Actually mileage vs what the car says?

[Mikes68charger]

Ok, so I'm new, just got my CPO 2014 MS P85+ fully loaded with 21in turbines.

I'm still trying to get a grasp on my actual mileage driven vs what the car says I have.

So it was 17deg all last night and I lost 3 miles from 11pm to 830am. No biggy

So started the day at 160miles. Set to condition car as it was 21deg inside car for 12min I think miles was at 155 before driving away.

Drove 10miles back roads, not a lot of stop and go but at least 8 stop lights

And now at 133miles, so that's around 22 e miles to drive 10 actual miles.

Yes both front seat heaters on 2, and heater set at 70 with fan speed of 3

Is this normal? Being a cpo I just wanted to make sure I'm not driving a bad car

Thanks Mike

 

[xG35]

This is normal. And the key factor you are seeing is as follow.

Winter short range drive is probably one the highest battery consumption because your car is doing 2 things, heating the cabinet and heating the battery. Once you stopped, the car gets cold again and it repeats. This impacts is much less when during long distant winter driving.

On a secondary note, heated seat consumes insignificant amount of power. Once the weather gets warm, you will see that efficiency of EV is opposite of gasoline car. AC barely draw the battery and heats might get you extra range.

 

[Videofrank]

Unfortunately it is. I bought my car in November and wasn't really familiar with how the battery would react in cold weather. I guess it's my fault really by not doing my research. The battery loses a lot of miles when it's cold, especially when the weather is in the 20's or lower. It's crazy really. I park my car outside and when I return about 8-10 hours later, the car has lost close to 10%! It doesn't really bother me too much since I can charge at home whenever the battery gets below a certain amount and I don't really drive long distances. I'm curious about how the battery will act in the summer here in the northeast.

 

[ewoodrick]

In the cold, look for about 30% range loss. For better information, use the Energy Range charts.

 

[D.E.]

Resistive heat is used to warm things. It takes a lot of energy. The seat heaters don’t take much.

I just drove from Michigan to Florida this week so was interested in watching power consumption along the way.

My car takes about 300wh/mi, it ranges 260-350 but it averages about 300 at 70mph on the interstate. If I run cabin heat it takes more, 350 or so. That’s with temperatures of about 20F and cabin temp set to 68F.

If you start off plugged in, either to a home charger or a supercharger, you can run the cabin heat and it will take the energy from the incoming power to warm the cabin and it will also warm the battery.

There is a “LO” setting for the climate control, it is at the low end of the temperature control. I can drive, cold outside, climate set to “LO” with very little impact on energy consumption, even in the cold weather I get about 300 wh/mi. With seat heat on and a jacket, it is fine for long distances then at the next supercharging spot I increase the cabin temp to 68 or so while it charges, then back to “LO” when I unplug the car. It was OK for me and I was able to get a consumption rate about what I see in summer driving.

I did some driving around town a couple of weeks ago, it was cold. I started with a cold battery (in garage, plugged in), no preheating, started across town with the cabin heat on and saw consumption levels above 700. These were short trips, 5 miles or less, but the consumption was enormous, it exceeded the graph’s range.

Once the battery is warmed, the consumption will decrease, and then the major increase in consumption comes from heating the cabin. If you want the cabin at warm room temperature, it’ll take a lot of power. If you are OK with a jacket, a much cooler cabin, and if you preheat your battery before starting off, you can drive in the cold with very little impact on your driving power consumption.

You should probably look at the displayed range as more a guestimate than an iron clad number. It is a good guestimate as long as you’re using power to drive the car and not so much to heat the cabin.

Most of the power when driving is used to push air out of the way. There’s a lot less air resistance at 60 than 70. If you are ever worried about remaining range, you can stretch things out by turning off the climate control and slowing down. Then your car will sip power and you’ll get more than the displayed range.

So the displayed range is a rough guide, you can do better or worse. And it is worthwhile to play around a little with it and see, because after that you can pretty much put the power use where you want it and you’ll see the displayed range stretch or contract to match your use.

 

[demundus]

Keep in mind the pack is keeping itself temp. controlled in cases where the temp is below 50F (i think???). Thats alot of energy being expended for the sake of the battery. Now take into account snow resistance/air thickness/internal heating/tire pressures and many other things i cant think of right now, and you're sucking the battery dry.

 

[JohnnyMarshal]

I was having the same problem. My car says 200 miles, but in this weather I get around 150. I was panicking trying to do the math when I would get below 70 miles. I then bought this Tesla Stat's app. It shows me what the car says, but it also gives an estimated range which has been pretty much spot on. It'll track your phantom drain and a bunch of other things too.

‎Stats: For Tesla Model S/X/3

 

[Rockford]

Are you using Typical or Rated as your estimated range display? I found Typical was way more accurate than Rated.

 

[D.E.]

I think there might be heat production from the batteries as the batteries discharge to run the car. I don’t know how much more heat is necessary if the pack is preheated before the trip. I wasn’t driving through thick snow, my tires were properly inflated. I was able to drive in the cold without using a lot more energy.

I don’t know the difference between typical and rated so can’t tell you what I used. Since I didn’t change it, I must have been using the default.

 

[dgpcolorado]

The miles displayed isn't how far one can go unless driving at the same efficiency as the EPA rating for the car, which would be very unusual. Rather, it is the car's fuel gauge (kWh/EPA efficiency) and how far you go is entirely dependent on how you drive and in what conditions (HVAC on/off, wind, snow, rain, temperatures, tire inflation, etc.) Rather than getting misled into believing that the miles left is a useful number, it is best to change your display to battery percent (state of charge, SOC) and just get rid of that miles number. You will find that you will use more battery percent in winter than in summer and use more when driving into a headwind than in a tailwind. You will eventually get used to about how much battery a typical local trip takes, if you bother to pay attention to it.

One advantage of using battery percent as your fuel gauge is that navigation on a route will give you the battery percent remaining at your next destination and this number will be adjusted in real time as you drive. If that number is falling you likely ought to slow down a bit. If it is steady or rising you are fine.

I realize that most newcomers to Tesla like to obsess over that supposed miles of range number but it really is best to just ignore it.

 

[Mikes68charger]

That helps thanks

 

[SSedan]

You will get a feel for it. As said above if I leave with no preheat will below freezing consumption will spike over 700 or even 800wh/m. In my 6.5mile commute with the graph set to 5 mile average and driving 45mph I can see it peak over 800 and settle back down near 700 by the time I park.

If I need max range I will preheat to a high temp while connected to a charging source, let's you bank a little heat.

It is a relatively small percentage of us that drive these in the actual cold, is is sad so much of the information is California centric.
Year and a half ago I was seeing the same surprises you are, now I don't hesitate to make a trip from Green Bay to Minneapolis in January.

 

[docbrown]

+1 on changing your display to percentage instead of miles. A good analogy is your smartphone. If your phone displayed minutes instead of percentage, how accurate would you expect that to be? It would totally vary depending on how many calls you made, how much internet browsing you did, how much you used the flashlight, watching videos, etc.

The car also has many unknown variables that can change for each drive, like hills, wind, high and low outside temperatures, your speed, etc.

 

[nativespinner]

Yeah I changed mine to display percentage because it was driving me nuts trying to figure the logic of remaining miles.

 

[Mikes68charger]

I agree I guess the issue I have with precent is I fly very large rc turbine and electric jets. And our rule of thumb is never go below 40% or we kill the battery. So at 50% I get nervous.

So if I was to drive all week and do no home charging, what precent would you head toward a supercharger? I only use 10_12 % round trip to work

 

[dgpcolorado]

I agree I guess the issue I have with precent is I fly very large rc turbine and electric jets. And our rule of thumb is never go below 40% or we kill the battery. So at 50% I get nervous.

So if I was to drive all week and do no home charging, what precent would you head toward a supercharger? I only use 10_12 % round trip to work

Tesla recommends that the car be plugged in whenever possible. I generally cycle my car between 30 and 70% by adjusting the charge time and level. I don't go below 20% except on road trips and then charge above that level immediately.

Many people leave their cars plugged in at 90% and seem to do fine. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Big Toys]

Ha, I can tell you that I had my car run down to 6 miles left, and it was still running around Miami trying to find the ***%&%% charger (concealed on the 3rd floor of a parking garage...)

 

[dgpcolorado]

...One advantage of using battery percent as your fuel gauge is that navigation on a route will give you the battery percent remaining at your next destination and this number will be adjusted in real time as you drive. If that number is falling you likely ought to slow down a bit. If it is steady or rising you are fine...

A caveat for navigating to a destination and watching the estimated battery percentage at the destination: if going over a mountain pass just before reaching the destination, one needs to be sure to get to the top of the pass! Taking a look at the energy screen plot helps with that, as you can see from this recent picture:

^ Navigating over Monarch Pass (11,312 feet, 3448 meters) to the Poncha Springs, Colorado Supercharger Station. (I did a level 2 charge for 45 minutes enroute to be sure that I could make it over the pass, and had no difficulty.) I would guess that most driver's energy plots don't look like this one but this is pretty routine in the Colorado mountains.

An elevation profile of the route:

 

[Chaserr]

Switch to %, ignore instrument cluster range that will always lie. Use the maps % at arrival estimate and Energy app's Trips estimate, those are always very good estimates that get updated on the fly. The instrument cluster range is never updates, it's just EPA estimated (and optimistic) range / current battery %.

On your staggered turbines don't expect 200 real miles per 100%. You can do it if you're really careful, but you have the least efficient Tesla ever made and it's not made for range.

Square 19" with non performance rubber helps on trips. But they're boring. Put snows on your 19", performance summers on your staggers, and enjoy more smiles in fewer miles per charge. Range isn't a problem, the supercharger network planned for 60kWh batteries so we just road trip a little less efficiently than AWD cars but don't have actual range trouble usually.

Your power use will improve 30% - 40% or so in the summer if you're on staggered 21" right now, that's how hard cold hits our cars. If those are the recommended summer compound rubber, get better winter wheels now you won't even be able to move when it snows. These cars are amazing in snow with snow tires but the summer tires are not going to work, it's dangerous. You're probably over 400whm right now right? 350 is the highest I can average in summer and I really enjoy my car, but in winter the lowest I can get is over 450 and sometimes in cold and thick snow as high as 700whm.