Daily Efficency on long commute

[Franzie3]

Just an open discussion on range and efficiency for long commuters or anyone for that matter...

So I've had my Model 3 LR for a month now. Bought it used with only 7900 miles on it. Since then I've but nearly 2800 mile on it between commuting and a few road trips and in town driving. My commute is ~72 miles 1 way so call it ~144 round trip each day. Sometimes ~150 if I need to drop off my daughter to daycare and/or pick her up. I've noticed also my battery tends to accumulate 30 miles per every 10% of battery charge. So at 90% I have a displayed ~270(268 or 269) miles of range, or at 50% it would state around 150 miles. When i first got the car the overall wh/m was around 280, which I felt to be kinda high.

Now the last few days my commute has yielded some interesting finds at least for me.... My commute is roughly 90% highway (55-65mph speed limits) and 10% city (30-45mph speed limits). Specifically yesterday after leaving my house at my 90% SoC completing my commute I traveled 150.9 miles, while using A/C, an using Autopilot majority of highway driving within 10 MPH of the speed limit I was able to get a 199 WH/M. I feel like this was contributed to Autopilot. Autopilot to me is significantly more efficient especially in highway driving. Again as a new owner this is awesome.

Even today running the same commute into my office I left at 90% (268 Miles rated) and arrived with 68% (203 Miles) where without autopilot the commute had typically been 25% of my battery and in this case it was only 22%

Does anyone else see these type of numbers? Have any thoughts or discussions?

 

[GtiMart]

I would start by saying that the car's overall wh/m is irrelevant to you since most of the driving (7900 miles) was done by someone else. Speed is a very significant factor, the person before you might have driven much faster. Just don't worry, forget about that and concentrate on the driving that you do with the car.

 

[Franzie3]

I would start by saying that the car's overall wh/m is irrelevant to you since most of the driving (7900 miles) was done by someone else. Speed is a very significant factor, the person before you might have driven much faster. Just don't worry, forget about that and concentrate on the driving that you do with the car.

But I constantly want to floor it

But yea even the wh/m when i got it has significantly dropped since I took over. i wish i could reset my battery stats and see how my driving habits are changing my rated range

 

[GtiMart]

Then don't even worry if that number is high. I'm around 200wh/km (321wh/mile) overall and it doesn't worry me a bit. I have real winters, don't have a heat pump, I drive on real winter tires and sporty tires in the summer, I have acceleration boost and like the occasional acceleration. I drive a bit over the speed limit (allegedly). YOLO as some say.

 

[Franzie3]

Then don't even worry if that number is high. I'm around 200wh/km (321wh/mile) overall and it doesn't worry me a bit. I have real winters, don't have a heat pump, I drive on real winter tires and sporty tires in the summer, I have acceleration boost and like the occasional acceleration. I drive a bit over the speed limit (allegedly). YOLO as some say.

Yea i'm in the Northeast US so i get cold winters and some snow. Curious to see how the winter without a heat pump effects my commute. time will tell.

 

[FLMan]

You can setup one of the trip odometers to track your usage and not reset it for a while.

Cold weather will definitely have an impact on the range (not the commute though). You'll have to play around with the AC/Heat settings on different commutes to see what works best for you (or just use whatever you like).

When I first got a Chevy Bolt I tried all kinds of different things to see what impacted the range the most. Heating / AC / speed, etc. I found that the biggest impact was the distance / speed. My commute is just like yours (60ish miles one way, 90% highway) but I have a slightly shorter option that's not highway. The route off the highway was always the most efficient route from a battery perspective but added 10-15 minutes to the trip. Stop and go traffic on the highway always added more range too.

In the end it was never enough to make me want to change anything like not running the heat or the AC or driving the more efficient (slower) route.

My M3LR has a lot more range than the Bolt so I don't even think about it. Less efficiency means taking the SoC closer to 20% after each commute.