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Convince me I need a bigger battery

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The pure joy of driving electric (to me) means that I will drive more...even casual "drives just for the sake of going for a drive" (a la Roadster).

A bigger battery = more freedom...to drive more when I want to drive more (and have more guilt free fun).

A bigger battery means the car has has fewer operational (range) limits..I don't like limits...they're so limiting! :wink::biggrin:

Therefore, give me the biggest battery & the fastest recharge capability...:smile::smile::smile:

fast charing is getting more importing than bigger batteries. 20kW AC with twin chargers is fine, but 80A are rare. 90kW QC is better but current non existent. CHAdeMOs with 50kW are popping up but not useable for the Roadster nor for Model S or X
 
260 days a year ? There are 102-104 or so saturdays & sundays, that leaves 261-264 days. Don't you have holidays and vacations in the US ?
Not all of us. Haven't you read about how Americans work too much to be happy? Many people have no paid vacation days and less than a week of unpaid vacation. As for holidays, how many federal holidays are there, six total I think?
 
When coming to my decision, I de-rated each pack's mileage in my head by 1/3. The middle-size pack was my original choice even though I could handle most of my driving on the small pack. I think it had the best value-for-money of the three.

That's how the numbers came out for me too. But for the original poster, 66% * 160 = 105.60, which is more than he plans to do even on the weekends.

It's true that if you plan to keep the car, battery unchanged, for a really long time, getting a bigger battery means the car will last longer (assuming no crashes) -- because the "degraded" battery will still be enough for your range. If, on the other hand, you expect to get a new car in ten years,....
 
That's how the numbers came out for me too. But for the original poster, 66% * 160 = 105.60, which is more than he plans to do even on the weekends.

It's true that if you plan to keep the car, battery unchanged, for a really long time, getting a bigger battery means the car will last longer (assuming no crashes) -- because the "degraded" battery will still be enough for your range. If, on the other hand, you expect to get a new car in ten years,....

My pack derating was not related to battery degradation, it's more to do with my anxiety level :)

When I start to trust that "30 miles left" on the battery meter really means 30 miles left, then I won't need to de-rate so much.

I guess I'm being too paranoid - Gas gauges in ICE cars are nice analog things, they measure the height of a float that's sitting in the tank.

Gas gauges in batteries aren't like that, they track energy put in and energy taken out, so there's the specter of cumulative measurement errors. Batteries, unlike gas tanks, "change shape" over time, holding fewer coulombs of energy as they age.

Yeah, I know... an EV's battery system is more complex than that, and is designed to know how much energy is actually available. I've never owned an EV, so I need to get used to the idea :)

/Mitch.
 
Here's my decision process : I consider (and pay attention, since I reserved) to my daily, weekly, monthly, and annual longest trip, over the last few years .
For me this means :
- daily commute is about 30 miles, urban Montreal
- weekly longest drive : 240 Km/150m , ski trip up north (Saint-Laurent, QC, Canada to Mont Blanc - Google Maps)
- monthly : same as above
- yearly : vacation trip to Maine (520km/320m) , Boston (500 km/312m), Québec City(250km/ 155 m)

So, for the money, I will put in this purchase, it can't be just a commuter car. So if I can cover my weekly and monthly longest drive, both ways, assuming no proper charging solution is in place in the first year of use.
I can live (not happily) with the fact that once a year, I used our ICE car for the vacation trip.

Does it justify 10000$ more for this convenience ? Not sure.

Other arguments mostly don't either:
- resale value : I think a 7-8-10 year old battery will not be worth much to anyone, independently of the initial capacity
- range : again, in 7-8-10 year I will probably be ready to get the latest Model ? so my 160 m Model S will make a very nice commuter car,


So, the final answer for me, will depend of the situation with chargers available and planned in my area.
I already started talking about chargers stations to the ski center, where I hang out...

Serge
 
Other arguments mostly don't either:
- resale value : I think a 7-8-10 year old battery will not be worth much to anyone, independently of the initial capacity
- range : again, in 7-8-10 year I will probably be ready to get the latest Model ? so my 160 m Model S will make a very nice commuter car,


Serge

My view is kind of different concerning the resale value. ideally the more "stuff/options" the car has the better resale value (fast charging, better acceleration, rarity, etc). I think getting the 300 mile battery and having the projected degradation still gives the range of the 160 m battery after 7-10 years. It's also a matter of buyers in 7-10 years, people would be more apt to buy a car with 210 mile range than one with 112 mile range.
Will you make your money back from the initial investment? I have no idea, but I will say with the 2004 Porsche, going from a low end Carrerra to a high end if you put out an extra 30 K, when you sell it, the resale value is 20 K over the base model (10 K loss).
Will the Model S have similar depreciation as Porsche's? I don't know
 
- weekly longest drive : 240 Km/150m , ski trip up north (Saint-Laurent, QC, Canada to Mont Blanc - Google Maps)
- monthly : same as above
- yearly : vacation trip to Maine (520km/320m) , Boston (500 km/312m), Québec City(250km/ 155 m)

So, for the money, I will put in this purchase, it can't be just a commuter car. So if I can cover my weekly and monthly longest drive, both ways, assuming no proper charging solution is in place in the first year of use.
I can live (not happily) with the fact that once a year, I used our ICE car for the vacation trip.

Does it justify 10000$ more for this convenience ? Not sure.
Seems clear to me that you should aim for the 60kWh pack, at a minimum. The frequent 150-mile trips, up into mountains in cold weather, may not be safely inside the 40kWh pack's range, especially after a few years when degradation has chipped some range off. I'm not sure I'd want to be using Range mode that often, either.

The question of moving up to the 85kWh pack from there is harder. Realistically, it won't get you to Boston; those 312 miles are nearly all interstate highways with posted speed limits of 65mph. I am hoping that Tesla installs a Supercharger near White River Junction, where I-91 and I-89 intersect; with that in place, you could do Montreal -- Boston even with the 60kWh pack (it breaks the trip into 300+200 km).

Your Maine trip is the "killer app" for you. The logical route takes you on secondary roads pretty much the entire way, so speeds will be generally slower. With careful driving and some top-up at a lunch destination, the 85kWh pack should be able to get you there. Otherwise, you're looking at charging up in an area where I know of no existing high-amperage charging options. Possible, but perhaps tedious.
 
Thanks for the feedback, Robert.

I didn't make clear that my daily and weekly distance are round trips, so my weekly trip up north (120km both ways) is probably ok during the first few years, but I am expecting having to recharge half way, eventually.

I undertook to "inform" the ski center about the possibility to join the public charging network being deployed across Quebec in 2012. Heck, I am ready to buy a EVSE if they are willing to connect it.

Obviously, I am not expecting to take the my 160m Model S to Boston or Maine, but if superchargers are installed along the way, then it might be an additional argument for the 230m pack.
But, otoh, I can rent a lot of nice cars for the yearly vacation trip with 10000$... or just take our ICE car ... :)
 
I can rent a lot of nice cars for the yearly vacation trip with 10000$... or just take our ICE car ... :)

Maybe you could rent a Model S Sport once a year. Or a Model X if you need some more space. Who says you have to rent an ICE?

Get the EV that meets your daily needs, and rent one with a bigger battery for the longer trips. We used to talk about renting batteries for long trips back when we thought that pack swapping was going to be an option. Now we act like that idea is dead. I don't think it is, just rent the whole car. Maybe not right away, but I'm sure in a year or two rental fleets will pick these up.
 
I'm not so sure that a 8 year old 300 mile pack will actually add to the sale price of the car in 8 years. For a high use item like the battery pack you might actually be a lot better off with a NEW 160 mile pack (or 200 or 250 or whatever is the smallest pack then), for a 8 year old car. Sure an old pack will add some value since the car can be driven without any replacements or repairs right away. Look at it this way. If you sell a car with 2 year old top-of-the-line tires or windshield wipers is that going to increase the price more than say new basic tires or wipers?
After all the new 160 mile pack will have a 100 000mile warranty while the old pack barely has any. And you don't know how the old owner has treated the pack, it might be likely to die completely in a year.
This of course only applies to resale value, value to the first owner is completely different depending on your usage pattern.

Cobos
 
... I am hoping that Tesla installs a Supercharger near White River Junction, where I-91 and I-89 intersect; with that in place, you could do Montreal -- Boston even with the 60kWh pack (it breaks the trip into 300+200 km).
...

I live about 10 mi north of White River Jct off I-91 and have an HPC outside our garage for public use. 70A does not make a supercharger but it's not bad with a Roadster.

I'm curious RobertB where you've been Nordic skiing this year? We have almost no snow. Pretty rare for us. Also curious if you've traveled with skis on your Roadster and how it affects your range.
 
I'm curious RobertB where you've been Nordic skiing this year? We have almost no snow. Pretty rare for us. Also curious if you've traveled with skis on your Roadster and how it affects your range.
Nowhere, sadly. I usually go to Jackson, NH, as they have the best grooming team on the east coast, but even they have iffy trails. Mt. Washington Resort claims to have most trails open, but they don't groom particularly well unless there's masses of snow. Mont-Tremblant has decent skiing, and they appear to have snow; haven't found the time to get that far north, though.

btw, I'm not a Roadster owner, just waiting for my Model S, so I've got no info on range degradation. I'm nervous in the Model S of having the skis inside, though, with their tips aimed at the touchscreen.
 
Mont-Tremblant has decent skiing, and they appear to have snow; haven't found the time to get that far north though.

i was x-country skiing up there a few weeks ago and the snow was good and the trails were in good shape. but that was before we had the schizophrenic weather with above freezing temps and freezing rain. am pretty sure that they didn't get it as bad as us in mtl but ...