Day 5 with my MS 70KW and feeling underwhelmed.

[sorka]

The way you drive, even on flat, no wind, and no turns can drastically effect your wh / miles.

I have P85D. 300 wh / mile is what I need to get to get the EPA rated mileage. In 70 degrees, flat, no wind, and no turns, I get 285 wh / mile at 70 MPH. At 75 MPH, it's 300 wh / mile.

My wife, on the other hand, on the exact same stretches of commute under the same conditions gets closer to 350 wh / mile driving the same speeds? Why? Because she varies here speed by a few mph constantly. If you watch her on the app, the car constantly accelerates and then decelerates. She's not good at keep her speed the same. Even worse, she's not good at keeping her throttle constant and then NOT below zero when she needs to slow down. If I happen to edge up in speed slightly, I ease off the throttle just enough to coast back down to a MPH or so slower rather than more which will result in regen breaking.

So what you see on the app if I drive is a nearly constant orange kw dicharge. Whe you see when she drives is orange to green to orange to green. It's only a few MPH variance but it makes a HUGE difference in the efficiency.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

Your experience is not uncommon. Tesla is a hype machine so you bought into the hype. I knew this ahead of time and knew what I was getting myself into. But here is my take:

1) 220 rated miles is a bit low for a S70. There might be a couple of reasons. One is unbalanced cells which means you need to drive to around 5% or less of battery and charge it to full (100%) a couple of times. Doing a road trips will achieve this. Hopefully this will help recover some miles. The other is maybe you got a dud. Which means you should contact the SC and see what they can do.

2) 338wh/miles is common especially when we are in the cooler months. Also keep in mind you have the RWD model S which is less efficient compared to the dual motor models. Also city driving is inherently less efficient for a tesla. Other EVs are more efficient in the city. Don't expect this number to go down for the winter months. Expect it to go up. But also don't expect it to drastically drops in the summer months either. Tesla model s is a big heavy car with sub optimal EV drive train compared to other EVs. You should be getting similar numbers in the summer months if you keep your current driving habits.

3) supercharging stations apparently all have issues. I use to think it is in CA only but it seems like hit or miss. Mostly misses at least from my experience. The picture you showed just illustrates the problem the supercharger have. I have supercharged fine 4 times in my ownership of my Tesla. Some are better than others but most are pretty bad or worst than what you experienced. Personally I think more should be done on team's part, but there are those tesla die hard fans here who keeps spinning the illusion the supercharger are great maybe to keep their shares of tesla's stock up short term.

I guess my point is tesla is a hype machine and sorry you did not do your research to see beyond the hype and see the problems before diving into the ownership of tesla. It is a compromised but hopefully the other positive experiences help make tesla ownership less bitter.

 

[bevguy]

Your range will get better with practice. Especially when you master one pedal driving.
Except for regen and heating the same factors influence ICE and BEV. Since there are lots of gas stations you may just not have noticed with ICE.

Drive gently if you are range constrained, slow down if needed
I consistently average less than 300 watt hr per mile, and always have more range than the estimate.

. Cold weather really impacts range . Pre heat while still plugged into the charger. Keep garage doors closed while charging to warm the battery.

 

[sorka]

Not only preheat car as hot as you can get it if it's really cold outside, but if you have a performance model, use "max battery" to heat the battery with the heater. In cold weather, this will get you the best possible range.

 

[CA_Fabien]

Make sure that tires are at 50PSI when cold.

 

[immolated]

The rated mile display is adjusted based on your recent driving, which changes dramatically due to elevation more than anything else mentioned here. If you really want to see, put a destination in your nav, and pull up the trip energy graph. This takes the elevation of your trip into account and the ending charge/range will be very, very accurate in my experience.

Supercharger speed is highly dependent on SoC. You're not going to get max charge rate at 50%+ battery. Next time, plan on arriving at 10% battery, and assuming you're not sharing sister stalls with anyone, you will hit 100kW+ charge rate until about 40%.

 

[sorka]

The rated mile display is adjusted based on your recent driving, which changes dramatically due to elevation more than anything else mentioned here.

EPA rated AND Ideal have nothing to do with the way you drive and do not change based on driving history. This has been covered probably hundreds of times by now in this forum.

Estimated range does vary based on driving history:

 

[Btrflyl8e]

The rated mile display is adjusted based on your recent driving, which changes dramatically due to elevation more than anything else mentioned here. If you really want to see, put a destination in your nav, and pull up the trip energy graph. This takes the elevation of your trip into account and the ending charge/range will be very, very accurate in my experience.

Supercharger speed is highly dependent on SoC. You're not going to get max charge rate at 50%+ battery. Next time, plan on arriving at 10% battery, and assuming you're not sharing sister stalls with anyone, you will hit 100kW+ charge rate until about 40%.

Also, I have noticed with increasing frequency the issue where supercharging ramps to 100+ kW for a few minutes, then quickly begins to drop for no apparent reason. I'll move to another stall and have no problem. It has been happening at nearly every charger I've visited in the past few months, but I first experienced at the Kingsland, GA charger.

 

[Electric700]

Also, I have noticed with increasing frequency the issue where supercharging ramps to 100+ kW for a few minutes, then quickly begins to drop for no apparent reason. I'll move to another stall and have no problem. It has been happening at nearly every charger I've visited in the past few months, but I first experienced at the Kingsland, GA charger.

Can you contact [email protected] about this and let them know which Supercharger you used along with the connector (e.g. 1A, 1B etc. at the bottom of the Supercharger station)? There are other reports of Supercharger rate slowdowns in different locations across the country, starting toward the middle part of this year.

 

[David29]

My suggestion as another 70 owner -- Relax! It is very early days yet. There is much to learn, but also much to enjoy.

At this early stage, I'd urge you to learn the car well, read the manual, see what it does, try out all the features and settings, give rides to friends and family, and mostly just get used to it.

By all means, consider people's suggestions about driving more efficiently, but unless your daily driving puts you on the edge of running out of juice, I would avoid obsessing about it -- at least, not yet.

And as for the range indicated by the car -- the panel indication is infamous for being only an approximate (but useful) indicator of actual maximum range. You'd have to drive it down to zero to see what you actually got, and even then you'd need to adjust for various factors to be sure. You can go crazy trying to prove to yourself what the actual range is. (So I don't -- I have never taken the battery down to or close to zero and then charged up to 100%. You'll discover that the user manual never suggests that.)

I hope you enjoy your Tesla!

 

[Btrflyl8e]

Can you contact [email protected] about this and let them know which Supercharger you used along with the connector (e.g. 1A, 1B etc. at the bottom of the Supercharger station)? There are other reports of Supercharger rate slowdowns in different locations across the country, starting toward the middle part of this year.

I let them know every time

 

[artsci]

Good advic, I am sure.
I am likely over thinking things a bit.
I've had some nice cars over the years, but this is an entirely different experience.
Lots to learn.
Sensory overload at times.

Once you get familiar with the range and charging thing the concern disappears. The best antidote is a very long drive with multiple supercharger stops. Also, whenever I'm concerned about range to the next supercharger I just draft a fast-moving rig. Even with a safe distance maintained it's amazing how much that benefits range.

 

[Boatguy]

I agree that miles matter. I'm a little surprised it's at 220, instead of mid/high 220s after only 7500 miles.

I'm not surprised, my 90D's range is down about 4% after 7,000mi.

 

[Max*]

I'm not surprised, my 90D's range is down about 4% after 7,000mi.

After 30k miles, I'm down maybe 3%. So YMMV

 

[apacheguy]

I took this photo about 15 or 20 minutes into my charge. Started the charge with 110 miles of range.

Well seems like you were at 60% or so. It is reasonable to expect more than 40 kW of charge rate.

OT: Man do I hate that charging screen icon. Is that supposed to be more helpful than the granular scale bar we used to have?

 

[hmmm]

Well seems like you were at 60% or so. It is reasonable to expect more than 40 kW of charge rate.

OT: Man do I hate that charging screen icon. Is that supposed to be more helpful than the granular scale bar we used to have?

I thought I had read somewhere on here that the charge rate "generally" tends to start dropping at the 40-45% SoC level, no?

 

[Rocky_H]

I thought I had read somewhere on here that the charge rate "generally" tends to start dropping at the 40-45% SoC level, no?

It's kind of a long gradual dropping all the way through. You can kind of ballpark it by adding together the % state of charge and the kW number. If things are running right, it's usually around 120-ish. At least that's the case for the higher batteries, like 85, 90. I don't remember the levels for the 60-75 ones.

 

[apacheguy]

I thought I had read somewhere on here that the charge rate "generally" tends to start dropping at the 40-45% SoC level, no?

Depends on what part of the curve you are referring to and which battery revision you have. Mine is between 100 kW-88 kW in the range you describe.

 

[gavine]

Try this...next time you charge to 100%, see how many miles you drive before the range meter starts to drop. This is a good indicator of how much the meter is off. I rarely charge to 100%, but the few times I did, the meter stayed put until I drove about 8 to 10 miles and then started to drop.