Three California residents last week filed a lawsuit against Tesla for what they claim is false advertising over the car's range.
Why stop at Tesla? And why just sue over false claims about range when every other claim about EVs is also a lie? The lawsuit comes in the wake of a Reuters report contending that Tesla had been goosing the range displayed on its dashboard and created a "Diversion team" to deal with all the customer complaints about faulty batteries.
A report from Car & Driver last August found that only three cars it tested did better than the official EPA range estimate.
SAE International studied the performance of 21 EV models this year and found that, on average, the cars' range was inflated by 12.5%. "Most tested to date fall short of both their electric consumption and range label values," the report finds.
The real-world range of EVs is even worse than these studies show because, unlike with gas-powered cars, weather can dramatically reduce an EV's range.
Consumer Reports tested how well EVs performed in different weather conditions and "Found that cold weather saps about 25% of range when cruising at 70 mph compared with the same conditions in mild weather. In the past, we found that short trips in the cold with frequent stops and the need to reheat the cabin saps 50% of the range." For example, Ford's Mustang Mach-E, which is supposed to get 270 miles on a charge, could manage only 188 miles in the cold.
Then there's the fact that carmakers recommend owners charge their cars to only 80% capacity - to extend battery life - which cuts even more deeply into the real-word range of EVs.
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