Tesla Reliability Doesn’t Match Its High Performance

After my post a few weeks ago where I berated Tesla for their less-than-stellar build quality and electrical issues, I did get quite a few emails from people claiming I was an anti-Tesla luddite who was stuck burning dinosaurs in my car. (Which is weird because I own a Nissan LEAF, charged by solar panels, so I'm potentially more qualified to talk about electric vehicles than 90% of the people who claim I'm an electric vehicle hater).
But to be honest you're right about Tesla motors - I don't like them. For me, they're very over-priced, very average cars, with a litany of problems that a modern car manufacturer just shouldn't have. I can get much more car for much less money with far fewer problems from many different manufacturers. Look at the new Model X; it's not "revolutionary" - they just did what every other manufacturer has done - took a 4-door saloon and steroided it up to be a mini-SUV or crossover.
Tesla is an interesting dichotemy though. On the one side, owner satisfaction sits at an enviable 97%, suggesting that just about every one of their customers would buy another car from them. But on the other hand you have the reliability and build quality issues I spoke about. I can't reconcile why so many owners have so many complaints, yet claim they'd still buy another vehicle from Mr Musk.
Consumer reports published their annual reliability survey recently - where car owners are quizzed about what the real cars are actually like, as oppose to the primped and modified press cars that are used for the reviews. In the case of the Model S, 1400 owners responded.
Most highlighted issues with the Tesla S: problems with the drivetrain, power equipment like motorized door handles not working, the big central touchscreen (too reflective, not responsive, too distracting, buggy software), charging equipment, climate control, steering, and suspension systems and various body and sunroof squeaks, rattles, and leaks.
What I wrote on October 5th that annoyed so many people: That giant touchscreen is a huge distraction, and in any amount of sunlight it behaves like a giant mirror inside the car, blinding the front seat occupants. Whilst the exterior is well presented, the interior fit and finish in all the ones I've driven has all the finesse of a 1970's Trabant. The panels squeak (especially around the touch screen), rattle and vibrate and the A-pillar panels either side of the windshield constantly pop out of place. The pop-out door handles work about 50% of the time.
So my experience would seem to match the experience of 1400 other Model S drivers, which is good for me because it means I'm not the only one who has experienced these issues.
Elon Musk naturally jumped in immediately claiming that these faults have all been fixed in the current 2015 production run, which would be fine had a percentage of the respondents not been driving - you guessed it - current 2015 production vehicles. Anyway - you decide:
Tesla Reliability Doesn’t Match Its High Performance

Renault now embroiled in the diesel scandal.

Remember back in October when I listed the 11 other manufacturers who were about to become affected by the diesel emissions cheating scandal? In addition to the ADAC tests, further third-party testing has now shown that the Renault Espace emits 25 times the legal NOx limit for diesel engines. The study was done by the University of Applied Sciences in Bern, Switzerland, and the International Council on Clear Transportation. The latter is the same council that commissioned the investigation into VW.
Renault aren't the only manufacturers of minivans who are now involved in the growing scandal. The Opel Zafira was also tested and found to have similarly high levels of NOx emissions.
Renault responded to the Espace allegations as follows: The test procedures used by the University of Bern are not all compliant with European regulations. The report shows important variations in test findings which are not conclusive and require 'additional measurements'.
In other words, the tests weren't done to the same artificially stupid requirements that the governing bodies require. These include loopholes such as allowing the manufacturers to optimize the engines to run at artificially low temperatures, strip out standard equipment to reduce the vehicle's weight, tape up door joints, and fit bald tires with lower rolling resistance. Also, the DUH tests were done with actual people driving actual vehicles on actual roads instead of a bastardised vehicle hooked up to a computer in sanitary lab conditions.

Red Bull F1 signs with Renault for the 2016 season.

I'm not a big fan of Renault. I posted a couple of weeks ago what I thought of them. But somehow they've conned Red Bull into using their engines again for the 2016 season. This is good news for me as a Red Bull supporter - I get to see them (and Torro Rosso) race again next year. It's good news for all the employees of the respective teams too, as well as the drivers (obviously). But as an F1 supporter, it's going to be irritating for me to see Renault still in the sport next year because it means I'm going to have to suffer through another 12 months of Red Bull not being able to compete. Renault can't solve their engine problems, but they won't admit it. They have heat and packaging problems and their EGU recovery and MGU electrical systems are like hand grenades - they pull the pin on the start line and wait for one or other of the items to explode.
So the compromise is that next year we'll see Red Bull racing with unbranded engines. This will hurt Renault (which frankly I have no problem with). If they hadn't pushed so hard for the 'green' engine movement, we wouldn't have had to witness the last two years of them airing their dirty laundry in public. And we might have seen my favourite team being competitive.

Are stop signs ruining fuel economy?

It seems like an obvious answer - yes - but have you ever thought about the math behind it? Obviously it takes less energy to accelerate a car from a rolling start to a given speed than it does to get it to the same speed from a total standstill. Bear with me through some sketchy math here. I'm going to make some pretty gross assumptions - a good median weight for a family car is 1500kg nowadays, and a good acceleration figure is 0-50km/h in 4 seconds. What follows assumes no complications from friction, wind, losses through transmission and the myriad other things that affect overall energy figures for a car, but this at least will serve to give some idea what I'm talking about.
Assume we have a stop sign and we have two options - come to a complete stop, then accelerate away at a constant rate to reach 50km/h, or cruise through at 15km/h and accelerate back up to 50km/h.
For the first scenario, the acceleration rate is 3.47m/s² (v=u+at), and assuming you reach 50km/h, you'll travel 27.7m (s=ut+½at²)
Assuming constant acceleration (which makes this much simpler), the force required in this scenario is 5205N (F=ma) which means that the energy expended is 144,178 Joules (W=Fs)
Okay yes that's a very simplified explanation, but it does give us a tangible number.
For the second scenario, assume we're going to travel the same 27.7m after the stop sign but this time we're going to coast through starting at 15km/h instead.
Now, the acceleration rate is less - 2.43m/s², meaning the constant force is also less at 3645N. With less constant force over the same distance, the energy expended also drops, in this case to 100,966 Joules, which is 30% less.
I'm not going to go into the math of fuel consumption vs. vehicle weight vs. acceleration but it's safe to say that for 30% less energy, you'll probably burn 30% less fuel.
Add up the number of red traffic lights and stop signs that you come across during your daily commute, and think how much better your overall fuel economy would be if you burned 30% less fuel at each of those stops. Over a day, a week, a month - it would add-up.
Maybe the time has come for the U.S to adopt roundabouts and get rid of stop signs completely. Roundabouts are more efficient all around - you don't often come to a complete stop and they flow the traffic much more smoothly. I'm sure someone could write a properly-worded paper and put it in front of the politicians and short of being lobbied by Big Oil, there's really no good reason to have stop signs any more.

Autopilot fails.

Ok yes I know Tesla's autopilot is only supposed to be used on open roads, but when they performed an over-the-air update to 40,000 of their Model S owners six weeks ago, what did Tesla think was going to happen?
Well - this for a start:

And this

I'm counting the days until someone autopilots themselves into a wreck and the class action suit begins. I applaud Tesla for trying this, but it's too early - the software/hardware isn't mature enough and videos like these show what happens when you put buggy software in the hands of average consumers. It's no good printing disclaimers telling the owners the system only works in certain places - people don't read instructions.
Case in point: how do you program a drone car for politeness? Everyone is hailing this video as proof of why drone cars are 'amazing':

You know what I see there? I see a line of traffic to the right that is backed up, and a polite driver has left room for the crossing driver to turn. I see a Tesla that is completely unaware of this simple act and continues at 45mph towards a line of slow-moving traffic ahead. (why isn't it slowing down already?). The result is that the Tesla nearly causes an accident, and only then recovers the situation. Sure, you can argue that the turning car should have waited (he should), but had a human been driving, they'd have seen the situation and (hopefully - if there's any politeness left in the world) slowed down to give the turning car room to pass in front. After all - the traffic ahead is backed up - the driver of this car isn't going anywhere.
Elon Musk finally admitted that his autopilot roll-out has been problematic in an earnings call last week (his understatement response to videos similar to those above was 'this is not good'). He's now suggested that Tesla will be adding some constraints to the system to try to minimise the problems.
That could be hard to do - how far do you constrain such a system? Right back down to basic adaptive cruise control similar to the systems that are factory-installed in most high-end cars now?
One thing's for sure - now Musk has admitted to the problems, something will change. Exactly what that something is, is yet to be seen.

The EPA finally owns up to it's part in the VW Diesel scandal.

When I first wrote about the VW diesel emissions problem, I pointed out that some of the blame had to be shared by the EPA. Standardised tests, free of variables and easy to engineer around, their duty cycle for testing both petrol and diesel engines is laughable. The tests are so easy to predict that basic software installed in an engine management system can guess when the car is being tested.
The New York Times ran an article today indicating that the EPA is finally going to test all new cars on actual roads instead of in lab conditions. This will have two benefits. Firstly, it will be far more random, making defeat devices much harder to engineer. But secondly, it will hopefully spell the end of the misleading EPA gas-mileage estimates that we see in the window stickers. Remember, those estimates are based on the same flawed testing mechanism that is used to determine the vehicle's emissions. The EPA have been doing these sorts of roads tests for decades on trucks - they've just never done them on cars.
The EPA aren't the only ones changing the way they do emissions testing. European bodies are looking at real-world testing too although their system isn't due to hit the roads (pun intended) until 2017.
The sting in the tail of this story is the get-out clause though. The EPA say that the lab tests will remain as the 'benchmark' and that road tests will only be carried out to try to find defeat devices.
So close and yet so far. What they need to do, of course, is get rid of the lab tests completely and road-test all the vehicles.
NYT article: Galvanized by VW Scandal, E.P.A. Expands On-Road Emissions Testing.