Tesloop, the intercity shuttle service that only employs Tesla cars, has achieved the rare distinction of clocking over 200,000 miles on a Model S for the first time ever. That it has been achieved in just over a year makes the feat all the more special.
It was in July 2015 that the particular Model S had started operations and had been plying in the Los Angeles to las Vegas route ever since. Speaking of the development, Tesloop CEO Rahul Sonnad stated most of the 200,000 miles included highway runs though Tesla stated there isn't much distinction to be made with highway or city drives in an EV. Sonnad also stated they had AutoPilot on most of the time while on highway.
With the sort of mileage that one normally takes a decade to register, the Model S naturally has emerged as the center of a lot of curiosity. Fortunately for us, Tech Crunch got the chance to interact with Sonnad and has the answers to some of the most pressing question uppermost in most of our minds.
That, among everything else, includes the amount of degradation the battery might have suffered. Sonnad stated its just six percent, even though they had topped up to 100 percent charge each time. Tesla recommends recharging to 90 percent each time under daily driving conditions.
"For your daily driver, you don't fully charge unless you're doing a long trip," Sonnad said. "We're doing a long trip every day. We save, like, three minutes in charging in Barstow if we fully charge beforehand.
Another issue they have faced with the car is when it started relaying message to the Tesla HQ about the motor performing below par even though the car seemed to be working fine. That was at 30,000 miles and Tesla had then changed the motor free of cost.
The only other issue they faced with the Model S is when it made it past the magical 200,000 miles mark. The range estimator began to show erroneous result which Tesla said is of software origin. Explaining further, Tesla stated the issue has to do with an algorithm that has failed to estimate the change in battery chemistry as such a high mileage and has not been compensating for the same appropriately.
While in case of Sonnad's Model S the issue has been rectified by replacing the 12-volt battery, which cost him $190, the same could have also been fixed by a firmware update that Tesla said is just a few months down the line.
Apart from that and the usual change of tires at regular intervals, there has been no other issue that Sonnad faced with the Model S. Speaks volume of the quality of the Model S, as well as its Autopilot system that worked fine for that many miles.
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