this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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The problem is that other vehicles adjust the projection based on current conditions - when I drive up a mountain, my projected range drops like a rock. When I drive back down I can end up with more range than I started. Reporting the “ideal” case during operation is misleading at best.
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.
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.
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.
How would anyone actually use that information?
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.
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.
Same as a fuel guage I'd imagine.
I've never seen a fuel gauge marked in any kind of units like liters or gallons, just fractions of a full tank.
Tanks is a unit of volume....
How many liters are there in a tank?
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.
Says the idiot who doesn't even know what a unit is.
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.
Bye, asshole.
You can display percent instead of rated miles