Tesla claims Model S has a 400-mile range, says EPA left door open during test

Tesla claims that its Model S has achieved an official 400-mile EPA-rated range with its latest update, but it wasn’t made official due to a mistake during testing by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier this year, Tesla released a new “Long Range Plus” version of the Model S with an EPA-rated range that was later updated to 391 miles on a single charge.

Around the same time, CEO Elon Musk claimed that Tesla is close to having a 400-mile electric car.

Today, with the release of its Q1 2020 results, Musk claimed that they already achieved it because the EPA made a mistake when testing the new Model S Long Range Plus.

The CEO claimed that the EPA left the door open and the key inside the car when stopping during range testing, resulting in the car remaining powered up and losing 2% of battery capacity.

Musk added that with that power, the Model S would have achieved an EPA-rated range of 400 miles.

He claims that once the EPA returns to testing after restrictions imposed due to the pandemic are lifted, they will be retesting the Tesla Model S Long Range Plus and it will achieve an official EPA-rated range of 400 miles.

The capacity for 400 miles of range is already in Tesla’s Long Range Plus Model S vehicle.

Recently, we have seen a race to build the first electric car with over 400 miles range.

Lucid claimed that its Air electric sedan is going to be the first to achieve it. Although, they claimed that it would achieve a highway range of 400 miles on a single charge, which could mean that the car’s actual EPA-rated range could be much greater than 400 miles.

Electrek’s Take

That’s impressive if true.

However, let’s keep in mind that they are talking about achieving that range in an EPA cycle test.

There’s been a lot of talks lately about EVs, and Tesla in particular, not achieving their EPA cycle test results in real-world testing.

That’s a real issue, but it is highly dependent on a bunch of different conditions, including how you drive.

I think that the useful way to look at it is that Tesla’s cars are getting more efficient and you can drive them that efficiently if you want to, but you really don’t need to.

In the bigger picture, I think it will be a good thing for EVs in general to have an electric car with an “official” range of 400 miles.