How often do Tesla owners run out of charge?

[jkriesel]

Have any of you had your Tesla run out of charge before it makes it to a charging station? How often does this happen? What do you do when it happens? I've heard there is a charge from Tesla's road side assistance to be towed to the nearest charging station.

Is this a common occurrence?

 

[Lloyd]

125,000 e-miles and never happened. Close only once when I was new and not informed of how much external factors, wind, rain, heat etc affects range.

Tesla will help you if you happen to get stuck. Remember you can plug in anywhere. Ask Chevrolet if they will tow you if you run out of gas! No different really!

 

[vkathuria]

never!

 

[Knightowl]

Have any of you had your Tesla run out of charge before it makes it to a charging station? How often does this happen? What do you do when it happens? I've heard there is a charge from Tesla's road side assistance to be towed to the nearest charging station.

Is this a common occurrence?

Never happend to me but got very close once on a roadtrip where no less than 8 exits in a row were closed due to contruction causing me to have to get 12miles out of 8miles range left, made it with negative 2miles, I expected the nav to know about this sort of thing but it did not.

 

[KidDoc]

I have run it near empty a few times but it never comes as a surprise. The care gives you plenty of warning and it is easy to plan when to charge.

How often do you run out of gas? As long as you pay attention it is a non issue.

 

[Rocky_H]

3 and a half years, 42K miles and never had that happen. Just don't let it happen. The car gives you WAY more information about your energy usage and remaining range than any gas car. Pay the least bit of attention, and you don't have to let it happen. I just decided I was not ever going to be that guy who ran out of energy in his Tesla. I don't push it, and you can change your speed by a little bit and make a huge difference in your remaining range.

 

[RichardD]

never, but I ran it to 0 on day one b/c i was ill educated when it comes to external factors like wind / cold temps / etc. I have 0 regrets, remember you can plug it in anywhere.. rather slow that way but it works.

 

[FlyF4]

I guess I would answer by asking how often do ICE owners run out of gas? A LOT. But you would have to be pretty dumb or not observant to run out of charge on a tesla.

 

[redan]

Never. I can envision some situations where it could occur, but really just due to lack of planning or unforeseen circumstances. Only once have I had to slow down to "just over" the speed limit to make sure I had plenty of range to make my destination.

 

[Twiglett]

not Tesla, but three years of EV driving and never ran out of power.
But also never run out of gas driving an ICE either.

If you're the kind of driver that often runs out of gas, you'll likely run out of power

 

[Olle]

Never. 70k miles and counting... once ran below 0 and was very close to stalling though in 2013 before there were many superchargers on a cold winter night when I had to really stretch it.
In 2017 you don't need to run out of charge as long as you are driving on Earth.

 

[Akikiki]

Have any of you had your Tesla run out of charge before it makes it to a charging station? How often does this happen? What do you do when it happens? I've heard there is a charge from Tesla's road side assistance to be towed to the nearest charging station.

Is this a common occurrence?

When was the last time you ran out of gas? Wait. When was the first time you ran out of gas? Why did you run out of gas? Poor planning? Unforeseeable circumstances? Well the same thing can happen with EV, Diesel LGP, or even Hydrogen. Some people will run out of "fuel" no matter how idiot-proof their vehicle is.

 

[Rocky_H]

I also kind of think of it this way, where it's a little different than the gas situation. With being able to charge overnight at home, I can't use up 200 miles in a day driving around town. So it's fine, and I never have to think about it in all of my daily use.

The only time it's even a consideration is when I am doing a trip. And when you're on a trip, you don't just "find yourself" somewhere. You drive for an hour or two at a time to get somewhere. You will have a destination set in navigation, and a display showing you as you drive how much remaining % of battery you will have left when you arrive. If you see that around 15-20%, you're doing fine. If it is dropping, and you see 13, 12, 11, ... you need to slow down some to lower that energy use from the wind resistance, and you'll give yourself more buffer. You have lots of time and lots of information to make these choices ahead of time so it doesn't become some sudden unexpected emergency. Really, it's amazing how much extra range you can get from slowing your speed.

Also, I'd rather take it a little easy during the early third or half of a trip to see how it's going. I can always speed up later if I have excess miles leftover and have a lot of margin, rather than speeding a lot early on and then realizing you have a problem and trying to claw back miles out of nothing when you've already "spent" them.

 

[Skotty]

I've never in my life ran out of gas. Same for my EV -- never ran out of charge before. The EV does require more careful planning for trips (counterpoint: staying it town is arguably easier if you can charge at home), as there are not charging stations at every exit like with gas. But plan ahead just a little, and be aware that extreme weather impacts range, and you're fine. The Tesla does offer you some helpful alerts when using nav, such as telling you to stay under a certain speed if it thinks your charge level is getting too low to make it safely to the next supercharger. It will also tell you when charging when you have enough charge to make the next leg of your trip, though I advise charging a little bit longer after that particular prompt just to have some extra margin for error.

 

[Doug_G]

Driving Tesla since 2010, never once happened. And as the range of the cars has increased and more charging stations have been deployed (especially Superchargers), it's even easier to avoid.

 

[SageBrush]

Have any of you had your Tesla run out of charge before it makes it to a charging station? How often does this happen? What do you do when it happens? I've heard there is a charge from Tesla's road side assistance to be towed to the nearest charging station.

As often as you want.
Or not.

 

[kort677]

Have any of you had your Tesla run out of charge before it makes it to a charging station? How often does this happen? What do you do when it happens? I've heard there is a charge from Tesla's road side assistance to be towed to the nearest charging station.

Is this a common occurrence?

how often do ICE drivers run out of fuel? I don't have empirical data but I'd suspect that the numbers of ICE drivers running out of fuel is proportionate if not higher than EV drivers running out of power.

 

[alcibiades]

I had a hilarious moment when I took an exit to go to a supercharger and at the top of the exit ramp was a stuck ICE car that had run out of gas.

I admit. I laughed.

 

[ModelX]

I haven't, but saw a Tesla towed to the supercharger and plugged in once!

 

[dgpcolorado]

For local driving it is hard to imagine running out of charge. That is only an issue for road trips (and the large majority of my miles is long road trips).

The only concern I would have about running out of charge would be if the Supercharger Station was closed for some reason, such as a general power failure. That would be rare, although it has happened to others. I try be careful not to miss the freeway exit to the Supercharger Station, especially when low on charge; sometimes it is a long way to get turned around! I routinely get down to 5-9 miles of range left and have to drive well below the speed limit to make longer trip legs, but I try not to let my charge get any lower than that through careful monitoring of the trip energy plot. All this is in a small battery S60; it shouldn't be much of a problem for the larger battery cars so long as one charges to at least 20 percent more than nav recommends. As others have said: when in doubt just slow down to stretch the range. It works!