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Driving round Australia on Route 1

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With a Tesla or almost all EVs the car will warn you well before you run out of charge, generally starting at about 100Km range left when the the range gauge turns amber and later red. If you have a destination in the navigation it will tell you how much range you will have or be short at your destination, it will also give advice to drive below a certain speed to make your destination.
If you don’t have a destination set you will start getting messages warning you “Should start searching for charging stops soon” etc. in other words you will never accidentally run out of electricity as the car will warn you multiple times before it actually happens.
I haven’t personally run my car to 0 Km range, my lowest was 25Km, but from what I have read you may get the “Car shutting down, pull over immediately” message anywhere from a few Km to zero for 10 to 20 Km, it’s my guess that it’s more a factor of how well balanced your battery is that improves the accuracy of your the range meter.
The real indication you are about to run out is the power availability dotted line creeping down. Once it gets down below about 100kW a complete shutdown is imminent.
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No need to get anywhere near zero range in a Tesla @Quamera , the biggest gap between usable power outlets on sealed roads in Australia is less than 300kms.
And of course you are not doing your battery any favors by running it right down either, I don't own an EV but was just curious as to what actually happened when you reached zero. When the DTE reaches 0km on a Commodore there is still 50 to 100km left in the tank depending on driving conditions.
 
Yes I realise that you will never accidently run out of charge, it would have to be deliberate and it would be quite painful to keep ignoring the warnings but I was just curious as to what actually happened.

With most modern cordless power tools you can barely detect the battery running down until it abruptly stops, there would still be enough power remaining to continue working for a short while but the battery controller shuts it down to avoid damage to the battery from being run down too far.
 
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I don't own an EV but was just curious as to what actually happened when you reached zero
I’ve never run my Tesla below 40km, but with the Nissan LEAF you get a voiced “low battery” warning when there’s 15km left on the GOM (guess-o-meter), then a voiced “very low battery” warning when the GOM goes below a few km and turns to “- - -“.

If you’re mad and keep going for about another 5-10 km (the car is still operating normally) it goes into “turtle mode” where a green turtle appears on the display. When that happens the car can drive at a maximum of 40 km/h, and you are warned to pull over immediately. At that point, you have about 1km left to drive, and then the car stops and completely shuts down.
 
Range anxiety is a non-issue.

If your projected range is less than the distance to go, just drive slower.
My s100d has 400 kms range at 110kph, 500kms at 90kph and 800 kms at 60kph.

ABC4 Adjust Battery Consumption is simply divide available battery kWh by distance to go and drive at the speed that achieves that wh/kms. Plus a 10kms buffer. Plus an allowance for elevation changes to the final destination.

This doesn’t apply when DC chargers are available since these fill fast enough to not waste the time saved by driving fast. And dual charger 22kW cars can fill fast enough from 22kW. But for the rest of us it is quicker overall to drive slower to avoid or reduce a day AC charge.
 
On this trip, we haven't charged once from DC since the only DC charger north of Perth in WA is privately owned at Jurien Bay and doesn't have a CHAdeMO lead.

Most charging points on the coast road have Tesla HPWCs now which give us 17kW or 80kms/ hour. If not they have 3p sockets but we can only draw 11kW from these through our UMC for 50kms/hour. Both are more than enough for the night charge.

As in my previous post, we reduce our day charge to a minimum by ABC4, but if we do stop for a loo, coffee etc then ABC1 applies.

However in the Kimberley and Pilbara some locations have only had single phase available, which is enough to fill the car if staying more than one night, but if not a bit of planning is needed to get to the next charging point.

Tesla have been very supportive on this trip and have accepted virtually every 3phase location at which we planned to visit or at which we have charged into their destination charging programme, so there will be a lot more HPWCS up here in a few weeks.
Also a few in NT, which we could not get to, but Richard in Darwin will test out.
 
100kW still sounds like a fair bit of available power or does it keep dropping fairly sharply after that.
The power keeps getting lower and lower gradually, but about 100kW is where I would be looking for a safe place to pull over.
I’ve actually rolled into a rural destination with maybe 80 kW showing as remaining available power on a dark and rainy night. The car barely responds to the throttle, almost felt like a petrol car :)
 
Good on you for helping the rollout of DCs.

I assume Tesla are supplying Gen2 HPWCs which afaik no longer have the Legacy mode switch enabling use by other Type2 Cara.

We tested a new HPWC recently and it still had the legacy switch, so not sure what is the situation with the latest ones.
But I always try to give locations an AEVA 3phase socket then a Tesla HPWC, so that installation of the latter is cheap and all EVs can charge direct from the 3phase if necessary.
 
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Thanks for cheering me up in a cold and locked-down Melbourne.
Awfully glad I was able to get the Highway One full circuit finished November last year! At least I can look at the photos...
Hoped to be out putting more miles on the P3-, but these days more than 5 km incurs a $1600 fee... had to be done, everything else didn't work (too many idiots out there)... don't get me started...

Looks so much fun: enjoy!
 
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It was go
Thanks for cheering me up in a cold and locked-down Melbourne.
Awfully glad I was able to get the Highway One full circuit finished November last year! At least I can look at the photos...
Hoped to be out putting more miles on the P3-, but these days more than 5 km incurs a $1600 fee... had to be done, everything else didn't work (too many idiots out there)... don't get me started...

Looks so much fun: enjoy!

Yes, well done TeeThreee.
It was good to see your logins in Plugshare. Always comforting to know your next charging point was working recently (ABC3 Always Browse Comments)
 
The power keeps getting lower and lower gradually, but about 100kW is where I would be looking for a safe place to pull over.
I’ve actually rolled into a rural destination with maybe 80 kW showing as remaining available power on a dark and rainy night. The car barely responds to the throttle, almost felt like a petrol car :)


So what is the approximate remaining range at 100kW available power.
 
Our adventure is nearly over - just one last leg of 500kms from Horrocks north of Geraldton to Bicton south of Perth.
Only a CCS2 DC charger on the way (provided by local hero Jon Edwards), which is no good for our S100D so ABC4 adjust battery consumption applies. This requires us to drive at 190wh/km, which is too easy normally but the prevailing wind is a moderate southerly.
This is our last challenge and hopefully we can reassure those who doubt Geraldton to Perth can be done without charging (no problem Perth to Geraldton because of the tailwind).

Ironically Lindz has just received her G2G allowing her to re-enter WA at Eucla, drive direct to Bicton (stopping only for fuel and rest) then self-isolate at home for 14 days. My G2G remains cancelled.

But there is always next year for our trip round Oz, and the Kimberley and Pilbara were so much fun. Really amazing destinations, with a lot more destination chargers now.
 
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Our MCU has started to fail after 50,000 kms and 3 years.
I booked a service appointment using the app and Tesla scheduled mobile service to my garage the day after we get back.
Since then they have been struggling to download the car logs since we have kept driving out of Telstra range.
They rang us to ask when we would next be overnight in Telstra range. Excellent service from Tesla.
 
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Our adventure is nearly over - just one last leg of 500kms from Horrocks north of Geraldton to Bicton south of Perth.
Only a CCS2 DC charger on the way (provided by local hero Jon Edwards), which is no good for our S100D so ABC4 adjust battery consumption applies. This requires us to drive at 190wh/km, which is too easy normally but the prevailing wind is a moderate southerly.
This is our last challenge and hopefully we can reassure those who doubt Geraldton to Perth can be done without charging (no problem Perth to Geraldton because of the tailwind).

Ironically Lindz has just received her G2G allowing her to re-enter WA at Eucla, drive direct to Bicton (stopping only for fuel and rest) then self-isolate at home for 14 days. My G2G remains cancelled.

But there is always next year for our trip round Oz, and the Kimberley and Pilbara were so much fun. Really amazing destinations, with a lot more destination chargers now.

Home with 6kms in the tank, having used 465kms to drive 503kms.
Yes, it is possible to drive Horrocks to Bicton without charging.
 
View attachment 581768 Our MCU has started to fail after 50,000 kms and 3 years.
I booked a service appointment using the app and Tesla scheduled mobile service to my garage the day after we get back.
Since then they have been struggling to download the car logs since we have kept driving out of Telstra range.
They rang us to ask when we would next be overnight in Telstra range. Excellent service from Tesla.
There are no symptoms for the flash-related MCU failures, they just stop one day. Those sorts of display corruptions are normally just software problems cured by resets but can of course also indicate an underlying hardware issue, especially if they recur frequently.
 
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