Your comment prompted me to think about how I would do this. Even though I have watched some videos and read quite a few posts by people who say they have done this, it strikes me as somewhat daunting. First of course, as you said, if you run short you can find yourself in a tense situation, at best, and possibly in danger of running completely out of juice, or worse.
I took a crack at planning a route. To travel that far (240 miles in my case) would be easiest to do on highways. But then I'd have to worry about going too fast and increasing my Wh/mile rate. And if one takes local roads and travels at a leisurely pace, you could easily (I think) achieve a much lower energy consumption rate than the EPA rate. What would that prove? If you get your rated range while traveling slowly enough (or in nice enough weather, etc.) to achieve a 10 or 20% improvement over the EPA rating, then you prove nothing about your battery when you reach your rated range. So, unless I missed something, to do this right, don't you really have to drive so that the entire trip yields an average energy use matching the one for the rated range? In other words, if I drive at 292 Wh/mile for 240 miles, I should get to zero charge when I get to 240 miles. If I run short, then that means the battery no longer has the capacity to achieve the EPA range. If I get further, it means my battery capacity is greater than advertised.
On the other hand, if one sets out to do this and does not closely control his energy rate, and then you get to either 0% SOC or to the rated range, what have you proven? If your energy use rate is above or below the EPA rate, that may or may not mean anything other than that the conditions (speed, temperature, elevation change, headwind, number of stops, etc.) precluded you from a valid test.
Am I over-thinking this? Or making to too complicated?
Hi
@David29, I think you are what most people refer to as "wise" or "smart", something which I have not yet attained for longer than 4 weeks at a time. But let me say that hyper-miling for the sake of taking a certain route, is really fun. There isn't so much the desire to do a route to see if the pack can achieve its rated range, though I found it really fascinating to answer the question, "is my car capable of being that efficient?"
For me the thrill of the whole thing can be recreated by watching the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13.
I started a thread called "Ultimate Road Trip: Austin to Chama, NM" ,and was advised by several much more experienced folks that my route was not ideal, and that I wasn't valuing my time versus driving time.... I certainly listened to everyone, and took this into consideration, and I even planned to take their advice, but I also planned a way to measure my progress along the route so it didn't come down to hoping I would make it. I could break the trip down into Wh/mi for a particular portions of the trip (using EVtripplanner).
The biggest factor, was discovering the app, "Inroute" which is a motorcycle app that lets you chart out the elevation and wind speed at each portion of the route in real time, so you can see the windspeed and direction on your trip before departing and also during the trip.
Like a space x launch, conditions have to be somewhat favorable to do a crazy distance.... in other words, elevation, temperature, and most importantly wind has to be blowing kind of the right way, or you have to adjust your speed accordingly.
I'll spare you the details, but I knew when I was shoving cold packs under my legs and armpits just to get through lubbock with no a/c so I could make it to Santa Rosa, that I was all in.
Now, let me give you a final word of advice... whatever you do, don't pack hot sauce in the same cooler as your cold packs, if you do this and the cap comes off the hot sauce, you may discover (somewhere in Clovis, NM) that hypermiling gives you a burning desire to make it to the destination in all the of the wrong places, if you catch my drift.
The most important thing in all of this is learning which apps to rely on to plan your routes, and to not to trust the Tesla route planning app too much as it will try to protect you for your own stupidity by rerouting you to various chargers once you get below a certain percentage. In these moments, you must trust your planning and remain determined that you will not let some "sophisticated" nanny-state navigation system deprive you of access to your own stupidity! This is America dammit!
