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

[Bigriver]

Driving on the Ohio Turnpike on Thanksgiving, the average speed was around 80+ with lots of cars going much faster. The only car I really saw going slowly on the whole trip was a Model 3. LOL.

I am more than a bit surprised by this statement. I do a round trip across most of the Ohio Turnpike at least once a month and I find that very few ever go over 75 mph. It is one of the most heavily patrolled roads that I drive, and I’ve always thought that shows in the moderated speeds. With a holiday weekend I would have expected the State Patrol to be out in force.

 

[Beasts]

A whole lot of different ways to approach this. A lot of different variables to consider. Without worrying about speed EVs are a whole lot more energy efficient than ICE cars and if you just look at ICE cars that perform comparably to the top Teslas it seems that the Teslas are somewhere around 4 to 5+ times the MPGe. Some days you just want to have fun and others you happen to think about climate warming, dirty air, noise pollution, the need to push for the use of renewables and the next generation's future so it just feels good to mellow out, relax and enjoy the scenery. Not to mention the quiet, or the alternative of listening to music without a lot of road noise, or a good conversation, while smiling to yourself about the decent ride and the potential waiting for you* when you want it. Lots of options. And when a disagreeable sort of individual passes you with a look that says "what's a grandpa/grandma like you doing driving a muscle car like that?" just smile and wave letting him know you don't have anything to prove.
*Jeez, I almost put "under the hood"!

 

[MichaelJava95]

Actually, the smartest and best way to travel in an EV is to slow down. You cannot charge as fast as the extra energy you spend going faster (you will spend more time charging to replace the extra miles used than you saved by going faster). The only time this doesn't apply is when you can easily make it to your destination and there's a charger available there.

Also, using your method, you better not start off with a full battery. The closer to zero you are when you arrive at the charging station, the lesser you'll need to charge to reach the next supercharger.

Regardless, when traveling in an EV, driving slower gets you there faster. Though I admit that it's hard to do sometimes.

This table shows that going faster gets you there faster.

In Search For Optimal Cruising Speed Of Tesla Model 3: Video

Preparing for long distance travel, one of the main questions is the optimal speed of driving. Here is a brief discussion of results for the Tesla Model 3 Performance.

insideevs.com

You’re changing the argument to something completely different.

I maintain my position: your argument that you need to “go slow to go fast” in an EV is simply not true at modern DC charging speeds. All other things being equal, going quickly,stopping more frequently, and using the bottom half of the battery will be faster. In the example above you’re STILL ahead even if you account for the deadhead minutes/miles getting to/from the charger (I think your estimate of 10 minutes is quite high for most of the sites I use).

If you’ve got a real world counterexample with any two reasonably distant points on a map, offer it up.

I’ll concede that the one scenario where it might make sense to slow down is when the trip is right on the edge of the max range of the car and the difference is between having to stop or not. But that’s not the same argument you made originally - that you “cannot charge as fast as the extra energy you spend going faster.” In almost all cases, you can.

I agree with that.

Drive slowly (<60mph) if you need to make the charge last to get to a certain location. (low on charge and gotta make it to the charger).
Drive fast (>60mph) otherwise.

Electric cars can get extremely high range even in cold temps (13C) if you drive at 50mph with the space heater off. A model S 75D is rated for 259 miles (when it is brand new). But in this video, bjorn drives it for 318 miles in a single charge by going 50mph, space heater off, 13C. You should warm the battery and the cabin while plugged in so you dont have to while driving.

When bjorn "range races" other electric cars (who gets to a far location and gets back first), he drives over the speed limit the whole time.

 

[DBV1]

I am more than a bit surprised by this statement. I do a round trip across most of the Ohio Turnpike at least once a month and I find that very few ever go over 75 mph. It is one of the most heavily patrolled roads that I drive, and I’ve always thought that shows in the moderated speeds. With a holiday weekend I would have expected the State Patrol to be out in force.

Wow - I that is the opposite that I see. I drive at least weekly on the Ohio Turnpike from around the 480 exit to I75 exit and it is like the autobahn most of the time. On Thanksgiving there was not a State Trooper in sight. I always use Waze, which picks up the majority of State Troopers when they are out.

Just going around 80 mph on Thanksgiving day, I had to stay in the middle lane, as people were flying right by me and I was driving slower than I usually do, as my wife was with me. LOL. Usually drive even faster always following a pack of cars. Earlier last year when Covid started, when the Turnpike was a ghost town, speeds were even faster.

 

[SO16]

That's missing the point. Even after they fixed testing to Tesla's satisfaction, the Tesla cars barely made their rated range (some still came up short). Meanwhile, pretty much every other car manufacturer exceeded their rated range by a pretty wide margin under identical test conditions highlighting how Tesla is the only company willing to game the range ratings to have larger numbers that don't really hold up in the real world. Published range ratings from Tesla with their cars are nowhere near equivalent to those published by other EV manufacturers. The latter tend to publish range estimates that are actually achievable in real-world driving conditions unlike Tesla.

I don’t like it that Tesla used a different (legal) method to determine the range either. All I stated was that this article showed them getting closer to EPA range.

I do prefer the under promise over deliver of range that the other manufacturers do. I wish they would have done the drive past zero with all the same models as their first test. Actual range to the point of car “gimp mode” is what I really care about.

 

[David_Cary]

One thing to consider is that other manufacturers have little EV capacity and make all of their money by selling ICE vehicles. They are a little biased to undersell their cars so it makes sense not to publish high range numbers. Put another way, it doesn't make sense to try and game the EPA numbers. It isn't that the LICE manufacturers don't want to sell EVs, but they don't put as much effort into selling them.

I think we can all agree that the ideal speed depends greatly on the overall trip. Obviously if I am taking a 300 mile trip that I can complete at 70 mph but need charging at 80 mph, it is better to go 70 mph. Then there are all sorts of less obvious cases - like being able to skip a supercharge that happens to be a bit more off the highway. There is no one speed that works best. Generally if you are hopping SC to SC well after your original homebase, it pays to go fast. But it doesn't generally pay to go 100 mph and then have to fill to 80% to keep going that fast. So there are limits.

And speed costs more at lower temps because of air density increases. So an ideal trip speed in the summer is different than the winter on identical routes. Understanding all these things makes it a whole lot easier.

 

[Destiny1701]

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.

Agreed on model 3…the most efficient of all the models by far. I went from an S for 5 yrs in Toronto winters barely able to achieve 65% of my posted range. My last S was a 2018 100D with 535km epa range and gave maybe 350km at best in winter driving My friends who owned model 3 over this last winter we’re achieving close to 80% consistently in the same weather conditions.

S is a heavier car so it will come with higher consumption period. One winter in 2017, we charged to 100% on our P100D (505km) drove literally a 200km return trip at eve/night during -8 to -10c temp. We ended up home with only 45km left. That’s 450km drained on a 200km trip. Full heaters, heated seats. If you want to improve colder weather range, Pre- heat your battery as much as possible prior to leaving and if possible at your final destination before returning.

 

[henderrj]

This just isn’t true any more.

Practically speaking, when traveling where charging stops are abundant I find the strategy @GtiMart describes to be easily the quickest - go as fast as you want, stop frequently, work the bottom half of the battery.

Consider a leg of a long trip where two cars leave a supercharger with 50% SoC and drive 100 miles to the next supercharger. One travels 80mph and one travels 65mph.

Travel time for the fast car is 1hr 15 minutes.
Travel time for the slow car is 1hr 32 minutes. (17 minute difference)

Using efficiency data from ABRP, a Model S 100D will use about 288 wh/mi at 65 mph and ~350 wh/mi at 80 mph. So the slow car uses 28.8kwh for the leg and the fast car uses 35.0kwh (difference of 6.2 kWh).

At ~120kw supercharging, it will take 3 minutes to make up for the extra energy used during this leg. Even if you’re only drawing 60kw, you’ll still recoup the extra energy more than twice over before the slower car arrives 17 minutes after you do.

Taking the strategy to the logical extreme: Go fast, stop frequently is the quickest by far.

A Rented Tesla Model S Just Shattered the EV Cannonball Record

Piloted by Ryan Levenson and Josh Allan, the Model S crossed the country in 42 hours and 17 minutes. That's two hours faster than the previous record, set in a Porsche Taycan.

www.roadandtrack.com

I lived the bulk of my life in the Northwest on the coast. Superchargers everywhere. Even more of them down where you are in california. Now, I've semi-retired to the midwest. You need some pretty powerful binoculars to see a supercharger around here! So, driving fast isn't always a possibility here. Hopefully will be soon! As i, too, love to travel at a quicker pace. Even if it does take longer at the charge stations, as I still have an old 85. Can't wait for that cyber truck!

 

[Vic_F]

There's a difference between "I got sold 400 miles and I don't get that" and "Tesla needs to up their game because 400 miles isn't enough". I won't argue for the first one. It might be misleading, better documentation could be done.
On the second one though... as long as there are chargers along the way, and they charge quickly enough, the car doesn't need to go 2000 miles without charging. You will make it to your destination fast enough. In many parts of the US, there are plenty of chargers.

Ford’s Mach-E seems to get the range claimed. IMO Tesla should list a more realistic number

 

[GtiMart]

Some manufacturers use a lower number than the epa test in their marketing. I believe Porsche does this but I don't know for Ford.
A test is a test. Advertising the epa number, if you tell it properly, is acceptable. You need to know how the test was done.

 

[SO16]

Some manufacturers use a lower number than the epa test in their marketing. I believe Porsche does this but I don't know for Ford.
A test is a test. Advertising the epa number, if you tell it properly, is acceptable. You need to know how the test was done.

It has to do with which “method” manufacturers choose to report. It’s legal but inconsistent. Should be the same exact process for everyone. This video helps explain it.

 

[GtiMart]

Another great video by EE, thanks for linking it. I was thinking of the voluntary reduction but clearly there's more to it.

 

[manitou820]

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.

On a long road trip, I prefer to stop every 3-4 hours. So stopping every 200-250 miles to charge isn't a big deal. But there are several routes I take that have 300+ miles would be nice.

For example we regularly go skiing during the winter and it's 250 miles round trip. 125 miles each direction, in the mountains, during cold weather. Having a legitimate 400 miles of range would be really nice so we wouldn't need to charge.

I also drive 275 miles one way to my father-in-laws house through the mountains. Again that's pushing the limit of a Model S or Model X.

Then there is Texas. To drive the shortest route from Colorado to Austin requires a couple of stretches that are 250 miles between chargers. As a result you need to charge to almost 100% which is a pain. I would not attempt this in our Model X.

Most people don't need 300 miles of range. Our second EV is mostly for around town and the metro area. 200 miles would be more than enough. But for some people having a true 400 mile EV would be a nice benefit.

 

[Unclepaul]

Strategy changes when freeway driving in an EV VS a ICE.

In ICE, many travel as fast as they feel they can get away with...without getting a ticket.

In EV you travel as fast as you feel you will get the range you need.

Both will empty their fuel quickly at speeds over 120 MPH.

Believe the Bugatti Veyron runs out of fuel (26 gallons) in less than 15 minutes at top speed.

The range people most look at is EPA estimates. Tesla rarely gives their own estimates, but usually demures to EPA, so get mad at EPA if you do not get the range you were "Promised"

 

[orion2001]

The range people most look at is EPA estimates. Tesla rarely gives their own estimates, but usually demures to EPA, so get mad at EPA if you do not get the range you were "Promised"

I mean when every other manufacturer's range estimates are nowhere near as optimistic as Tesla's (see the Edmunds link posted here several times), I think people are right to blame Tesla. At the very least Tesla can't have it both ways... Claim the mantle of best efficiency and range for their cars using their hyper optimistic published ranges while then falling drastically short compared to their competition in meeting their own published range specs.

 

[ucmndd]

Strategy changes when freeway driving in an EV VS a ICE.

In ICE, many travel as fast as they feel they can get away with...without getting a ticket.

In EV you travel as fast as you feel you will get the range you need.

Both will empty their fuel quickly at speeds over 120 MPH.

Believe the Bugatti Veyron runs out of fuel (26 gallons) in less than 15 minutes at top speed.

The range people most look at is EPA estimates. Tesla rarely gives their own estimates, but usually demures to EPA, so get mad at EPA if you do not get the range you were "Promised"

This post is almost complete fallacy.

 

[SO16]

This post is almost complete fallacy.

Really?

 

[dipper]

Really?

On road trips, some of us drive as fast as we can get away with and go supercharger hunting. Key is do not charge more than need to go to next supercharger.

A lot of YouTubers, like Kyle, do that. This topic has been talked about in this forum many times.

 

[ucmndd]

Really?

Yeah. Take a look upthread for the article posted that shows the faster you go, the faster you arrive up to about 118mph.

In Search For Optimal Cruising Speed Of Tesla Model 3: Video

Preparing for long distance travel, one of the main questions is the optimal speed of driving. Here is a brief discussion of results for the Tesla Model 3 Performance.

insideevs.com

The last paragraph, about Tesla “demurring” to the EPA is just completely fabricated.

 

[FirstInTown]

2020 X LR+ owner and I posted in X forum Disagree With Elon 400 EPA Miles Isn't Enough and got flamed. But 400 EPA miles in a Tesla is rarely 400 miles. Sure in summer at 58 mph I have matched or beat the rated range. But add a little speed (my choice),1000 foot altitude change on trip and cold (not my choice) and SNOW on the road(not my choice) and 371 EPA in my X becomes questionable for the required 215 miles we need to get to our cabin with ZERO super chargers on the way(Teslas choice) .

It sucks because bought the X to avoid driving Ice car, but the range anxiety felt doing this trip with 6 inches of snow on the way where range would get decimated while pushing the car through that made us take our Older Ice car the Tesla was to replace but just don't feel it can do it the winter. If we have taken X and it wasn't going to make it, our only real charge option is a destination charger 30 miles out of the way. Could add HOURS to the trip charging at 10 kw/hour so didn't test it. SUCKS having to burn gas to do this trip though as Tesla made it in Sumer OK.(93->17% usage in Summer)

So NO 400 miles EPA is not enough. Great leader is just wrong.