Extremely Disappointed With Model S Range When Driving on the Highway at 35F

[redmunds]

500 miles is further than most bladders can go, so it's a moot point. Tesla CAN get 400 miles of range, though most people will get closer to 350 at speed.

Exactly. I can no longer drive more than about 3 hours at a time without the need for a break, so the 402 miles advertised for my 2020 MS LR+ is plenty.

 

[mswlogo]

Hi, this must be your first EV. Cold weather almost always sees you lose a decent amount of your rated range. Also you're never going to get anywhere near the 405 miles range unless its 0 wind, perfectly sunny warm day and drive 40 mph nonstop on a flat road. I don't get why Tesla even bothers putting those numbers because it gives new owners unreasonable expectations. Also depending on where you're driving elevation plays a major factor in your energy consumption. Going uphill you'll use more energy but on the way back you'll offset that with regen. Also I'd kill for 258 miles of range.

Oh, I know, I bought the long range model 3, not the SR+ And you seem to understand so you were not my target audience. There's a point at which I think a bigger battery becomes a problem. Batteries are heavy so there's a point where huge batteries eventually reduce your range (by augmenting consumption). They are costly and we want car makers to make affordable cars. There's a good amount of pollution created to build them, and not enough recycling at the moment to offset it. Heck, we can't build them fast enough to sell all the cars we want to sell so putting more cells per car further reduces that capacity. I would also prefer to never stop anywhere for charging, but I think that's not reasonable.

Disagree. My last 19,000 miles is almost exactly EPA rating. Which about 300 wh/mile. That includes NewEngland Winters, and TOWING. Car is almost always fully loaded too. Two small dogs way back. Two adults and back seat packed to the brim.

 

[richrootes]

Can you still select ‘Range Mode’ in the newer cars? This might have helped a little - plus the advice we got years ago was to use the heated seats over the cabin heater for longer trips in the cold

Don‘t get disheartened - it just takes a little while to get used to

 

[ucmndd]

Disagree. My last 19,000 miles is almost exactly EPA rating. Which about 300 wh/mile. That includes NewEngland Winters, and TOWING. Car is almost always fully loaded too. Two small dogs way back. Two adults and back seat packed to the brim.

FWIW the early Raven cars like yours had much more realistic EPA estimates. I believe your X was delivered with an EPA range of 325 miles?

Much easier to hit rated range in your car. It's shortly after that when Tesla really started leaning hard into gaming the EPA ratings... all of a sudden the same exact car magically started being delivered with 360 miles of range, and then 371, despite no fundamental changes.

I also have relatively little trouble getting close to EPA range on my 2016 S.

 

[ThomasD]

How long does it take to charge to 400 miles

 

[augkuo]

This was posted this June with a very long line at Tejon:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1405177307472576512

The navigation map will now let you know if stalls are out of order or if all stalls are being used. There are 3 supercharging stations right before Tejon ranch so you can use those to get over the Grapevine.

 

[DBV1]

Hi, this must be your first EV. Cold weather almost always sees you lose a decent amount of your rated range. Also you're never going to get anywhere near the 405 miles range unless its 0 wind, perfectly sunny warm day and drive 40 mph nonstop on a flat road. I don't get why Tesla even bothers putting those numbers because it gives new owners unreasonable expectations. Also depending on where you're driving elevation plays a major factor in your energy consumption. Going uphill you'll use more energy but on the way back you'll offset that with regen. Also I'd kill for 258 miles of range.

What is strange is that other EV makers advertise more conservative numbers, but then get much better range. As a first time Tesla owner, will be really disappointed if the OP mileage ends up being true all winter. Won’t be keeping my new Model S LR long. EPA/Tesla needs to estimate what real world mileage will be then.

On my BMW 530xi, I always overachieved range by quite a bit even in the winter and that was not babying the car either in good winter weather. There is no reason, that Tesla can’t t make it more realistic or underestimate then overachieve the rated mileage. Many more first time buyers will be disappointed if this does not change, as I estimated 300 miles range would be worst case scenario. Anything under that is unacceptable for the LR with 19’s.

 

[bb95570]

Jill and I went for our first long trip in our 2021 Model S LR yesterday. The trip covered 325 miles of roads with speed limits mostly between 55 and 70 mph. Close to half of that was on 70 mph highways. The car was set to Chill Mode and I have never been stopped for driving at the speeds we traveled. The temperature outside hovered around 35 degrees Fahrenheit and we kept the inside of the car at 68 F. My calculations show that we got 258 miles with 100% of a full charge (325 miles with 126%)! No where near the 405 miles of range advertised. And that doesn't even account for leaving enough charge to be able to safely reach a charger. Yes, we were traveling mostly at high speeds but we had hoped that these conditions wouldn't result in a 36% drop from the 405 miles advertised even with the cold weather. And I would have hoped that the estimated range would leave a safe reservoir to get to a charger. Much of the distance was spent on cruise control, so no heavy foot on the gas and light winds. Please explain.

Do you really want to drive for more than 4-5 hrs at a stretch? I don't. My favorite part of this whole lifestyle is that I'm forced to take a break at reasonable intervals. No more driving from Boulder CO to LA in one shot, which I did once in my 20s. Nuts. Seems like you have the perfect pacing. Now-- charge times and costs I suppose are a significant downside to this but the costs aren't bad and the waiting for the charge is best spent in a nice cafe eating lunch anyhow.

 

[dipper]

Most of us learned to forget range and just race to the next supercharger.

Charge enough to get 100-150 miles to the next charger. Then get close to the peak charge as much as possible. And repeat.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

EPA range is easy to achieve in our model 3. But EPA conditions are nothing like the conditions you were driving in.

I’m not sure why people expect to get EPA range numbers on road trips on major highways.

Maybe the EPA needs to make a special set of conditions that mimic road trips.

 

[DBV1]

Most of us learned to forget range and just race to the next supercharger.

Charge enough to get 100-150 miles to the next charger. Then get close to the peak charge as much as possible. And repeat.

That is too short for me, so hopefully it will be much better than that. Although my Dad would love stopping that much. LOL

 

[GtiMart]

Too short? It's the fastest way to road trip an ev. Longer stints require deeper charges, which are long since charging speed goes down as the battery fills up. By stopping less you'll arrive later. Weird, I know

 

[orion2001]

EPA range is easy to achieve in our model 3. But EPA conditions are nothing like the conditions you were driving in.

I’m not sure why people expect to get EPA range numbers on road trips on major highways.

Maybe the EPA needs to make a special set of conditions that mimic road trips.

Tesla could easily do what pretty much every other EV manufacturer does - be conservative with their range estimates, but they happily game the EPA rating system to the max to make their range appear to be a lot better than what it really is.

Refer to the chart here which I posted earlier

Edmunds Tested: Electric Car Range and Consumption | Edmunds

Which EVs have the best electric car range? The EPA provides range estimates for every electric vehicle, but they don't test EV range in the real world -- and Edmunds does. Read all the latest real-world EV test results from the Edmunds experts.

www.edmunds.com

It's so obvious that Tesla is the only one gaming their published mileage rating compared to everyone else. The comparison for the EQS v.s. Plaid or Mach-E vs MY is embarrassing. Yet most folks seem to accept the rated 326 Mile range for the MY as gospel and an apples to apples number when comparing against any of the other EV manufacturer's mileage ratings when real-world testing clearly indicates otherwise.

 

[ucmndd]

What is strange is that other EV makers advertise more conservative numbers, but then get much better range. As a first time Tesla owner, will be really disappointed if the OP mileage ends up being true all winter. Won’t be keeping my new Model S LR long. EPA/Tesla needs to estimate what real world mileage will be then.

This, I think, is the underlying problem. EPA estimates, be them for electric vehicles or gas vehicles, have always been worthless at predicting real world range or economy.

Their real value was to offer a consistent point of reference in lab conditions. This enabled relative comparison across similar models. That appears to be fundamentally broken in the case of EV range estimates, because the manufacturers can manipulate all of these fudge factors and publish wildly divergent numbers.

Thus the prior utility of relative comparison is gone, and the absolute numbers remain worthless in real world conditions, so really they’re good for nothing.

 

[martinwinlow]

And.... let's not forget that *any* vehicle suffers the same extra aerodynamic drag (and therefore reduced range per 'refuelling') in cold weather. It's down to the increse in the density of the air at colder temperatues. IIRC, I calculated that going from about 20C to 0C ambient outdoor temperature increases aerodynamic drag by about 10% - ie very significant. Cold tyres will also worsen the cars overall efficiency as would any significant build up of ice and/or snow.

I'd really like to see all EVs come as standard with electrically heated windscreens (eliminating the need for very inefficient hot air de-misting), heated sets (all of the seat, not just the base), heated steering wheels (makes a huge difference to the percieved temperature/comfort) and ideally a heated patch on the floor to allow passengers to keep their feet warm - all without the need for any sort of hot air. Together with some sensible clothing, these relatively affordable features would go a long way to offset the need for cabin heat set to balmy temperatures.

Then there's heat pumps and cabin insulation... double-glazed windows (maybe not)?

As Rocky_H competently explained in the 3rd post on this thread, getting away from the idea of free heat due to the appalling inefficiency of the ICE takes a bit of getting used to. So does actually having to actually pay for it!

 

[Beasts]

Most of us learned to forget range and just race to the next supercharger.

Charge enough to get 100-150 miles to the next charger. Then get close to the peak charge as much as possible. And repeat.

Tough to do when there are only 2 out of the way, poorly spaced chargers anywhere near your 325 mile round trip. Travelling through Amish areas in Ohio is a whole lot different from driving in less rural places where many of the residents don't rely on horses and bicycles for transportation. But the scenery is outstanding!

 

[swt2c]

So now comes the downside of the amazing efficiency of electric motors. They run cool. The don't waste TONS of the energy getting extremely hot like gas engines do. So if you want to warm up the cabin, you need to run an electric space heater quite a bit.

Doesn't the '21 refresh S have the heat pump?

 

[WilliamG]

Doesn't the '21 refresh S have the heat pump?

Yup.

 

[Rocky_H]

Doesn't the '21 refresh S have the heat pump?

Yes, it does. I mentioned before thinking about it though. Heat pump efficiency shifts, though, with what temperature the source is and how far of a temperature difference it is being asked to create. When the outside temperature is in the 40's or 50's, that's not bad to make it 70 in the car. When it's getting down to low 30's, the heat pump is losing effectiveness and having to run more/work harder and consuming more energy and maybe having to run the supplemental direct electric heating.

For our house, we got a combo air conditioner / heat pump unit. And the house already has the existing standard gas furnace. So the thermostat system is set for a cutoff point of I think somewhere in the upper 30's degrees where it will just use the gas furnace when it is colder than that, because the heat pump just wouldn't be able to do anything when it is that cold. But most of the semi-cool times of the year, when it's above the 30's, it does well.

 

[jsmay311]

For reference, the InsideEVs 70mph range test on a 2021 Model S Plaid with 21-inch wheels found it got 12% less range than the EPA rated range. (300 miles vs 348 miles.). They don’t specify precise temperatures, but it’s probably safe to assume mild temps.

And I don’t think it was mentioned in this thread, but I saw the OP mentioned in another thread that he’s got 19-inch wheels, so you can rule out 21’s contributing to the poor range and efficiency. (I was wondering this myself.)

Also relevant, I believe the EPA rated range is based on combined city+highway efficiency. For the 2021 S LR, the rates combined efficiency is 120 MPGe and the highway is 115 MPGe. So for highway driving, right off the bat you can drop the 405 mile range down to 388 miles. (=405 x 115/120)

Lastly, I’ve been driving EVs for 9 years and a Tesla for 3 years, including several Midwest winter road trips, and I’m still a bit surprised by just how far below the rated range the OP achieved. 70mph just isn’t that fast (and 55mph certainly isn’t) and 35F just isn’t that cold. :-\