Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

90d.... late November 2016 build

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Hello everyone,

I am new to the Tesla forum family. Please don't hang me out to dry if this topic has already been discussed as I cannot seem to find a search option and the forum. I have a 2016 facelift model S that was manufactured on November 26 of 2016.I have concerns over the range of the car. Right now I have 55000 miles and at a 95% charge it saying I am only rated to 256 miles. I know when new the car should have been rated somewhere just over 300 miles range. So my question is should I be concerned about the life of my battery and/or is it failing?
 
So, here's my take on this. Change your display from range to % and stop worrying about it.

The actual range of my car varies on a day-to-day basis - what's the temperature? Humidity (air density)? Wind direction and speed? Road surface conditions? Tire pressure and wear? You get the idea - there are a lot of factors that affect range. There are days that a 90% charge will get me 150km, like last week in -40* temperatures. There are days when I'd get 440km+, heading downhill with a tailwind. Which of those is my car's range?

Personally I only show percentage, and then I look at how far I drove on the last 10% of my battery and extrapolate that for what my range that day will be. So if I'm in cold weather, stop-and-go traffic, with the heat on and with a cold battery I know I'm not going to get very far compared to if I'm driving in the summer on a moderate day with no AC and no wind on the highway.

I don't know where Youngstown is, but where I live no two days are the same (unlike what I imagine living in southern California to be like), so the error in measurement from the environmental variables washes out whatever the actual degradation effects are. I know my battery will degrade over time and has degraded, but I also know that the impact of degradation is a pittance compared to the impact of other factors that the car experiences every time I drive.

For the record, I believe my car had an original range of around 460 km and the last time I charged to 100% the car figured it could go 440 km. The 440 km is pretty consistent with what I see using my 10% method in near-ideal driving conditions in the summer, and in the winter I know that number will be closer to 330 km unless it's really cold or the roads are really bad. How often do I have to drive that far in a single day without a stop to charge? Pretty much never, so it's usually a moot point either way.

The idea of a single, specific, fixed range that the car has is, to me, not logical. And no different than an ICE vehicle. It's a moving target that depends on that day's circumstances, and unless the car was reporting vastly different numbers under similar conditions I personally don't think about it twice. But I definitely seem to be in the minority on this forum...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shateam