2022 M3 400wh/mi and charging problems in 110F heat

[letterk]

I recently replaced my 2018 Model 3 with a 2022 Model 3. I also have a 2021 Model Y. The new 3 has consistently had worse efficiency than my old 3, even though it's supposed to be better. I think I'm starting to figure out what's going on.

Recently, I drove from southern California to Vegas. Temps were in the 105F-115F range. My efficiency was always above 400wh/mi. I tried to get this as low as possible one day. Started at a Supercharger, charged to 80%, waited inside with the AC on. Left and drove 15 miles at 60mph, mostly on the freeway. Flat roads. Regen always, no brakes. Efficiency was a little over 400wh/mi. This repeated for the entire trip, even much longer drives.

Another clue to a problem was while I was in Vegas, three times at V3 chargers and SOC around 25%, the charge rate started at over 200kw for a minute or two, and then suddenly dropped to 30kw. One time it stopped completed.

I noticed while charging the car could not keep the cabin cool. I was sweating. Other cars around me did not have this problem.

I've been having this efficiency problem since I got the car earlier this year. The first long road trip I took the 3 and the Y on a drive to Oregon. During hot parts of the drive, the Y did better. During cool parts of the drive, the 3 did better.

My initial thinking was the AC was drawing excessive charge. But I've recently conducted more testing and can't get efficiency to correlate with high AC usage all the time. What I've just noticed is that ambient temp DOES correlate with poor efficiency all. the. time. Now, I know all about efficiency and all the different environmental and behaviors can affect it. My old 3 and my Y, behaved similarly, but with slightly worse performance on the Y, as you'd expect. This new 3 varies wildly. Mild days I can beat the rated efficiency, with AC usage, every time, easily in the 210-220wh/mi for round trips. On very hot days, it's 400wh/mi. Those hot days are worse than when I drive up the mountains to go skiing. Doesn't make sense.

Do you think it could be a battery cooling problem? I think that would explain both the terrible efficiency, but also inability to charge at a high rate, or not at all, when it's hot.

As I expected, Tesla had the car for a week, then gave it back and said to drive it more. But now that I have a theory, unfortunately, the Tesla app doesn't let you schedule a service appointment for battery or range issues.

 

[letterk]

Couple other things I forgot. Sometimes when AC is low, but on a hot day, I hear a very high speed whine that does not correlate to AC setting. I’ve never heard this with my old 3 or Y.

I’ve noticed locally on hot days, my max charge rate at super chargers is about half of what I see on the Y or old 3.

 

[EVFamilyGrins]

But now that I have a theory, unfortunately, the Tesla app doesn't let you schedule a service appointment for battery or range issues.

The app DOES allow you to schedule service for battery, topics are Charging and Range. I would schedule this under Charging as it is easy to submit video of car charging from low SOC at slow speeds on hot temperature vs cool temp (with high speed) using same charger and if you provide date/time stamps of recent issues, they can pull the logs.

 

[letterk]

The app DOES allow you to schedule service for battery, topics are Charging and Range. I would schedule this under Charging as it is easy to submit video of car charging from low SOC at slow speeds on hot temperature vs cool temp (with high speed) using same charger and if you provide date/time stamps of recent issues, they can pull the logs.

Not anymore. I tried both battery and charging today. Each time it ran diagnostics and said the car is fine. No ability to schedule an appointment.

 

[jjrandorin]

Due to all the people who continuously try to engage tesla over "my car does not get rated range", its going to be very (very very) difficult to engage them on something like this, even though it sounds like you have an actual issue, at least by what you have posted.

My recommendation (remember that I am not an insider), would be to not discuss "battery efficiency" at all in the service request, and instead focus on the problems the car had cooling the cabin.

I have no idea if your idea of battery coolant could be true (its possible, but I am not technical enough to speak on that), but I do know that any battery concerns that are not corroborated by errors in the car get pushed away by tesla, and we have all the people who try to submit tickets for "I drove 8 miles but 10 went off the battery, why wont you listen to me tesla!" to thank for them ignoring real battery concerns.

Focus on the AC not cooling the vehicle (which I have heard here before in other threads), and when you take it in, you can describe the whine (with a time and date stamp hopefully). Let them fix that, then see where you end up.

 

[letterk]

Yeah, I get the whole issue of people complaining about range, who do not understand how EV's work and how there are many factors that can affect it. But Tesla doesn't seem to want to do anything that doesn't have an outright fault. They are overly dependent on their diagnostics, which I know from first hand experience does not catch everything.

The one time I mentioned where it completely stopped charging, there was an error code. Tesla said it was because I was plugging in/unplugging/unplugging back in too quickly. Even though I was sitting in my car and not doing what they claimed I did. I explained this to them and they wouldn't discuss it further, saying, that's what the diagnostics tell us. Maddening.

I got a chance to finish two comparisons drives today. It's part of my drive home I do every day. From my office to the end of the off ramp of the freeway. I like this section because it's the most consistent day to day. Same traffic levels. Same car speeds. No impact of various red lights. Etc... There is a slight elevation loss. Even thought it was hot today, I kept the AC at the same speed as yesterday for comparison. Yes, it was hot, but all in the name of science.

-Yesterday. 89F. 163wh/mi
-Today. 100F. 269wh/mi

 

[ucmndd]

400wh/mi on a Model 3 is insane even at 110+ degrees.

Agree with others, you have an AC/cooling problem, not a battery/range problem. Categorize it accordingly and schedule service.

 

[letterk]

I had a lengthy call with a rep a couple days ago. Almost 30mins. He agreed something is certainly wrong with the car. But since the diagnostics don’t report any faults, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. So I’m logging data from trips and emailing it into service.

 

[3sr+buyer]

Could the AC have a problem where it tries as hard as it could (using up as much energy as it can) but still fails to cool the cabin?

Does the AC in the Model 3 also help cool the battery? If so, it could be having difficulty with battery cooling while Supercharging in hot weather, resulting in reduced Supercharging rates.

 

[Rocky_H]

Could the AC have a problem where it tries as hard as it could (using up as much energy as it can) but still fails to cool the cabin?

That does sound to me like that's going on.

Does the AC in the Model 3 also help cool the battery? If so, it could be having difficulty with battery cooling while Supercharging in hot weather, resulting in reduced Supercharging rates.

Yep, that is one of the really intelligent things Tesla designed into all of their cars. They have multiple paths and ways of managing their liquid temperature control systems to heat and cool the battery. It can route the coolant just out to the standard simple radiators to exchange heat with the outside air, but if that isn't sufficient, it can route the coolant through the air conditioning chiller to actually make the coolant cold before running it back through the battery. And of course if it's doing that, but not actually getting any chilling there, it's going to keep at it and run the A/C extra high. And in a way, that's worse. While it continues to do that (and not working), the coolant stays warm, whereas it could at least cool it down some if it realized that wasn't working and went back to radiators instead.

Did you see headlines of some articles a while back with Sandy Munroe and people raving about how cool the "octovalve" thing was? That's part of this, with how many options the cars have to move coolant around in different ways to different places.

 

[Regaj]

I don't usually encourage 3rd-party apps - Tesla owners can decide for themselves what, if any apps they want to add. But in your (OP) situation, I would highly recommend Scan My Tesla. That app, in conjunction with the required OBD Bluetooth adapter, would allow you to monitor a variety of temperature-related components. Individual cell temps, coolant temp, coolant flow rate... that sort of thing. I would think that kind of information would be invaluable in diagnosing whatever it is that you have going on. Subsequent conversations with Tesla Service could be much more targeted.

Best of luck. Definitely sounds like you have something amiss. It may very well be something as simple as as a bad sensor which is failing to trigger active cooling, leading to thermal issues and thus efficiency decline.

 

[3sr+buyer]

I don't usually encourage 3rd-party apps - Tesla owners can decide for themselves what, if any apps they want to add. But in your (OP) situation, I would highly recommend Scan My Tesla. That app, in conjunction with the required OBD Bluetooth adapter, would allow you to monitor a variety of temperature-related components. Individual cell temps, coolant temp, coolant flow rate... that sort of thing. I would think that kind of information would be invaluable in diagnosing whatever it is that you have going on. Subsequent conversations with Tesla Service could be much more targeted.

For a 2022 Model 3, use of an OBD-II Bluetooth device will also require an OBD-II splitter adapter to plug the OBD-II Bluetooth device into.

 

[theocguy]

I had a lengthy call with a rep a couple days ago. Almost 30mins. He agreed something is certainly wrong with the car. But since the diagnostics don’t report any faults, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. So I’m logging data from trips and emailing it into service.

Are you able to just log a ticket for the AC cooling with tesla abs have them to look at it?

 

[letterk]

Are you able to just log a ticket for the AC cooling with tesla abs have them to look at it?

I've tried that. I get the standard BS answer from them that "all diagnostics report the vehicle is performing within specs." If you've ever run into issues that aren't detected by diagnostics, it can be terribly frustrating. They believe their diagnostics are infallible and exhaustive. They are absolutely not.

 

[jackmott]

Are the doors that open up to the radiator stuck closed, or have a plastic bag stuck in there or something?

 

[jackmott]

See the solution this guy found, had lots of leaves/gunk in and behind the radiator:

Supercharging slowing down...heat?

So I recently took my 2018 LRM3 on a road trip from DFW to Colorado Springs (750 miles, mostly at posted speed limit - 75mph). This is 5 charge stops, 3 V3 (Amarillo, Clayton, Trinidad) and 2 V2 (Henrietta, Childress). I noticed a new behavior this trip (I make this trip several times a year)...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[KenC]

I would definitely take regaj's advice and get yourself an OBD reader, adapter and SMT. Then you can see for yourself the temps the car is recording, whether the battery pack is being cooled sufficiently, etc.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I've tried that. I get the standard BS answer from them that "all diagnostics report the vehicle is performing within specs." If you've ever run into issues that aren't detected by diagnostics, it can be terribly frustrating. They believe their diagnostics are infallible and exhaustive. They are absolutely not.

Can you post some drive info (energy screen for last 30 miles, conditions), locations of start and end of drives? Just to get some certainty on all of this, evaluate elevation changes, etc.

It definitely does sound like there is an issue here but some specifics on what happened would help evaluate how far outside the norm it is:

1) Energy Screen Consumption graph last 30 miles at end of each drive.

2) Trip Details Page at end of each drive (showing elapsed time, distance, Wh/mi, outside temp, etc.)

3) approximate start and end points of each trip (Google maps). Can shift it by 1/4 mile or whatever for privacy as long as each area is reasonably flat.

4) Any other observations/conditions. Cabin temp set point. Was AC on? Etc.

 

[letterk]

The new energy usage app has been interesting. While I haven't had a very hot day since getting it, I have seen a drastic difference in energy usage between an 80F day and a 90F day. On my typical 12 mile/30 min commute home from work, on an 80F day, my AC usage takes up about 3-5% of total energy. On a 90F day, it jumps to 22-25%. With my previous Model 3, I never saw AC even half of that (based on back of the napkin calcs). Really interested to see how high that jumps on days 100F+, but may have to wait until next year to find out.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

With my previous Model 3, I never saw AC even half of that (based on back of the napkin calcs).

Very hard to say given the rough calculations. Tons of variables which is why the in-car display is long-awaited and much needed. Unlikely anything has changed that much even when comparing heat pump Model 3 to AC-only Model 3. Obviously for heating it will be much different.

Getting the very specific details and round trip info listed above would help narrow down the issue, or determine whether this is “normal.” Hard to say.