I wanted to share my experience with 'long distance' driving and saving energy.
My office is around 100km away from where I live and I visit that office around 2-3 times per week. My 2014 S 60 has around 250km of rated range at 90% (it's Winter and well below freezing!) so I have enough range for a return trip.
Lithuania is mostly flat, but there are some low gradient slopes that affects power consumption greatly when Cruise Control is on.
Baring in mind there is often rain, ice and snow on the road these days, in order for me to make the round trip, I need to limit my speed to around 90-100km/h.
Before, when I got on the highway, I would just set the speed and let the car maintain the speed, and I noticed that my power consumption would typically sit at around 20kw. When hitting a slight downhill section of the road, the car would regen a little (but only marginally) and when hitting the uphill section moments later, the power would shoot up to 30-60kw!
Even though the gradients are fairly modest, it seems to make a difference. It seems such a waste to actually apply the brakes on the downhill, which produces only a marginal amount of power, only to then waste it all (and more) on the uphill just moments later. It would make much more sense to actually allow the car to increase speed, and use the momentum to help the car on the uphills.
SO!
Last week I started driving without cruise control and manually control the power output myself. I get on the highway, and stick to 15kw output power (you need a steady foot). My average speed was around 90km/h at 15kw.
I found that on the downhill sections, I was able to pickup a good deal of speed (over 110km/h). Uphill, of course I slowed down, but actually the decrease in speed was very slow and gradual. I would normally be able to reach the apex of the hill before dropping below 85km/h. It felt like around 2 - 3 second per km/h of lost speed. Certainly it seemed to pick up much faster on the downhill sections.
Overall travel time (average speed) was very similar but power consumption was noticeably when controliiing the power, rather than the speed. If memory serves me correctly, I was able to achieve around 170wh/km controlling the power, whereas I would get around 195wh/km using cruise control. So this is around a 12% reduction in power for the same distance at pretty much the same average speed.
Perhaps Tesla should implement a 'power control' feature as this may be very helpful to improve range.
Anyone else notice this?
My office is around 100km away from where I live and I visit that office around 2-3 times per week. My 2014 S 60 has around 250km of rated range at 90% (it's Winter and well below freezing!) so I have enough range for a return trip.
Lithuania is mostly flat, but there are some low gradient slopes that affects power consumption greatly when Cruise Control is on.
Baring in mind there is often rain, ice and snow on the road these days, in order for me to make the round trip, I need to limit my speed to around 90-100km/h.
Before, when I got on the highway, I would just set the speed and let the car maintain the speed, and I noticed that my power consumption would typically sit at around 20kw. When hitting a slight downhill section of the road, the car would regen a little (but only marginally) and when hitting the uphill section moments later, the power would shoot up to 30-60kw!
Even though the gradients are fairly modest, it seems to make a difference. It seems such a waste to actually apply the brakes on the downhill, which produces only a marginal amount of power, only to then waste it all (and more) on the uphill just moments later. It would make much more sense to actually allow the car to increase speed, and use the momentum to help the car on the uphills.
SO!
Last week I started driving without cruise control and manually control the power output myself. I get on the highway, and stick to 15kw output power (you need a steady foot). My average speed was around 90km/h at 15kw.
I found that on the downhill sections, I was able to pickup a good deal of speed (over 110km/h). Uphill, of course I slowed down, but actually the decrease in speed was very slow and gradual. I would normally be able to reach the apex of the hill before dropping below 85km/h. It felt like around 2 - 3 second per km/h of lost speed. Certainly it seemed to pick up much faster on the downhill sections.
Overall travel time (average speed) was very similar but power consumption was noticeably when controliiing the power, rather than the speed. If memory serves me correctly, I was able to achieve around 170wh/km controlling the power, whereas I would get around 195wh/km using cruise control. So this is around a 12% reduction in power for the same distance at pretty much the same average speed.
Perhaps Tesla should implement a 'power control' feature as this may be very helpful to improve range.
Anyone else notice this?
