Just another mileage gripe post

[S&B's M3]

In April I will have owned my SR+ for 4 years and unless I'm going on a long trip I charge to 80-90%. I've taken it on a few trips up the coast to Monterey and down to San Diego and it did rather well. However, over the last year or so, it's been losing miles with each charge. I'm heading out of town tomorrow and so last night I charged to 100% and I got...

Drum roll, please....

Yeppers, out of 240, I get a whopping 213 kw miles. But wait, there's more....

Now, that said, if I could really get 213, I could make it one way, charge at the destination hotel, drive around, visit friends, charge again, and drive home. But unfortunately, as many of you know, that 213 isn't anywhere near accurate. History tells me (yeah, I've kept a spreadsheet since it was delivered up updated it while I commuted to/from work in SoCal including vacation trips), that the best I can hope for is ~142 miles (I need 175). How do I come up with 142? Well my spreadsheet tells me kwm versus actual miles driven and gives me a consumption rate. Including vacation trips, I have consumed approximately 1.4 kwm to 1.6 kwm for every actual mile I drive, or 133 to 152 miles. Things like HVAC running, hills, highway speeds, wind, etc. impact the consumption rate. So I took the mid point at 1.5 to calculate the approximate miles I would get on this trip (213÷1.5=142), even at 1.4, I would only get 152 actual miles.

So my gripe? Well my car is under 4 years old and there's only 13.5k on the ODO, I just think I should be getting more range at this point. I have tried a couple of the useless methods for recalibrating the battery. In fact, the ranger that came out earlier this week to replace the 12v battery (yeah I griped at him too) told me to do the same thing, i.e., run it below 10% and then up to 100%, which I've tried in the past with no appreciable success.

Ok, please don't tell me to sell it, I like the car, I just wish it would deliver more miles per charge. I don't think that's an unreasonable request either.

At this point the Tesla is going to get some sleep this weekend as we'll be taking our ICE vehicle.

Flak jacket on...

 

[Tam]

...I would only get 152 actual miles...

The moral of the story is: Expect the worst not the best. The best is the EPA rated miles. The worst is you need to chop that down to 70% covered by the warranty. On top of that, the driving condition is not the lab's so don't even expect the 70% capacity.

That's why Lucid Air Grand Touring is rated at 516 miles for a price of $138,000, and the Chinese are coming out with a 641-mile CLTC range starting from $43,500.

Revised Zeekr 001 Has Huge 140 KWH Battery, 641-Mile Range

That’s over 1,000 km on one charge of what is the industry’s biggest battery pack in a vehicle of this type.

insideevs.com

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Yeppers, out of 240, I get a whopping 213 kw miles

Haha, new units. Rated miles = kW miles. Can be confusing though since it implies units multiplication which isn’t right. Of course rated miles is also the wrong units, so whatever.

Anyway your battery estimates 46.6kWh which really isn’t bad for a 2018/2019 vehicle! (11% loss)

How do I come up with 142? Well my spreadsheet tells me kwm versus actual miles driven and gives me a consumption rate. Including vacation trips, I have consumed approximately 1.4 kwm to 1.6 kwm for every actual mile I drive, or 133 to 152 miles

Yeah that implies about:

1.5 displayed rated mile / mi = 1.5 drmi * 0.955 * 52.5kWh/240drmi / mi = 313Wh/mi average consumption (including parking losses probably)

That seems a little high for driving only but perfectly reasonable with parking losses too.

I’d expect on a high speed trip you’d be closer to 280Wh/mi which would yield a multiplier (easier to think of it as a divider for me) of about 1.34.

In town you might get 230Wh/mi (some do much better with no HVAC) which would be 1.1.

 

[3sr+buyer]

Loss of about 10% of battery capacity over a few years appears typical for NCA batteries.

Consuming 1.5 rated miles for each actual mile comes down to driving or other energy consumption habits.

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Unlike fossil cars, EV's are not particularly sensitive to miles driven. Typically the greatest cause of battery degradation is simply age, and losing 10% in the first 4 years is right on track with normal and expected. It's actually pretty excellent compared to phones and laptops which degrade much faster.

As for the claimed range vs actual, Tesla has no say in that. They have to submit their cars to standardized EPA tests and it's the EPA that makes the range claim. Those tests are city-biased because fossil cars tend to get fairly similar highway mileage, but this inadvertently gives EV's a scoring advantage. The tests are slowly evolving to this new reality but the evolution must continue to be slow in order to maintain some year-to-year comparison legitimacy.