Coming from eGolf, my Model 3 SR+ range doesn't feel right

[tinyfist]

Hi there,

Sorry for starting yet another range thread, but I'm new to Tesla but not to electric cars and something feels wrong, so I'm hoping to see what others who have more experience think.

Background for my comparisons:

I owned a Volkswagen eGolf for 3 years with 200km (125 mile) range. I'm a fairly cautious driver so was able to hit 200km constantly during summer months. I would use the air conditioning all the time and during long country drives, could hit 230km range in ideal conditions. In the winter time, the cold temperatures and heat use would drop me down to ranges of 130-100km.

Now I have a new Model 3 SR+ with a rated 400km (250 mile) range that I've been driving for a few weeks. I have kept the aerodynamic wheel covers on. I use the air conditioning as I did in the eGolf. I have sentry mode on, but not at home where I spend most of my time. I don't notice a drop in battery that much overnights. I have not changed my driving habits and still visit the same locations I did before. I charge my Tesla up to 90% and when fully charged, the battery display reads about 350km, which seems about right.

The problem I'm having is that I'm not getting anywhere near 350kms. The battery seems to drain much quicker than it should, so I'm only getting about 230-250km (150 miles). I've linked a picture below showing I've driven 195km since last charge, with only 55km remaining on the battery. And by the pattern I've seen, I wouldn't even get 55km out of the remaining charge. Also I took this picture after plugging in for 15-20 minutes. At the lowest, it read 40kms left.

Is this right? I know the Teslas have a lot more electronics, a constant internet connection, etc. and all that uses battery, but that seems like a huge drop!

Is this what I can expect? A realistic range of 240km?

Imgur

 

[Rocky_H]

PLEASE read any of the hundreds of existing threads on this. But here is some helpful suggestions about this:

The battery seems to drain much quicker than it should, so I'm only getting about 230-250km (150 miles). I've linked a picture below showing I've driven 195km since last charge, with only 55km remaining on the battery.

Let me take an educated guess here. You are intentionally not plugging in every night, but are running it down lower over a few days before plugging in to refill it?

You're not wrong in your suspicion about this. People who come from other brands of electric cars are frequently pretty shocked at Teslas' amount of idle energy draw. Leafs and eGolfs and such lose almost no energy for days at a time while unplugged. Tesla does a very high amount of monitoring and "readiness" kinds of things that keep a steady low level draw going, so that they are not as idle and low power as they could be.

I will recommend these things to turn off:
Summon Standby--this is huge! It draws at least a few miles per day, and is pretty unnecessary, and most people don't know about that setting.
Sentry mode--you've mentioned you use it some. It's going to be some hefty energy draw too.

 

[GtiMart]

You've done 152Wh/km, I believe you need to do around 135 to get your 400km range out of your 54kWh battery. At that rate your full battery should last ~355km, not 400. Look at the other threads as others have suggested to get a good idea of how to calculate things.

If the battery goes down significantly between the time you got out and the time you get back in the car, sentry and the summon standby are known offenders. If you use the cabin overheat protection and it's hot where you live, your car will often wake up and run the AC. You might want to turn that off if you're in search of energy savings. Checking the state of the car in the app also wakes the car up. It is when it sleeps that it drains the least, and by a good margin. You need to let it sleep.

 

[user212_nr]

Do you drive the same speed in your Model 3 than in a car with one half as much power?

The eGolf does 0-60 in 9.1 seconds. That's almost double.

When driving a slow car it is normal to get in the slow lane and drive 55 mph, but in a Tesla, that is more difficult. Even 10 mph difference could have a big effect like you are seeing.

 

[tinyfist]

Hey thanks for the reply!

You are correct with your educated guess, I was trying to get a sense of how much mileage one charge was going to give me, but I didn't drive a lot last week, so it did sit idle most of the time!

I'll keep in mind the idle energy draw and try to factor that in. Does this community have a sense of how much draw is normal? I know everybody has different settings and conditions, and here are some of mine for reference if it helps give somebody an idea of how much I could expect:

- Summon standby - I don't have FSD so I'm assuming this doesn't apply to me?
- Sentry mode - it is off at home (which is where I've been most of the time)
- Cabin overheat protection - off
- External temperature - it's been pretty hot last week with temperatures between 30-40 degrees C.

I did check the app daily to see if there was a lot of overnight draw, and the mileage remaining seemed consistent day-over-day, leading me to believe the draw was negligible. I know checking will also consume energy since it wakes the car up, so I tried to keep it to once a day.

I did manage to put 185km on it in one day yesterday though, and the remaining mileage said 162km (mostly highway). I had charged to 100% the night before for testing purposes, so it read 398km at the start of the day.

185+162 = 347km

Considering it was mostly highway driving, that seems more like the typical efficiency loss than the data I was seeing over the last week.

If the ultimate takeaway is just to plug it in more often on weeks where it is not being driven much, that's okay.

If I had seen the day-over-day loss, then it would have been more clear last week. But because it looked like not much idea energy was being lost overnight, it made me believe that there wasn't much idle energy loss.

But as of now, the small road trip taken yesterday does make me feel a lot better!

 

[tinyfist]

PLEASE read any of the hundreds of existing threads on this.

I appreciate that this question has been asked an infinite number of times already and I have been working my way through the threads. There are a lot, but I haven't yet come across a thread where somebody was getting 230km out of a possible 350km yet. If I was getting 300km then that wouldn't have set off any alarm bells. It just seemed too extreme a loss since most of my high drainage settings were off.

I do appreciate the responses and help though!

 

[GtiMart]

That looks good tinyfist. Look at the energy graph as a better prediction of the range remaining depending on how you drive it. Check out ABetterRoutePlanner to plan trips and reduce range anxiety. Have fun!

 

[tinyfist]

Do you drive the same speed in your Model 3 than in a car with one half as much power?

The eGolf does 0-60 in 9.1 seconds. That's almost double.

When driving a slow car it is normal to get in the slow lane and drive 55 mph, but in a Tesla, that is more difficult. Even 10 mph difference could have a big effect like you are seeing.

That's a fair question. As I said, I'm a bit of a conservative driver, so even if there wasn't traffic preventing me from driving at higher speeds, I typically don't tend to do so.

I would say that both in the eGolf and the Model 3, I have been driving around 90-110 km/h.

Maybe I've been accelerating faster from stop lights, perhaps it not super noticeable in the Model 3. I didn't think I was doing that, but I'll grant that maybe I just haven't noticed doing it.

 

[Sklith]

Hey thanks for the reply!
- External temperature - it's been pretty hot last week with temperatures between 30-40 degrees C.

Since you have fairly high external temperatures, your car will cool the battery down a bit in high temps like that. It's 33c here, and my car hasn't slept since 10:44 this morning.

 

[camalaio]

Hey - warning of deeper technical information ahead.

Like others have explained well, Tesla's standby power usage is fairly egregious.

Since you asked when the car is awake and ready to get goin', it uses about 250-300W. Sentry Mode and Summon Standby both keep the car in this state a lot, which is why it's recommended to keep them off. This is equivalent to about 2km/h (in terms of rated range usage). So if you had it sit for a full 24h day like this, it would consume nearly 13% of your SR+ battery.

Now, when not using those, my long-term experimentation has discovered the following:

• When plugged in, it uses an effective average of 60W (2.8%/day)
• When unplugged, the effective average is 11-14W (0.6%/day)

I say "effective average" because it's short-term spikes in power draw of 150-300W before the car falls back asleep for some time.

When the car is in Drive and "idling" (stopped), it will consume about 450-550W baseline to run the pumps, computers, headlights, etc.

If you're super concerned about reducing energy usage, I recommend the following:

• If you're not driving and don't need to store the car with a lot of range capacity, you can leave it unplugged above, say, 40% safely while still leaving room for a sudden outing. Note this is explicitly against the manual's recommendation of always being plugged in.
• Don't check the app. Opening the app wakes the car and starts pulling 150-300W. It will go back to sleep some time after closing it.
• Don't precondition the cabin excessively. A good 5 minute chill/heat is way more than good enough (Tesla's recommendation is something like 30 minutes I think, and is ridiculously wasteful).

Final note: The energy shown via the trip meter only counts while in gear. If parked, it does not count energy usage. So things like preconditioning etc. will not show on the trip meters.

P.S. - I personally don't mind "yet another thread" on the topic. Every situation is different. I'm personally happy to address each situation. Once you've got a feel and explanation for things, there's a lot more information you can search with that base understanding. Welcome to the forum!

 

[KenC]

You can easily lose 2km an hour if you have any of the above-mentioned things running, Summon, or Sentry.

 

[user212_nr]

I saw the other day a chart with percentages of how much the various EVs were "overestimated" or "underestimated" in their EV range. I can't find it anymore though, and I'm not sure how they are able to understate their "range" if the range is an epa number. The eGolf is a smaller car, even than the model 3, so maybe it has less wind resistance.

I really wouldn't worry too much about it. There is really no opportunity for your car to be defective in how much range it gets. Its not like you can go clean the engine and replace the oil filter to make it run better.

 

[vsansal]

The range figures doesn't mean much since it is meant to be from 100% down to 0% on a straight drive without stops which is not realistic. I have a model 3 performance and I cannot charge at home. So for me it is very consistently 40% per 100 miles. I don't have sentry enabled at home but use it everywhere else, I do have cabin air protection on with AC, I drive normally like how I would drive any other car. So my effective range is around 200 miles going from 90% down to 10% or so. But my vehicle is rated at 304. 200 miles is plenty enough for me and if I go on a trip, I can get around 250 miles from 90% down to 5% or so. Again that's enough for me.

 

[Runt8]

)I had charged to 100% the night before for testing purposes, so it read 398km at the start of the day.

In case you didn’t know, this is not something you want to do. If you need the extra range that you get from charging to > 90%, try to time it so that you finish charging right before you leave. You never want the battery to sit at 100%.

 

[Gasaraki]

PLEASE read any of the hundreds of existing threads on this. But here is some helpful suggestions about this:


Let me take an educated guess here. You are intentionally not plugging in every night, but are running it down lower over a few days before plugging in to refill it?

You're not wrong in your suspicion about this. People who come from other brands of electric cars are frequently pretty shocked at Teslas' amount of idle energy draw. Leafs and eGolfs and such lose almost no energy for days at a time while unplugged. Tesla does a very high amount of monitoring and "readiness" kinds of things that keep a steady low level draw going, so that they are not as idle and low power as they could be.

I will recommend these things to turn off:
Summon Standby--this is huge! It draws at least a few miles per day, and is pretty unnecessary, and most people don't know about that setting.
Sentry mode--you've mentioned you use it some. It's going to be some hefty energy draw too.

It's not even that. The Tesla estimates are all wrong when you stop. Every time you do calculations from different disconnected trips, the estimates don't add up. You really can't add 50 miles today + 45 miles yesterday and 12 miles the day before and then subtract that from the battery meter.

 

[tinyfist]

Since you have fairly high external temperatures, your car will cool the battery down a bit in high temps like that. It's 33c here, and my car hasn't slept since 10:44 this morning.
View attachment 566793

Thanks for this! I didn't really realize that there is active cooling being done on the battery on Telsas.

Hey - warning of deeper technical information ahead.

Like others have explained well, Tesla's standby power usage is fairly egregious.

Since you asked when the car is awake and ready to get goin', it uses about 250-300W. Sentry Mode and Summon Standby both keep the car in this state a lot, which is why it's recommended to keep them off. This is equivalent to about 2km/h (in terms of rated range usage). So if you had it sit for a full 24h day like this, it would consume nearly 13% of your SR+ battery.

Now, when not using those, my long-term experimentation has discovered the following:

• When plugged in, it uses an effective average of 60W (2.8%/day)
• When unplugged, the effective average is 11-14W (0.6%/day)

I say "effective average" because it's short-term spikes in power draw of 150-300W before the car falls back asleep for some time.

When the car is in Drive and "idling" (stopped), it will consume about 450-550W baseline to run the pumps, computers, headlights, etc.

If you're super concerned about reducing energy usage, I recommend the following:

• If you're not driving and don't need to store the car with a lot of range capacity, you can leave it unplugged above, say, 40% safely while still leaving room for a sudden outing. Note this is explicitly against the manual's recommendation of always being plugged in.
• Don't check the app. Opening the app wakes the car and starts pulling 150-300W. It will go back to sleep some time after closing it.
• Don't precondition the cabin excessively. A good 5 minute chill/heat is way more than good enough (Tesla's recommendation is something like 30 minutes I think, and is ridiculously wasteful).

Final note: The energy shown via the trip meter only counts while in gear. If parked, it does not count energy usage. So things like preconditioning etc. will not show on the trip meters.

P.S. - I personally don't mind "yet another thread" on the topic. Every situation is different. I'm personally happy to address each situation. Once you've got a feel and explanation for things, there's a lot more information you can search with that base understanding. Welcome to the forum!

Thank you for the detailed response!

I will keep it plugged in from now on, when it is not being driven. I was mostly leaving it unplugged to gather data on what to expect in terms of battery consumption. Just to confirm, as long as I have set the battery charge cap to 80-90%, leaving it plugged in for days is no problem?

You can easily lose 2km an hour if you have any of the above-mentioned things running, Summon, or Sentry.

No Summon Standby (I don't have FSD), and Sentry Mode is exempted at home, so it shouldn't be running most of the time either. Makes sense it drains battery when I am out, however.

Also no Cabin Protection either.

I saw the other day a chart with percentages of how much the various EVs were "overestimated" or "underestimated" in their EV range. I can't find it anymore though, and I'm not sure how they are able to understate their "range" if the range is an epa number. The eGolf is a smaller car, even than the model 3, so maybe it has less wind resistance.

I really wouldn't worry too much about it. There is really no opportunity for your car to be defective in how much range it gets. Its not like you can go clean the engine and replace the oil filter to make it run better.

Thanks for the encouraging words! If you ever come across that chart again, I would love to see it! I am very curious how the various cars stack up!

The range figures doesn't mean much since it is meant to be from 100% down to 0% on a straight drive without stops which is not realistic. I have a model 3 performance and I cannot charge at home. So for me it is very consistently 40% per 100 miles. I don't have sentry enabled at home but use it everywhere else, I do have cabin air protection on with AC, I drive normally like how I would drive any other car. So my effective range is around 200 miles going from 90% down to 10% or so. But my vehicle is rated at 304. 200 miles is plenty enough for me and if I go on a trip, I can get around 250 miles from 90% down to 5% or so. Again that's enough for me.

Thanks! Wow - you're losing about as much as me! Glad to know mine's not abnormal.

In case you didn’t know, this is not something you want to do. If you need the extra range that you get from charging to > 90%, try to time it so that you finish charging right before you leave. You never want the battery to sit at 100%.

Thanks for the warning! I don't (and will not) normally set it to 100%. This was just for testing purposes.

It's not even that. The Tesla estimates are all wrong when you stop. Every time you do calculations from different disconnected trips, the estimates don't add up. You really can't add 50 miles today + 45 miles yesterday and 12 miles the day before and then subtract that from the battery meter.

Thanks for the reply! Is it all the stuff running in the background in between trips that's causing it not to add up? Or is there more to it than that, pertaining specifically to separate trips that makes it not add up?

 

[tomas]

I think you have gotten the correct answers above, but let me confirm... speaking as someone who also went from eGolf to 3.

EGolf does not have active battery management system. When you turn it off, everything goes off. From my experience, it doesn’t even remember your radio station or volume. Or your HVAC setting. As a result, it has almost zero draw while sleeping. Tesla has a lot of ‘vampire loss’, some due to settings like summon, overheat protection, sentry mode , etc. as already pointed out. But also quite a bit due to active battery management system that manages things like battery temperature and cell balancing (and much more). Also, the car is always at least a little awake and “connectable”. Or even connected if it is downloading software or uploading logs.

so... you can only truly measure Driving energy usage in a single driving session. And you should heed the manual... plug in nightly. If you don’t drive near the capacity, set the battery to charge somewhere between 60 to 80%... but otherwise 90 is fine.

 

[miimura]

I think you have gotten the correct answers above, but let me confirm... speaking as someone who also went from eGolf to 3.

EGolf does not have active battery management system. When you turn it off, everything goes off. From my experience, it doesn’t even remember your radio station or volume. Or your HVAC setting. As a result, it has almost zero draw while sleeping. Tesla has a lot of ‘vampire loss’, some due to settings like summon, overheat protection, sentry mode , etc. as already pointed out. But also quite a bit due to active battery management system that manages things like battery temperature and cell balancing (and much more). Also, the car is always at least a little awake and “connectable”. Or even connected if it is downloading software or uploading logs.

so... you can only truly measure Driving energy usage in a single driving session. And you should heed the manual... plug in nightly. If you don’t drive near the capacity, set the battery to charge somewhere between 60 to 80%... but otherwise 90 is fine.

A bit off-topic, but the e-Golf climate control resetting to 72F is a feature. A dealer or DIY OBD tool can change it so that it remembers your climate settings between drives.

Back to topic, yes the Model 3 and e-Golf have very different energy consumption profiles when parked. e-Golf can be left parked for months and the 12V will still be fine and the traction battery will have lost an insignificantly small amount of energy.

 

[Watts_Up]

From all the previous comments, I think you should measure separately the two types of consumption you are evaluating.

First, about the driving consumption:

I would advice to use some Apps, like Tezlab or TeslaFi....,
to get detailed information and compared your results with other users.

Also you can get a lot of additional measurements with the Scan My Tesla App,
which requires getting an ODB2 Bluetooth transmitter and a special harness.​

Second, about the overnight losses or phantom drain:

Try to let your car sleeping for at least a full day, or even a full weekend or more if you can.

Last time, when travelling, I kept my car unplugged for a longer time, I loose 6% over 2 weeks,
parked in a garage at about 50 F at night and 60 F during the day.

I turned off Sentry, Alarm, and Summon (from the AutoPilot menu), and didn't used my Tesla App or any other App.

I have a LR battery, so 6% of 300 miles (480 km) is 18 miles (29 km) for 14 days or 1.28 miles (2 km) a day.​

 

[camalaio]

...
I will keep it plugged in from now on, when it is not being driven. I was mostly leaving it unplugged to gather data on what to expect in terms of battery consumption. Just to confirm, as long as I have set the battery charge cap to 80-90%, leaving it plugged in for days is no problem?

... Is it all the stuff running in the background in between trips that's causing it not to add up? Or is there more to it than that, pertaining specifically to separate trips that makes it not add up?

Yepp, no worries on up to 90%. Lower is better if you really don't need it, but it's unclear by how much or if it's noticeable long-term.

As for not adding up, yes, it's whatever the car is doing while you're not there that adds up. This includes preconditioning from the app for what it's worth.

I think you have gotten the correct answers above, but let me confirm... speaking as someone who also went from eGolf to 3.

EGolf does not have active battery management system. When you turn it off, everything goes off. From my experience, it doesn’t even remember your radio station or volume. Or your HVAC setting. As a result, it has almost zero draw while sleeping. Tesla has a lot of ‘vampire loss’, some due to settings like summon, overheat protection, sentry mode , etc. as already pointed out. But also quite a bit due to active battery management system that manages things like battery temperature and cell balancing (and much more). Also, the car is always at least a little awake and “connectable”. Or even connected if it is downloading software or uploading logs.

so... you can only truly measure Driving energy usage in a single driving session. And you should heed the manual... plug in nightly. If you don’t drive near the capacity, set the battery to charge somewhere between 60 to 80%... but otherwise 90 is fine.

Common misconceptions here.

Most of the power usage while you're not driving your car has nothing to do with battery management, and more for data gathering and unoptimised feature functionality.

For thermal management, the temperatures at which is decides to cool or heat are further away than you'd think, and usually the temperature difference doesn't require much active power. For example, if the heat threshold was 35C and it's at 38C, it doesn't take much to keep it below 35C. Cooling the battery doesn't mean making it cold, just slightly less hot. Heating it is more expensive, but only a problem in very cold temps if stored outside for a prolonged period. Tesla uses very little active thermal management, certainly much less than is commonly thought. But of course, the times it does do so are important.

For capacity/balance management, the amount of power used for this is incredibly negligible. Charging your phone from the car would use more power. The blinkers actually probably take more power? Balancing can be done while the rest of the car is asleep, so there's really nothing else going on. The car is actually designed well to sip very little power, but "features" and "data" put the car in a waked state much more often than necessary.

I'm also certain the eGolf has battery management, just not liquid cooling.