[Tesla] Improve cold weather range estimates

I drove from Montreal to Toronto with my friend’s Mercedes EQB 300. It is about 600 km and I have done the same trip several times in my own Volvo EX30. Both cars struggle a bit with range in cold weather, so the comparison here is not about range. The real difference was the software and how the infotainment system works with the electric powertrain. CarPlay turned out to be almost useless in the EQB. Apple Maps cannot read the battery state, cannot see the consumption trend, cannot understand temperature effects, and cannot plan charging stops based on the battery’s condition. It looks nice, but it is blind to everything that matters in an EV. It cannot help with planning at all. The EQB’s built-in charger finder was also a problem. We could not get it to show chargers more than roughly ten kilometres away. It kept returning “no chargers found” even though chargers clearly existed further along the route. We were never sure whether it was a bug or just the way the system is designed. On the Quebec to Ontario corridor, where chargers are already spaced out, this creates a real risk. The biggest issue was that the EQB’s range estimate was extremely inaccurate. At multiple points during the trip it was off by eighty to one hundred kilometres. Because of this we could not rely on the in-car estimate or on ABRP or on our phones. Every tool expected the car to report a realistic battery state. Instead we ended up guessing whether we would reach the next charger. My EX30 behaves completely differently. Its Google Maps EV routing usually predicts the arrival battery percentage more accurately than the car’s own range number. It reacts to cold weather, elevation, wind, HVAC use, and driving speed. It updates the estimate continuously and never swings wildly. It understands chargers that are far ahead and it preconditions the battery correctly when navigating to a fast charger. It feels like the navigation system and the battery management system are part of the same brain. What surprised me is how little discussion there is about this difference. Most EV conversations obsess over screen layouts or CarPlay support, but the real question is whether the car’s software is fully integrated with the battery and charging logic. If it is not, the entire long-distance experience breaks down. That is exactly what happened with the EQB. We had poor visibility into our remaining range, poor access to chargers, and no reliable predictions. Driving the same route in the EX30 is not magically easier in terms of range, but the software makes it predictable and manageable. The EQB trip made it obvious that EVs with integrated, EV-native infotainment systems like Tesla, Rivian, and the EX30 operate on an entirely different level from EVs that bolt EV features on top of traditional luxury systems. The difference is not subtle at all and I am surprised it is not talked about much more.