Stop the Press! Tesla announces REAL HP numbers for P85D and P90L

[stopcrazypp]

So wait wait wait.

You just said they cant advertise some bogus number because the EPA test exists.

Then on the same page of posts you say they can?

Which is it? They're either allowed to or they're not.

They are allowed to, but I am saying that in this case Nissan's hands are tied in that they are mandated to publish the EPA number regardless of what they advertise elsewhere (so customer will always be given the EPA number if they buy a car). In the horsepower situation, there is no such mandate, so it is a complete free-for-all.

Also, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility for the FTC to eventually mandate all advertising of EV range to must also mention EPA range, similar to how the FTC requires all advertising of fuel economy to mention EPA mpg numbers (although FTC allows automakers to focus on highway numbers):
http://www.law360.com/articles/537956/ftc-to-seek-comment-on-new-fuel-economy-ad-guidelines

 

[LetsGoFast]

However, assuming that there is no EPA mandated range testing, I'm not saying a consumer would have no legal recourse. I am saying the lawsuit is different between:
1) A claim that is literally false (as in the Ford Mustang Cobra, Mazda RX8, Mazda Miata cases)
2) A claim that is true but may be misleading (as in the Tesla case)

For a literally false claim, it is pretty straight forward: all the plaintiff has to demonstrate is a production engine doesn't make the advertised power under the test procedure used by the manufacturer to determine that number. Ford and Mazda knew they would lose because they tested using different parts and then changed it in the cars sold to the customers (while the test was inclusive of those parts).

In the latter example, you have to establish that the claim would be misleading to the target audience of the advertising, which is usually done using surveys. It will not be based purely on facts, but also on perception.

FWIW, a court could hold that Tesla's claim was literally false if they believe that Tesla used an inappropriate method to measure or test the horsepower. They are not required to accept Tesla's methodology. The court would hear expert testimony and determine what test methods appropriate. For instance, if I strap my car to a team of 900 horses and declare I had 900 horsepower when I pull the reins backwards, the court doesn't have to accept my methodology for "testing" horsepower.

Otherwise your analysis is pretty good and a special shout out for citing the law review from Marshall Wythe!

 

[Andyw2100]

FWIW, a court could hold that Tesla's claim was literally false if they believe that Tesla used an inappropriate method to measure or test the horsepower. They are not required to accept Tesla's methodology. The court would hear expert testimony and determine what test methods appropriate.

And were I an attorney for the plaintiffs making an argument for the fact that Tesla did use an inappropriate method to measure horsepower, I think I might ask the court to consider whether or not it is appropriate, when advertising a car's hp specifications, to list the motor's hp specifications knowing full well those specifications can't be met in the car as it is being sold, and also knowing full well that the average consumer would have no way of knowing that.

The last part--the fact that the average consumer would have no way to know they were being shown an irrelevant specification--is important, in my opinion. In this particular case if Tesla had claimed the motors were capable of 3000 Motor HP or something like that, plenty of people would have asked "How the heck is that possible?", and done a lot more digging. But 691 was completely plausible.

 

[Denarius]

Btw, I keep forgetting to post this....

View attachment 109592

I kind of want to find a good local dyno now...

I know I'm late but I want this sooooo bad!

 

[stopcrazypp]

FWIW, a court could hold that Tesla's claim was literally false if they believe that Tesla used an inappropriate method to measure or test the horsepower. They are not required to accept Tesla's methodology. The court would hear expert testimony and determine what test methods appropriate. For instance, if I strap my car to a team of 900 horses and declare I had 900 horsepower when I pull the reins backwards, the court doesn't have to accept my methodology for "testing" horsepower.

Otherwise your analysis is pretty good and a special shout out for citing the law review from Marshall Wythe!

I think that would still fall into the true but misleading example, where a survey would determine if that is reasonable in terms of consumer expectations. And in this case, Tesla used ECE R85, which is a UN standard. I wasn't successful in finding an analogy to Tesla's case (all the ones in the US always involved some sort of parts difference, not a test method difference). That's why the Norway case may show some insight into this (if the court accepts Tesla's method or not).

 

[qwk]

And were I an attorney for the plaintiffs making an argument for the fact that Tesla did use an inappropriate method to measure horsepower, I think I might ask the court to consider whether or not it is appropriate, when advertising a car's hp specifications, to list the motor's hp specifications knowing full well those specifications can't be met in the car as it is being sold, and also knowing full well that the average consumer would have no way of knowing that.

The last part--the fact that the average consumer would have no way to know they were being shown an irrelevant specification--is important, in my opinion. In this particular case if Tesla had claimed the motors were capable of 3000 Motor HP or something like that, plenty of people would have asked "How the heck is that possible?", and done a lot more digging. But 691 was completely plausible.

All the plaintiffs attorney would have to do, is point out the advertised HP of all the other models(60, 70D, 85, P85, 85D) is slightly exceeded in real life, but the top of the line, most expensive car, falls really short. There really isn't much defense to that.

 

[lolachampcar]

qwk,
You just wait; you'll have a few feverishly defending that on this thread. I used to think things were cut and dried but have learned there are always arguments to be made by the other side (not that I am making them).

 

[MikeBur]

The C&D example definitely is not statistically random as you are limiting your subset to C&D readers, which is quite narrow. NYT may have a larger readership that is closer, but not sure if it meets the standard.

I think coming up with the survey question is a lot harder. It can't be biased or lead the person to a certain answer, and must be able to directly address the issue.

I'm not even sure that NYT would be statistically random either as the car press, both print and online, would pick this up and skew the results.

Additional to to the unbiased questions, and yep I've done a few of these myself and no matter how hard you attempt to be objective it is almost impossible not to include implicit bias, you also must supply context and background to the questions being asked. This gives me pause as I believe many existing, and potential future, owners are in blissful ignorance and TM could easily be perceived as either neutral or negative (though arguably never more positively) by this.

The more I think about a full/half page spread, the more I believe the TM stock would be negatively impacted and that's not something I want. I do fear that if TM does not significantly improve their communications that this kind of false marketing / creative interpretation / misleading consumers & industry press* will bite them when they go mainstream.

* delete/modify as appropriate, based on your POV ;-)

 

[qwk]

qwk,
You just wait; you'll have a few feverishly defending that on this thread. I used to think things were cut and dried but have learned there are always arguments to be made by the other side (not that I am making them).

I know exactly what you mean. Unfortunately Tesla contradicted itself with this issue. JB's blog comeback stated that coming up with a meaningful HP number in an EV is hard, and nothing at all like ICE cars. The thing of it is, if it's so hard to come up with a accurate number, the other models would be all over the place with their numbers. That is not the case with every other Tesla. Either it's hard to get an accurate number with an EV or it's not. Can't have it both ways.

 

[tomas]

Is there anything that has not been said???

 

[stopcrazypp]

All the plaintiffs attorney would have to do, is point out the advertised HP of all the other models(60, 70D, 85, P85, 85D) is slightly exceeded in real life, but the top of the line, most expensive car, falls really short. There really isn't much defense to that.

qwk,
You just wait; you'll have a few feverishly defending that on this thread. I used to think things were cut and dried but have learned there are always arguments to be made by the other side (not that I am making them).

I know exactly what you mean. Unfortunately Tesla contradicted itself with this issue. JB's blog comeback stated that coming up with a meaningful HP number in an EV is hard, and nothing at all like ICE cars. The thing of it is, if it's so hard to come up with a accurate number, the other models would be all over the place with their numbers. That is not the case with every other Tesla. Either it's hard to get an accurate number with an EV or it's not. Can't have it both ways.

I was going to let this die on its own, but given the "being silent means agreement" implication, I'll just say that is a mis-characterization of what happened. "Motor power" was applied to every single model (I painstakingly found the numbers in the post here, with links to sources):

When looking purely at REST numbers, the ones that don't exceed combined motor power number are: S60, S70, S60D/S70D, S85D (post 6.2 update), and P85D.
The ones where REST does exceed combined motor power number are: S85, S85D (pre 6.2 update) and P85.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...91HP/page119?p=1115469&viewfull=1#post1115469

So to say "the advertised HP of all the other models(60, 70D, 85, P85, 85D) is slightly exceeded in real life, but the top of the line, most expensive car, falls really short" does not match with the facts. Although this whole debate is framed on the P85D, it is easy to forget "motor power" applied to the other models also, just that those owners didn't care about the issue.

The only issue where it can be argued about consistency is on the 0-60 rollout (which is a whole other discussion).

I don't think a lawsuit would be as straightforward as some see here. That's why i think the step 2 of Norway complaint will be interesting given a binding decision will be made (step 1 seem to be in Tesla's favor).

 

[wk057]

"Motor power" term didn't exist on Tesla's site until the P85D was advertised. Up until that point all models met or exceeded what was advertised.

You know full well this is what was meant by the posts above. This is not disputable.

Additionally, the 85D meets or exceeds its originally advertised HP numbers.

 

[KyP85D]

I have remained silent on this issue. As a plaintiffs attorney I feel,in my opinion, this is an open and shut case. The only real question is whether from an owner/attorney perspective to pursue this individually or as a class action. The real delay has been the availability/non availability of expert witnesses with sufficient knowledge and expertise of the Tesla systems to support the claim. It is apparent those experts are now becoming available.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Additional to to the unbiased questions, and yep I've done a few of these myself and no matter how hard you attempt to be objective it is almost impossible not to include implicit bias, you also must supply context and background to the questions being asked. This gives me pause as I believe many existing, and potential future, owners are in blissful ignorance and TM could easily be perceived as either neutral or negative (though arguably never more positively) by this.

Good point on that. I also see that a public ad like that will easily trigger bandwagon jumping. I think that was what happened in Norway. Not much people cared until it was announced there was a complaint being lodged with the Consumer Council and then a flood of complaints suddenly came in (I believe the same thing also happened in Nissan's horsepower lawsuit in Norway).

 

[McRat]

Could it have been an honest mistake?

AWD chassis dynos are rare, expensive, mostly unnecessary, and dangerous. Engine dynos accept a single motor at a time. Since the AWD Teslas do not have a center diff, you can dyno one on a 2wd chassis dyno if you can disable the one end of the car. Doing it on a 2wd chassis dyno would not necessarily show a battery limitation, and certainly would not appear on an engine stand.

 

[MarcG]

"Motor power" term didn't exist on Tesla's site until the P85D was advertised. Up until that point all models met or exceeded what was advertised.

From my understanding, that is because -until the P85D- the maximum battery power was always sufficient to meet the peak power that the motors in pre-P85D models could generate. So there was no need to distinguish between motor vs battery power.

With the P85D, having two motors -- with the large one from the P85 at the back and the newer, smaller one at the front -- meant that the max power put out by the battery wasn't sufficient to meet the two motors' combined peak power.

I'm not saying Tesla handled the communication of this difference well on one hand, but on the other hand I don't believe they were purposely using deceiving practices either.

I'm just saying that the difference between max battery power and peak motor power was only introduced with the P85D, and that is why Tesla eventually started making the distinction.

 

[stopcrazypp]

"Motor power" term didn't exist on Tesla's site until the P85D was advertised. Up until that point all models met or exceeded what was advertised.

You know full well this is what was meant by the posts above. This is not disputable.

Additionally, the 85D meets or exceeds its originally advertised HP numbers.

Again, this is from viewing everything from "P85D" tinted glasses. The motor power term was introduced with the dual motor launch, which included the 60D and 85D, not only the P85D. And even the single motors were switched to "motor power" only (previous numbers were completely removed), see below articles at the time for sources.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/10/20141010-tesla.html
http://www.greencarreports.com/news...ower-numbers-for-tesla-model-s-whats-the-deal

Personally, at the time I noticed the change precisely because of S60 and S85 having the same "motor power" rating, nothing to do with P85D. So I knew the "motor power" number was not a battery inclusive number.

The 85D had a quirk in that it had a 6.2 motor firmware update that increased output power. Initially motor power for 60D and 85D was advertised at 376 combined hp (pre-update). AFAIK 60D/70D does not exceed this number (REST I guessed was 320-330 hp), although 85D did.

After the update, the 70D/85D was briefly advertised at 514 hp motor power (which AFAIK 85D does not exceed, correct me if I'm wrong). They later switched to advertising only the single motor 259 hp (not a combined number, although it is quite easy to do the math yourself 259hp*2= 518 hp). However, the later change was at the time when the "691hp" thread had already exploded (they also removed the combined 691hp number in the same time frame).

 

[wk057]

Again, this is from viewing everything from "P85D" tinted glasses. The motor power term was introduced with the dual motor launch, which included the 60D and 85D, not only the P85D. And even the single motors were switched to "motor power" only (previous numbers were completely removed), see below articles at the time for sources.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/10/20141010-tesla.html
http://www.greencarreports.com/news...ower-numbers-for-tesla-model-s-whats-the-deal

Personally, at the time I noticed the change precisely because of S60 and S85 having the same "motor power" rating, nothing to do with P85D. So I knew the "motor power" number was not a battery inclusive number.

The 85D had a quirk in that it had a 6.2 motor firmware update that increased output power. Initially motor power for 60D and 85D was advertised at 376 combined hp (pre-update). AFAIK 60D/70D does not exceed this number (REST I guessed was 320-330 hp), although 85D did.

After the update, the 70D/85D was briefly advertised at 514 hp motor power (which AFAIK 85D does not exceed, correct me if I'm wrong). They later switched to advertising only the single motor 259 hp (not a combined number, although it is quite easy to do the math yourself 259hp*2= 518 hp). However, the later change was at the time when the "691hp" thread had already exploded (they also removed the combined 691hp number in the same time frame).

Nothing you've said negates anything in my post that you quoted. Just because other models used the same term afterwards doesn't invalidate what I've said. Owners of the 60D (did they even ship any of these?), 70D, 85D, etc purchased around the end of 2014/early 2015 are certainly are well within their rights to be pissed off as well, not just P85D owners.

Additionally, the 85D was advertised as ~376 HP initially. Buyers of the 85D while that spec was present now have over 400HP output at the battery, and thus have been made more than whole on the issue and have no additional say in this fight, IMO. 60D? I've yet to even see an emblem photo for one, or even hear of anyone actually buying it, so not sure what that gripe would be. There was no 70D at the time.

My point is, again, up until the release of the P85D (and yes, we all irrelevantly know that other models were released at the same time) all of Tesla's performance numbers met or exceeded advertised values. Are you disputing this?

I seriously hate this thread... heh. Over a year after the fact, and after Tesla both contradicts their own post and finally admits the actual horsepower numbers I'm just completely floored that there is even a debate here at all still. *facepalm*

 

[qwk]

I was going to let this die on its own, but given the "being silent means agreement" implication, I'll just say that is a mis-characterization of what happened. "Motor power" was applied to every single model (I painstakingly found the numbers in the post here, with links to sources):

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...91HP/page119?p=1115469&viewfull=1#post1115469

So to say "the advertised HP of all the other models(60, 70D, 85, P85, 85D) is slightly exceeded in real life, but the top of the line, most expensive car, falls really short" does not match with the facts. Although this whole debate is framed on the P85D, it is easy to forget "motor power" applied to the other models also, just that those owners didn't care about the issue.

The only issue where it can be argued about consistency is on the 0-60 rollout (which is a whole other discussion).

I don't think a lawsuit would be as straightforward as some see here. That's why i think the step 2 of Norway complaint will be interesting given a binding decision will be made (step 1 seem to be in Tesla's favor).

So what excuse are you going to come up with for the promised, but far off 10.99 quarter mile times? Clearly there is a very strong pattern of deceit here...

 

[wk057]

So what excuse are you going to come up with for the promised, but far off 10.99 quarter mile times? Clearly there is a very strong pattern of deceit here...

Thought we already figured that one out? Of course they used the new Tesla standard of subtracting the first 50-ft rollout... and in about a year they'll add an asterisk next to it kind of explaining it, shortly after they put out a blog post about how EV quarter mile times are difficult to measure.