KenN
Member
That's excellent data, with it being broken out so I can get an idea of charge needed for each leg, esp the long climbs! Thanks.
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Peter_M
Member
I thought I'd share some info about a trip I did, to show an extreme case of the effects of winter weather on range. I drove from Montreal to Ottawa last night via the Cornwall supercharger in the snow & freezing rain. It was -7C and snowing, there was a stiff headwind and some freezing rain, and the road was mostly snow-covered. Because of the freezing rain, I was using all the heaters at various times - front and back defrost (plus mirror heaters), windshield heater and just cranking up the heat, all to try to stop the windows from icing up. So pretty much worst case all around, except that it could have been colder. As for speed, the weather and road conditions kept me to around 65 on average, 90 on the clearest stretches.
I left Montreal with 193 km of rated range and got to Cornwall with 53 km left. That's 140 km of rated range to go 87 km, at an average speed of 60 km/h.
Then I charged up to 308 (superchargers are awesome!) and drove home and arrived with 111. That's 197 km of rated range to go 113 km, at an average speed of 64 km/h.
So I was burning up to 74% more than rated range. At one point, the 50 km average consumption was 312 Wh/km! I think the biggest contributor to the poor range was the snow on the road - I often felt the deceleration from hitting a deeper section. But I'm sure all the other stuff didn't help...
So if you have to drive in a storm, plan for really poor efficiency.
A question for the experts: For the first leg, 140km of rated range to go 87 km, I would think that means the Wh/km should be 1.61 times what it is for rated. Rated consumption is around 188, so that comes to 302 Wh/km for that leg. But the trip odometer showed 275 Wh/km. Can anyone explain why they are different?
The other observation is that the car really can't keep the windshield free of ice in those conditions above 70 km/h. Whenever I slowed down to 60 or less, the ice melted (due to less cooling from the airflow, I assume), but at 70 or higher, no setting I could find would melt the ice. The bottom half of the windshield was OK, but the top part iced up in minutes. It took constant spraying, max defrost and stopping a few times to clear the ice to get through it.
On the good side, the driving performance was absolutely awesome. Despite hitting snow piles with one wheel, hitting icy patches, turning corners on very slippery roads, etc., I never felt a loss of control, although the traction and stability control were VERY busy (and ABS a couple of times too). It is truly an amazing car for winter driving.
I left Montreal with 193 km of rated range and got to Cornwall with 53 km left. That's 140 km of rated range to go 87 km, at an average speed of 60 km/h.
Then I charged up to 308 (superchargers are awesome!) and drove home and arrived with 111. That's 197 km of rated range to go 113 km, at an average speed of 64 km/h.
So I was burning up to 74% more than rated range. At one point, the 50 km average consumption was 312 Wh/km! I think the biggest contributor to the poor range was the snow on the road - I often felt the deceleration from hitting a deeper section. But I'm sure all the other stuff didn't help...
So if you have to drive in a storm, plan for really poor efficiency.
A question for the experts: For the first leg, 140km of rated range to go 87 km, I would think that means the Wh/km should be 1.61 times what it is for rated. Rated consumption is around 188, so that comes to 302 Wh/km for that leg. But the trip odometer showed 275 Wh/km. Can anyone explain why they are different?
The other observation is that the car really can't keep the windshield free of ice in those conditions above 70 km/h. Whenever I slowed down to 60 or less, the ice melted (due to less cooling from the airflow, I assume), but at 70 or higher, no setting I could find would melt the ice. The bottom half of the windshield was OK, but the top part iced up in minutes. It took constant spraying, max defrost and stopping a few times to clear the ice to get through it.
On the good side, the driving performance was absolutely awesome. Despite hitting snow piles with one wheel, hitting icy patches, turning corners on very slippery roads, etc., I never felt a loss of control, although the traction and stability control were VERY busy (and ABS a couple of times too). It is truly an amazing car for winter driving.
Most likely the majority of your range loss was due to slogging through snow and slush. Heating doesn't help, but once the drive train warms up it isn't a big deal due to the heat pump.
As for the Wh/km display... I'm not sure I trust it. The numbers don't always all agree.
As for the Wh/km display... I'm not sure I trust it. The numbers don't always all agree.
Despite not trying to, you've convinced me not to drive this car in severe conditions. I've already driven once when the Wh/km went above 300, for a not good enough reason AFAIK, so I'll just agree with Doug_G on the numbers. There are plenty of times I've been unable to make sense of them, in weather good and bad.
I can add my experience during the same drive. We left Montebello QC heading to the Cornwall SC (first SC Charge!). Left with 400km range and arrived with about 200 left. That is 200km lost while going ~125 real km. Temp started at -14 and rose to -9 in Cornwall. It was snowing a lot by the end of the drive. The Tesla was fully loaded with luggage and 4 passengers. Back up to 390km over about an hour at the SC (A-Type battery and slow taper). Drove 180km to Kingston Best Western using 250km of range so down to 150 left. Terrible driving with blowing snow. Even driving at 90km/hr due to the conditions the battery was really being eaten up. Temp now at -3. Figured we needed at least 390km to make the 240km to the Toronto SC. So charged for 3.5 hrs (curses to whomever held up the Kingston SC!). (On the up side I gave my daughter the queen of spades multiple times during our many hands of spades). The first 60km out of Kingston ate 100km of range! That was going to make it close. Going 90-100km/hr on snowy roads. Temp now 0C. Temp got warmer and roads got better and we moved to 70km then 75km travelled for 100k range used. Sped up as we approached Toronto and made super charger with 40k range. Range mode on the whole way.
Superchargers are ridiculous. So fast when the battery is low. Literally something like 7 minutes to get from 40km range to 100km range to get the final 40 km home.
Bottom line in the winter with cold slushy nasty roads, a full (packed the the hilt front and back) car, and headwinds then Toronto to Kingston can be tight. SC between Kingston and Toronto seems a good idea. A fun adventure for us but tired when we rolled into home base at 1:30am.
Superchargers are ridiculous. So fast when the battery is low. Literally something like 7 minutes to get from 40km range to 100km range to get the final 40 km home.
Bottom line in the winter with cold slushy nasty roads, a full (packed the the hilt front and back) car, and headwinds then Toronto to Kingston can be tight. SC between Kingston and Toronto seems a good idea. A fun adventure for us but tired when we rolled into home base at 1:30am.
I think the numbers are useful, as I think they are reasonably consistent and therefore a good guide as to your relative consumption. I just don't think their absolute accuracy is perfect.
You can drive in bad conditions... just be aware of the energy requirements. I've als noticed significant drag in heavy rain conditions. It doesn't matter if the road is just wet, but if you're continuously driving through puddles it will gobble energy.
Peter_M
Member
Fair enough - we each make our choices, and I agree it's hard to figure out the numbers. Before heading out, the driving wasn't worrying me but I was a bit concerned about the range, especially since there are almost no charging options between Montreal and Cornwall. The rated range was double the distance, but the projected range showed only about 25km buffer. So I ended up doing one extra charge before leaving, adding 22km at a slow 30A station, but driving an extra 10km to get to it. As it turned out, I would have been fine without that, but it made me feel better until I realized I could have got to bed at 2am instead of 3:30
As they say, better safe than sorry.Your calculation makes sense. To make it concrete: 140 km of "rated range" means 26.32 kWh if "rated range" assumes 188 Wh/km. i.e. 140 km * 188 Wh/km = 26320 Wh.
26320 Wh / 302 Wh/km = 87.2 km
87 km * 275 Wh/km = 23925 Wh
26320 Wh - 23925 Wh = 2395 Wh
So that's 2.4 kWh unaccounted for. One thing I have noticed is that the trip odometers do NOT seem to account for energy usage when the car is in park (though the calculation clearly includes heat and other energy consumption when the car is moving). e.g. if you preheat the car, you won't see an absolutely enormous spike the moment you move out of the driveway. Is it possible that you reset the trip odometer but did some heating before moving the car? That's the only explanation I can think of.
As for not coping with ice - did you tap the front defrost icon twice? I'm sure you did, but just checking - if you do that then the icon shows in red, rather than blue, and the temp selection shows "HI". In that condition the heater is putting out something like 10 kW. I'd be surprised if that wasn't enough to keep the windshield clear.
But... though I grew up in Ottawa and have encountered -7C and snow - and worse - many times in the past, I now live in Victoria so have not encountered such driving conditions in the Model S!
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You can get some pretty crazy conditions on the 401. On one occasion I was unable to keep the windshield clear in an ICE, which had plenty of heat, and once I ran out of windshield washer (and none left at any gas station) I ended up slumped in my seat so I could look through the bottom 2" of windshield. I had inch thick ice on the front of the car when I arrived in Ottawa. Crazy!
High defrost mode gets too hot to leave on continuously. One thing I can suggest in conditions like that is to manually increase the fan speed. The Auto mode lets it drop too low once the cabin is at temperature, and as a result it can't keep the windshield clear even though the air is warm enough.
High defrost mode gets too hot to leave on continuously. One thing I can suggest in conditions like that is to manually increase the fan speed. The Auto mode lets it drop too low once the cabin is at temperature, and as a result it can't keep the windshield clear even though the air is warm enough.
Peter_M
Member
No, I didn't stop anywhere on that leg of the trip, and I took a picture of the "since last charge" odometer just before I plugged in at the supercharger. There was a spike on the energy graph at the start of the trip, higher than it should have been for just driving. I see that pretty much every time I start driving in the winter, so I assume it's battery heating. On the weekend I was doing a lot of sitting in the car with climate control on (sometimes charging, sometimes not) for 30-60 minutes and then driving, and there was a spike every time. Maybe that's the missing energy. The disappointing thing is that the spike happens even if the climate control is on for an hour before starting, as it was in this case.
Yes, I was using max defrost (red icon) most of the time, and I even tried it once with Range Mode on, in case there was a difference. Doug's right - with max defrost on, the car gets too hot, but I was just living with that to try to get the window to clear.
I guess it was just the "perfect storm" of conditions to create a state that the car can't quite handle. It was -7 C, cold enough to make the rain freeze quickly on the windshield but not cold enough for the rain to turn to snow. And the roads were bad, but good enough for me to drive above 70 km/h, and there was a headwind most of the time. I was surprised how quickly the ice melted when I got off the highway and slowed down below 60. That extra bit of evaporative cooling made enough difference. Seems like there was a missing test case in Tesla's winter testing: -7C, freezing rain, drive 80 km/h.
One other thought: as I cleaned off the car I noticed that the vents in the front bumper were almost completely blocked by ice. I could see that being a problem in hot weather, but could it be contributing here? And BTW, if I had an autopilot radar there, it would have been totally useless under 1cm of ice.
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I did check the fan speed a few times and it was at 11, but maybe it dropped lower sometimes. I'll check that next time.
The preheat doesn't warm up the drive train, so you're still running on resistive electric heaters until it warms up and the heat pump has something to work with. In extreme cold you may also see ongoing battery pack heating.
Unfortunately Tesla doesn't provide any information other than total power consumption, so it's hard to understand exactly what is going on. It's really too bad that Tesla won't share a couple of critical temperature measurements - I'd really love to know the average battery pack temperature. Also the coolant temperature for the motor.
You were in some very nasty conditions, and it can be very hard to keep the windshield clear. Short of going to HI you could set the fan to high, all air on windshield, and increase the temperature only as much as you need to be able to see.
The unfortunate thing is in these humid situations you usually can't get away with using recirculation - you need dry air - so you're bringing in outside air and heating it.
Yeah, Tesla made a big deal about their winter testing when they first released the car (there's a video on it), but in reality they didn't have a lot of real-world experience. When I first got my car it couldn't keep the windshield and the driver's side window clear on ANY cold day. Total fail. They had to replace the dashboard with one that had actual vents to direct air onto the glass (they came up with it so quickly I think they had originally designed the car to have it, then I bet Elon didn't like the look so they removed them. Now they're part of the "winter package".)
Probably not. In cold weather the battery pack runs cold because of its large exposed area. It never reaches normal operating temperature (after highway driving for two hours I've had the car tell me to plug in because the battery was cold).
My last car had adaptive cruise, and it always went offline in rain (due to microwave absorption I assume), or if the bumper was covered in ice/snow.
This is actually one of the very few things I miss about the LEAF. The LEAF has a page which shows instantaneous power consumption due to heating/cooling, other auxiliaries, and the drivetrain. Why doesn't Tesla provide that - at least? I'd like to know where the energy is going. It would be very educational as well - go to the "Energy page", turn the stereo on full volume and see what effect that has (likely nearly zip), turn the lights on and see what effect that has (nearly zip), turn the heat on and see what effect that has (holy moly!), ...
Oh, and a heated steering wheel. I miss the heated steering wheel.
Aussie Bob
Member
As this is a Cdn Trip planning site,has anyone have recommendations for Ottawa to Quebec City? May need to travel this route with Australian friends during August.
Ottawa to Montreal Supercharger. Montreal to Quebec City. Done.
If you want to stop for some coffee, I highly recommend Cafe Morgane in Trois Rivieres - it's a great coffee shop and has a Sun Country CS90 as well as two other charging stations.
If you want to stop for some coffee, I highly recommend Cafe Morgane in Trois Rivieres - it's a great coffee shop and has a Sun Country CS90 as well as two other charging stations.
Aussie Bob
Member
If u stay In Quebec City, do u have suggestions? This for info
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Meant thanks for info
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Meant thanks for info
There are several viable alternatives. However, it's hard to answer because the charging infrastructure landscape will be much different by then. Do you have a 60 or an 85?
Aussie Bob
Member
For Ottawa --> Quebec City or points East, I recommend avoiding the Montreal island traffic, if possible.
1) If you have the CHAdeMO adapter, there's the Northern bypass: 50E to 15S to 640E to 40E. 442 km total. In Lavaltrie (234 km from Ottawa) Maskinongé (278 km) Yamachiche (297 km) and Trois-Rivieres (322 km) there are Circuit Electric 46 kW CHAdeMO stations where in 40 minutes you'll add about 160 rated km for $6.67. There's also an AZRA network CHAdeMO in Mirabal (166 km from Ottawa) that will do the same.
2) When the Drummondville Supercharger is open (work has restarted despite the Winter) there's a South-Shore bypass: 471 km. 417 to 30 to 20. The Drummondville Supercharger is at the 324 km mark. There is a small toll for the bridge crossing the St. Lawrence West of Montreal.
Once in Quebec City, there are luxury, well situated hotels (ALT and Germain) offering 80A HPWC. Or, there are hotels that offer clean rooms and 70A or 30A J1772 for about 100$ plus tax. (Repotel Henri IV and Cofortel). The latter ones aren't in business or tourist districts, but aren't too far by car, either. By August, it's possible the planned Supercharger for Levis (across the bridge from Quebec City) will be ready as well.
1) If you have the CHAdeMO adapter, there's the Northern bypass: 50E to 15S to 640E to 40E. 442 km total. In Lavaltrie (234 km from Ottawa) Maskinongé (278 km) Yamachiche (297 km) and Trois-Rivieres (322 km) there are Circuit Electric 46 kW CHAdeMO stations where in 40 minutes you'll add about 160 rated km for $6.67. There's also an AZRA network CHAdeMO in Mirabal (166 km from Ottawa) that will do the same.
2) When the Drummondville Supercharger is open (work has restarted despite the Winter) there's a South-Shore bypass: 471 km. 417 to 30 to 20. The Drummondville Supercharger is at the 324 km mark. There is a small toll for the bridge crossing the St. Lawrence West of Montreal.
Once in Quebec City, there are luxury, well situated hotels (ALT and Germain) offering 80A HPWC. Or, there are hotels that offer clean rooms and 70A or 30A J1772 for about 100$ plus tax. (Repotel Henri IV and Cofortel). The latter ones aren't in business or tourist districts, but aren't too far by car, either. By August, it's possible the planned Supercharger for Levis (across the bridge from Quebec City) will be ready as well.
Aussie Bob
Member
Jaff
Active Member
The Hotel Sepia was nice when I was there many months ago...at the downtown Best Western, my experience was not the best though...
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