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Did you read the article? > Musk didn’t elaborate on whether someone would need to drive just as slowly to reach 620 miles in 2017. We’d guess that’s not what

• yclept 11y ago
  They'd guess c:
• davmre 11y ago
  No, he didn't say that at all. "We’d guess that’s not what he had in mind" is Techcrunch editorializing. Musk himself didn't say what he had in mind. Given that 620 miles is roughly triple a Tesla's current everyday range and it's unlikely that battery performance will triple in the next two years, it seems a lot more plausible that he's thinking of extending the current hypermiling techniques -- add a special software mode, tuck in a few extra battery packs around the edges, etc. -- than about some fundamental innovation that would yield 620 miles from typical driving habits. If he really meant the latter, he could have said so, but keeping it vague allows him to make an ambitious-sounding prediction that is, strictly speaking, still pretty straightforward for Tesla engineers to fulfill.
• dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  Normal driving conditions for a 500mi trip are substantially different than those for five 100mi trips. Generally speaking, people going 500+mi (highway driving) all at once aren't doing so at 55mph or 65mph unless they're towing/hauling something. A reasonable speed to go 500+mi is 70-90mph. Nobody going that far wants to sit in a car any longer than they have to. A lower speed is reasonable for a trip of less distance.