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Don’t order SR or MR if your winter is cold.
- Thread starter maroon555
- Start date
Don't buy this car if you plan to drive in short trip conditions. Just drove 0.4 miles at 647 Wh/mi. My range is reduced 63%, to 115 mile range!
If you drive very short distances, be vary wary, you may not even have enough range to make the trip.
If you drive very short distances, be vary wary, you may not even have enough range to make the trip.
dhrivnak
Active Member
You may not agree but I think the car will. As an example I did take a 60 mile trip this morning power after 1 mile was 400 Watts on level ground. After 30 miles I averaged 309. After 60 miles my average dropped to 266. All this on level roads in MS and a cool 45 degree. Distance matters.
How about using a zero emission bicycle for that distance?
While the title of the article is clickbait, I think many are dismissing some valid concerns voiced by many driving in cold weather including myself. As mentioned previously I am losing 30% due to cold. I have real concerns that when driving through snow that I might not make it home.
I have had to actually turn off the heat a few times to ensure that I make it home when I have driven less than 200 miles. With 310 miles rated range I felt pretty confident that range anxiety would not be any issue but now that it is cold out I am having some concerns.
This is coming from a person that has been obsessively following Tesla for years. If it caught me off guard it will definitely catch the general public off guard.
I had planned on buying the wife a short range model 3 when they become available but after experiencing cold weather loss I’m not so sure. While 220 miles should be more than enough for her on a daily basis if I do the math of 90% charge with a 30% cold weather loss equals 132 miles. She easily will drive a 100 miles a day with work and kids activities which doesn’t leave much room.
The point is cold weather loss has to be a serious consideration for people living in cold weather climates and cannot simply be dismissed.
The argument that ICE vehicles lose range in cold weather is a straw man. I never considered the effect of cold weather when purchasing and ICE vehicle. Sure maybe I got less mileage in the winter, I would just get more gas then. It is not quite as simple with EV’s.
I have had to actually turn off the heat a few times to ensure that I make it home when I have driven less than 200 miles. With 310 miles rated range I felt pretty confident that range anxiety would not be any issue but now that it is cold out I am having some concerns.
This is coming from a person that has been obsessively following Tesla for years. If it caught me off guard it will definitely catch the general public off guard.
I had planned on buying the wife a short range model 3 when they become available but after experiencing cold weather loss I’m not so sure. While 220 miles should be more than enough for her on a daily basis if I do the math of 90% charge with a 30% cold weather loss equals 132 miles. She easily will drive a 100 miles a day with work and kids activities which doesn’t leave much room.
The point is cold weather loss has to be a serious consideration for people living in cold weather climates and cannot simply be dismissed.
The argument that ICE vehicles lose range in cold weather is a straw man. I never considered the effect of cold weather when purchasing and ICE vehicle. Sure maybe I got less mileage in the winter, I would just get more gas then. It is not quite as simple with EV’s.
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You nailed it. A lot of people on this forum have no idea what they are talking about and choose to live in a bubble. My experience with i3 and M3 is exactly the same in winter with 50% or worse of range loss based on the same daily commute pattern. I had to charge more than once a day for i3 in the winter to make a 50 mile round trip commute. It will piss me off if I have to charge once every two days for my LR M3 in the coldest days. Yes, I don’t pay a penny for electricity since I get it free from work and have access to free chargers close to home. But still the perception of dramatically diminished range is psychologically depressing.
Thanks! I'll give that a shot.
This. I've had 2013 and 2016. But for EV neophytes I imagine it takes a while to adjust, especially if they're the types (like my boss with his 3) to keep their gas cars always above half a tank. I used to always wait for about 30 mi after the light came on lol.
I do discount the severity of it, because I've survived since 2013 only driving Leafs. But I agree with most of your points given your use case. The only thing I don't get: can't you stop to charge? If you're driving these distances, there are multiple Supercharger stations within 100 mi of me.
When I was selling my Leaf this week, I definitely mentioned cold weather hit to each person and said that (with 73 mi range) the car wasn't for them if they drive more than 50 mi/day. That said, it doesn't have SC network. So hopefully Tesla sales people mention this to the store-derived prospects (i.e. not just buying off the site without coming in). But if you're frequently driving 200 mi/day without: stopping at a job that has charging; or at home for a bit (with HPWC); and are unwilling or unable to stop at a SC and play on your phone or grab a coffee for a few minutes, maybe EV isn't for you either. I haven't driven 200 mi in one day since I picked up the Tesla in September. We usually only drive that far 3-4x/year for road trips.
To me, it's worth all the savings and the driving experience to stop and charge for a bit. I'd just work it into my schedule. But I'm a planner. If you're very spontaneous maybe you don't want to do that.
voip-ninja
Give me some sugar baby
Was that supposed to be funny? Has anyone discussed emissions in this thread? You are trolling... and for what it's worth, even with cold weather hits to range Model 3 will get much better equivalent mileage than the comparable BMW/Merc/Audi cars that people would alternately be buying for $45,000-$75,000.
Yes, there is a supercharger in the vicinity of my work and my home and I charge at home with a HPWC. By vicinity, I mean half-hour from work and half-hour from home. Round trip plus 20-30 minutes charging is 1:30 total. I have done this on occasion when absolutely needed but I really don’t desire to do it on a daily basis. Yes, I have also topped of at home a few times but usually looking at an hour minimum charge time to get the distances I need. So I know how to make it work and am generally willing to put the effort in.
The point is 200 miles of driving range is really the bare minimum that I need not the maximum. I thought this could be easily achieved with a rated battery of 310 miles but I am finding out that this is not the case which is disappointing. I didn’t fully appreciate the cold weather hit in range.
I was thinking of posting something similar. I was looking at my trip computer leaving work. It was 0.2 miles to reach the street (all down hill) and I was at 900 wh/mi. OMG I need to return my car !! I ended up at 285 wh/mi at 32F (all day) on a five mile commute. At one point it showed 200 wh/mi at 1 mile. But again that's a ridiculously small piece of data to judge performance on.
I'd consider folks quoting poor performance on 0.4 mile commute in the cold as trolling.
If my commute was that short, I think I'd walk.
Dear Tesla,
Prewarming the interior on shore power needs to include the battery regardless of the temperature (or at least user selectable). Even though my lowest temperature in the car has been about 42 degrees (overnight lows in the low 20s) in the morning I still have limited regen for the first 5 miles or so even though the interior has been warming to 68 for 20-30 minutes on shore power.
Prewarming the interior on shore power needs to include the battery regardless of the temperature (or at least user selectable). Even though my lowest temperature in the car has been about 42 degrees (overnight lows in the low 20s) in the morning I still have limited regen for the first 5 miles or so even though the interior has been warming to 68 for 20-30 minutes on shore power.
mmd
Active Member
Thanks for being honest. Most TMCers have too many TSLA eggs to protect, so they are naturally inclined to dismiss anything remotely negative about Tesla or EVs. I'm surprised that long term followers of EVs are caught off guard. There is a good reason Tesla went with 300+ mile EPA range claim. If you are having some trouble now, what will happen 2-3 years later when the battery itself has lost some ~5-10% capacity? But I must say, driving 150+ miles a day is not a common scenario.
But then, you lose 40-60 mile of range in the super charger detour and cause extra traffic on the road
Best to get a charger installed at work, if it is at all possible.
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168 miles driven (7% charge remaining) plus 20 miles remaining projected = 188 miles. I left the house this morning charged to 90% with a half-hour preheat. Total loss is about 33%. Good thing I didn’t have to take my daughter to dance class or my son to Tae Kwon Do tonight.
This is what I am trying to describe. Who bought their car thinking that they might have to sweat about range when only driving around 160 miles on a 310 mile battery pack.
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voip-ninja
Give me some sugar baby
It's a legitimate point. Superchargers to do a quick top off to continue running around in cold temps is not convenient or even an option for a lot of people. With a gas car you just pull into one of a billion gas stations and top off and go on your way... and realistically in cold weather the hit to ICE range is about 12% not 35%.
I will say there are benefits though to cold weather EV driving. I don't have to baby the EV in cold weather for fear of harming the turbo, engine or transmission. Similarly the heater starts working immediately even in very cold weather and doesn't take 10-15 minutes to start producing warm air in the cabin. I can also pre-heat even if it's not plugged into power and even if it's in my garage so that after I get my morning coffee the car is nice and toasty and ready to go.
People in colder climates absolutely want to buy the best battery they can.
I expect even larger capacity and better cold weather performance to be things Tesla will deliver on in less than 5 years time which would line up with a good time to trade in my 1st gen Model 3.
I see people remote start their ICE cars and then leave them running for 30 min or more. That obviously reduces the range of that car, but it's inconsequential because the risk of getting stranded is pretty much nonexistent for ICE.
EVs are different. Yes, it's great to start with a full "tank" every morning, but the reality is that if you run low on juice mid-drive, it's quite the heart-pounding experience.
And I also think that a good portion of people who shell out $100k or more for a Tesla aren't your typical $100k ICE buyers. A lot of them support the company mission and/or are efficiency-minded. So optimizing for efficiency and range are very much on people's minds.
For me, LR gives me lots of peace of mind. I don't need to charge as full. I can forget to plug in sometimes and still have enough range the next day. I can get more charge into the car per unit time than a smaller battery. I can absorb more the effects of cabin heating, cold temps, slushy wet roads. I don't have to feel range anxiety as much as the battery never gets too low.
I get that for some, the additional cost of LR outweighs the above peace of mind considerations. And that's cool too. And some people have way less range anxiety than me. I took some advice I read on these forums to force myself to push the battery down to single digits. It was a nervewracking experience. 20F and I was losing range faster than anticipated (in my S). I reached the supercharger with 2% left. It did not cure my range anxiety. It just kind of traumatized me. I never want to feel that way again, so the more buffer I have from 0%, the better.
EVs are different. Yes, it's great to start with a full "tank" every morning, but the reality is that if you run low on juice mid-drive, it's quite the heart-pounding experience.
And I also think that a good portion of people who shell out $100k or more for a Tesla aren't your typical $100k ICE buyers. A lot of them support the company mission and/or are efficiency-minded. So optimizing for efficiency and range are very much on people's minds.
For me, LR gives me lots of peace of mind. I don't need to charge as full. I can forget to plug in sometimes and still have enough range the next day. I can get more charge into the car per unit time than a smaller battery. I can absorb more the effects of cabin heating, cold temps, slushy wet roads. I don't have to feel range anxiety as much as the battery never gets too low.
I get that for some, the additional cost of LR outweighs the above peace of mind considerations. And that's cool too. And some people have way less range anxiety than me. I took some advice I read on these forums to force myself to push the battery down to single digits. It was a nervewracking experience. 20F and I was losing range faster than anticipated (in my S). I reached the supercharger with 2% left. It did not cure my range anxiety. It just kind of traumatized me. I never want to feel that way again, so the more buffer I have from 0%, the better.
good post, definitely buy the biggest battery you can afford.
personally I think SR will be more than enough for me here in NYC. 50-60 miles is max I drive in a day.
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