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.
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
Don’t be. I’m happy to learn.
Don’t apologise, this was a great post!
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.
Braking does not increase range. Regenerative braking reduces the losses involved, it doesn’t eliminate them. Your last sentence makes it sounds like not braking enough will lower your range - that isn’t the case.
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.
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.
Excuse the meta conversation but why are people downvoting what seems to be an earnest question?
Lighten up and just answer the question.
In addition to what atmur said, EVs don’t have the baseline inefficiencies an internal combustion engine requires just to keep itself running. ICEs waste a huge amount of energy just running, which gets lost as heat, vibration, and noise. EVs have the advantage of being able to run just as much as needed, so you don’t throw away huge amounts of energy at low speeds.
The efficiency curve of an ICE vehicle generally peaks somewhere around 70-90km/h, due to a combination of wasted energy at low speeds and gearing ratios. EVs peak much lower, generally in the 35-55km/h range. This is due to not having the low speed overhead of an ICE, but still being subject to high speed inefficiencies like rolling resistance and drag.
also, the EPA test cycle for highway has a maximum speed of 60mph, with the average below 50
Yeah this is what it’s like with my mach e as well. I have an extended range and I get 300ish miles town/city but on the highway probably 240. So realistically I charge every 190-220 miles on long road trips with the 80% fast charging stations.
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 the New York Post, temperature would be a chilly 45F for their American audience
Ah that’s a much more normal temperature but cold enough that it would start to affect the range also no?
Not really, my card range doesn’t really start to be hurt until you’re in sub-freezing (32F) conditions
I think when the weather is 45 instead of the more normal 65 temp for when go to work the average battery drain % difference is 2 or 3, which even on my leaf with 155 miles of range isn’t much
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.
In all fairness though both Hammond and May currently own Teslas.
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.
It’s the same with gas, you just didn’t notice it as much. Gas cars definitely get way lower mileage in the winter.
In mine the torque converter clutch won’t lock until the transmission is warm. That takes a while in winter.
Something else i dont see mentioned often either is that ICE cars generate heat as a waste byproduct of producing power, but electric cars dont produce usable heat, so if your in an area where its cold then using the AC heating will be additional battery usage coming off your driving range
By FAR the biggest impact on range in the winter for me is climate control.
Sounds more like something they need to solve in EVs
Musk lied about something? Ooooh no, he’s never done that before. /s
People who do business with tesla deserve what they get.
Industry average results?
Shoddy build quality and no physical buttons
Build quality was shit maybe 7 years ago, today’s model 3 and y are fine, especially those made in China and Germany. And physical buttons are going away industry wide.
https://insideevs.com/news/701296/vw-physical-controls-to-return
https://www.thedrive.com/news/we-saw-the-tesla-cybertruck-up-close-panel-gaps-and-all
And then there is this
Teslas are shitboxes controlled by a man child full of false promises and if you buy one at this point you are a moron, sorry
Notice how I mentioned model 3 and y, which are the ones selling millions, not musk’s ego trip cybertruck?
Promises are nice, let’s see the model interiors in a few years.
I only notice how you claim the build quality was only shit 7 years ago, which is demonstratively false if the problems still occur with the cybertruck.
On the model 3 and y. Which are the ones most people buy.
Lets see if there is a tesla in a few years once the class actions drop over the false promises they made
They were careful enough to never promise anything in contracts, just on Twitter or TV interviews. The WLTP ratings are done by external testers, I imagine the EPA ratings are similar. They will settle out of court maybe for misleading advertising for somethimg, owners will get a check in the mail for 40 cents and that will be it.
ikr they deserve exactly normal damn it
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.
Is hypermiling different in a hybrid or an EV compared to say an old manual transmission ICE?
EDIT: To be more clear, I guess I was more curious about techniques used. I already am aware how much waste heat and energy there is in ICE vehicles.
One difference is EVs have regenerative breaking. Using your brakes in an ICE is 100% wasted energy, while regen breaking in an EV returns some (I don’t know what percentage) of the car’s kinetic energy back into the battery.
Hybrids have regen as well. Some phevs and some evs let you set the regen strength so you can either brake by letting off the accelerator (highest return to the battery) or you can just coast (lowest return) or somewhere in between.
For more info, look for one pedal driving. If either my current or last car had adjustable regen I’d probably be able to do even better with efficient driving.
It’s far more effective in an EV. With an ICE about 80% of the energy is just generating heat so you’ve only really got the remaining 20% that you can influence.
I don’t think that’s true. The issue is the amount of storage available for the regen to go. With a regular hybrid you have enough battery for maybe a couple of miles on battery depending on several factors. With a plug in you have anywhere from 15 to 30+, I think the latest prius was supposed to have something like 100 miles of range. With the larger battery the regen can be more effective on the efficiency.
It’s also dependent on the strength of the regen. There is what people are calling one pedal driving when the regen is set as high as possible, the motors will immediately start slowing the vehicle as soon as you let off the accelerator. The regen is also way more effective in the city. On the highway you’d probably want it set as low as possible. I don’t yet have a vehicle with adjustable regen so I haven’t personally tested out various scenarios to figure out what is more efficient.
I’ve worked some hypermiling concepts into my driving but I don’t really go full on with it. I still haul ass on the highway and will gun it when needed.
The easiest things people can do are overinflating your tires by 10-15% along with watching both upcoming stop lights and the brake lights of the cara in front of you and not just the one directly in front of you, when it looks like traffic is slowing down, let off the gas and coast. I coast as much as I can, especially towards red lights, stop signs and highway congestion.
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.
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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”
Which is true, many countries have planned bans on the sale of new ICE cars by 2035. Which is good, even now electric cars are starting to be competitive without subsidies.
I would maybe extra-tax ICEs instead of banning them, so you still have your exotic cars with vroom sounds…
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.
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.
Yeah I’m hopeful for the Bolt and a similar cost competitor that isn’t on GM’s problematic platform.
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.
That’s honestly way better than I expected. Based on everything else Musk has done recently, and the comedy of errors the Cybertruck has been, I expected 80% less
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.
Idle losses are real but not very substantial in a modern engine compared to the bigger factor you’re missing which is that in city driving tests there is a lot of speeding up and slowing down, ICE vehicles throw away all the energy used to slow down as heat in the brakes which makes city cycles particularly inefficient while an EV captures that energy through regenerative braking, dramatically reducing the net cost of those momentum changes.
Regenerative braking only can recapture something like 2-5% of lost energy. The bigger factor is exactly what the other person said.
This is just not true. Regenerative braking is much more efficient than that.
I’m not sure where that number came from but according to Wikipedia the conversion from momentum to electricity loses 10-20% and the conversion from electricity to battery storage is another 10-20% leaving a theoretical recovery at 60-70%. In real world tests, Teslas recovered 20-32% range with regenerative braking, a far cry from 2-5% you cite. https://electrek.co/2018/04/24/regenerative-braking-how-it-works/
Ah, good point, the speed changes for ICE results in lots of energy wasted as heat instead of being recaptured. That would certainly be the largest loss for an ICE in the city cycle.
Also regenerative breaking is not useful when you’re maintaining constant speed on the highway, but a huge leg-up in the city
It’s also a factor that acceleration/deceleration in an ICE kills mileage. Highway tests maintain a constant speed. If you ran the same test at 35 mph, they would get much better mileage than at 55 (or 70)
That makes sense, thanks.
It has the aerodynamics of a brick
Aha yes, but what about other EVs?
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.
Do you mean that ICE is more efficient than EV at higher speeds, or that ICE scales better than EV?
ICE vehicles have better MPG at higher speeds, EVs at lower speeds.
Neither. ICE reaches its best efficiency at higher speeds than EV does, but it is still less efficient than EV at all speeds.
Aerodynamic drag increases with the square of speed. Other frictional losses might follow a similar pattern.
Cars have other sources of inefficiency too (such as idle power consumption), so all cars have a different optimum speed for maximum range (which depends on wind speed, direction & temperature too).
Air drag
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.
That’s cool. I didn’t know that. Obviously no regen braking so won’t ever quite be as efficient downhill as an EV, but I’m glad ICE cars considered this and have a fuel/environment saving solution.
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.
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?
The point isn’t what the YouTuber thinks but what the YouTuber observed as a matter of fact during testing. Ignore the person, focus on the claim.
Someone who relies on sensationalism to drive clicks to his business is not trustworthy. Believe what you want.
Elon’s cock doesn’t taste as good as you think it does. Please try a different cock. There are many out there.
Oh a homophone. What a novel approach. Nobody has though of that before.
Go to any YouTube reviewer that’s paid by the click. There you go.
