Tesla was so swamped with complaints about driving ranges that it created a secret team to cancel owners’ service appointments, source says::To suppress the volume of complaints the automaker created a secret “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel appointments, Reuters reported.

  • ashok36@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Yeah, it seems like using ‘miles’ as an indicator or energy left is the root cause. If they just change the kwh left or similar they’d be more accurate but, ironically, confuse way more people.

    • cerevant@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Though, ironically a scale of Full - 3/4 - half - 1/4 - empty is perfectly fine for gas. There is usually a visual gauge of % for charge, but it isn’t as prominent as the range. Oddly, my car has it divided roughly in thirds.

      • yiliu@informis.land
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        11 months ago

        It’s also less accurate. Ever notice your phone sometimes drops from 100% to 80% in only a few minutes, or hangs around at 10% for ages? That’s because with batteries it’s much less simple than “full, medium, empty”. There’s actually a bunch of code to improve the estimation specifically for your battery, and still they can behave strangely.

      • ashok36@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That’s part of my point. kWh isn’t very useful to most people. The problem is that ‘miles left’ is an abstraction from kWh which is more helpful but less accurate.

        Now people are complaining that it’s not accurate, which it was never going to be in the first place. It’s a UX problem. They should probably just change to a percentage based readout with a “Estimated Miles Remaining” option for those that want it.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          11 months ago

          I found some images of a Tesla’s display, and it has a percentage and a bar graph just like a phone. The problem isn’t that people can’t see roughly how much charge is left, it’s that the distance-remaining display is misleading to such a degree that it seems malicious, and it’s demonstrably possible to give a much more accurate estimate. They are at the very least guilty of including a defective feature in their cars.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          11 months ago

          I’ve never seen a fuel gauge marked in any kind of units like liters or gallons, just fractions of a full tank.

              • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Implementation defined.

                But like kWh you can easily learn (either intuitively or by the dark magic of multiplication) the ratio between tanks and ability to get to your destination.

                The idea that people can’t learn that they get roughly 6 or roughly 3 etc km per kWh with their driving style and thus physical units should be hidden from them is insulting and anti-intellectual. Stop trying to project your stupidity and anti-curiosity onto others.

                  • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    An international standard unit is not the same thing as a unit. A cubit is a unit even though people’s arms aren’t all the same size.

                    I said stop trying to project your stupidity onto others, not double down on it.