If it is a common problem for these temperatures, then I expect that others would have their cars in for service and the service center would tell you that it's just the heat.
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2023 M3 air conditioner using 70% of energy
E90alex
Active Member
Short tips are not accurate to determine to full range of the battery.
Every time you park the cabin will heat up dramatically and the system has to work overtime to cool the cabin back down. This is especially true since the roof is glass so the interior will get hotter than other cars.
If you look on the consumption graph, the energy usage is going to be crazy high every time you get into the car and it will level off as you drive longer. It may take a few miles of driving before the cabin is cool enough to ramp down the AC. But if you are only doing a few mile trips at a time between stores and errands etc, the cabin never fully cools and you are just seeing that constant high consumption.
Also if you keep the climate set to “LO” then it’s going to drain maximum power because it’s trying to keep the cabin temp as low as possible. The climate control is automatic and smart and you shouldn’t need to adjust the temp at all. Just set your desired temp and let it do its thing. If it’s hot, it will max out AC and then gradually ramp down the AC as the cabin gets to your desired temperature. If you keep it on LO then it never gets to ramp down and is constantly running at full tilt.
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ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I’ve driven 170,000 miles in a Model S in interior CA - we are not “Phoenix Hot” but spend most of the summer near or above 100 degrees.
What you’re experiencing is not normal. What’s not clear to me is if you’re basing your findings off of this single 10 mile trip or what the other variables are.
Are you preconditioning the cabin before you depart?
Do you see the same consumption on a single longer trip (say 50+ miles)?
Do you see consumption noticeably reduce if you set the temp to say ~70-72 instead of full-tilt “LO”?
What does the car report for wh/mi on these trips? A “100 mile” range in a Model 3 RWD implies consumption in the 500-600 wh/mi range.
What you’re experiencing is not normal. What’s not clear to me is if you’re basing your findings off of this single 10 mile trip or what the other variables are.
Are you preconditioning the cabin before you depart?
Do you see the same consumption on a single longer trip (say 50+ miles)?
Do you see consumption noticeably reduce if you set the temp to say ~70-72 instead of full-tilt “LO”?
What does the car report for wh/mi on these trips? A “100 mile” range in a Model 3 RWD implies consumption in the 500-600 wh/mi range.
If the short trips are with short stops, if may be wise to leave the car on ( lock, and turn the precondition on ) to maintain the cabin temp
E90alex
Active Member
There’s a keep climate on function as well.
Again, are you preconditioning the car (using the app to schedule turning on the HVAC to cool the cabin) prior to unplugging from the AC charger?
In short drives the car will initially expend lots of power to cool the cabin (and possibly the traction battery) but this energy consumption will decline once the cabin is at the desired temperature. If you extrapolate the initial HVAC consumption it will give an unrealistically short range.
I would also suggest that purchasing a sunshade for the glass roof such as:
https://www.amazon.com/Sunshade-Shades-Skylight-Reflective-Upgarde/dp/B092YST673/
will help reduce HVAC power consumption.
Thanks for the question, the 10 mile was just an example, we always experience a 200% to a 300% drop in range for any distance driven when running the AC (in phoenix 110+ temps , running on LO with HI fan.) I am assuming running LO is running the compressor constantly, which another post claimed would consume a max of 7 kw. That being the case it is not possible to loose that much range. preconditioning does not impact our results, sometime we jump in and drive when in a hurry , sometimes if the kids are going we cool down a bit, but since we park in car port it is not much of a factor. We see the same results at 50+ miles (We drive the grandson home everyday 56 miles round trip- with no AC (Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb) we got expected range. When it got warmer we suspected something was wrong but never really measured it , just noticed our charging time (L2 home charger) was taking longer and longer. Then we measured in May and were shocked with what we were seeing. We took the car in for service but were not takin seriously, later found out they never voltage tested the compressor. We are taking it in again, but afraid of the same run around, so wanted experience from others if they were getting these poor results. My 2016 Nissan Leaf (nice cold AC is loosing about 13% range running on LO) with it's horrible 60 mile range it is nearly out performing my 272 mile 2023 Tesla M3 standard range. Running the AC on 72 improves a little, but simply because the single stage compressor is engaged less, but still horrible. When my wife gets back from dropping the grandson today I will answer your wh/mi question, ( I looked before , but don't remember)
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Lindenwood
Active Member
This! I have definitely seen 600+ wh/mile for the first portion of a drive in really hot days where the AC has to run hard to overcome the heat radiated from the roof glass.
On that note, I highly recommend roof glass shades in place for hotter seasons. It makes a huge difference in the time and energy required to initially cool the cabin, and even steady-state reduces highway consumption in hot days by 25-50 wh/mI.
We park under a car port. If the AC is suppose to only pull 7kw max (running all the time -LO with HI fan) , going 10 miles and consuming 35 miles, or going 58 miles and consuming 140 miles plus. How do you recommend I precondition the car that is going to change this? (please provide details, I will gladly precondition the vehicle to avoid this excessive range reduction.) We are talking a 200% to 300% reduction in range running the AC, I am not sure how preconditioning it going to change that. I am not squabbling about 20 or 30 miles of range here. But if there is something I am missing, I will gladly do whatever to get rid of this problem.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
10 miles is a very short trip. I would bet that a lot of this is overhead loss from initial startup and depending on what type of roads you are travelling and if there is a lot of stop and go, it could be from a lot of time where your car is stationary, but AC is still running.
One thing to note is AC consumption varies in time, not as a proportion of miles. That means if you are travelling fast, it's impact as a portion of miles is less. If you are going slow or in traffic or stationary, it goes up drastically. Same applies to heat.
This trips up a lot of people because they look at it as a percentage of miles travelled, when that is not how it works.
If you were actually going 100 miles (which would be done typically on a highway) and you observe consumption percentage actually being that high, that is one thing, but you aren't observing that.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
He is saying due to your short trip, the initial energy needed to get your car to initial target temperature takes up a huge portion of your total energy usage as a percentage. If you went on longer trips where range would be a concern (like 100+ mile trips) it is unlikely you would observe the same thing.
Here's some ball park numbers from your 9 mile trip. For AC you used 20 miles of range out of 272 rated miles. A 2023 Model 3 RWD has 57.5 kWh usable. Works out to about 4.4kWh used by AC. At 7kW full bore, that means around 38 minutes of AC usage. Does that sound about right for how long that trip took (including time parked with AC on)? Note the above assumes the energy app is accurate, which there have been cases reported the categories it puts consumption in might not be.
As others mentioned though, LO generally is a waste of energy as the car isn't adjusting the AC to suit a target temp, so it is going at full bore when it may be better suited not to and to recirculate (as Auto does).
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E90alex
Active Member
You are trying to extrapolate from all the wrong data that is distorted by all the short trips.
Firstly you should keep the display on % of energy used instead of miles.
That energy screen looks pretty but doesn’t really give you much useful information in terms of predicting range because it’s comparing to EPA rated range. You almost will never get the rated range and will always “use” more miles than you actually traveled.
You never say how you are achieving your number of 100 miles of range. I assume you are just seeing that you “consumed” 3x more miles than you travelled and therefore you assume your total range will be 273/3. Again this is not going to be correct if you’re basing your numbers on that energy screen.
A more accurate measure of your energy usage is the consumption tab to see how many wh/mi it’s using and if you change it to the last 5 mi after the cabin has been cooled to temp (and not set on LO, you should see a more accurate prediction of your remaining range.
You should also look at your trip meters to see the actual consumption in wh/mi which is going yo be more useful than extrapolating remaining range from your energy screen.
Firstly you should keep the display on % of energy used instead of miles.
That energy screen looks pretty but doesn’t really give you much useful information in terms of predicting range because it’s comparing to EPA rated range. You almost will never get the rated range and will always “use” more miles than you actually traveled.
You never say how you are achieving your number of 100 miles of range. I assume you are just seeing that you “consumed” 3x more miles than you travelled and therefore you assume your total range will be 273/3. Again this is not going to be correct if you’re basing your numbers on that energy screen.
A more accurate measure of your energy usage is the consumption tab to see how many wh/mi it’s using and if you change it to the last 5 mi after the cabin has been cooled to temp (and not set on LO, you should see a more accurate prediction of your remaining range.
You should also look at your trip meters to see the actual consumption in wh/mi which is going yo be more useful than extrapolating remaining range from your energy screen.
Please do not say what I am and am not observing, this is dismissive and misrepresenting the facts. We quickly posted an example simply because we were asked to. Your logic is faulty - We drove only 5.3 miles on a similar hot day in a model Y Lender (posted below) and consumed only 7 miles, so driving less should have been worse according to what you are saying - But being a different vehicle it did not have the problem. We take our grandson home everyday 58 miles (round trip) that consumes 140+ miles of range running the AC. Our 2023 M3 standard range is getting less than 100 miles of range in the phoenix summer. Please post your energy app results going 10 miles running the AC on LO with fan speed of HI, lets see how many miles you consume.
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E90alex
Active Member
I just drove home with the climate set to LO and consumption went from like 230 wh/mi to 400-500+.
This is your problem if you’re keeping the climate on LO or very low temps all the time.
This is your problem if you’re keeping the climate on LO or very low temps all the time.
Usage would be 1.75kw max, in phoenix this is 13 to 15 minutes, (and there is no parking time - you have a lot of inaccurate assumptions ). We experience the same problem on long trips. I am going to have to post more examples with longer trips. I had no idea a simple sample would result in so many people being so presumptive that this was short trip issue. There is no other tesla m3 I know getting under 100 miles of range in the phoenix summer. We know the vehicle is using energy because the charge time verifies what the BMS is reporting. I am taking the vehicle in for service again. I ran this post to get some indication if anyone else was experiencing this, because none of my small circle of tesla friends do, they all tell me I have a defective vehicle. We compare the same trips and my vehicle is always much worse running the AC. (And no it is not a BMS issue.) The issue only occurs when running the AC.
Interesting. So then all 2023 Tesla M3 (is that your vehicle?) will get a reduction of 200% to 300% in range always driving on LO. Problem is. that is not the case, my tesla friends (mix of M3 and Y model various years) here in phoenix doing the same test - do not. They do experience somewhere around a ~20% loss in range when do the same tests, so it is bad, but still no where near what I am experiencing of 200 to 300% loss of range.
I will be getting another Loaner where I can compare same to same drives with AC on LO and fan on HI. Same conditions and trips, if there is no problem, then the results should be the same. I will provide some bench marks to see how vehicles compare. There will be differences, but they should all be ball park the same .
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I'm saying you are not observing 100 miles because you didn't actually go that far, but rather extrapolated!
By your own numbers:
Traveling 10 miles used 35 miles, a 3.5x ratio
Traveling 58 miles used 140 miles, a 2.4x ratio
This proves my point! The further you travel the smaller the ratio gets. That suggests that the high consumption is most likely overhead related. That means if you actually travelled 100 miles non-stop, most likely the ratio will reduce further.
As for me posting the energy app, I'm still on 2022.20.7, so I don't have the new energy app that shows how the consumption breaks down. Also I'm in the Bay Area in California and right now peak temperatures is 60-65 degrees, so no way will I blast AC at LO with HI fan speed for 10 miles, as that's just a recipe for getting a cold.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Is that the actual travel time or are you just estimating from maps?
I agree with the others, post your actual wh/mi from the trip meter (which should include travel time also). That makes it easier for others to compare to their own consumption numbers without relying on assumptions the energy app may be making.
You can display the trip meter by going to Controls > Trips
For the current trip it would show display distance, duration and average energy usage.
For since last charge it can show distance and total and average energy.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla
Up thread you already have some numbers to compare to: 230 Wh/mi without AC, 400-500+ Wh/mi with AC blasting on LO.
The only thing I can contribute is my own recent trip with no AC is 210 Wh/mi (I have a 2021 Model 3 SR+), lifetime average since I last checked was 221 Wh/mi.
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Thanks will post the requested sometime tomorrow, provided I can steal the car from my 100 mile a-day driving wife.
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