Almost 15% range loss Model 3 Awd

[Max3]

Hi, I have read about people losing range over time in their model 3s. In most cases its about 10-20 miles. For me the story is a bit different, right now at 100% charge I get about 267 miles. That's over 40 miles that I have lost. It has been happening slowly over time, I have had the car for about 6 months, and almost every week the range reading at 90% dropps with 1 or 2 miles. So it seems that it is steadly going down, but sadly it doesn't stop. I have contacted Tesla and been to the Sc several times and they keep telling me every single time that it's because of driving style and that the range reading adapts to my driving, this is not true as you probably know.

I have tried several times 100%-0%-100%, nothing helps. Tesla did actually do a diagnostics but found nothing, and they do not wanna help me anymore because they don't see this as a problem. Anyone experience THIS much range loss?

I have a LR AWD

 

[TMThree]

Whats your lifetime Wh usage?

 

[ajdelange]

Batteries, as does everything else, wear out eventually. Each ages at a different rate and what that is does depend on many factors including how you manage it part of which is how you drive.

Start monitoring the battery capacity in terms of % or better still kWh rather than miles and keep a history. Use an application like TeslaFi to help you do this. A battery should lose only about a percent or 2 capacity each year. This after 8 years, the length of the battery warranty, it should have lost 15 - 20%. Take your degradation over time history to Tesla and ask them if this is normal. If it is ask them how steep a decline would be considered abnormal. Ask them if they will replace the battery if it has lost 20% in a year or 2.

Because monitoring battery capacity is somewhat difficult you need a lot of data over time to draw solid conclusions as to whether you battery is really losing life faster than "normal" or not. I have often said that once a new Tesla owner gets past range anxiety he becomes preoccupied by battery degradation anxiety. Much of the time it isn't real but sometimes, of course, it is.

 

[TMThree]

Tesla battery warranty on the 3 is 70% over 8 years as per: Vehicle Warranty

Here's my battery chart off Teslafi. The drop when the car was new was due to firmware decreasing range from 325 miles to 310, and then later restoring it (which caused a slow climb after)

 

[jelloslug]

What is your average running Wh per mile?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

right now at 100% charge I get about 267 miles. That's over 40 miles that I have lost.

That is pretty bad. The good news is that you really are not far from a battery replacement. You only have to wait 3 more months at this rate!

There are a couple examples of people who have had really bad degradation like this, and they get a message that their battery won’t take a charge, at some point.

I am not sure why people want to know your lifetime Wh/mi. But I guess it would be a datapoint, to see how aggressively the battery was used. Not sure why that would matter though.

How many miles on the car?

 

[TMThree]

I am not sure why people want to know your lifetime Wh/mi. But I guess it would be a datapoint, to see how aggressively the battery was used. Not sure why that would matter though.

It would help us see if he's just burning a ton of power and thus the range is actually accurate based on his usage. If he's getting 250 Wh, then its a problem. If this guy is using 400 Wh then maybe not. Some people are running AC on high, driving at 95 mph on the interstate and wondering why EPA range isn't happening.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It would help us see if he's just burning a ton of power and thus the range is actually accurate based on his usage. If he's getting 250 Wh, then its a problem. If this guy is using 400 Wh then maybe not. Some people are running AC on high, driving at 95 mph on the interstate and wondering why EPA range isn't happening.

I assume he is talking about the battery indicator of range (rated miles). This is not affected by Wh/mi usage in any significant way.

In the original post it seemed fairly clear that is what he was talking about, but OP could confirm.

 

[Max3]

First off, the car has 6000 miles. Avg wh/mile is 290, although this should not have an affect on the rated miles as Alan stated. I am not talking about real range here!.

As stated it might go under 70% capacity in a while, but I need that extra range now, that's why I chose a LR over a SR+. And every day I hope to get out to my car saying "cannot charge to 100%" cause as you stated, that's what has been happening to people seeing huge range losses. And have lead to a battery replacement.

Right know I get 61 kWh out of the battery when doing 100-1% runs. This clearly shows that something isn't right but when mentioned to Tesla technician his answer was: "I cannot see anything wrong with the battery".

It think Tesla should have some sort of battery warranty for the first year like max 20% deg.

And to be clear, maybe its not physical degradation, but I know for sure that something isn't right with my battery.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

@Max3

IMO the level of degradation is very high and if the trend continues Tesla will almost certainly replace your battery.

As a point of reference, my car is one year old, has over 15k miles on it and I abuse the hell out of my battery (according to the purists at least). I don't have charging at home and also don't need to drive to work, so my car can go 1 - 3 weeks at a time without being charged with just a handful of drives. Most of my miles are highway miles with 95%+ of my charging done at Superchargers, meaning long deep drain charge cycles (apparently bad) in short periods of time, such as a 2,000 miles trip to Colorado over 4 days (and back again).

The punchline? My rated range is 301 miles @ 100% which is barely a 3% degradation. People throw out a lot of idealized guidelines for looking after your battery, and no doubt some of them make some difference. But the biggest factor by far is simple luck of the draw. Some batteries leave the factory in better shape than others.

Short anecdote - I used to be obsessive about looking after the battery in my MacBook back in the day, storing at 60% charge and avoiding deep discharges, calibrating and all kinds of crap. After 400 charge cycles I had to replace it as it lost more than 20% capacity. My wife owned the same MacBook and didn't care about any of that. She'd often leave it to die completely discharged for days while she was on a trip, or have it plugged in on her desk for weeks on end while doing an assignment. When we finally sold it after 6 years it had over 900 cycles and 92% of its original capacity.

It's the luck of the draw.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

As stated it might go under 70% capacity in a while, but I need that extra range now, that's why I chose a LR over a SR+. And every day I hope to get out to my car saying "cannot charge to 100%" cause as you stated, that's what has been happening to people seeing huge range losses. And have lead to a battery replacement.

Maybe it will happen soon! You can hope.

I do think I would escalate your issue again to see if they can look more closely and have engineering look at it. It makes no sense to have 20% EDIT: 15% (did not calculate and somehow got 20% in my mind) range loss in 6 months.

 

[KenC]

Seems wrong. Can you take your car to a different SC?

 

[Max3]

Maybe it will happen soon! You can hope.

I do think I would escalate your issue again to see if they can look more closely and have engineering look at it. It makes no sense to have 20% range loss in 6 months.

To be clear, around 15% but still a lot ofc. The main problem is that my SC don't think there is anything wrong with the battery, and every time I trie to contact Tesla trough other sources ex chat or phone it always comes down to them saying that my SC will have a look at it witch of course does not help.

 

[Max3]

Seems wrong. Can you take your car to a different SC?

Maybe but it seems quite risky if I drive 250 miles to the 2nd nearest SC and they say the same thing, or ask me to go back to the other SC.

 

[diamond.g]

Have them try a CAC reset (if they are willing) to see if it is just a calibration issue.
Battery Degradation "fix"? : teslamotors

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

To be clear, around 15% but still a lot ofc. The main problem is that my SC don't think there is anything wrong with the battery, and every time I trie to contact Tesla trough other sources ex chat or phone it always comes down to them saying that my SC will have a look at it witch of course does not help.

Sorry, 15%. It sucks that you actually need the range and you don’t have it. Patiently waiting for failure is less palatable in that case.

 

[ajdelange]

Right know I get 61 kWh out of the battery when doing 100-1% runs.

I interpret this a meaning that if you get in the car with 100% battery and drive until it reports 1% and look at the watt hours consumed for that trip that the number is 61 kWh. This implies usable capacity of 61/(1 - .01) = 61.6 kWh. I assume the S LR has a 100 kW hr battery which has about 98 kWh capacity when new in which case your battery has degraded to 62% of its capacity and that is certainly not normal for 6 months ownership.

Now if you are looking at the "Since Last Charge" number this usage has occurred over several days and if you have preconditioned the car etc phantom or other drains may have lowered the SoC but these are not counted by the Trip OD's kWh calculations and it is possible to see a 99% SoC reduction with only 61 kWh having gone into consumption while the car is moving. For this reason battery capacity is calculated from charging data. If you charge from 1% to 100% (please don't do this often) and the BMS reports that only 61 kWh was added to the battery that really means that the capacity of the battery is 61.6 kWh and that really is an indicator of a serious battery problem.

So collect charging data using TeslaFi or a similar app. If you consistently find kWh_added/(End_SoC/100 - Start_SoC/100) is around 61 kW then you have a solid argument that there is a problem and a tech who understands will clearly see it.

This clearly shows that something isn't right but when mentioned to Tesla technician his answer was: "I cannot see anything wrong with the battery".

Collect some battery capacity data as described above and show it to him. A sample plot would look like this (just look at the little circles for now).

The caution that goes with this is that the accuracy of the estimated battery capacity as estimated from a charge is directly proportional to the percent SoC difference between start and end. Thus an estimate for a charge for 10% to 60% is 5 times more accurate that one from a 30% to 40% charge. Try, therefore, to charge at least 50%. In this sample plot the accuracy of each estimate is shown as the vertical bar under the circle which represents the estimate. In drawing the trend line those accuracies are considered. Even with the wild points and none of the fancy math it's clear that the capacity of this battery is about 98 kWh. If all the points were distributed about the 60 kWh line that would be a very strong argument that the battery capacity is about 60 kWh and that either the battery is flawed or the BMS is not reading its status properly. Keep in mind that this data is taken from the car's BMS through the API. It is what the car itself has reported.

Now I recognize that all this is easy for me to say because of 50 years experience doing this kind of data analysis and am aware that someone with no technical background would probably not be able to advance this argument as assertively as I believe I could (but not in Swedish). My suggestion would be to seek the assistance of a friend, colleague or family member who could do the analysis and/or make the argument for you.

 

[KenC]

So, if the other SC is too far, and you are getting nowhere with the local SC, I'd do as others suggest, collect more data, using TeslaFi or other app, and if that doesn't work, then I'd try a hard reboot, link below. You can ask the SC for a CAC reset, but it doesn't sound like they'd agree.

Tesla Model 3 Hard Reset

 

[Max3]

Have them try a CAC reset (if they are willing) to see if it is just a calibration issue.
Battery Degradation "fix"? : teslamotors

Yes have seen that article although a couple of days ago he posted an update saying that the range started to go down again below 290 miles and seems to continue dropping.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

at 100% charge I get about 267 miles

I get 61 kWh out of the battery when doing 100-1% runs

Sounds like this was a continuous 100% to 1% discharge (no park)

Story checks out:

267rmi * 230Wh/rmi * 0.99 = 60.8kWh

Note the use of the 230Wh/rmi constant (it is arguably as high as 234Wh/rmi but I've never seen that) - shows that the 245Wh/rmi constant that some people insist on is only for the charging event (as detailed above).

A new battery should give you 310rmi*230Wh/rmi = 71.3kWh. (With 234Wh/rmi it would be 72.5kWh)

(This number doesn't have anything to do with the actual battery capacity of course - it is a scaled (by about 0.955) version of the capacity - but it does show you the relative degradation - which of course is 15%.)

Keep hoping for that "cannot charge to 100%" message! What sort of driving do you do where you have to routinely do this sort of length drive?