From Tesla Model 3 brake fixes to extreme Tesla Model 3 hypermiling to smashed Tesla sales surge in Shanghai, here’s your Tesla news roundup for the day.
Sharpening the Braking Software
Shortly after Consumer Reports identified an issue with the emergency braking performance of the Model 3, Tesla began sending out over-the-air updates. Elon Musk tweeted on May 26, “Should improve braking distance by ~20 ft for repeated heavy braking events.” In its original testing, Consumer Reports found the Model 3 required as much as 152 feet to stop from 60 mph. Its average for luxury compact cars is 131 feet. If Elon’s tweet is accurate, the braking performance of the Model 3 after the update should be right in line with that average.
Consumer Reports has agreed to retest the car after the company has finished updating all the cars currently on the road. According to Fortune, the braking issue involves the way in which the electric drive motor regenerates electricity when the brakes are applied.
Consumer Reports reported it was unable to recommend the car to consumers because of the braking issue and for other reasons, like excessive wind noise on the highway and an uncomfortable rear seat. It also found the placement of all the controls of the car in the center-mounted touchscreen inconvenient. It remains to be seen whether it will recommend the car even if the brake update solves the emergency braking issue.
In a week in which Musk has adopted an uncharacteristically combative attitude toward journalists, he went out of his way to praise Consumer Reports. “Thanks @ConsumerReports for excellent critical feedback!” Think what Consumer Reports has to say isn’t important to Tesla? Think again.
Hypermiling Heaven
While most Americans were busy pounding down hot dogs to honor veterans on Memorial Day weekend, Sean Mitchell, president of the Denver Tesla Club, and Erik Strait, a Tesla owner and YouTube entrepreneur, spent 32 hours driving around in a circle at speeds between 20 and 35 miles an hour. When their car finally stopped running, it had covered 606.2 miles, which may be a new world record if it is certified by the folks at Guinness.
What does one have to do to become a hypermiling champion? Sit in a car for 32 hours with the windows up and the air conditioner off so the temperature inside the car soars to more than 108°F, then have friends drive alongside to pass you food using a net on a pole. If you want to share in the stultifying boredom these two guys endured, you can feast your eyes on the more than 8 hour long video of their adventure that was uploaded to YouTube. Or you could just load one of those videos of a fire burning in a fireplace that go on interminably and watch it until your eyes fall out of your head.
Oh, one other joy that goes along with such stunts? When it’s over, you can have your car towed because it no longer charges properly.
Getting our hypermile #Model3 towed to the Service Center. After leaving it charged overnight at a Supercharger it is still not taking a charge. @teslainventory pic.twitter.com/QicQbnnWrF
— Sean Mitchell (@seanmmitchell) May 27, 2018
Shanghai Tesla Store Sells Out
After China’s Customs Tariff Commission announced that import duties on electric cars will be reduced to 15% starting July 1, Tesla went ahead and instructed its stores in China to reduce prices immediately. As a result, the Tesla store in Shanghai sold all 10 Model X SUVs it had in stock in just one day. InsideEVs picked up on a story in Yicai Global about the sales surge.
A sales representative at the Shanghai store told the local press, “The cars available were all imported from the States in April and May this year. After selling all of them, we’ll replenish stock when the new tariffs come in. We were losing out on profit with the lowered price as the cars were imported at the old tariff rate — the Model S 75D was CNY70,000 (USD11,000) cheaper.”
The new prices will apply to all cars imported into China going forward but not to existing orders. Prior to July 1, all Tesla automobiles are subject to a 25% import duty, so Tesla is effectively subsidizing sales for the next 5 weeks. It is unlikely people with pending orders will be very pleased about such corporate largess unless Tesla decides to compensate them in some way.
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
