I have a 2016 Model s 70s I bought it last Easter and have 28k on it. We routinely drive to Orlando from Kennesaw GA which is north of Atlanta. We usually go every other month and every time we drive below 0 miles the most I have gone is -7 miles but always -5. This has not hurt the battery at all in fact I have very little battery degradation. My 90% is 209-210 every time which this is what I always charge it to unless taking a trip. Full charge is 100% is 232-233. We have made so many trips in this car we will leave with only 5 mile buffer if we are in a hurry. We drive from our house to Tifton supercharger which is 210 miles with a full charge and drive 83 MPH the whole way (barring traffic of course) this is in warm or mild weather we do not have much of a winter here at least it does not stay cold for long. We arrive with 0 miles and are so used to it now we have no anxiety at all even my wife doesn't even look anymore lol. On the way back we have to drive about 78 from Tifton because we usually only have maybe a 10 mile buffer because we do not wait for a completely full charge. There is a pretty large elevation change so getting there uses less energy. When we leave our house the conservative Tesla trip planner says stay below 55 to make your destination I wish I cold turn this thing off it is super conservative. We look at the little battery on the left it is the closest thing to accurate that we have found. We check the attrition rate between how much it says we have left and how many miles we have left. One of our trips we had rainy windy weather and had to drive slower and do some drafting but hell it was raining so hard no way was I going to drive 80 mph in any car.
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How low have you gone?
- Thread starter Pinot.Noir
- Start date
I've not had them check it out given there are no Tesla service centers in Lithuania, and the nearest is either in Germany or Finland. Poland is imposisble to drive across given the lack of charging infrastructure, and I don't really have the time to take several days off to visit a SC.
I did call Tesla about this and they said there was nothing in the logs to indicate any problems and they also said the level of degradation I'm seeing is 'normal'.
I'll probably take it on a road trip some time in the future and will pass through a country with a SC. So will take it in then to get it checked out.
USMC_Mustang
Member
You still can. They've had the option to disable it ever since they added it to the car. It was total garbage when it first came out, so I immediately turned it off and didn't use it for about a year. It's not too bad now, so I turned it back on. Go to Controls, Settings, Apps, Navigation, and there's the checkbox for the "Beta Trip Planner".
Anyway, on to the original topic. I decided right from the beginning that I was never EVER going to be "that guy" who ran his Tesla out of energy and had it sitting by the side of the road or getting towed. I was in an area where most people had never heard of Tesla, so I wasn't about to be responsible for giving their reputation a black eye that way, when everyone was asking about the car and what it did and how it worked.
It helped that I've been driving economy and hybrid cars all my life, so I have very ingrained conservative driving habits. I did a few trips early on where there were no Superchargers, so I was very careful to make sure not to have to go to a backup plan on some of those routes. The lowest I think I've technically gone is 9 miles left, but I was kind of pushing it on purpose going back home. It was open highway late at night on a predictable route I've done several times, so I could just keep pushing my speed up and up to get it to some low number.
But for not trying to make it go low on purpose, I've been down to 20 and 25 miles. I've had to do some 50 and even 45 mph times to keep that 20 mile buffer just to make sure. The longest distances on some of those were 234 and 238 miles. I also did a trip where I left my garage fully charged with the trip estimate showing I would arrive with -2% remaining and charge was needed to reach my destination. There were some butterflies in my stomach from that, but I had confidence in the EVTripplanner estimate and my cautious driving, though, and made it fine.
artsci
Sponsor
6 for me, and more than once. No sweat or concerns. I've had the car long enough to learn how to manage range when it gets low. In my most recent experience I had about a 3 mile cushion to get home from where I started -- definitely not enough as the trip was 80 miles. But I knew is was downhill most of the way and the regen would add to that cushion. The cushion went as high as 20 and ended up being 6 when I arrived home (the last part was uphill and I punched it knowing I had enough range to get home).
If you put the supercharger destination in your nav, it will automatically take elevation into account. On the energy graph page it will give you a very precise prediction so you can adjust your speed accordingly during your trip. Don't need an extra app.
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
I'm down 13 percent and I got exactly the same response from Tesla service. So, I get annoyed when people here crow about how Tesla batteries don't degrade. 180 RM @ 99 percent makes road trips more difficult and most of my miles are long road trips (132 Supercharging stops so far). Just got home from a 2741 mile road trip.
I've been down to 7 RM fighting a stiff headwind into Green River UT. But I had increased speed toward the end because I knew I would make it. I was used to driving a 70 mile range LEAF so 7 miles is a lot!
I learned from that early trip to slow down sooner rather than later when the energy plot shows that I may have trouble making the next stop at my current speed. I can speed up later once I know I will make it. When I'm stretching the range on a long trip leg I compare my dash RM to the distance left. If the buffer is staying the same I am fine. If the buffer is shrinking it might be best to slow down a bit more. Supercharger trip legs of 95 percent to 5 percent are becoming routine.
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I wonder what variables drive that or if it's just random chance that one person has a lot more degradation than another. I have 253 RM on a 100% charge at 55k miles on a B pack, which I consider to be very good vs the 265 the car was advertised with.
Looks like we are seeing roughly the same thing.
Unfortunately for me, I don't have access to any SuperChargers which makes long distance road trips tricky or a little on the tedious side.
Yesterday, I managed to complete a 220km (132miles) journey travelling at around 120km/h (72mph) starting out with just 90% charge which translates to about 253km (rated). I arrived with 26km and used 40.5kwh of energy.
Funny thing is, the numbers don't exactly add up for me. My graph clearly shows the rated energy consumption of 188wh/km and my average usage was only 186wh/km. The exact distance I traveled was 218km, so starting with 253km, I should have had 35-36km remaining, and yet there is 9-10km of range unaccounted for. And this seems to always happen. Even though I keep my energy consumption down (at or below 188wh/km) I still always end up losing more range than I've actually done.
Anyone know whats going on?
DB 2
Member
It means that only 95% of your usable kWh are above 0km. 5% is in the below zero zone. This comes from 178 Wh/rated km actually seen while driving divided by 188Wh/rated km shown on the graph. In my car (refreshed 60/75) 5.3% is below zero. See this post for more information.
Since you have no Service Centers within reasonable driving distance, I suggest you consider using TM-Spy to get detailed data about your pack, including voltage for each of the 84 bricks (cells). I figure you have over 16% degradation on your battery (253km rated @ 90% SoC versus about 302km when new.) That seems way out of line compared to what others report.
K-MTG
Sunshade Captain of TMC
8 miles left when I arrived at Bakersfield Supercharger. I actually skipped the Buttonwolillow one, drove 85 mph from gustine
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Not on road trips, but around town if the range gets to around 80 miles on our Model X 90D I start to feel like I'm getting low....then I realize that 83 miles is a FULL CHARGE on my BMW i3.
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
You can always call a tow truck to take you to the Supercharger. Not the end of the world. You have a cell phone, right?
Isn't it bad for the battery to run to zero? Maybe that's just a left over feeling from my ICE days.
Yes it is bad. You don't even want it to get down to the last few percent if you can avoid it.
jelloslug
Active Member
jelloslug
Active Member
Zero is not actually zero. There is an unusable bottom buffer.
DB 2
Member
This is the best forum subject I've seen!!! Next subject should be highest speed someone has reached in their tesla....
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