Battery died with 10 km Typical Range left?

[JRMW]

I've never been stranded like the OP asked
HOWEVER:

The Supercharger in my metro is 20.0 miles from my house. I had to use it until the electrical company hooked up service in my garage.

(I apologize but I forget the nomenclature here)

I had 71 miles showing under my battery on my car display. On the energy consumption graph, it said I had 41 miles of range.

I drove the 20 miles at 65 mph on a highway.
I had to turn off all heat except seat heaters and steering wheel.

At the end the energy consumption chart said I only had 5 miles remaining.
under the battery, it said 12 miles.

So I used WAY MORE energy than I would have thought.

of note:
my car was cold soaked for 4 days.
it was FREEZING. (I forget, but I think it was about 15 F)

 

[Andyw2100]

I drove the 20 miles at 65 mph on a highway.
I had to turn off all heat except seat heaters and steering wheel.

Did you also turn on range mode? I'm guessing, based on your numbers, that you may not have. If you did not have range mode on, a lot of energy was being devoted to heating your battery.

 

[JRMW]

Did you also turn on range mode?

I didn't. thanks for the reminder!

it'll hopefully never happen again, because now I have the 14-50 hooked up in my garage.
So I start every day with 190 miles of range, which I will NEVER use in a day!

but I'll tell you, it was SCARY seeing the car drop 2.5 to 3 miles of range for every mile I went... with the interior heat OFF!

 

[Carl]

I had also put this question to the Belgian-Dutch subforum (where there is no bitching ), so I might as well translate here the general teneur of the answers there:
- no-one has seen a battery drop dead under him with the car still indicating any amount of typical range;
- typical range does not inexplicably start dropping over the last tens of kilometers*; if you are, say, burning 30% more typical range than you are actually getting kilometers on the odometer, and your right foot is monitoring that your typical range stays at +30% and doesn't drop below that percentage**, then you can rely on the fact that the typical range calculation will not suddenly go berserk (if all external circumstances stay equal)***
- nothing in this respect has changed since 2013****

So I tend to believe we are OK here. Well done Tesla. And as @ohmman says - this is quite different from an iPhone, which, especially in the cold, can suddenly drop dead whereas a second earlier it still mentioned 20% or so available battery!

* like @Nietschy, a lot of members of the Belgian-Dutch forum drive to near zero between superchargers, if only because, unlike lucky @Nietschy, we have to drive at least 800 km to see the first ski slopes! And supercharging the first 50km is a lot faster than supercharging the last 50km, so we tend to leave at a supercharger as soon as possible and arrive at the next at near zero range.
** simply adapting speed is generally more than good enough, in the experience of many.
*** unlike the figures (or the "stay below 90/105/120 km/h" messages) of the trip/energy planner, which seem to change every few minutes. Of course you need to take into account the fact that you may need to climb a mountain or you could get stuck in a snowstorm, but that was not the question.
**** it may be that the amount of km that one can possibly do below zero has changed (i.e. is lower today than it was before), but again that was not the question.

 

[croman]

I didn't. thanks for the reminder!

it'll hopefully never happen again, because now I have the 14-50 hooked up in my garage.
So I start every day with 190 miles of range, which I will NEVER use in a day!

but I'll tell you, it was SCARY seeing the car drop 2.5 to 3 miles of range for every mile I went... with the interior heat OFF!

Cold soaked battery driving at 65mph actually isn't great for your battery. Tesla BMS will protect you somewhat but I'd definitely be glad you left range mode on because you needed the battery heater on full blast. Next time preheat your car and pay for level 2 charging locally rather than highway driving to a SC. It'll be better for your battery and encourage more public charging stations to invest in your region.

 

[iKhalid]

As I thought, my case has always been unique!
My car died TWICE with range left. The first time was I think 2 years ago in freezing winter. I had around 4% left when the supercharger was only 5km away. And now my car is at the Montréal service centre for the exact same reason; this time with 15km (5%) left when it wasn't that cold. And guess what! They just called telling me that my battery is fine after a week of troubleshooting. I guess you already know how I feel about this!

 

[whitex]

They just called telling me that my battery is fine after a week of troubleshooting.

It seems irrelevant that battery is fine if the car can't move with 15km range to go. In the end, the complete drivetrain is under warranty, not just the battery, so in the end I say warranty covers whatever is needed to have the car move. I'd ask them to identify which part of the system is not fine, rather than just check the battery. Maybe your range estimation is off, maybe some battery management system is off and attempting to protect the battery too early, or maybe the motors draw too much power causing the battery at low SoC to get overloaded, maybe the wiring has too much resistance, or it could be the gremlin under the car - who cares, the car should not shut down with 15km to go, IMO.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

The OP went wrong in admitting any risky or wrong-doing on their part. When I saw message #3 I knew it was a mistake by OP.

That is a surefire trigger on TMC. Now most of the thread has degenerated into talk about how risky the OPs actions are, instead of the accuracy of the Typical Range estimator. OPs potential risky actions are wholly irrelevant to whether or not Typical Range can be positive and yet the car stops. (Or at least, if you consider them relevant, make the case why they caused this - not the mere fact that the range was low.)

My tip to the @Carl, you should have asked two very simple questions only:

this is only about whether anyone has ever experienced any of these two situations: battery dead with still some Typical Range left, or: Typical Range, when it is getting low, suddenly decreasing by an order of magnitude without any good reason.

I live in eternal hope someone might actually want to discuss OPs questions instead of how or why he was low on range. Everyone is low on range sometimes. Trustworthiness of the Typical Range estimate is a useful topic.

Now, as to the questions: I have had Typical Range go much faster when it is low, so I share that sentiment. But I have never had the car stop due to no battery. (I got to 0 only once on the Model S P85 and quickly drove to a very nearby charger, other low ranges I've had more often than that.)

 

[Carl]

Thanks @iKhalid that’s very informative. So I guess we need to be aware it can happen, even if only exceptionally. As @whitex says, I wouldn’t consider that normal though.

 

[SuisseDriver]

Cold soaked battery driving at 65mph actually isn't great for your battery.

Why???
Driving at 100-110kmh on the highway is necessiting very little energy (probably 30-40kW) so like 10-15% of the full power. What basing you this qualitative statement on? Any source?

 

[TravisT]

I ran out of juice a half mile from the Des Moines supercharger and showed 14 miles of range remaining. This was two weeks ago.

 

[TravisT]

Oh, the next day I got the 12V power low warning. My SC changed out the 12V battery and the battery coolant heater. No problems since. And I thought I was fine with 14 miles left because we've run my wife's MS down to the single digits a few times with no problem.

 

[croman]

Why???
Driving at 100-110kmh on the highway is necessiting very little energy (probably 30-40kW) so like 10-15% of the full power. What basing you this qualitative statement on? Any source?

Winter saps the batterys ability to provide power and driving beyond 65mph further increases the strain. Cold Soaked battery eats energy warming itself. Bad combo. If you've never driven under those conditions you'd never know that the car will use far more than 30kw to maintain speed with the conditions.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

And I thought I was fine with 14 miles left because we've run my wife's MS down to the single digits a few times with no problem.

I would say the past common wisdom was that you can go into negative miles even.

Never before this have I heard positive miles resulting in the car stopping due to low battery.

Is there a bug in the firmware or are some cars just aging bad or?

 

[IdaX]

When this happened to Bjorn he thought that the cause was uneven discharge in the individual battery modules. So if just one of the 8 modules drops below voltage, the car cuts off even if there's lots of energy left in the other 6-7 modules. The solution to this is to charge your car up to 100% a few times a year to re-even the battery states across the various modules.

 

[mmccord]

Didn't the Tesloop guy have a battery replaced for shutting down with range remaining?

 

[iKhalid]

Didn't the Tesloop guy have a battery replaced for shutting down with range remaining?

I bet some well-known owners will get "Tesla's special treatment"!

FYI, Tesla will be returning my car tomorrow without a fix. They said they couldn't find anything wrong, but it could be a software glitch. (I heard the same excuse two years ago!)
I'm definitely unhappy. I hate the fact that I cannot trust my car anymore.

 

[whitex]

I bet some well-known owners will get "Tesla's special treatment"!

FYI, Tesla will be returning my car tomorrow without a fix. They said they couldn't find anything wrong, but it could be a software glitch. (I heard the same excuse two years ago!)
I'm definitely unhappy. I hate the fact that I cannot trust my car anymore.

DId they confirm that they will tow the car each time the car refuses to move with range leftover (up to whatever the range says)?

Btw, if it was me I'd do two things:

1. The one curious thing I noticed on your warnings was the 12V battery warning. 12V should never be low if functioning correctly (it gets a constant periodic recharge from the main battery - we have 2 MS which run a dual dashcam from 12V 24/7 and never got a 12V battery warning. Maybe you want to replace it (it is a 3+ year old car)? If 12V is faulty, if could potentially glitch some batter management functions, causing imbalances, or even specifically this issue, the car tries to go, battery management has a brownout and throws a fault. If nothing else, It should eliminate the extra warning when this happens. Cost of a battery is not that big.
   
2. What someone suggested earlier, charge the main battery to 100% a couple of times to let the batteries balance out.

 

[TravisT]

I bet some well-known owners will get "Tesla's special treatment"!

FYI, Tesla will be returning my car tomorrow without a fix. They said they couldn't find anything wrong, but it could be a software glitch. (I heard the same excuse two years ago!)
I'm definitely unhappy. I hate the fact that I cannot trust my car anymore.

The roadside assistant told me her supervisor said in older models to give a 20 mile cushion when the range gets low. I told her I don't buy it because my wife's is a year older and has gone into the single digits a few times with no problem.

 

[TravisT]

The solution to this is to charge your car up to 100% a few times a year to re-even the battery states across the various modules.

There is something to this...maybe run it down low also. When mine died, it said 100% was 305 miles on a P85D...about 15 miles higher than I expected. After it died, 100% is now closer to 290 miles. I think the battery lost it's charge reference point sometime before it died.