After spending a couple of months logging data on TeslaFi.com for my Model X, across a range of temperature conditions here in New England, I've started to develop some data on how energy consumption varies at different outside temperatures in my car. I'm a pretty average driver (average 314 Wh/mi -- slightly better than EPA rating) and while the Boston area isn't by any means mountainous, it isn't flat, either. As they say, though, your mileage may vary.
First of all, here an example of the temperature efficiency chart that TeslaFi shows me for the last 5,000 miles of driving:
You can see that the "sweet spot" for my car is 60 to 70 F, which of course is when I'm least likely to be using climate control (or at least it isn't working very hard). I only had one short drive over 100 F, but that drive burned through nearly 600 Wh/mile as I had the A/C cranked. But in any event, any temperature above 90 F seemed to really hit efficiency -- especially on short drives.
Which leads directly to the next analysis -- how do these numbers vary by length of drive? TeslaFi will produce this chart for drives over 1 mile, 5 miles, 10 miles, 25 miles, and 50 miles. So I took those different drive distances and graphed them. Here's what I saw:
Interestingly, on the longer drives efficiency was fairly flat in the 60 to 90 degree range, which suggests to me that a great deal of the energy consumption penalty I was seeing on shorter hot-weather drives was in the initial cooling of the car rather than later in the trip. I'll be interested to watch this over time.
In any event, I thought I'd share this data, though it pretty much matches the anecdotal evidence being recounted by other TMC drivers.
I'd be curious to see what others' temperature efficiency profiles look like -- especially in other climates and driving conditions.
First of all, here an example of the temperature efficiency chart that TeslaFi shows me for the last 5,000 miles of driving:
You can see that the "sweet spot" for my car is 60 to 70 F, which of course is when I'm least likely to be using climate control (or at least it isn't working very hard). I only had one short drive over 100 F, but that drive burned through nearly 600 Wh/mile as I had the A/C cranked. But in any event, any temperature above 90 F seemed to really hit efficiency -- especially on short drives.
Which leads directly to the next analysis -- how do these numbers vary by length of drive? TeslaFi will produce this chart for drives over 1 mile, 5 miles, 10 miles, 25 miles, and 50 miles. So I took those different drive distances and graphed them. Here's what I saw:
Interestingly, on the longer drives efficiency was fairly flat in the 60 to 90 degree range, which suggests to me that a great deal of the energy consumption penalty I was seeing on shorter hot-weather drives was in the initial cooling of the car rather than later in the trip. I'll be interested to watch this over time.
In any event, I thought I'd share this data, though it pretty much matches the anecdotal evidence being recounted by other TMC drivers.
I'd be curious to see what others' temperature efficiency profiles look like -- especially in other climates and driving conditions.
