James Titcomb
Fri, 5 January 2024
Tesla says it has received legal requests from the Department of Justice over issues including vehicle range
Tesla has cut back claims about how far its electric cars can travel as it faces scrutiny from the US government.
Elon Musk’s company has reduced the estimated range of several cars on its US website by as much as 37 miles.
Tesla, which was this week overtaken by China’s BYD as the world’s best-selling electric car manufacturer, did not give a reason for the adjustment.
However, the US Department of Justice has been investigating Tesla’s range claims amid concerns they may be exaggerated.
Tesla updated its website to say that its Model Y Performance vehicle has a range of 285 miles, down from its previous 303-mile claim. Meanwhile, the Long Range model has been cut from 330 miles to 310.
One version of its luxury Model S car has seen its estimated range reduced from 396 miles to 359 miles.
In October, Tesla said it had received legal requests from the Department of Justice over issues including vehicle range.
Tesla did not publicly say why it had changed the range estimates. According to internal company documents reviewed by the Drive Tesla website, the changes are in response to new testing conditions from US regulators, and “comfort and functionality improvements” that require more energy from the battery.
Tesla has faced questions over its cars’ ranges, a key selling point for electric vehicles as their manufacturers seek to avoid the “range anxiety” that deters many drivers.
An investigation by the Reuters news agency last year claimed that Tesla often exaggerated ranges to attract drivers, while the US organisation Consumer Reports found that Tesla cars were among those whose ranges fell short of what was claimed.
Tesla owners have sued the company in the US over false advertising related to the range claims. The company has responded to the lawsuits, calling the Reuters investigation “error-ridden” and the lawsuits “legally untenable”.
Tesla has not reduced its range claims in other countries, such as the UK, which uses a different testing regime.
Separately, Tesla was forced to issue a recall to 1.6m cars in China to fix its Autopilot system, which steers and accelerates automatically.
A regulator in China said Tesla would make the changes through a software update issued to the vehicles. It covers almost every Tesla vehicle sold in China since 2014.
It comes the month after Tesla was forced to update its Autopilot system to more than 2m cars in the US. The company has not been required to make any changes in the UK.
Regulators have launched investigations into Autopilot after dozens of crashes, some of them fatal, in which the technology was activated.
The system warns drivers that they should have their hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road when it is activated, but Mr Musk has been criticised for over-stating the cars’ ability to drive themselves.
This week, China’s BYD surpassed Tesla as the world’s best-selling electric car maker, after selling 526,409 cars in the fourth quarter of 2023 against Tesla’s 484,507.
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