Just for grins and giggles, I looked up the range of the Toyota Prius Prime Plug-in hybrid. It can go 25 miles on electricity and 615 more on its liquid gas fuel. So 640 miles range. A 3-gallon gasoline container (like the ones mentioned above) would extend that to 790 miles! Plus, it is perfect in stop and go traffic since it does not use its gas engine when not moving and can creep along very efficiently using the EV mode. The AWD RAV4 hybrid has an impressive range of 474 miles and also can creep in EV mode, though it does not plug in. It would also be better for crossing a muddy median strip embankment if the other side of the highway was an option (as it was in some places during Irma). With a 3 gallon container in back, its range is 575 miles. One could drop the rear seats and sleep in a RAV4 too if need be. Cool topic!
Based on my recent experience evacuating from Irma, the best evacuation vehicle is a diesel. They were the only drivers not waiting in line for fuel or waiting for a fuel truck to arrive.
I had a similar experience, but not quite as bad. We left Vero Beach for Jacksonville with almost a full tank, and when we got to Jacksonville we had half a tank. While looking for fuel, I spotted a Gate Petroleum tanker and followed it to its delivery destination. Gate is a local chain in NE Florida. I had to wait about 20 minutes to fuel, but I had a prime spot next to a fuel pump to wait.
I was going to use Jacksonville as a jumping off point in my evacuation plan. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary and I was able to head home with a full tank of gas.
One thing about electric cars like Teslas is that crawling stop and go evacuation traffic actually improves an electric car’s range if you don’t use the AC and drive with the windows open and minimize braking or at least use regenerative braking. It doesn’t take a lot of power to go slow and electric motors have a relatively flat efficiency curve compared to gasoline engines and almost zero standby power consumption when not moving.
A Tesla that has a normal range of around 250 miles when traffic is moving unimpeded might go up to 400 miles in 15 mph traffic if the driver keeps a cushion in front of the car so he doesn’t have to throw energy away by stepping on the brake.
You know what’s infuriating about this whole thing? Evidently, Tesla deliberately used software to make the battery under-perform on their cheaper model. IBM did the same thing on the cheap version of their early laser printer. Evidently, making a cheaper model under-perform is a thing. 
I’m not blindly defending Tesla here, but I just don’t see where the ire comes from. Tesla deliberately used software to make the battery underperform on the cheaper model because some people did not feel they needed as much range and would rather save money on the car. They were given a choice and chose the cheaper option knowing full well that they were choosing the cheaper, shorter range version. They also knew (and this is why the software limit is cool) that if their needs changed in the future, they could pay a fee and get the software limit removed.
To put that in the context of “normal” vehicles, I remember back in the 80’s Ford used to sell vans with optional second fuel tanks. Buying that option would increase your range to, frankly, ridiculous levels - 44 gallons of fuel will do that. You could easily get 600+ miles out of one gas stop.
If you bought a van with only a single tank, you could not call Ford up and say “hey, I want the dual tank range now.” Ford would tell you that’s too bad, and you should go buy a new van.
Now Tesla is giving you the option to call them up and tell them you want more range, and all you have to do is pay a few grand, and they flip a switch that gives you more range, instead of having to sell your Tesla and go buy a new one. I don’t see why this is a problem.
And those under-performing lithium batteries should last more charge-discharge cycles.
Lithium batteries don’t “like” being stored fully charged or being deeply discharged.
Simply charging (the common lithium-cobalt cell) to 4.1V instead of 4.2V significantly increases cycle life.
At work I care for a collection of laptop computers that are used in an electrical engineering lab once or twice a week; and often sit for a couple of months.
By keeping the batteries at 50% charge when not in use they last the 7 years between laptop replacement.
I agree!
Are you serious?
CSA
Upset because you didn’t save money by choosing the P60 model?
The lower performing model will likely have lower warranty claims than the others, this may be one reason it is offered at a lower price.
Yes.
… Were you planning on explaining why I’m wrong?
I think if you listen to the podcast I provided a link for, you’ll see that’s not the reason they offer a deliberately disabled cheaper model. It’s about selling more cars, or laser printers in the case of IBM.
No speakers on my computer at work, I listened to the clip tonight.
It is the opinion of economist Alex Tabarrok that this is a case of “price discrimination”. He did not state that this information came from Tesla.
These cars come with an 8 year/unlimited mile warranty on the battery and drive unit, warranty costs will be a factor in the performance limits place on the vehicle.
If he is wrong, then why is the update temporary? The question also remains, why did IBM do the same thing with laser printers?
I think what you’re missing is that this is a common practice in business.
Because the emergency is over.
Using the battery’s full capacity is hard on lithium ion batteries and should only be used in the event of an emergency.
The lower price of the limited model reflects the lower warranty replacement costs for the manufacturer.
You ever notice how short the life of cordless power tool batteries is for people who have the batteries sitting on the charger whenever they are not using the tool and then use it until the cordless power tool slows to a crawl?
Because Tesla was doing what businesses should do, and not being hard-nosed jerks to their customers who found themselves in a bind. They did something really nice and gave them extra range so they could get out of Dodge when danger was coming. That doesn’t mean they’re required to let their customers keep that extra range forever, for free. In fact, it would be ethically wrong of them to do it, because the rest of their customers who bought the lower-range cars aren’t getting free range upgrades.
I admit I find this topic somewhat irritating. Every day brings a new example of a business that’s eagerly looking for ways to screw its customers over.
Wells Fargo signs people up for fake accounts they don’t even know about and then claims they’re subject to binding arbitration when they try to get redress for the financial harm this caused, because they agreed to an arbitration clause in their actual legitimate accounts – which, if you’re keeping track, means that if you are or ever have been a Wells Fargo customer they can do anything they want to you and you will not be able to take them to court for it, ever.
Equifax farts around with security and exposes everyone in the country to potential identity theft after gathering every scrap of financial and identification data on us that exists without our consent, and then has the audacity to make the only steps we can take to prevent it a profit center for themselves.
And now Tesla actually does something good, and helps their customers out of a bind, for free, which they were not legally or ethically obligated to do, and people crap on them for it. The mind boggles.
That’s not the part that irks me. The part that irks me is that they deliberately installed software to make a part perform at a less than optimal level, like IBM did with its first laser printer (as described in the podcast). The high-cost laser printer and the low cost laser printer were the same, except the low cost printer also included a computer chip that slowed it down. I admit I probably over-reacted to finding this out with more anger than is appropriate, but I still question whether the practice is ethical. It’s not a big deal though. It’s pretty easy to avoid doing business with Tesla and IBM these days, and choose other company’s products instead.
The alternate was to design an entirely new, slower laser printer and sell that. But now you have to recoup development fees, as well as the expense of having a second manufacturing line, so the cheap printer is now no longer as cheap.
The thing that interests me is that Americans generally love capitalism until it requires that they pay for something, and then the greedy jerk who had the audacity to make money can go straight to hell. If you’re going to sell two lines of the same product, with one being less capable than the other so that you can charge more for the better one, then what real difference does it make to the end user if you artificially limit its capabilities, or spend a lot of money to produce completely different hardware? It makes absolutely no difference, except that if you choose the latter option you have to charge more for the cheap one.
IBM did the same thing on their large multi million dollar main frames (370’s) back in the 70’s and early 80’s. I’ve never been a fan of it, but it’s been going on for years. Almost every industry does it. It’s actually cheaper for manufacturers to build ONE item with all the options, then make it easy to enable/disable the option. Sell the options at a premium because they can.
And every one of Tesla’s competitors and IBM competitors has done and is still doing the exact same thing.
I get it. You don’t have a problem with this behavior and I do. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.