How low have you gone?

[kort677]

I use the energy graph extensively, it does vary but you learn it's nuances adjust accordingly and realize that it doesn't like when the projected soc is under 5% at your destination. The only big issue is that it doesn't factor climatic conditions into the calcs.
Learning to work with the tools provided save you from spending uneeded time charging, you don't get anything out of arriving with extra miles.

 

[RichardD]

day 1 driving from denver to houston,

got to 0 miles, shutting down non essential features. It was abnormally cold earleir in the day, and I trusted the car to get me where it said the supercharger was.

I made it.

 

[KidDoc]

The lowest I have taken mine is 4 RM. We had a trip into Austin from where I lived at the time (Smithville TX) and after getting home we wanted Mexican food at a place just out of town. I had about 20 miles in the tank at the time. Car was pretty upset with me but I wasn't worried.

Oddly enough it was during the charge after this that my 40A adapter melted and fused to the cord. I had a bit over 100 RM before it melted and Tesla sent me a new cord for free overnight so it wasn't a big deal but kind of scary. The cords have fuses now to prevent them from overheating and melting. Found my old pictures of it.

 

[Pinot.Noir]

Lucky the plastic didn't catch fire. Yikes!

 

[randvegeta]

and I've never run below 90 miles!

What? As in you've never had less than 90 miles of range on the dash? That's insane. I have an S 60 with a max of 275km range assuming 100% charge. That's 165 miles tops. I never charge to 100% though and stick to 80-90% so I really only get 132-149 on the dash. I regularly (and I mean twice weekly) run my range down to about 10 miles. Where I live, in Lithuania, there are no Super Chargers, and only a handful of Chademo chargers which typically pump out 35-40kw, so it's almost never worth stopping to charge on my regular 130 mile round trip.

Is that bad?

 

[NoMoGas]

0 + 12

 

[TesTaipei]

0 just last month. Going uphill and then frantically finding charger in this new underground parking lot.

 

[CalBlue 85D]

The only time I had truly had range anxiety involved risky range decisions (on my part) and a trip through remote country in the interior of British Columbia, Canada.

Last August we were on a two week road trip from California to BC to visit relatives. We traveled through Vancouver and up to Whistler for a couple of days of sightseeing before heading to see the family in Kelowna. Whistler had plenty of destination charging choices, so we departed with a full charge and decided to take the Northern route via the interior rather than heading back to Vancouver and going via Highway 1. The nav wanted to take us via a SC in Kamloops, but looking at the map and charging options on plugshare I realized that we were adding at least an hour to the trip by driving up to Kamloops before heading South to Kelowna. Merritt has several L2 chargers (but not SC at that time), so I considered the time saved driving vs. the longer charge time at at L2 and decided to take the Merritt route. We arrived in Merritt with about 22% remaining in the battery and EV trip planner rated the remaining trip to Kelowna as requiring 29% (taking all of the additional factors into account). I figured 5% extra charge above that was a sufficient buffer for the journey, so we spent about 40 minutes on L2 at the visitor center before heading out along route 5A towards 97. Hot summer weather, full load of passengers (wife and two kids) and luggage. I used a speed multiplier on the trip planner to take into account running with traffic, but I decided to take it easy and run at the speed limit. We hadn’t crested the first long climb out of the valley before the nav started warning me that I needed to keep the speed below 100kmh in order to reach Kelowna. Of course I should have just turned around and headed back to Merritt for more charging time, but instead we pressed on at 100kmh. The farther we went, the slower the nav was telling us to go until we were doing 80kmh in a 120kmh zone and the energy display was still showing insufficient charge to reach Kelowna! I’m driving this powerful electric car on a great driving road and I’m limited to 80kmh and even being passed by tour busses. Oh man, this is embarrassing, but the worst part is that I’m committed to continuing on to Kelowna because now I’m beyond the range of return to the L2 in Merritt. Finally we reach a steep climb with a 80kmh posted limit due to construction, I have never been so glad to see a construction zone. Construction only lasts a few k’s and ends before the climbing is done, so I’m back to being the slow car on the road. We finally made it to the summit on 97 by the visitor center and could finally see some regen heading down the hill into Kelowna. In the end, we got to the SC with exactly 5% remaining, but had to do it at a much slower speed than anticipated.

Lesson learned, I should have either just taken the detour to the SC in Kamloops or spent at least an hour on the L2 in Merritt. I think we’ll do the exact same trip next summer and enjoy supercharging in Merritt and laughing about the time we almost arrived on a tow truck. It could have been much worse because the interior of BC is very unforgiving for missed charging opportunities.

 

[Ulmo]

I hit 0RM on my first trip in winter, and was stuck in freezing weather with nowhere to charge around 1AM. I found a Home Depot and plugged into its 20 amp exterior 120VAC outlet and spent many hours with no heater in freezing weather getting it up to 3RM; it barely had enough power in that cord to overcome the charging losses, but it did add charge, enough to make it to a college that had a proper Level 2 charger with J1772 (after a harrowing 35MPH drive from that HD to the college in straight lines). That Level 2 gave enough power that I was able to turn on the heater and warm up. From there, it was relatively easy sailing. A stop at a SuperCharger and I was on my way.

I went through an adaptation period to get used to being good at this. Now, I'm pretty good at it. I already know most my routes and how long they take and how to do them. Summer it's easier since the estimates are closer to correct. I don't use RM any more; I use %. I try to arrive at a SuperCharger with 10% or more, but if it's a long leg and I'm not too worried about variables, I don't mind arriving at a SuperCharger with 5% or so.

Errands in the day are what throw me off. Friday, I ran out of energy in San Jose, and had to sit at a Level 2 for 30 minutes just to make it to a SuperCharger and go on my way from there. From there, I was linked to a chain of SuperChargers to get to my last SuperCharger for the trip out of town yesterday evening, but then it was a long throw from that last SuperCharger to my destination and back, so I put 100% in my car to make sure I had the best chance to make it. I ended up going 4 different places all over the lands after leaving my last SuperCharger on the way out, but made it back to the first return SuperCharger with about 3%, so no problem. From there, going home is easy: I never have to worry about running out on the way home from the SuperCharger network, since I already know the routes and just follow the instructions on the car, and there's already a charger at home waiting to plug in. (My home is easily reachable from the SuperCharger network.)

If you ask me, the big thing missing is Destination Chargers. But if I had a proper 85 or 90 battery, I probably wouldn't even need that. Even the $2,000 upgrade on my 60 to a 75 would be a great help.

 

[Pinot.Noir]

What? As in you've never had less than 90 miles of range on the dash? That's insane. I have an S 60 with a max of 275km range assuming 100% charge. That's 165 miles tops. I never charge to 100% though and stick to 80-90% so I really only get 132-149 on the dash. I regularly (and I mean twice weekly) run my range down to about 10 miles. Where I live, in Lithuania, there are no Super Chargers, and only a handful of Chademo chargers which typically pump out 35-40kw, so it's almost never worth stopping to charge on my regular 130 mile round trip.

Is that bad?

I've had my car for 2.5 months...no road trips. My commute is 80 miles daily, and I charge to 288 (84% or so) daily. It just so happens I get to 90 miles on occasion due do driving places while I'm at work. I don't feel comfortable making my 80 mile commute with 10 miles to spare, so I have never gone below 90 miles.....yet. I will do so on road trips, but I was prompted to ask about this as I had a "nightmare" a few nights ago about running to zero, and had to ask about others experiences.

 

[Pinot.Noir]

We traveled through Vancouver and up to Whistler for a couple of days of sightseeing before heading to see the family in Kelowna.

Excellent Pinot in Kelowna! Particularly love Blue Mountain! Love that area!

 

[Ulmo]

What? As in you've never had less than 90 miles of range on the dash? That's insane. I have an S 60 with a max of 275km range assuming 100% charge. That's 165 miles tops. I never charge to 100% though and stick to 80-90% so I really only get 132-149 on the dash. I regularly (and I mean twice weekly) run my range down to about 10 miles. Where I live, in Lithuania, there are no Super Chargers, and only a handful of Chademo chargers which typically pump out 35-40kw, so it's almost never worth stopping to charge on my regular 130 mile round trip.

Is that bad?

That seems good. You would of course want to look at the battery degradation over the years, and as it starts to approach 2-3 years away from degradation where you would need charging to make it home, you can (if you like) start the 1-2 year process of siting a destination charger at your twice weekly destination. (I suppose another alternative is swapping the car in for another that can easily make it again, and that option is available for a lot of people.)

 

[Carl]

@Ulmo what are you talking about? Are you saying that running the battery close to zero on road trips degrades the battery to an extent that you would notice it in your future typical range? My experience is: not at all! And there are a lot of posts on this forum proving that (i) the Tesla batteries are degrading only very slowly and (ii) Supercharging, or "going to zero" may have a certain influence, but does not matter that much, or actually even does not matter at all except if you want to keep your car at a 75 % of the initial battery range 30 years from now (and I'm quite sure that in 2047 you will have changed your batteries, as the newer ones will be damn cheap and damn more efficient).

You seem quite sure of what you are writing, in terms of much earlier degradation, so if you have any evidence supporting what you are insinuating, please provide such evidence! Would be very helpful to the community.

 

[David99]

Many times way below zero. The three worst times was 5 miles, 10 miles (partly uphill) and 15 miles (some downhill, though). On road trip I actually often try to cut it really close to save time at the Supercharger. Countless times I rolled in at 3 or less miles left.
They key is to go easy towards the end. Avoid hard acceleration is your best bet.

 

[Lloyd]

How about -2!

 

[SarahsDad]

Back in the day I experimented with "how low can you go" - this is from 2014 so things may have changed but when you dropped below zero you'd get "charge now". Never went more than 1-2 miles below zero though.I did this several times and capacity was very predictable. And I don't recall any reports of being stranded with 0 miles or more on the battery. I still run the battery down to 5-10 miles on long trips to make the most efficient use of supercharger time.

 

[Btrflyl8e]

Back in the day I experimented with "how low can you go" - this is from 2014 so things may have changed but when you dropped below zero you'd get "charge now". Never went more than 1-2 miles below zero though.I did this several times and capacity was very predictable. And I don't recall any reports of being stranded with 0 miles or more on the battery. I still run the battery down to 5-10 miles on long trips to make the most efficient use of supercharger time.
View attachment 230894 View attachment 230896

Haha, I remember that old speedo graphic.

 

[randvegeta]

That seems good. You would of course want to look at the battery degradation over the years, and as it starts to approach 2-3 years away from degradation where you would need charging to make it home, you can (if you like) start the 1-2 year process of siting a destination charger at your twice weekly destination. (I suppose another alternative is swapping the car in for another that can easily make it again, and that option is available for a lot of people.)

My car is 3+ years old now (2014 Model) with around a 10% degradation on the battery already. I get 275km rated range instead of the more typical 320+. I calculate I have a usable capacity of around 50kwh vs the original 58, suggesting a loss of around 14%.

But I've only owned my car for around 6 months so this was the range I had when I first took ownership. Since owning it, my rated range has increased a tiny amount. Now I get about 280km.

Given the degradation, I have tried been careful not to fully charge unless necessary so I almost never charge over 90%.

 

[Shock-On-T]

Just be very careful when it's cold or your destination is up a mountain. You might think you've left enough reserve then get a rude shock.
I've had a situation where my range was dropping 3km every 1km of driving (about 2 miles per half mile) all the way up a cold mountain. Made it to the destination with 3km left, but for most of the journey thought I had 40km buffer!

 

[Az_Rael]

My car is 3+ years old now (2014 Model) with around a 10% degradation on the battery already. I get 275km rated range instead of the more typical 320+. I calculate I have a usable capacity of around 50kwh vs the original 58, suggesting a loss of around 14%.

But I've only owned my car for around 6 months so this was the range I had when I first took ownership. Since owning it, my rated range has increased a tiny amount. Now I get about 280km.

Given the degradation, I have tried been careful not to fully charge unless necessary so I almost never charge over 90%.

Have you ever had Tesla check it for bad modules?