Don’t order SR or MR if your winter is cold.

[Big City]

I've just had my M3P- for almost a month now and the watts per mile has gone from 220 to 360 as the temperature has been dropping. For my 30 daily commute it's not a big deal, but I now have to factor reduced battery efficiencies when planning my trips up North. I may need to detour 15 miles to a supercharger, that is not in my normal route. I wonder what my range will be when we hit minus 10 in early January.

Really glad I have the LD battery now.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

You should expect at least 50% reduction in real-world range due to decreased battery efficiency, increased need for heating, increased vampire battery drain.

Tesla must be getting desperate, if they're using sock puppets to upsell the LR.

 

[Zythryn]

You should expect at least 50% reduction in real-world range due to decreased battery efficiency, increased need for heating, increased vampire battery drain.

The way this is stated is pure FUD.
The FACT that winter reduces range is very true. The "You should expect at least 50% reduction..." only creates uncertainty and fear. I have been driving EVs for the past 8 winters. The 50% is pretty much worst case scenarios due to the winter.

If you had said "You should be prepared for a 50% range reduction at worst", I would have agreed with you. It is very important for people to be aware of the shortest range they may see.

Other factors include what type of tires you have, if the car is plugged in overnight, do you charge just before you leave, and numerous others.

In addition, your title is click-bait. If someone only needs 100 miles of range, even with your hypothetical 50% range loss, the SR or MR Model 3s work just fine.
You simplified the whole issue to an extreme with results of amplifying FUD, intentionally or not.

 

[Jaguar]

People often forget that winter affects ICE cars as well and pretty much to the same extent. My Fiat 500 took a 35% hit in mpg every winter, which was about the same as my Smart Electric. All cars suffer in climate extremes. If you have a short-range like the Smart this can have a big impact but it's less of a worry with a big battery car.

 

[voip-ninja]

People often forget that winter affects ICE cars as well and pretty much to the same extent. My Fiat 500 took a 35% hit in mpg every winter, which was about the same as my Smart Electric. All cars suffer in climate extremes. If you have a short-range like the Smart this can have a big impact but it's less of a worry with a big battery car.

LOL. no. wrong. full stop.

ICE cars do not suffer 35% range reduction due to low temperatures. That is absurd.

Fuel Economy in Cold Weather

Fuel economy tests show that, in short-trip city driving, a conventional gasoline car's gas mileage is about 12% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

LOL. no. wrong. full stop.

ICE cars do not suffer 35% range reduction due to low temperatures. That is absurd.

My old CR-V's range dropped greatly every winter. I could easily get 29-30 mpg in warmer months. In the winter, it averaged around 22 mpg...and once I got 19 mpg. I tracked it for 20 years and you could clearly see the drop in mpg every winter.

Hmm. I guess that's not 35% but was still a huge drop every winter.

 

[Jaguar]

LOL. no. wrong. full stop.

ICE cars do not suffer 35% range reduction due to low temperatures. That is absurd.

Fuel Economy in Cold Weather

20 degrees F is hardly cold. That's T-shirt weather here.

 

[SSonnentag]

During freezing weather, I figure 140% of rated power usage for the first 1-1.5 hours, and then 110% of rated usage for the remainder of the drive. So on long trips, it's only the first leg of the trip that you'll notice any "extreme" power usage.

 

[gambit48]

It's weird. I get cold temp warnings even when it's just at the high 50s. I got a warning to charge car NOW at stated 45 miles range left.

The thing is, I don't think the range has actually been any different. Not that I've noticed anyways. I just get warnings I've never gotten before when it was warmer.

Keep posting your experiences though. It does drop to below freezing here so I wanna know what to expect. Just hasn't happened gotten cold yet.

 

[dsvick]

//aside

The car sat in my garage uncharged (was planning on charging free @ work) for the remainder of the weekend.

I drove 10 miles to work today and they were working on the parking garage and I was unable to charge. I just checked the range on the car via the app and it's now 138. So, I drove 10 miles today, left the car parked in the garage saturday and sunday and the car lost about 40 miles of range.

Question... what is that 138 mile range based on? Is it based on your lifetime wh/mi? The last XX number of miles driven? Does it take into account the current battery condition? Meaning, if you start out driving on a longer trip will your estimated range increase as the battery warms up?

 

[SSonnentag]

My Prius took an 18% mpg hit during Arizona Winter (10-50 degrees F) driving vs Spring and Fall driving (no heat/AC). Summer driving took a 5% hit due to AC usage. My S takes about a 5% AC hit in the summer, the same as the Prius. Winter varies from 40% at the worst for the first hour down to about 10% once everything and everyone is warmed up.

So in my estimation, ICE beats EV for commuting efficiency during the icy Winter months, while EV beats ICE on long driving trips during those same icy Winter months. (Efficiency being the optimal range vs realized range per unit of fuel/energy utilized.)

 

[dailo]

It was 57 outside this morning and I saw limited regen for the first time on my 3. Surprised to see that, I've only seen limited regen when it was in the 30's.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

You should expect at least 50% reduction in real-world range due to decreased battery efficiency, increased need for heating, increased vampire battery drain.

50% 'at least' is incorrect, and it's possible to get hit with only 10-30% of loss.
However, opposite is possible; when I drove short commute (5km one way), and didn't charge for days, I was able to squeeze only about 100km over a week, instead of 330km for my S60, which is a touch over 65% hit, almost 70%.
However, this is a weird, weird use case, where you don't need a car and hence drive very little, and keep it on the street, so lots of vampiric losses, and no charging in the meantime... Even then it costs less to charge than even the most cost effective diesel , let alone gasoline car. Perhaps it's fair to say you need to charge once a week, whether you drive or not in sub-zero temp., this is a winter overhead. And then your driving hit is probably only 10-30% depending on the length of driving; the more you need to drive the better range, so it evens out nicely

 

[SSonnentag]

It was 57 outside this morning and I saw limited regen for the first time on my 3. Surprised to see that, I've only seen limited regen when it was in the 30's.

I could be mistaken, but from my recollection of driving my S last Winter, one of the updates during the past year has raised the threshold on when limited regen is seen. I don't think I used to see limited regen until at least down in the 40s at night, but like you, I'm now seeing it well up into the 50s.

 

[gambit48]

It was 57 outside this morning and I saw limited regen for the first time on my 3. Surprised to see that, I've only seen limited regen when it was in the 30's.

Yeah, I got that at 59. Totally didn't expect it. That's still shorts and t-shirt weather for a lot of the country.

 

[voip-ninja]

Question... what is that 138 mile range based on? Is it based on your lifetime wh/mi? The last XX number of miles driven? Does it take into account the current battery condition? Meaning, if you start out driving on a longer trip will your estimated range increase as the battery warms up?

The 138 miles is based on what is currently displaying in the app. I have no idea how the car lost ~230 miles of range just sitting in a cold garage for 48 hours but apparently it did.

Now that I think of it, I backed the car out of the garage yesterday morning so I could replace a light bulb. That was about a 20 meter trip. The car might have been on for about 15 minutes (not driving).

So yeah, cold weather hammers these cars big time.

I've never once seen the estimated range go up, it's only ever gone down.

 

[voip-ninja]

20 degrees F is hardly cold. That's T-shirt weather here.

If you are down into the severe sub-zero F temperatures required to make an ICE car lose 35% of its range I am highly skeptical that you are seeing less than 35% range reduction in similar conditions in an electric vehicle. Maybe if you pre-condition the car in a heated garage, don't run the heater on your trip, etc.... but in ALL situations I have ever seen backed up by factual data, an EV will suffer demonstrably and substantial range loss compared to an ICE vehicle in similar conditions.

ICE cars are their own heat sources and generally once they begin to warm up the range impact is not too severe.

EVs will always require heating of the battery in extreme cold, and they will burn a ton of power heating the cabin. This is less of a problem on very long trips but will impact people who do the typical 10-30 miles each way commute the hardest.

People would never think of not operating the cabin heater in a conventional automobile, but people in TMC act like they are wearing the red badge of courage for driving their $100,000 Tesla in the cold with a winter coat and gloves on and nothing but a seat heater to keep them warm so they can maximize range.

 

[cab]

As others have noted, one if the less obvious pieces of this puzzle is the darn vampire drain we see in Teslas. My wife took our Model S from Dallas to San Antonio for a conference, she was there at the hotel for a few days and then drove to her sister's house in Boerne before heading back to the San Marcus Supercharger. The vampire drain tends to be more "hidden" when your car sits at home plugged in all night (where it will top itself off after it drops a bit), but on the road sitting at a hotel or a family member's house (unplugged) it can come as quite a shock. Having done this a couple of times, we now have her take on extra juice at the last Supercharger stop before she hits San Antonio....and yeah, before you ask, San Antonio has 1.5 million people, (metro area is 2.4M people), is the second largest city in Texas (surpassed Dallas a while back) and has ZERO superchargers (Dallas/Ft. Worth area has 4 in comparison).

 

[StellarRat]

You should expect at least 50% reduction in real-world range due to decreased battery efficiency, increased need for heating, increased vampire battery drain.

Gee, I never had that much reduction even in my Leaf (no battery heater even). I can't imagine a Tesla is going to take that much of a hit. I suppose if it was 40 below zero something maybe.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

I expect ~30% just like the MX and similar to the LEAF.

I am not new to BEVs, and see no reason to believe that the Model 3 will experience any greater effects from the cold. Besides, a 50% reduction would still be ~20 miles more than our LEAF saw during ideal conditions.