Does anyone use tesla-screen.com?

[vitesse]

I've just found tesla-screen.com but I'm a bit confused.

The car's charge display says 190 miles range on the charging display but tesla-screen.com says 241 miles and 85% battery charge (it was charging at the time on the home charger).

There are also icons for rear seat heating and sentry mode, neither of which are fitted to our car.

 

[IanMcL]

Never heard of that! I see sentry and rear seat from my phone but obviously, it can't read car data from my phone.

My S doesn't have sentry or rear seat gear. Perhaps something out there does!

 

[Terry_B58]

Probably showing 'Rated Miles' and using a generic layout, it appears not a lot of thought has gone into it, or it could just be there to harvest credentials.

 

[vitesse]

@Terry_B58 I think it's legit, it looks like the developer is a member here:

tesla-screen Updated

I found the website details after finding the above post when I was trying to find out how to switch to a percentage view of the battery state. Most of the tutorials available look different - probably because of the recent UI change?

I still haven't got my head around 'rated' and 'ideal' miles, or whatever.

 

[vitesse]

@IanMcL It shouldn't matter if you are using your phone or the car's browser as the communication with the car's systems is via the Tesla cloud (via Tesla's API). What a browser may affect is the layout of the display.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Its an established api from tesla which returns battery level, ideal battery range (possibly rated, ie what the regulators signed off), battery range (possibly typical, a fixed rate of consumption which Tesla thinks is more reasonable), est battery range (possibly the figure from the energy consumption chart, figure on the right edge which is the only place it adjusts to your recent driving efficiency), and usable battery level plus a whole host of other info.

All these apps work pretty much the same way from the same set of data which they get every time they poll the car. I'm also doubtful on accessing features you can't access in any other way in the car like they claim.

 

[vitesse]

Its an established api from tesla which returns battery level, ideal battery range (possibly rated, ie what the regulators signed off), battery range (possibly typical, a fixed rate of consumption which Tesla thinks is more reasonable), est battery range (possibly the figure from the energy consumption chart, figure on the right edge which is the only place it adjusts to your recent driving efficiency), and usable battery level plus a whole host of other info.

All these apps work pretty much the same way from the same set of data which they get every time they poll the car.

Thanks for that! Just so I am absolutely sure, what is the mileage displayed on the charging status display (or what are the options?). With our 70D it says 200 miles at 90% - which is signifiantly lower than I am seeing others reporting (c. 215-218 miles). But I don't really know if I'm comparing apples with apples.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

In the bit by the speedo? It depends on whether you have it selected to show rated or typical - but if its lower than you expect its almost certainly Typical which is a more cautious estimate of range than rated.The setting for it via the big screen options and I think its under units, you may need to scroll down the page.

That figure though is like all these things an estimate. You may do more or less than that figure, often a little less.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

I've just stuck my details into tesla info and it showed this, so I think I had the order slightly out but you get to see some of the values just on charge level

 

[vitesse]

OK, this is what I got:

Charge level 79
Ideal range 175.84
Battery range 222.73
Est range 170.1
Usable battery 79
charge_limit_soc 90
charge_limit_soc_min 50
charge_limit_soc_max 100
charge_limit_soc_std 90
charge_to_max_range

I would really like to be more confident in knowing what Ideal, Battery and Estimated really mean

On the Tesla App (the car is currently at my wife's place of work ) it says 176 miles, so that's 'Ideal' range.

By the way, are Tesla API tokens single-use or re-usable?

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Tokens are reusable so you can use it elsewhere - I guess they expire eventually but I believe the only way to force them to stop working is to change your password.

As far as I can deduce, the battery management system reports an available amount of electricity available - lets say 60kwh pr 60,000 watts - this is akin to how much petrol is your petrol tank

Each of the range numbers is just dividing that by a number, the Rated is something daft like 260 wh/m which would give 60,000 / 260 = 230 miles - the 260 is fixed and will never change

The Typical is usually in the range of 300 to 360 depending on model of car, but fixed for that model unless Tesla tweak it through a software update. So the typical range is 60,000 300 = 200 miles.

Both the above are therefore just a crude ways of changing an amount of electricity to a distance using a fixed ratio.

The other number is based on your average consumption over recent miles. If you go to the big energy chart you'll see this number, I think its on the left. Lets say its winter and you've been enjoying the car and this figure is 360wh/m. The range using this would be 60,000 / 360 = 166 miles. But you can't display this number on the main dash.

 

[vitesse]

@GeorgeSymonds I think I have cracked 'Ideal range' thanks to your help - but 'Rated range' is referred to a lot - is that 'Estimated range' on the API data or 'Battery range'?

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

I've edited my answer above - I'm not sure what Tesla Info mean by which, Rated is the one determined by the government testing and is usually the highest - I think tesla info call this just Battery Range,

 

[arg]

The problem here seems to be that tesla-screen has been written by someone in the USA without regard for the different way the info is displayed in EU-market cars.

For what is displayed beside the speedo (if you choose miles rather than percent), USA cars have two options: "Rated" and "Ideal". Rated is the EPA official test, which is mildly optimistic yet achievable in real-life use under favourable conditions; "Ideal" is based on constant 50mph and so is hugely optimistic for any real driving.

EU cars also have two options, but they are both different from the USA ones: "Typical" and "Rated". "Typical" is a figure invented by Tesla and seems to be roughly based on constant 70mph driving; it's slightly less optimistic (ie. smaller figure) than the USA-Rated and reasonably easy to achieve in real life (though not with a lead foot). "Rated" for EU cars is currently based on the ludicrously optimistic NEDC official test - this is closer to the USA "ideal" than to the USA "rated".

So you can't compare any of the numbers from your car with those reported by cars in the USA, and tesla-screen is confusing you by labelling your numbers as if they came from a USA-spec car.

Most UK drivers prefer to have their displays set to "Typical" rather than "Ideal" since Typical is at least potentially achievable. Some people prefer just the percentage rather than miles; I don't know anybody who likes "ideal", other than people trying to sell the cars and make them look good.

All the above are based on the car's estimate of the energy available in the battery, and then converting to miles based on a (choice of) fixed assumptions of driving pattern. There is also the "estimated range", tucked away on the energy screen in the car's display, which estimates the range which would be achieved if you continued driving in the same conditions as the past 5, 15 or 30 miles. This sounds useful, and indeed many EVs display that as their main 'fuel gauge' figure, but experience shows it to be almost useless (Leaf drivers refer to the "Guessometer"). It's quite easy to take a Tesla-style standardised range and say, "OK, today it's raining so it will be a bit worse", or "I'm driving on slow A-roads so can maybe do better"; it's much more difficult to remember what you were doing on the past 30 miles, which could be a couple of short trips and so quite unrepresentative of what is coming up next.