Considering the Model 3 and have a few queries.

[MrBadger]

And the fact it was downhill

Alas not. She gets -32kW/mile for a downhill run indicated on car trip. Yes, that is a minus, we live on a hill, but the fun and games are short lived...

Does wonders for outbound. Our school run is sometimes 0

erm, but not the return.

Normally he would walk, but he had forgotten something so need a quick dash to get something.​

 

[Adopado]

Somehow, my wife can somehow achieve 170Wh/mile for 16 mile trips even in these cold conditions.

Your wife must have a lovely right foot. My wife ... not so much.

 

[MrBadger]

Your wife must have a lovely right foot. My wife ... not so much.

Those were the days when we didn't have home charging - the battery had to last a week. Now we have home charging, the stats are not nearly so good! But its good to show that the quotes ranges are not entirely fictitious, even this time of year and first drive of the day.

 

[mo.dilwar]

The SR is more efficient than the LR based on official Tesla numbers hence the difference. However, since the 26, 36 etc are based on those figures, they are also mostly meaningless, as they are based on achieving the 225kWh or so for LR and whatever it is for SR.

Depends entirely on what you choose to use as a typical energy consumption figure. You can check this in the car, but here are a few examples, ranging from a pretty optimistic 250 Wh/mile to a heavy right foot 400 Wh/mile, for a 32 A charge point with a standard 230 VAC supply, and assuming zero charge losses:

250 Wh/mile consumption = 29.44 mph charge rate

300 Wh/mile consumption = 24.53 mph charge rate

350 Wh/mile consumption = 21.03 mph charge rate

400 Wh/mile consumption = 18.4 mph charge rate

To get your claimed charge rate of 34 mph from a 32 A, 230 VAC charge point, means that your energy consumption figure has to be extraordinarily low, about 216 Wh/mile. At this time of the year that is a very optimistic energy consumption figure; I doubt that many owners will see anything like as low a figure. I've just checked, and our last long trip averaged 294 Wh/mile, and the local trips this week have only managed 368 Wh/mile.

Duh. Of course that makes way more sense.

 

[snerkler]

For the record an M3 LR battery is about 75KWh
The AC charge rates are pretty constant e.g. at 7Kw it will be 26 miles per hour and you will get that from 0% to nearly 100% state of charge. So home charging rates are very predictable.
DC rapid charge rates not so much. The Car cannot sustain a rate of 250KW for very long and only at fairly low states of charge so while 250kw is 909 mph you could only get that rate for a few minutes.
The best way to look at rapid charging is charging from 20% to 80% (which is what you typically do on a rapid charger during a journey) on a current gen Tesla supercharger might take 15-20 minutes under optimal conditions but on a third party charger (50kw) or under non optimal supercharger conditions ( cold weather, others using it at the same time, etc) it could take an hour. Unless you have to queue for the charger in which case......

Cool thanks. I think I'm starting to get my head around it. In Fuel terms the M3 has a 'tank' of 75kWh therefore if charging at 7.5kW it would take 10 hours to completely charge the battery from 0, and if charging at a theoretical 75kW it would complete a full 100% charge in an hour?

Depends entirely on what you choose to use as a typical energy consumption figure. You can check this in the car, but here are a few examples, ranging from a pretty optimistic 250 Wh/mile to a heavy right foot 400 Wh/mile, for a 32 A charge point with a standard 230 VAC supply, and assuming zero charge losses:

250 Wh/mile consumption = 29.44 mph charge rate

300 Wh/mile consumption = 24.53 mph charge rate

350 Wh/mile consumption = 21.03 mph charge rate

400 Wh/mile consumption = 18.4 mph charge rate

To get your claimed charge rate of 34 mph from a 32 A, 230 VAC charge point, means that your energy consumption figure has to be extraordinarily low, about 216 Wh/mile. At this time of the year that is a very optimistic energy consumption figure; I doubt that many owners will see anything like as low a figure. I've just checked, and our last long trip averaged 294 Wh/mile, and the local trips this week have only managed 368 Wh/mile.

Interesting, so again in my petrol head terms Wh/mile is like mpg, so 250 Wh/mile is good 'mpg' whilst 400 Wh/mile is poor 'mpg'?

 

[mo.dilwar]

As a side note. I did a 20 odd mile round (50 mph average speed mostly) on Friday and managed 210 Wh/mile. Was quite mild weather 11/12c outside at the time, so had climate off and seat warmer set to 2.

 

[snerkler]

As a side note. I did a 20 odd mile round (50 mph average speed mostly) on Friday and managed 210 Wh/mile. Was quite mild weather 11/12c outside at the time, so had climate off and seat warmer set to 2.

So that would mean you could have got a theoretical range of 359 miles? (75000W battery capacity/210 Wh/mile)

 

[Adopado]

Cool thanks. I think I'm starting to get my head around it. In Fuel terms the M3 has a 'tank' of 75kWh therefore if charging at 7.5kW it would take 10 hours to completely charge the battery from 0, and if charging at a theoretical 75kW it would complete a full 100% charge in an hour?

Interesting, so again in my petrol head terms Wh/mile is like mpg, so 250 Wh/mile is good 'mpg' whilst 400 Wh/mile is poor 'mpg'?

You got it.

In the real world, of course, even with home charging you are never going to be charging from 0 to 100%. I have a cheap 4 hour night rate with Octopus (5p per kWh) and I rarely have to charge for more than those 4 hours if I routinely plug the car in when it's at home. Topping up is the way to go (in the interests of battery health and also to make sure that your car has plenty of charge for the day ahead).

 

[Jason71]

26 miles per sound quite low. My SR+ charges at a consistent 34 miles per hour when I set the current to 32 amps

TBH I was just parroting Jeremys figures and using them for illustrative purposes but as he says if you can get 216w/m at this time of year you are a better ( and slower) driver than I am. I am averaging 300w/m over 2500 miles so far

 

[snerkler]

You got it.

In the real world, of course, even with home charging you are never going to be charging from 0 to 100%. I have a cheap 4 hour night rate with Octopus (5p per kWh) and I rarely have to charge for more than those 4 hours if I routinely plug the car in when it's at home. Topping up is the way to go (in the interests of battery health and also to make sure that your car has plenty of charge for the day ahead).

Thanks, yeah I appreciate that you wouldn't do this just trying to get my head around the 'conversion' from the fossil fuel way of thinking

That's something I'd have to look in to should I decide that the M3 is for me, home chargers.

I also need to find out whether Tesla would take my current car off me and settle my current PCP. Very difficult to find out this info as it seems to be predominantly online sales etc

 

[mo.dilwar]

So that would mean you could have got a theoretical range of 359 miles? (75000W battery capacity/210 Wh/mile)

Alas no not for me, as I have an SR+ with a suspected 50 kWh battery. Although 238 miles wouldn't be too shabby.

 

[vitesse]

With DC rapid charging you do need to think differently because the charging rate tapers. It's very fast at a low battery level and then drops steadily after a certain point. The final 7 or so % takes a very long time. For road trips the trick is to arrive at the charger with low charge and only charge as much as you need to get to the next charger or your destination looks whatever else you need. This means your average charging speed remains high and you spend less time charging for the same amount of charge.

 

[tess19]

The problem with teslas at superchargers is that I tend to end up charging for longer periods than required. It is usually dictated by game end or netflix. Not something every other EV suffers from.

 

[snerkler]

With DC rapid charging you do need to think differently because the charging rate tapers. It's very fast at a low battery level and then drops steadily after a certain point. The final 7 or so % takes a very long time. For road trips the trick is to arrive at the charger with low charge and only charge as much as you need to get to the next charger or your destination looks whatever else you need. This means your average charging speed remains high and you spend less time charging for the same amount of charge.

Useful info, thanks.

The problem with teslas at superchargers is that I tend to end up charging for longer periods than required. It is usually dictated by game end or netflix. Not something every other EV suffers from.

Haha, that'd be me too

 

[*Adam]

This thread should be a sticky. Some very good questions, and answers from the community.

 

[ejvee]

Hi,

Sorry if these questions have been asked elsewhere but I couldn't find them and certainly not all in the same place. So I'm considering a Model 3 due to the 0% BIK that's coming into play in April this year and have some questions.

1. When building the car online there's very few options to say the least and I would like the Long Range version but with different wheels and also with the black interior but not the wood trim, is it possible to spec the car with different wheels (such as the silver ones I've seen plenty of in photos or even the ones that come on the performance model) and a different trim to the wood (without paying extra for the black/white interior)?

2. What range are people getting in the real world, and what type of driving is this?

3. What is involved (holes in walls etc) in order to get a charger fitted at home/work, can they be fitted outside rather than in a garage etc and are the charge points lockable?

4. How irritating are the windscreen wipers and not being able to control them properly without using the main console? I imagine it's quite distracting changing settings on the wipers having to delve into the computer menus whilst driving?

Any help appreciated.

Good that you asked, as this forum members are quite helpful, especially to novice. I gathered lot of info from here, before I ordered my M3 LR

1. You get only 4 external colours and 2 seat colours to choose from. There are no other options available to change trims. SR and LR comes only with 18" Aero wheels (the ones with dark grey wheel covers). There is no option to get any other size or look for the wheel. Performance version comes with 19" silver alloys
2. I've owned the car only for a month and did my long drive last weekend. My calculation is that,the car loses 1.25 to 1.45 miles of battery range for every 1 mile of actual distance driven. Approximately 135 miles worth of battery to cover 100 miles of run.Of course, it varies if you ramp up heating/cooling, if you use fog lamps, how many people are riding the car and how hard you hit the pedal.
3. I've installed tethered(prevents cable theft) Rolec smartcharger, which apparently can be locked thru the phone app so that no one steals your electricity. I'm not sure about this, and have heard lock keys available as well. They have installed something called "Matte Unit" instead of earth rod. All looks neat and tidy.
4. Windscreen wipers are auto activated, though not as sensitive as my previous cars. However, slight press on the left stick gives a wipe, and long press gives wash and wipe. I haven't operated the wiper thru main console yet

Hope this helps

 

[snerkler]

Good that you asked, as this forum members are quite helpful, especially to novice. I gathered lot of info from here, before I ordered my M3 LR

1. You get only 4 external colours and 2 seat colours to choose from. There are no other options available to change trims. SR and LR comes only with 18" Aero wheels (the ones with dark grey wheel covers). There is no option to get any other size or look for the wheel. Performance version comes with 19" silver alloys
2. I've owned the car only for a month and did my long drive last weekend. My calculation is that,the car loses 1.25 to 1.45 miles of battery range for every 1 mile of actual distance driven. Approximately 135 miles worth of battery to cover 100 miles of run.Of course, it varies if you ramp up heating/cooling, if you use fog lamps, how many people are riding the car and how hard you hit the pedal.
3. I've installed tethered(prevents cable theft) Rolec smartcharger, which apparently can be locked thru the phone app so that no one steals your electricity. I'm not sure about this, and have heard lock keys available as well. They have installed something called "Matte Unit" instead of earth rod. All looks neat and tidy.
4. Windscreen wipers are auto activated, though not as sensitive as my previous cars. However, slight press on the left stick gives a wipe, and long press gives wash and wipe. I haven't operated the wiper thru main console yet

Hope this helps

Thanks very much. I've not looked into the different chargers yet, I've only seen the Tesla one, but having something with a fixed cable to prevent cable theft would be great.

 

[vitesse]

Thanks very much. I've not looked into the different chargers yet, I've only seen the Tesla one, but having something with a fixed cable to prevent cable theft would be great.

You don't want to be digging out a cable and plugging it in at both ends every time either - they are quite heavy and bulky!

 

[snerkler]

I assume charge points on the cars are weather sealed so that you don’t have to worry about charging in the rain?


Just submitted a trade in value request for my current car so we’ll see what that brings up. Phoned Tesla Manchester yesterday to find out whether they can settle my current PCP should the trade in value be acceptable and they didn’t know, doesn’t fill me with the greatest of confidence

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Yes, the charging connectors are weather sealed, up to a point. They are OK with rain, snow etc, but the connector should not be subjected to high pressure water, say from a pressure washer, when the charge port door is open and a connector plugged in.

You most probably won't get a decent price from Tesla for a trade-in, as they aren't really interested in them, and will only offload it immediately to an auction house. The price they gave me was a couple of thousand less than I got by selling to a dealer, and that was maybe a thousand less than I'd have got from selling privately (I just didn't want the hassle of dealing with loads of tyre kickers).

The price I got offered by We Buy Any Car was a lot more than the price from Tesla, also.