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Horrible Range 2020 Model 3 LR, Dual Motor!

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Bought a new 2020 model 3 LR, 19" wheels, duel motor in Dec. I have never got more than 130 mile per charge from 90% to about 30%. No matter how I drive. I been trying to accelerate gradually and to not speed up and slow down as much as possible. I live in San Francisco where the climate is cool. I have tried soft reboots but nothing seems to help. Is there a problem? does anyone have any good advice?
 
Way too many variables. What’s your wh/mi? Open the energy graph. There is a baseline there that you should try to hit to get near the advertised range. If you stick to an average of about 50mph with no wind and perfect temp and no jackrabbit accel, you should get about the EPA range (as that’s the EPA test cycle).
 
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Bought a new 2020 model 3 LR, 19" wheels, duel motor in Dec. I have never got more than 130 mile per charge from 90% to about 30%. No matter how I drive. I been trying to accelerate gradually and to not speed up and slow down as much as possible. I live in San Francisco where the climate is cool. I have tried soft reboots but nothing seems to help. Is there a problem? does anyone have any good advice?

I am just going to take a guess, based on your statement, that you are counting that "130 miles from 90% to 30%" from counting 6-10 mile trips out to the store, etc, and then not plugging in when you get back home.

is this correct?
 
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From that 60% rated range, you have about 192 rated miles. At 130, you're consuming an additional 32% or so compared to rated. This would be expected in Winter, but Winter it is not.

Like others said, many variables. You say "cool" temps, but it seems around room temp so that's not really a factor (unless you're heating the car?). How many days does it take you to go from 90% down to 30% normally?

These are my guesses:
  • You have either Sentry Mode or Summon Standby enabled. These consume ~250-300W constantly when either is enabled, and when you're not driving. That's an additional 8.7%/day if the car is parked for the whole day and could very easily explain it (especially if this is over more than one day)
  • You're doing city driving but not using a lot of regen, either by aggressive driving (requiring friction brakes) or by having regen set to Low. In my town, regen easily recovers 30% of my used energy for a round trip, so this is significant.
  • You're just rippin' on highways. You'll use more than the rated amount if you're traveling at 70+mph consistently, and it's much much worse with every mph after that.
  • You have something that's increasing your drag, e.g. bike rack or rooftop box.
 
From that 60% rated range, you have about 192 rated miles. At 130, you're consuming an additional 32% or so compared to rated. This would be expected in Winter, but Winter it is not.

Like others said, many variables. You say "cool" temps, but it seems around room temp so that's not really a factor (unless you're heating the car?). How many days does it take you to go from 90% down to 30% normally?

These are my guesses:
  • You have either Sentry Mode or Summon Standby enabled. These consume ~250-300W constantly when either is enabled, and when you're not driving. That's an additional 8.7%/day if the car is parked for the whole day and could very easily explain it (especially if this is over more than one day)
  • You're doing city driving but not using a lot of regen, either by aggressive driving (requiring friction brakes) or by having regen set to Low. In my town, regen easily recovers 30% of my used energy for a round trip, so this is significant.
  • You're just rippin' on highways. You'll use more than the rated amount if you're traveling at 70+mph consistently, and it's much much worse with every mph after that.
  • You have something that's increasing your drag, e.g. bike rack or rooftop box.
I don't have Sentry mode on at home, it's always in a garage at home. A couple days a week it's not driven at all. I am doing city driving ,but very rarely touch the brakes at all. I do go over 70 mph at times, but that is gong with the flow. I have been trying real hard not to be "Rippin" anywhere. No bike rack or any drag except few normal things in the trunk. No long trips yet cause of bad range so far!
 
I been trying to accelerate gradually and to not speed up and slow down as much as possible. I live in San Francisco where the climate is cool.

How about those streets in San Fransisco! What kind of roads you are driving, their incline, braking, the speed you are going, all make a difference.

Since you left all that out, it is understandable that you are not getting the ideal range.
 
It's more like 15 miles to work and 15 miles back, 3 days a week, charging every 2 weeks.


There you go. If you bought this car thinking "it has 300 miles range, and my commute is only 15 miles each way so I can go 2 weeks between charges", you made a mistake. There is NO benefit to "running it down to charge it back up" so plug in daily at home if you can.

In any case, several short trips do not add up to 1 long trip, because every time you start the car, just like a gas car, more energy is spent getting going than keeping things running.

Anyway, read up on the stickied threads at the top.
 
I don't have Sentry mode on at home, it's always in a garage at home. A couple days a week it's not driven at all. I am doing city driving ,but very rarely touch the brakes at all. I do go over 70 mph at times, but that is gong with the flow. I have been trying real hard not to be "Rippin" anywhere. No bike rack or any drag except few normal things in the trunk. No long trips yet cause of bad range so far!

Hahaha. You have a Tesla in a garage in San Francisco? Geez buddy, stop complaining about your millions of bucks.

I'd assume standby losses are the cause of your "low efficiency". Over a two week period, that will add up.
 
It's more like 15 miles to work and 15 miles back, 3 days a week, charging every 2 weeks.

I don't have Sentry mode on at home, it's always in a garage at home. A couple days a week it's not driven at all. I am doing city driving ,but very rarely touch the brakes at all. I do go over 70 mph at times, but that is gong with the flow. I have been trying real hard not to be "Rippin" anywhere. No bike rack or any drag except few normal things in the trunk. No long trips yet cause of bad range so far!

Ah, okay. So if you only charge every 2 weeks, you're actually mostly seeing standby losses and there doesn't seem to be anything else amiss. Tesla is one of (if not the) worst EVs for standby losses, as there's many ways for it to occur and the cars generally wake themselves up to a certain extent.

If I assume you get rated efficiency, rough math says you're missing about 14.5kWh over those two weeks, or about 1kWh/day (a bit over 1.3%). Tesla says 1%/day is normal. Your consumption would imply about 43W average, and I recall the average on the Stats app being about 60W median, so you're actually doing better than most people. Note that this doesn't mean the car is consuming 43W constantly, just that it's the average (this could be several short bursts of 300W when the car is routinely awake, for example).

I'm not saying "sell the car!" because that's extreme, but if this incredibly important to you, there are other EVs that do better in this regard. Chevy Bolt is one of them if I recall correctly, as well as Nissan Leafs.

I wish we had figures like gal/hour for idle consumption in gas cars, we'd have published typical kWh/day values for EVs. Unfortunately, even in the case of gas vehicles, those figures were not prominent. For EVs though, as you've found, they can actually matter a lot in terms of what you expect to get out of a charge. Maybe this will become a requirement in the future. I hope so.
 
Yeah, you won't get anywhere remotely near the rated range driving in a bunch of short trips over a week or two. The rated range is only achievable on long continuous drives. The car uses a lot of energy sitting around. Your car is fine, you can accelerate full throttle every stop and it won't make a big impact.
 
I usually don't care what range I get as I hook it up to the charger every night. However I do care about the range when I go on a trip, two much time at the charge stations. I don't make my driving a big game. I drive fast as it is safe and I have my mind on business matters more that I should. I don't charge over 85% as I need to get going and the charge rate is getting slower. I never drive to less than 20 to 30 miles range as I don't want any pressure. I want to choose where I am going to eat and not go walking around the charge station looking for some fast food place. My standard range model 3 is not for me. I am looking at the new 400 mile S. I would like to know how many miles the averge person gets between charges. Please Tesla super fans, don't reply.
 
Keith, do you have a charger in the garage? Then just set the charge to 85% to make your battery last and forget about it. It's a great car around town. I am back to driving my ICE cars on a trip. The cost for gas or electricity is insignificant comparaed to depreciation. I have to chuckle when I see a $100K Tesla crusing at 60 mph in the right lane to save range. Each to his own.
 
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