is based on a mixed test. EVs are backwards compared to ICE, you’ll get ~20% less range than the EPA estimate driving highway speeds and ~20% more doing purely city driving.
I wrote this in another comment, but Tesla has been known for a long time to game EPA numbers. Here’s an article from 2020 talking about it: https://insideevs.com/news/407807/eletric-car-real-world-range-tested/
Several get below their EPA numbers, but several cars also get higher. Tesla models all get significantly below their claimed mileage.
The insideevs article reports 239 miles for a Model 3 Performance while clicking all the way through to the actual source of the testing “Whatcar” reported 324 miles for a M3 LR. What car indeed. I don’t believe these low numbers.
I’m sure Tesla has been overly aggressive with the range numbers. Especially people in colder climates must be getting far less than advertised. But these low-effort articles are not the best of sources.
It’s worth noting that he recently did the same test, with similar temps, in the EV9 (which is also super inefficient on the highway), and got over the EPA range. IIRC most of his range tests exceed EPA numbers.
Why highways are worse than city streets? Highway doesn’t have traffic jams, frequent stops when you just burn fuel\electricity to move a little further. It’s just supporting the momentum of a car. With more than one gear it’s trivial.
Maybe I don’t understand something about e-cars, but from my experience I have wasted like 30% less of fuel just driving on highways from city to city for the same distance I drove in town.
In traffic, the largest reduction of efficiency comes from accelerating and the braking. You use energy to start moving (proportional to m V^2) and then you dump that energy into heat in your brakes to stop. The second comes from idling where you use energy to keep the engine rotating. As others have mentioned, EVs use regenerative braking so a substantial portion of the energy used to slow and stop the car is used to recharge the battery. EVs have no need to keep an engine running so unless you’re running the a/c there are minimal demands on a stopped/idling EV.
On the highway, you have the internal friction in the drivetrain to overcome, the constant deformation of the tires, and - most importantly - wind resistance, which is proportional to cd x rho x V2.
Cd (drag) and rho (air density) are low, but that V (speed) squared means driving at 75mph incurs 25x the energy use as driving at 15 mph. An EV gets no sage harbor here - plowing through a fluid (air) is essentially the same work.
To give you a sense of numbers, my vehicle (F150) gets less than 10mpg the 5 miles to my local pool/gym. The speed limit is 25 mph but there are stop signs every block or two. Lots of braking loss. On back roads with gentle curves and a 45 mph limit I get close to 30 mpg. That’s the sweet spot between overcoming transmission friction and air resistance. On the highway at 60 mph I get 22-23 mpg. At 78-79 mph I get 19 mpg. These are all generally on flat stretches using the 6 min average on my dashboard.
(Sorry for the long post…I’m an engineer and mechanical efficiency and aerodynamics are my happy place)
Ah so actually it’s not that ICE vehicles are more efficient at highway speeds, it’s that they are just SO MUCH worse in city driving that it only seems that way.
Interesting, I never thought about it that way
It’s both. Nearly all ICEs are specifically optimised to cruise at 50mph. Anything more or less will significantly reduce your MPG.
But yeah, slow speeds are really inefficient in an ICE.
Any braking without energy recovery is wildly wasteful. Public transit (busses, trains) are fucking terrible wastes of energy due to their large mass and frequent stops. Hybrid and/or electric busses are, in this respect, potentially far superior to their diesel counterparts. I’m not a train person (engineer…train…haha) but I don’t think even the all electric trains use regenerative braking and there are few battery powered trains in service.
I’ve spent the last year altering my driving habits when I can. I try not to be an asshole when others are around/in traffic, but when I’m not pressed I will coast to a stop as much as possible (esp uphill) and use hills to gain momentum. Over 6000 miles, I’ve raised my overall mpg around 18%.
For trains and subways, you can build the stations slightly above the rest of the tracks so that a train will naturally break when reaching the station, and accelerate when leaving. Efficiently storing energy in potential gravitational form. I’m not sure how frequently this is done, but at least in my city the subway does this at most stations.
Don’t be. I’m happy to learn.
Don’t apologise, this was a great post!
So, in other words, the only things EVs are good at are things that public transit would be even better at.
Consider a typical afternoon commute for a parent - you go from work to your kids school to some after school activity (different destination every day) to a few grocery stores then back to the after school activity and then finally home. If you have three kids… now you’re going to three afternoon activities. And maybe two schools as well.
Sounds like it’d take about 5 hours with public transit, especially since for some of those you’d literally be getting off the bus stop, then 5 minutes later be back at the bus stop waiting for the next bus. Kids aren’t allowed to wait at bus stops these days… whoever is looking after the kid will only release them when the parent comes in to pick them up. Often the parent even has to type their password into a system that checks if they are approved to pick up the kid (most kidnappings crimes are committed by family, often a parent, and staff aren’t expected to keep on top of that… so they use databases).
I love public transit. But major cultural changes would be required for it to be my main form of commute.
Not quite. EVs can still do door to door transport, are faster portal to portal, and have a vastly more diverse infrastructure, including the ability to (at least in a limited extent) traverse areas without track or road infrastructure. Public transit is still better, especially for rail, in reducing energy losses due to wheel deformation, reduction of human fatigue and dependence on attentiveness, and in some cases station to station speed and net air resistance per passenger mile. Since this is technology instead of fuckcars, it seems reasonable not to circlejerk too much.
Traveling at high speeds just takes a lot of power regardless of fuel, but ICE cars are so inefficient in city driving it makes highways look good in comparison. 25-50mph might be more efficient, but every time you brake that kinetic energy is turned into waste heat, totally negating the benefit of driving slower.
EVs on the other hand have regenerative braking systems. Rather than using friction to slow the car down, they just use the motors by applying resistance to the wheels. The kinetic energy is used to charge the battery while slowing the car down. You get the benefit of slower speeds without much braking loss, so this is where EVs shine.
That sounds really sweet for a street usage.
Frequent lite braking allows the regenerative brakes to do all or almost all the work, meaning you recover a good chunk of the energy you’re using in city/stop-and-go traffic.
Infrequent braking or hard braking (which requires the service brakes) means less energy recovered, so shorter range.
Hmm. So it’s a sneaky little argument for EVs for an in-city use? I wonder why no company screamed about it through a loudspeaker. If that’s so, it’s a killer feature for most drivers
It was one of the main selling points of the Prius (which has regenerative braking). Great gas mileage, especially in city driving.
This is correct. I’m a Prius driver. I get 45-55 mpg on the highway, depending on conditions. If it’s just city driving, I get 55-65 mpg. I’ve had as high as 72 mpg, many years ago driving Uber downtown.
And with a plugin model Prius… you won’t use the ICE power unit at all on a typical commute (25 mile battery range on the current models).
Man, don’t I know it. The 2023 Prime is out with a 39-44 mile range, which would cover about half my total daily commute, plus my employer has free charging. Someday…
I’d happily trade it all for robust public transportation, though.
Not being a car guy, I missed it all.
Thanks, I’d keep that in mind.
If I’m not mistaken, the much more important element is air resistance. The power-efficiency ratio of electric motors is nearly constant, meaning the energy usage per unit distance is nearly the same at all speeds, but there is more air resistance at high speeds.
That’s the same for a fuel-based cars. Some other users told me about the black magick trickery electric cars do in the city. Guess you’d like to check their replies too.
Gasoline powered engines are very inefficient in terms of getting all of the potential energy out of it’s fuel source. They do have a sweet spot, usually somewhere between 2,000 and 3,500 rpm and most companies will tune their vehicles to be at highway speeds while in that sweet spot. The rpm range from idle (ICEs needing to idle at stoplights decrease city MPG) up to that sweet spot is less fuel efficient than rolling around in the sweet spot, so a lot of stop and go driving will see a gas motor running out of it’s fuel efficient range quit a bit.
Electric motors have the same efficiency at any rpm and they don’t use energy while the car is sitting still.
I saw those after I posted, and I’m a bit surprised. I always thought the reason EVs lose range on highways was closely related to the reason they don’t have gears. I guess I’ll have to revisit it.
Idk if you have an EV, but I imagine the EV owner reading this thread and thinking to themselves ‘Holly-molly, my car can even do that?’.
You are correct. Electric motors are 100% efficient, so a combination of air resistance at speed as well as more regenerative braking being done during city driving are the reasons for better city driving effective mpg.
Electric motors are 100% efficient
Umm what? Have you never heard of the laws of thermodynamics? I mean, the overall thrust of your argument is correct, but that statement is just nonsense.
Oh, and using regenerative brakes will always waste more energy than not using brakes at all and simply moving at a constant speed. Regenerative brakes are only efficient compared to conventional brakes, which waste all of their energy as heat. Braking more in the city driving doesn’t improve an EV’s efficiency there compared to using that same EV on a highway (aside from the fact that you’re driving more slowly overall,) it just improves its relative efficiency compared to ICE vehicles with conventional brakes.
Excuse the meta conversation but why are people downvoting what seems to be an earnest question?
Lighten up and just answer the question.
And EVs and hybrids have regenerative braking so that does some recharging of the batteries. It’s not going to be stellar, but in stop and go traffic, it could definitely had some miles to range. There’s a lot less stopping on highways.
Regenerative braking isn’t magical. It doesn’t add range. It reduces range lost by stopping. Conservation of energy is still a thing.
If you were to drive any speed uninterrupted until the vehicle died, then attempted the same drive with stops every mile, the vehicle wouldn’t make it to the end.
Semantics. Regenerative braking adds miles of range compared to those without.
Yes, but it’s unrelated to highway versus city performance in electric/hybrid cars.
Driving under highway speeds is almost always more efficient due to wind resistance. But for ICE cars without regenerative brakes the losses from braking and idling hurt enough to give the illusion of freeway efficiency.
And the reason actual highway speed versus the estimates on the sticker are often so far off with ICE cars is that the test is based on 55mph max highway speeds with an average speed of 48mph. Meanwhile the speed limits on all the freeways near me are between 75 and 85, making actual performance way, way worse.
This is true, but it’s neglecting one variable that does complicate the math slightly. There is greater air resistance at highway speeds. IIRC at 60mph 50% of your power is lost due to the air resistance.
So yes, if we lock the speed to a fixed value and compare them, then regenerative of course doesn’t increase the range more than not stopping at all. But that’s the nuanced gap in the discussion where misunderstanding is going to reside. That’s why you two are on different pages. Someone is assuming equal air resistance (speed), and someone is assuming a comparison of average city miles vs highway miles.
Neither is necessarily the ONLY way to look at it. It’s all relative.
I have had my bolt, with new battery, for nearly 3 years. On interstate driving in summer I’m not sure I’d go beyond 180 miles, pretty sure 200 miles I’d be in turtle mode at least. Currently in winter I’m probably limited to about 160 tops.
Also this test was at 45⁰ C? That is not a normal temperature for most people.
It’s farenheit, Its winter/cold in America right now
I remember when top gear tested a Tesla and found the range they quoted to be wildly over estimates. Tesla lost the lawsuit.
That article’s from 2012, before Elon Musk popularity took off, and yet you can already get a foreshadowing sense of Musk off the article:
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk called Top Gear “completely phony” and his company sued for libel and malicious falsehoods.
Top Gear were completely phony though, they purposefully ran the battery flat before the demo. This is known. Elons a douche but so is Clarkson.
Also, IIRC, Top Gear have always had a blase attitude towards their influence in the motor world. Given their reputation as petrol heads, and the fact that their review was also critical of the impact of EV’s on the environment, they’ve often fell back on the “we’re an entertainment show, you’re not supposed to take us as experts”, when many manufacturers have often said a negative review could cause significant harm in sales.
People who do business with tesla deserve what they get.
Musk lied about something? Ooooh no, he’s never done that before. /s
Check the results of other cars in this test here: https://outofspecstudios.com/70-mph-range
Yeah ambient temperature dramatically affects the range of EVs. One time I took my Model 3 on a roadtrip and I had quite a bit of range left when I got to the hotel, but the next morning the temperature had plummeted and suddenly I had to make for the nearest charger instead of continuing on for a while. It’s just something we have to get used to with EVs I guess.
Sounds more like something they need to solve in EVs
Also, the Murdochs are known to fan out the EV bullshit that is being sold these days via their channels.
It’s only a matter of time before driving an EV is considered woke.
It definitely already is and some people will literally buy huge gas sucking trucks that they don’t need just to stick it to the libs or whatever
Just throwing away money really but the reasoning is insane
Already there, a conservative I know said to me “it’s only matter of time until they make us all drive EVs”
Wow, just like the cars!
As someone who bought one of their cars the only real positive is that the charging network is available 24 hours a day and very prominent across most of my travel routes.
Additionally, I would say wait out for this industry to get better since every single manufacturer of EV’s is full of absolute horse shit in regards to range and safety, ESPECIALLY anything not coming from USA or Europe. Byd’s are fucking death traps
Intrigued about your BYD claim - got anything to back it up?
Thanks mate.
BYD is going to destroy Kia in the states in the 30s
im in the industry cant wait to kill car town kia
That explained absolutely nothing
Ha, I don’t have a choice in California. So I’m stuck reading the tea leaves to find the best of the bunch.
I haven’t done a ton of research on the matter so definitely take this with a grain of salt but I have heard that the volt has been receiving pretty good reviews.
I would say for sure that you’ll want to investigate a TON before making your purchase, you do not want to end up in a tesla situation like I did where an update to the car after a lawsuit provides direct evidence that tesla lied to everyone about the range of the vehicles.
The price/performance ratio on tesla vehicles made sense when they were still in development, but tesla is now one of the largest companies in the world and should not be allowed to screw their customers over like this anymore, but I feel the same way about most technology companies these days and the law, unfortunately, does not appear to agree.
Yeah I’m hopeful for the Bolt and a similar cost competitor that isn’t on GM’s problematic platform.
Tesla has done a lot of scummy shit and they have likely outrightly lied about their range but pretty much all vehicle manufacturers do to some point.
Fuel efficiency is measured in both highway and whatever cool term the company likes such as ‘city, urban, commute’
They do these tests on test tracks, windows up, no AC, no quick acceleration or braking etc and THEN they combine them and spit out an average of the two numbers and tell you to expect that fuel economy.
It does not happen and I’ve heard of multiple court cases against manufacturers alledging they’ve lied and the fuel efficiency they state is impossible. I don’t think any large manufacturers have lost however.
Anyway, point being - range is usually exaggerated quiet a bit. It may be about to get those numbers in a completely unrealistic scenario but actually obtaining them in the real world, in traffic etc - they are all liars.
Gaming laptop of trucks and cars
i Only buy chinese old fashion car battery electric cars
Lithium fire is not a joke
Heh here’s one for people. In my province at least the best way to get cheap 24/7 fuel in every corner even the podunkest no stoplights villages is to get a free membership with the local fuel co-op (UFA here)
I regularly save 2-10 cents a litre and have 24/7 access and even shitters and showers in most locations all for no extra money or work on my end other than the initial sign up.
I hope that works out for everyone that uses it but the key reason I ended up getting an electric vehicle after my ICE vehicle broke down was to avoid oil and gas prices, especially in regards to the continuing degradation of the geopolitical situation in the middle east where OPEC+ produces and transports more than 80% of the world supply of usable oil.
I hated waking up and wondering if the dice roll would break my bank that day. Although my car ended up a fair bit more expensive than I had wanted, the vehicle has nearly paid for itself with all the charges I didn’t have to pay at the pump.
This isn’t an endorsement for electric vehicles just a note of a positive side that I personally was able to avoid.
If my country wasn’t completely backwards and we had more nuclear facilities and less dependence on oil barons, I’d be happier, but the reality is not everyone has the ability to change over, and even I would still be using an ICE vehicle today if insurance didn’t cover the rest of the price of my old car when my accident happened.
Did the YouTuber run the same type of test that the EPA would run?
I feel like every car I’ve ever owned has had worse milage than what’s on the sticker. But maybe I have a lead foot.
You probably do have a lead foot. I can usually best the sticker mpg especially with hybrids.
He ran his standard test. Most other EVs in this test exceed the EPA range, most notably he recently tested the EV9 (a literal brick) in similar temperatures.
Good to know. Sounds like this is just the same old shit Elon / Tesla just got slapped for by the feds.
The EPA highway test is 55mph or something around that. These real world tests are all 70mph+
The only way you do better or equal on a 70mph test is
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Advertise a smaller range than you actually have
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Gear the motor for high speed and have worse performance at lower speeds (EVs typically do better at low vs high, but you could make low even worse)
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Have a multi gear motor like Porsche and I think some Audi. Then you don’t have to optimize the motor on 1 gear, but it substantially increases cost (but it’s a porsche) and complexity and repair costs.
The EPA just needs to make a 70mph test part of the test cycle and make them advertise that.
The gearing in the Taycan/E-Tron GT aren’t for efficiency, but for speed. Electric motors don’t really lose efficiency as they spin faster, but they do start to lose the ability to move the car faster against the exponentially increasing wind resistance. This isn’t an issue for most cars (they top out around 110mph), but for something like the Taycan it’s important (tops out around 155mph).
The 70mph situation is more that manufacturers de-rate their cars. Both the Taycan and the Lyriq (a SUV brick) are well-known for demolishing their EPA ranges in 70mph cruising tests. Even the EV9 (the brickiest brick) exceeded the EPA range in this same test.
This is right from energy.gov
https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/articles/determining-electric-motor-load-and-efficiency
Most electric motors are designed to run at 50% to 100% of rated load. Maximum efficiency is usually near 75% of rated load. Thus, a 10 horsepower (hp) motor has an acceptable load range of 5 to 10 hp; peak efficiency is at 7.5 hp.
They also run more poorly below 50%.
To get a good city/highway range they would need to try and keep the motor above 50% for city, while also keeping it
underaround 75% for highway. How you move that gearing will impact range at higher speeds or lower speeds. Maybe it’s not as much as I think, but it definitely comes into play, and the Taycans geared motor helps some amount.Tesla has definitely honed their motors to maximize the EPA range vs higher speeds in addition they aren’t de-rating like some other manufactures do.
Unrelated to my other reply - but I think it’d be interesting to see how much other manufactuers de-rate their cars, by having independent testers also run an EPA test just like they run real world tests.
I’d love to see them run reports saying XYZ car has an actual epa range of XYZ even though they report ABC
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What was the EPA rated highway range? The 320 mile range is the EPA combined city/highway which you won’t hit doing entirely highway but you would beat doing entirely city.
Why is the efficiency lower on highways?
Due to electric drivetrains having minimal fixed losses at low speed unlike internal combustion engines. Aerodynamic losses start becoming the largest factor for EVs at relatively low speeds (25-35 MPH) since other losses at so low. This shows up on tests as higher city efficiency and lower highway.
For an internal combustion engine you are burning a large amount of energy just to keep the engine running, so the slower the speed, the less distance traveled for the fixed amount of running losses and lower the MPG. It isn’t until higher speeds (55-65 MPH) that aerodynamic losses become the largest factor. This manifests as lower efficiency in the city tests and higher highway.
Also regenerative breaking is not useful when you’re maintaining constant speed on the highway, but a huge leg-up in the city
That makes sense, thanks.
There’s more air resistance at higher speeds.
That doesn’t explain why ICE vehicles are much better efficiency-wise than EV ones at higher speeds, just why EVs don’t do so well. Another post responding to me addresses it well.
Air drag
Most EVs he’s tested hit or exceed the EPA range on this test. Even bricks like the EV9 exceed their EPA range in similar temps.
Is this any different than EPA rated MPG listed on vehicles? Obviously their quoted range is an absolute best case scenario. Still fun to meme on the cyber truck though.
Tesla has been known for a long time to game EPA numbers. Here’s an article from 2020 talking about it: https://insideevs.com/news/407807/eletric-car-real-world-range-tested/
It’s not a best case scenario - it’s a precisely repeated series of accelerations, cruising with a specific amount of resistance applied to the wheels, and braking.
It won’t match any real world drive. In the real world there are other variables, traffic, wind, hills, speed limits, etc. It’s also intended to be a fairly typical highway drive, so in ideal conditions you will do better than the EPA range. Down hill, for example, the cybertruck can drive forever (unlike an ICE, which is so inefficient it uses energy even going down hill).
Modern ICE cars do not use fuel when coasting down hill. The computer completely shuts off the fuel injectors when coasting and the physical energy from the car rolling keeps the engine turning over.
I’ve found EPA MPG estimates to be fairly accurate. Unless I’m driving aggressively or there’s a lot of elevation change the highway average has been spot on the EPA number in every car I’ve driven enough to pay attention to the MPG.
Because a lot of other EVs that he’s run on the same test exceed the EPA numbers, some by a quite considerable margin. The Taycan for example is well-known for exceeding the EPA estimates by as much as 50%. He recently tested the EV9 (a brick) on the same test in similar temperatures, and it also exceeded the EPA numbers.
Yeah, it’s not any different than ICE vehicles, people here just love being on the Elon hate train. If it’s related to anything he touches, you’ll mostly only see negative comments be upvoted. Me saying this tends to set some off too so
BRING THE DOWNVOTES, I DRINK YOUR TEARS
Who cares what some doofus YouTuber thinks?
