Tesla Sued Because 469hp Is Not 700hp

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So what do you think? If you paid almost $100,000 for a car that is supposed to have 700hp would you be upset if you "only" got 469hp? All I want to know is what Tesla means by the horsepower rating meets the requirements “according to the measurement method required by the authorities.” We have a surefire way to tell how much horsepower a car has, you strap it to a dyno and be done with it. The numbers don't lie. :D

Some 126 owners of the Tesla Model S sedan’s P85D performance version are seeking unspecified reimbursements after the model only reached 469 horsepower instead of a pledged 700 hp, said Kaspar N. Thommessen, an attorney at Wikborg Rein law firm representing the plaintiffs. The car “has too low horsepower,” the lawyer said Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions. “And of course, it affects the car’s performance, according to the consumers.”
 
This could be due to drive train loss, but that's over 200hp lost to drive train. Also, since it's hard to measure the performance of the car, it could be it's like an "equivalent" to 700hp. Since the front and back of the car has electric motors.

Tesla-X-drivetrain.jpg
 
I wondered how long it was going to take for this to happen. The Tesla marketing has always been very misleading. The motors may be capable of that output all added together, but the battery in no way can supply the amount of current needed to achieve any of it. Not too long ago they amended their webpage to say motor output, with the much lower actual battery limited output below it. Now they've removed all references to HP on their website.
 
Interesting. I've never actually seen an advertisement or stat from Tesla claiming it had 700hp, however it's entirely possible they did. If that's the case and it doesn't make it (or close to it, to be fair) on a dyno, then that does seem to be deceptive. Still though, if the car can get 0-60 in 3.1 - 3.3 seconds... that doesn't seem like a 469hp car given it's not exactly a lightweight car (4,000lb+ for most/all models if I recall correctly).

This could simply be a confusion issue over hp and torque however. Electric motors won't get the same speed as a high hp car, however they will blow away pretty much everything in terms of torque. Miscommunication perhaps, not sure. I don't believe this will tarnish Tesla's rep much if at all as the cars are still pretty amazing in almost all categories, including performance.
 
many cars and motorcycles use horsepower on the crank not on the wheel anyways, so if you measure it at the wheels it's always lower.
They could indeed just dyno the engine, but it's not easy to compare combustion engines with electric engines anyhow. Totally different power curves
 
DukenukemX said:
This could be due to drive train loss, but that's over 200hp lost to drive train. Also, since it's hard to measure the performance of the car, it could be it's like an "equivalent" to 700hp. Since the front and back of the car has electric motors.
Click to expand...

It's not drivetrain loss. It's because the batteries can only supply enough power for 470 hp regardless of how much the motors are capable of.
 
DukenukemX said:
This could be due to drive train loss, but that's over 200hp lost to drive train. Also, since it's hard to measure the performance of the car, it could be it's like an "equivalent" to 700hp. Since the front and back of the car has electric motors.
Click to expand...

Throw it on an all wheel dyno, that will tell you all you need to know. Our car club has a dyno day at a local performance shop about once a year, $50 gets you 3 pulls and it lets you know right where you are at and gives you bragging rights to boot. :cool:
 
Setiri said:
Interesting. I've never actually seen an advertisement or stat from Tesla claiming it had 700hp, however it's entirely possible they did. If that's the case and it doesn't make it (or close to it, to be fair) on a dyno, then that does seem to be deceptive. Still though, if the car can get 0-60 in 3.1 - 3.3 seconds... that doesn't seem like a 469hp car given it's not exactly a lightweight car (4,000lb+ for most/all models if I recall correctly).

This could simply be a confusion issue over hp and torque however. Electric motors won't get the same speed as a high hp car, however they will blow away pretty much everything in terms of torque. Miscommunication perhaps, not sure. I don't believe this will tarnish Tesla's rep much if at all as the cars are still pretty amazing in almost all categories, including performance.
Click to expand...

They advertised the HP all over. 0-60 is a function of traction (AWD) and tq, not of HP. Trap speed is more indicative of HP. That is where the Tesla always fell flat on its face. For "700" HP it was a very slow car. The low trap speeds were right in line with a 470 HP car given its weight. They used to state this on their webpage, but now they don't talk about HP at all anymore.
 
469hp is enough to get 0-60 in 3.1 with the appropriate gearing and tires, but ill agree the overall performance of the P90D sure as hell doesnt act like 469hp. I get that there's no power band, its more of a power plateau, so I guess we'd have to see a CVT capable of holding 500hp for an apples to apples'ish comparison of a ~500hp car launching and staying @ peak HP the entire time. i actually bet it'd pull hard as hell and shock people pretty hard.. my road race car is only ~520hp and its enough to scare people despite having to climb the power band up (loss of efficiency) and then past the peak output before shifting gears (another loss of efficiency).

If they say its 700hp, though, and its not... i mean... it is what it is. a dyno measures HP, not marketing or overall performance or "well you'd have to have 700hp in a normal car to match it." dynos dont tell you any of that shit. i dont see how they'll defend this case.

and the 0-60 isnt necessarily limited to the AWD + torque.. its the fact the car doesnt have an RPM range. its 100% efficient output 100% of the time + awd + torque generated from that output. imagine if you could stay @ 6800 rpms from 0-150 in any car. thats what CVT's were designed for, because if CVT's didnt totally suck, they'd be amazing for everybody.
 
If their gripe is that is makes 469 at the wheels, then the gripe is incorrect, as I don't know any mass market manufacturer that uses wheel horsepower figures over crank horsepower figures. Even most boutique brands do not.

If that is the case, if you take an awd vehicle with an automatic transmission, you can expect ~25% loss from the drivetrain, and Tesla is racking up about 33% loss.

If you had no care for the drivetrain, you could get a 408hp (at the crank) 1995 911 turbo 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, but it did that carrying around about ~1600 pounds less car than a tesla.

My take, this is like claiming that a car that has 500hp in a manual and 500hp in automatic are defrauding the consumer because the automatic has higher powertain losses.
 
I'm not actually sure what the rule would be, and it is probably different for many places/countries. However, what if the motor and battery were capable, but the software was limited for safety or something. I know they don't offer the insane mode anymore, so I wonder if that is where some of this is coming from on the subject.
 
If the primary part of the advertisements in question were about horsepower, then Tesla screwed up big time. If the primary part of the advertisements were about 0-100kph performance, and the car meets or exceeds those claims, then the owners should just be happy. If Tesla can get the car to 100 in 3.3 seconds with 'only' 469hp as opposed to 700, good for them.
 
bildad said:
They advertised the HP all over. 0-60 is a function of traction (AWD) and tq, not of HP. Trap speed is more indicative of HP. That is where the Tesla always fell flat on its face. For "700" HP it was a very slow car. The low trap speeds were right in line with a 470 HP car given its weight. They used to state this on their webpage, but now they don't talk about HP at all anymore.
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mostly this

one of my friend's is a huge Tesla fanboy but not well versed in the car scene. I'm big into the modified car scene, and mostly "meh" about the Tesla

All my friend could spew out of his mouth was how amazing the 0-60 time of the Tesla was. That's literally all I could get from him. 0-60mph means nothing these days - we're pretty much at the limit of tire grip off the line these days. 1/4 mile times/traps are much better indications of a car's performance these days.......yet no matter what, all this fanboy friend could tell me is how fast it is to 0-60mph, even with completely silly graphs of "cars that do 0-60 in under 3 seconds" like it meant a damn thing

So I decided to google what the 1/4 mile states were for myself. I went through 3 pages of google results and still couldn't find them. Literally the only people hyped about the Tesla are technology websites. No automotive publications came up in google results.

It's performance figures are NOT ground breaking.

I don't mind if you find the technology of Tesla cars cool and interesting, but don't start spewing how it's shattering performance metrics in the automotive industry...because then you're just spewing nonsense in a field you know nothing about.
 
tesla-gate. HP is now the new hard disk storage box specs. "actual formatted size will vary", going to need something similar on cars so these new kids know that rated HP is always more than what is at the pavement.
 
0-60 times are much more important in daily driving than 1/4 mile times, just saying.
 
Do the motors have the capability of outputting around half a million watts? no? then it fails.
 
Setiri said:
Interesting. I've never actually seen an advertisement or stat from Tesla claiming it had 700hp, however it's entirely possible they did. If that's the case and it doesn't make it (or close to it, to be fair) on a dyno, then that does seem to be deceptive. Still though, if the car can get 0-60 in 3.1 - 3.3 seconds... that doesn't seem like a 469hp car given it's not exactly a lightweight car (4,000lb+ for most/all models if I recall correctly).

This could simply be a confusion issue over hp and torque however. Electric motors won't get the same speed as a high hp car, however they will blow away pretty much everything in terms of torque. Miscommunication perhaps, not sure. I don't believe this will tarnish Tesla's rep much if at all as the cars are still pretty amazing in almost all categories, including performance.
Click to expand...

Car manufacturers do not provide dyno numbers (they are quite smaller, even today), except internally. It's all crank horse, and each car is completely different. Usually they average it across a large sample and then provide the lowest average. I know the newer mustangs and corvettes are 450 and they end up making WAY more. So much in fact that they have been accused of deliberately lying so the other team doesn't try so hard. Then blow the doors off of them.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Do the motors have the capability of outputting around half a million watts? no? then it fails.
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The P85D in Insane mode peaks at around 415 kW drawn from the battery, roughly 556 HP. This resulted in a long thread at a Tesla related forum with a number of angry owners, many of whom still upgraded their P85D to Ludicrous to get closer to what they originally paid for.
 
The article is lacking how it was measured.
Horsepower in a gas engine is a calculation. Torque output@RPM / 5252= Horsepower. An electric motor produces torque based on load, the more you load it, the more it produces. You cannot simply throw a Tesla on a dyno the same as you would a gas powered car and get correct results.
 
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-Strelok- said:
0-60 times are much more important in daily driving than 1/4 mile times, just saying.
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I'd say in daily driving it's entirely situation-dependent. Therefore it's not really 0-60 that's relevant, but 0-75-ish, and that entire range needs to be subdivided into multiple, variable, possibly overlapping ranges. The rationale is that there are multiple use cases of acceleration in general (which it sounds to me is really what this is measuring). Passing a car on a backroad, passing a car on the highway, starting from 0 and going to 20/30ish as fast as possible to get over a lane after a traffic light... etc etc. I mean 0-60 time in general is fine if every single car has absolutely constant acceleration throughout the range... but do they? I don't know, I'm not much of a car buff. Chances are, it will drop off towards the end.

As far as the Tesla car goes in general, I don't really understand the point of it, personally... at least not from any economic OR thrill-seeking standpoint. The price is just absurd, so any want you could have except being a technophile should be fulfilled by an existing car currently. But these funders are getting our technological advancement somewhere, so whatever.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'd say in daily driving it's entirely situation-dependent. Therefore it's not really 0-60 that's relevant, but 0-75-ish, and that entire range needs to be subdivided into multiple, variable, possibly overlapping ranges. The rationale is that there are multiple use cases of acceleration in general (which it sounds to me is really what this is measuring). Passing a car on a backroad, passing a car on the highway, starting from 0 and going to 20/30ish as fast as possible to get over a lane after a traffic light... etc etc. I mean 0-60 time in general is fine if every single car has absolutely constant acceleration throughout the range... but do they? I don't know, I'm not much of a car buff. Chances are, it will drop off towards the end.
Click to expand...

My point is 1/4 mile is irrelevant since you'll be at around 100 mph on many cars at that point, which most people won't hit in the US unless you like tickets. The Tesla will most likely win in almost all the "relevant" ranges.
 
bildad said:
I wondered how long it was going to take for this to happen. The Tesla marketing has always been very misleading. The motors may be capable of that output all added together, but the battery in no way can supply the amount of current needed to achieve any of it. Not too long ago they amended their webpage to say motor output, with the much lower actual battery limited output below it. Now they've removed all references to HP on their website.
Click to expand...

Not uncommon for lithium packs to be able to handle that current.
 
Who the hell cares how much HP it has, when it hits 60mph faster than you can say "700 horsepower".
 
-Strelok- said:
0-60 times are much more important in daily driving than 1/4 mile times, just saying.
Click to expand...

...

no......no, it's not

you're telling me people launch their cars from every red light?

-Strelok- said:
My point is 1/4 mile is irrelevant since you'll be at around 100 mph on many cars at that point, which most people won't hit in the US unless you like tickets. The Tesla will most likely win in almost all the "relevant" ranges.
Click to expand...

1/4 miles are the best metric because it's a wide enough range of measurement.

A powerful car with the worst launch in the world (either by difficulty or electronic nannies) will always post an awful 0-60 and then that would be the end of the story

A powerful car with the worst launch in the world will still post impressive 1/4 mile stats, in either the time relative to the 60ft, and/or it's trap speed
 
Like I said, hitting 120mph in 1/4 of a mile isn't relevant to most people. Flooring from a red light would actually be more likely to happen if you are in the wrong lane or something and need to get to the other side. I don't know about you, but I would say most of my driving is between 30-80mph, so those ranges are what really matter to me.
 
-Strelok- said:
Like I said, hitting 120mph in 1/4 of a mile isn't relevant to most people. Flooring from a red light would actually be more likely to happen if you are in the wrong lane or something and need to get to the other side. I don't know about you, but I would say most of my driving is between 30-80mph, so those ranges are what really matter to me.
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A metric has to be used, 0-60 or 1/4mile times are extreme but no one is going to buy a car with "parked to local grocery store in 12minutes" as a performance perk.
 
Darunion said:
A metric has to be used, 0-60 or 1/4mile times are extreme but no one is going to buy a car with "parked to local grocery store in 12minutes" as a performance perk.
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No one is saying they should do that. I just don't see how 1/4 mile time is all that relevant in this case. Just as an FYI, the P90D did it in 10.9s around 120mph based on Motortrend's run. Average runs are in the mid 11's with speeds around 115-120ish.
 
-Strelok- said:
Like I said, hitting 120mph in 1/4 of a mile isn't relevant to most people. Flooring from a red light would actually be more likely to happen if you are in the wrong lane or something and need to get to the other side. I don't know about you, but I would say most of my driving is between 30-80mph, so those ranges are what really matter to me.
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that only means you don't know how to read 1/4 stats

what you just said can be read from a 1/4 mile run, while also being able to tell how powerful the car is outside of just the start

0-60mph tells practically nothing

30-80mph? that's best interpreted in a 1/4 mile run. How does a 0-60mph launch tell you anything about how powerful the car is?

If a car has a pathetically slow ~2.5second 60ft time but still rolls past the 1/4 mile above ~100mph or a sub 12 second time - I KNOW that car is packing some horsepower/torque.
 
maybe its like internet speeds.......TWC says I get 20 Mbps. But I get 17.27 Mbps, so do you think we should all sue?(yea I know the ads now say * up to*)
 
-Strelok- said:
No one is saying they should do that. I just don't see how 1/4 mile time is all that relevant in this case. Just as an FYI, the P90D did it in 10.9s around 120mph based on Motortrend's run. Average runs are in the mid 11's with speeds around 115-120ish.
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This is about the P85D, though, which Motor Trend did the quarter in 11.6 @ 115.2 MPH.

2015 Tesla Model S P85D First Test - Motor Trend
 
-Strelok- said:
No one is saying they should do that. I just don't see how 1/4 mile time is all that relevant in this case. Just as an FYI, the P90D did it in 10.9s around 120mph based on Motortrend's run. Average runs are in the mid 11's with speeds around 115-120ish.
Click to expand...

because just like everyone is saying, and the whole purpose of the article - 1/4 mile is a better metric to measure a CAR. just because YOU spend more time between 0 to 60 doesn't mean it's an accurate metric to measure a car's performance

10.9seconds @ 120mph on a "700hp" car

A Mustang GT350R does 12.1seconds @ 119.6mph on a 471 wheel hp car

You're telling me a Tesla that makes 700hp passes the quarter mile 1.2 seconds faster doesn't pass it at any higher speed? Clearly the Tesla just falls flat on it's face if a mere 471 horsepower car can catch up in speed.

Again. How would 0-60 times given any insight into the car's overall performance? This is why 0-60 times are pointless these days.

If we only used 0-60 times, the mustang would be reporting a measely 4.1 seconds vs the Tesla's ~3.0 or below. that doesn't even come close to painting a realistic picture. A car that can pull 120mph even after crossing 2 seconds slower is packing way more usable grunt in everyday driving - one that would be far more responsive 30-80mph
 
A P85D will destroy a GT350 on regular roads. AWD vs RWD, manual vs automatic(single transmission in this case) and instant torque/acceleration. The GT350 is a terrible example since it's made for the track.

Also, ~5000lb vs ~3500lb. I don't think I need to tell anyone what the implications there are.
 
-Strelok- said:
A P85D will destroy a GT350 on regular roads. AWD vs RWD, manual vs automatic(single transmission in this case) and instant torque/acceleration. The GT350 is a terrible example since it's made for the track.

Also, ~5000lb vs ~3500lb. I don't think I need to tell anyone what the implications there are.
Click to expand...

and literally none of what you just said could be derived from a 0-60mph statistic, hence why your point of 0-60mph being more important is just stupid

and fine, you want apples to apples:
IMG_20160921_162440_01_zpsx1vfybit.png


an ~800whp vs a ~500whp stock GTR

If you went off pure 0-60 times alone, you would be telling me the they drive the exact same.......

again, 0-60mph is the worst metric to compare a car. Tesla and it's technology fanboys do it all the time, but automotive experts see through the marketing nonsense. It may be fast off the line, but it's not a groundbreaking amount of power. 0-60mph statistics is just a narrow skewed metric that doesn't portray the performance of a car as a whole
 
The only issue is that Tesla didn't say 700 HP equivalent instead of just 700 HP. There is a difference between electric motor HP and combustion engine HP the same way as there is a difference between 60W incandescent bulbs and "60W equivalent" LED bulbs. Due to the full torque at 0 RPM and the efficiency of electric motors you can do equivalent work to that of a much higher HP combustion engine. It won't have the "peak" HP and perhaps "peak" torque as the combustion engine, but it has a far higher average.
 
Exyia said:
So I decided to google what the 1/4 mile states were for myself. I went through 3 pages of google results and still couldn't find them. Literally the only people hyped about the Tesla are technology websites. No automotive publications came up in google results.

It's performance figures are NOT ground breaking.
Click to expand...
Took about 30 secs to find info on P100D on YouTube.

0-60 2.54 secs
0-100 6.52 secs
1/4 mile 10.78 secs @ 124.54mph

 
wickedld9 said:
The article is lacking how it was measured.
Horsepower in a gas engine is a calculation. Torque output@RPM / 5252= Horsepower. An electric motor produces torque based on load, the more you load it, the more it produces. You cannot simply throw a Tesla on a dyno the same as you would a gas powered car and get correct results.
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Totally can. The dyno (no matter what kind) is being driven by the rotating hub at the suspension. The dyno is oblivious to how the hub is being turned, only that it's being turned. Because otherwise you could make the same argument about a crankshaft+piston engine versus a rotary. You can argue about the true cylinder capacity of a rotary engine all day long, but the power output is not arguable.
 
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RobT said:
Took about 30 secs to find info on P100D on YouTube.

0-60 2.54 secs
0-100 6.52 secs
1/4 mile 10.78 secs @ 124.54mph
Click to expand...

This is the problem with Tesla.. what they list on their site is very misleading. I do remember when they used to list HP on their site, but I thought it said the 'equivalent of XXX HP'. Problem is, they are using acceleration 0-60 having the equivalent of a 700HP car. At least that was the impression I got. Take the car from 100-130 and they would probably have to put the 'equivalent of a 300HP car'.

The 2.5s they list on their site for the P100D is obviously with Ludicrous mode. Not sure how many are familiar with this, but the car doesn't always run in Ludicrous mode like you could with the old Insane mode. Ludicrous mode needs to be activated.. and it's not as simple as just pressing a button to enable it. It takes time to prep the batteries to the optimal temps before it can be activated which can take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on weather etc. Additionally, after 4-5 pulls, the system sometimes drops out of Ludicrous mode and will go back to preparing. At least this is how it was with the P90D Ludicrous.. maybe they improved the system with the P100D.
 
raz-0 said:
If their gripe is that is makes 469 at the wheels, then the gripe is incorrect, as I don't know any mass market manufacturer that uses wheel horsepower figures over crank horsepower figures. Even most boutique brands do not.

If that is the case, if you take an awd vehicle with an automatic transmission, you can expect ~25% loss from the drivetrain, and Tesla is racking up about 33% loss.
Click to expand...

And they are correct in measuring this way. You do not rate a "car" in power, you rate the motor. The drivetrain loss is just a fact of life, but measuring the motor is the correct way to do it.

If you look at the picture above, you see that it's two transverse setups. There is no drive shaft or secondary differential. Transverse transmissions are the most efficient. You have two transmissions, but they are subtracting independently from separate engines. So a 10-20% overall loss would be understandable. Because if each engine is putting out say 350HP and each transmission is causing a parasitic loss of 15% that is:

(350 * 0.85) + (350 * 0.85) = 595
700 * 0.85 = 595

So it doesn't combine to cause 30% loss.

According to this claim, the car has a 34% loss. If you are loosing 34% of your power somewhere, I would be concerned about heat, stress, and lifetime of whatever is absorbing that power.
 
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