If Tesla restarted selling the LR RWD model, what would its range be?

[nightfly]

Noticed that they advertise a new AWD M3 LR at 322 miles or 3.8% more than its original rated range of 310. Applying the same % to the LR RWD model gets you 338 miles.

Is anyone with an LR RWD with 36.2.1+ fw getting over 325 miles of range?

I have 40.2.1 and am still getting 325miles in the UI. A range test would be nice!

I get it though, for the current models being sold, they've "increased" range. Did the MR get a boost in range?

 

[srs5694]

Noticed that they advertise a new AWD M3 LR at 322 miles or 3.8% more than its original rated range of 310. Applying the same % to the LR RWD model gets you 338 miles.

Is anyone with an LR RWD with 36.2.1+ fw getting over 325 miles of range?

I'm not. I bought my LR RWD Model 3 in March of this year, and the range has dropped a few miles. I'm not sure if it's from battery degradation, if the cells need re-balancing, or if the display is showing a slightly shorter range because of the cold weather. I'll be doing a long road trip and charging at least once to 100% over the holidays, so the BMS should at least be able to re-balance the cells soon. (I normally charge to 85%, and it's rare for the SoC to drop below 50% in my normal driving. My understanding is that the BMS won't be as effective at re-balancing the cells under that sort of use as when the SoC varies more widely.)

 

[Ol'Blue]

I'm not. I bought my LR RWD Model 3 in March of this year, and the range has dropped a few miles. I'm not sure if it's from battery degradation, if the cells need re-balancing, or if the display is showing a slightly shorter range because of the cold weather. I'll be doing a long road trip and charging at least once to 100% over the holidays, so the BMS should at least be able to re-balance the cells soon. (I normally charge to 85%, and it's rare for the SoC to drop below 50% in my normal driving. My understanding is that the BMS won't be as effective at re-balancing the cells under that sort of use as when the SoC varies more widely.)

This is my experience so far. Any longer trip I have, I always start at 95-100% and bring the range lower. There’s usually a noticeable “change in the range”. I often find it has a lot to do with temperature of the batteries upon arrival and departure from a supercharger.

sorry this won’t answer the RWD question

 

[birjman]

My LR RWD on 40.2.1 is getting 297 so...

 

[Candleflame]

The rated range is completely irrelevant. What matters is the consumption - and here the RWD if I remember correctly gets around 8% more range than the AWD.

 

[Bobbo8]

My LR RWD is getting 322 miles

 

[nightfly]

Yeah, I just talking "rated" range relative to the new rated range of the AWD M3 which is 322. I don't see a 8% diff in rated ranges from the original range of 310 for AWD and 325 for RWD. That's roughly ~5%

 

[Candleflame]

Yeah, I just talking "rated" range relative to the new rated range of the AWD M3 which is 322. I don't see a 8% diff in rated ranges from the original range of 310 for AWD and 325 for RWD. That's roughly ~5%

you don't get it. The rated range has been set by tesla arbitarily and sort of guided by the EPA cycle. The RWD has around 8% more range than the AWD in the EPA highway test and is hence more efficient. Tesla chose to give both of them a rated range of 310 miles but in the RWD you could go faster and still hit rated range as it was more efficient.

As for the new AWDs which have 322 miles rather than 310 - I believe this is now Tesla just displaying the advertised EPA range rather than voluntarily displaying less. They are not actually more or less efficient than before though I might be wrong here.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

As for the new AWDs which have 322 miles rather than 310 - I believe this is now Tesla just displaying the advertised EPA range rather than voluntarily displaying less. They are not actually more or less efficient than before though I might be wrong here.

You are wrong. You can compare the 2018 datafile to the 2020 datafile and see that the drive test results are different. Download Fuel Economy Data

The 2020 LR RWD (and the MR RWD) in these datafiles has not been retested AFAIK. It's just a placeholder, numbers are the same as 2018.

Additionally the SR is a placeholder from 2019 - that's why it looks so much worse than the SR+ (in 2019 it was nearly identical efficiency to the SR+).

Note that the rounded numbers for the LR Performance have been voluntarily derated to match the AWD. The actual unrounded results are better for the 2020 18" Performance than the 2020 LR AWD you'll notice.

To answer the original question, no idea, but I would guess the LR RWD, if retested, would now be rated at 335-340 EPA miles, roughly taking into account the efficiency improvements seen on the SR+ between 2019 and 2020. Whether these efficiency improvements are applicable to the 2018 LR RWD vehicles, I have no idea. Furthermore, it's unlikely Tesla will adjust the constant to reflect the improvement even if it exists, for older vehicles. So you wouldn't necessarily expect them to show more than 325 rated miles even if they were more efficient and could achieve 340 EPA miles.

 

[dhrivnak]

My LR RWD dropped from 322 to 311 on the last software update. Still more than the 310 miles I got when new over 20 months ago.

 

[srs5694]

you don't get it. The rated range has been set by tesla arbitarily and sort of guided by the EPA cycle. The RWD has around 8% more range than the AWD in the EPA highway test and is hence more efficient. Tesla chose to give both of them a rated range of 310 miles but in the RWD you could go faster and still hit rated range as it was more efficient.

That's not quite complete. I don't recall the exact timing of this, but in early 2019, Tesla announced an efficiency boost for the Model 3, and with it, they increased the range claims of the Model 3 LR RWD from 310 miles to, IIRC, 325 miles. The LR AWD and LR Performance models did not get that range boost at that time, but they did get a range boost more recently with a second round of software tweaks from Tesla. That seems to be the point of @nightfly's question -- since the LR RWD was discontinued (for the second time) before this second range boost, the question is whether a hypothetical resuscitation of the LR RWD configuration would result in a further claimed range increase, and if so, to what value.

FWIW, in researching this answer, I checked the fueleconomy.gov Web site. It shows the 2019 LR RWD with its original 310-mile rated range. Interestingly, although that configuration is no longer available, it does show up as an option for the 2020 model year on fueleconomy.gov, with a 330-mile rated range. This is despite the fact that the 2019 and 2020 versions have identical MPGe figures. Here's the side-by-side comparison. It could be that's the answer right there -- Tesla would now claim a 330-mile range for the LR RWD. OTOH, maybe that's a glitch or oversight on the fueleconomy.gov Web site.

All of this, of course, is distinct from the question of how far you can actually drive the car on a full battery. The phrase "your mileage may vary" is at play here in a very literal way. To the extent that Tesla actually tweaked the efficiency of the drivetrain, their changes may result in actual range increases; but if they just muck with parameters relating to how it's displayed on the screen, it won't have any real-world effect. Tesla has been as clear as mud about the details.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

. It could be that's the answer right there -- Tesla would now claim a 330-mile range for the LR RWD. OTOH, maybe that's a glitch or oversight on the fueleconomy.gov Web site.

It would likely be better - look at the improvement in the SR+ numbers in the table above, year over year. Likely similar improvements (not as much) are possible with the LR RWD, if they chose to sell that car again.

My understanding of the range boost that the LR originally got was that they just made more of the battery “visible” (made buffer smaller) - I’m not aware that the constant changed. Not sure about this though - we would need to see an ancient CAN bus readback from the LR RWD in 2018 before the range bump and see the size of the buffer (might be 8kWh!) and the overall “FullkWh” value. It does not look like from the EPA data that it was an efficiency improvement. This all predates my knowledge though so I am really guessing - maybe someone definitively knows.

 

[nightfly]

Right, clearly Tesla left some wiggle room to be able to compete on the range metric and thus the point of the question. My guess is that they bring back the LR RWD, which I suspect they eventually will; it'll be rated at ~335 all else staying the same. I have a 2019 BTW. They made the LR RWD into June of 2019 - so there are likely quite a few out there.

Diff topic ,but just read that the "performance upgrade" for $2K is likely to come out for the LR RWD as well.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

but just read that the "performance upgrade" for $2K is likely to come out for the LR RWD as well.

If you look at the numbers for the 980 motor there is only a little more to be gained with the LR RWD - about 0.2-0.3 seconds by my estimates. 5% or so.