Full Self Driving vs Long Range

[jay ref]

Hello!

I'm about ready to pull the trigger and new Model 3. What's holding up my decision, is the choice between Full Self Driving vs Long Range.

I live in FL and those of you know, we drive and put on some miles. Once I buy, I'm going to drive the piss out of the car. I drive 125 round trip to and from work, with traffic and heat. Plus, I'm very active with the kids in baseball/softball. To give you an idea, I have a 2016 truck with 117,000 miles on it. Thats 34,000 miles annually and a lot gas money.

A few questions here.

Anyone else in a similar situation with mileage? What did you choose and why?
Can the 240 handle the drive with the mileage, traffic and heat?
I read the battery is only good for 1500 charges? Is this true?
Do I go 240 with self drive or go long range?

I'm concerned with the 240 mile battery. I know the car can recharge while driving, but how often will I have to charge?

If anyone has any comments please weigh in.

Thanks for your time!

 

[jjrandorin]

Given the choice, I would always choose range, given your driving profile... simply because you can always add the options for FSD later, but you can not (easily) add more battery capacity later.

The slightly longer answer is the shorter range car can likely be made to work just fine for you, but for as much as you drive, I would get the range.

 

[Rottenapplr]

I have a 90-120 mile commute and while 240 seems a lot when you take into account energy for cabin overheat protection plus sentry mode and you’ll eat those % mileage lost sitting around at work. Get the biggest battery you can afford in my honest opinion. Like today I drove 140 miles today and came home with about 100 miles left. I left home with 292 mile range so cab over heat and sentry mode ate a lot but I don’t care to turn off those features because I got the long range model. I didn’t get the self driving and no regrets. I don’t drive in stop and go traffic.

 

[Tam]

...117,000 miles...

Easy choice: I would go for range due to your history.

...I read the battery is only good for 1500 charges? Is this true?...

We don't know until we get there:

1,500 charges x 310 miles = 465,000 miles which is much more than your 117,000-mile history.

Long Range battery is only guaranteed for 8 years or 120,000 miles.

When they say charges, they mean full cycle, not partial.

Most people don't use a full cycle of 310 miles every day, 365 days per year.

So if you drive only 155 miles per day, you can charge 3,000 times or more than 8 years instead of 1,500 times.

And if you only drive 75 miles per day, you can charge 6,000 times or more than 16 years instead of just 1,500 times, and so on...

 

[ucmndd]

The extra range actually exists. This is not a tough decision.

 

[darth_vad3r]

Hello!

I'm about ready to pull the trigger and new Model 3. What's holding up my decision, is the choice between Full Self Driving vs Long Range.

I live in FL and those of you know, we drive and put on some miles. Once I buy, I'm going to drive the piss out of the car. I drive 125 round trip to and from work, with traffic and heat. Plus, I'm very active with the kids in baseball/softball. To give you an idea, I have a 2016 truck with 117,000 miles on it. Thats 34,000 miles annually and a lot gas money.

A few questions here.

Anyone else in a similar situation with mileage? What did you choose and why?
Can the 240 handle the drive with the mileage, traffic and heat?
I read the battery is only good for 1500 charges? Is this true?
Do I go 240 with self drive or go long range?

I'm concerned with the 240 mile battery. I know the car can recharge while driving, but how often will I have to charge?

If anyone has any comments please weigh in.

Thanks for your time!

Are you going to charge at home? If so, the answer to how often you will charge will be every night, just like your cell phone.

For battery health you’d want to limit charge to 90% max on a regular daily basis (216) and try to avoid going too low on a regular basis as well (20% or 10%).

216 (90%) -> 24 (10%) gives you 192 of rated range to use daily. 125 should take maybe 160 tops in winter? Should be fine in Florida.

I’d rather have FSD than extra range. You don’t need extra range around town. Extra range saves you a few minutes on the first supercharger leg of a road trip, and then a few minutes each subsequent supercharger stop.

Add up all those road trip minutes and see if they are worth the extra $ to you or not.
FSD has the potential to be a game changer and a life saver. Extra range is a slight timesaver on road trips. Might save you a couple hours total per year if you road trip a lot. You’ll save way more than that by never going to the gas station for your daily driving needs and just taking 5 seconds to plug in at home.

If you cycle between 90-10 max you will get way more than 1500 full-cycle equivalents ... maybe if you did 100%-0% and hurt the battery you’d only get 1500.

 

[doghousePVD]

Range. No question.

You can add FSD later, when FSD actually IS "Fully Self Driving", not partial as it is now.

Get the range. A whole lot stress when your plans change unexpectedly. The 240 mile range will be really stretching some days in traffic, heavy a/c, detours, etc. Get the range. And make sure you have good Level 2 charging at home.

Did I say get the range? Or get both?

 

[bwilson4web]

I drive 125 round trip to and from work, with traffic and heat. Plus, I'm very active with the kids in baseball/softball. To give you an idea, I have a 2016 truck with 117,000 miles on it. Thats 34,000 miles annually

As concerns the Standard Range Plus Model 3, a couple of questions:

1. Can you charge at work on a 208/240 VAC, 40 A circuit? If yes, no problem as you'll get ~30 miles of range per hour and ~4 hours will cover your morning commute.
2. Using "www.plugshare.com," look for SuperChargers along your route or a close alternative between home and work. You can charge daily and no problem getting home. Give us the source and destination cities and we can check PlugShare for recommendations.

In my case, we put 10,000 mi in the first 100 days, several long trips. Compared to a "2016 truck," it will seem like driving for free.

Bob Wilson

 

[TMThree]

Easy choice: I would go for range due to your history.



We don't know until we get there:

1,500 charges x 310 miles = 465,000 miles which is much more than your 117,000-mile history.

To add to this, the 1500 charges for the battery isn't a hard limit. Its just designed to hit that point. You should still have ~80% battery capacity remaining.

The battery degradation curve is high initially, leveling off to a gentle slope for the majority of its lifespan. At the very end, it starts to degrade much quicker.

Assuming no hardware failures, its more likely your chassis suffers before your battery is useless.

 

[TORQU3]

I'd probably go for long range over FSD, it's a lot more difficult/expensive to update that later if desired. FSD is a simple payment and software unlock if you ever decide you want it and it's worth it.

 

[ewoodrick]

Hello!

I'm about ready to pull the trigger and new Model 3. What's holding up my decision, is the choice between Full Self Driving vs Long Range.

I live in FL and those of you know, we drive and put on some miles. Once I buy, I'm going to drive the piss out of the car. I drive 125 round trip to and from work, with traffic and heat. Plus, I'm very active with the kids in baseball/softball. To give you an idea, I have a 2016 truck with 117,000 miles on it. Thats 34,000 miles annually and a lot gas money.

A few questions here.

Anyone else in a similar situation with mileage? What did you choose and why?
Can the 240 handle the drive with the mileage, traffic and heat?
I read the battery is only good for 1500 charges? Is this true?
Do I go 240 with self drive or go long range?

I'm concerned with the 240 mile battery. I know the car can recharge while driving, but how often will I have to charge?

If anyone has any comments please weigh in.

Thanks for your time!

Which part of Florida? It makes a difference on the range that you'll get in the winter. North Florida is going to see up to around maybe 30% degradation in the winter, whereas south Florida will tend to see very little.

The question in my mind is how many days do you pass about 180 miles? (little less in the north). How many Superchargers are along your routes?
I'm assuming that you'll install a charger at home. That tends to mean that you may never have to worry about charging. Many folks only use Supercharging when travelling. It's been a month or two since I've visited a Supercharger.

If you have Superchargers along your route, that would tend to mean that on days when you expect that you may run out of fuel, you just need to stop for a few minutes. And that's may only be 5 minutes. Look at the Superchargers and the things around them. It's quite possible that a Supercharger and Starbucks are next to each other, two birds with one stop.

The FSD does make long distance driving less stressful. TACC does a great job, but Navigate on Autopilot is, at this time, icing on the cake. FSD has a possibility of making your travel possibly enjoyable. But it's basically a bet at this time.

Elon has indicated that the car is showing an expected lifetime of over 300,000 miles. That's for all models.

 

[ezevphl]

Get the Long Range now. If FSD actually works and is beyond really approved and legal then you can always add it on.
My model 3 was totalled after a year.. If I had paid for FSD I would be out of a lot of money and would have only seen a few minor fun features but nothing significant beyond auto pilot. Don't buy vaporware unless $ is no issue.

 

[Knightshade]

The extra range actually exists. .

To be fair- so do many FSD features on new (post EAP) cars. YMMV on how useful they are to your given driving situation, but they certainly exist.

 

[srs5694]

I'd probably go for long range over FSD, it's a lot more difficult/expensive to update that later if desired. FSD is a simple payment and software unlock if you ever decide you want it and it's worth it.

I agree with the overwhelming majority of advice that LR is likely to be more valuable to @jay ref now than is FSD, and the above reasoning tips the balance even further; however, there is a major caveat: Tesla is notorious for making sudden price changes. Elon Musk has explicitly said that the cost of the FSD option will go up in price quite significantly as it becomes more capable. Right now, it's not really worth the $6,000 price, IMHO; however, if Musk's statements are to be taken at face value, that price is likely to go up quite significantly. This might happen in steps, all at once, with notice, without notice, etc. Thus, you can't really assume that FSD will be a $6,000 option in the future. (When I ordered my own car, FSD was said to cost $2,000 extra if bought in the future compared to buying it at the time of ordering the vehicle. I don't see anything on the ordering page to indicate if there's such a price guarantee today, but maybe that's buried in the fine print somewhere.)

To be sure, I still think that an LR battery is likely to be the better choice for @jay ref today. Beyond the minimal features FSD provides now, it's basically vaporware. There's a chance it'll never materialize, or be a perpetual disappointment. There's also a good chance that future price increases will arrive with enough notice that you'll be able to buy them at roughly the current price before the price skyrockets. Thus, FSD is more of a gamble, and you might come out reasonably well by buying it in the future; but an LR battery is a known "win" today.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Go with the one that actually exists. In 5 years from now when FSD may actually work you can always upgrade. By then you may be in a new car.

 

[Rottenapplr]

I'm telling you base on my personal experience today. I drove 120 miles today and used over 160 range miles so 240 is cutting it given you are not charging to 100%. So you have about 40 miles of range left. May not be enough for errands or emergencies.

And factor in future battery degradation and the margins get closer.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

The basics of Autopilot give you adaptive cruise control and autosteer.

FSD gives you navigate on autopilot and some summony stuff.
LR gives extra range, faster Supercharging and 48A AC charging.

Get LR.

 

[Zaxxon]

Range all the way. Besides being something that will make your life easier, today, and will without doubt improve your resale recovery in the future, it's something that you cannot add in later. You can always add FSD if you decide later on that you want it.

 

[CharleyBC]

I think you pretty much answered your own question. With all that driving, go for long range.

I assume the point is your budget can handle one or the other, but not both. Even if you had a more "normal" driving pattern, I'd still vote for the battery. You can always add the software option later when your finances allow. You can't go back and make the battery bigger, though.

LR it is!

 

[Rocky_H]

The extra range actually exists. This is not a tough decision.

Absolutely. This would be a no-brainer for me. FSD may turn into something if they can get stuff worked out and if state regulatory agencies approve it, etc. etc. It seems like throwing your money at a roulette wheel. It could be really cool if or when it becomes reality, but it's not something to buy in advance. And yes, I do know of a Tesla owner who had paid for FSD on his Model X, and it got totaled, and *poof* it didn't transfer or anything. That money was just gone. So no, that is a terrible idea to buy it before it really becomes the great thing it could be.

LR gives extra range, faster Supercharging and 48A AC charging.

Ooooh, I totally forgot about the faster charging parts. Yes, of course a bigger battery can take higher rates of power, but that can be a really significant deal that the long range car comes with the more powerful 48A onboard charger.