Right?! It makes it look as though they're trying to hide something.
Maybe.
But I note that there have been a lot of "tempest in a teapot" arguments recently about what the "real" kWh rating of Tesla's various cars is, including arguments over the issue of full kWh capacity vs. usable capacity. In fact, I've seen one comment copied and pasted recently that accuses Tesla of "lying" by using Panasonic's nameplate capacity for the cells in the car, rather than whatever fraction of that the person commenting
feels is more appropriate. (I say "feels" here rather than "thinking", because it's clear they are
not thinking!)
I can certainly see why Tesla might get exasperated by such obsessive nit-picking, and perhaps that's why they are not publicly disclosing the kWh capacity of its newer cars, such as the Model 3 and the Tesla Semi Truck.
I don't see that as any different than what other PEV makers are doing. GM steadfastly refuses to disclose the amount of "reserve capacity" in Volt battery packs; in fact, they even refuse to acknowledge that any reserve capacity exists!
And really, the things that are important about a PEV include the range, the energy efficiency, and the ability to fast charge, not so much the full capacity or even the usable capacity of the battery pack expressed in kWh. The actual kWh capacity is useful for us "armchair engineers" who like to play around with the numbers, but those figures are not actually important in terms of how useful or practical a car is going to be, nor how well it's going to sell.
So I can understand why, for the Model 3, Tesla has talked about only the car's range and how fast it can be fast-charged, in terms of miles rather than in terms of kWh. The average car buyer isn't a STEM geek like me.
