Just Did 20 Miles at "0" Rated

[Tdriver]

Returned last night from Phoenix to Palm Desert with two buddies and luggage. Stopped at Buckeye charger with 20 miles, charged to 150 and headed to Quartzite charger. Arrived with 20 miles. We decided not to eat so stood around the car chatting. Was anxious to get home so we left with 115 miles. I knew the Indio charger was 115 and I knew there was a 20 mile downgrade into Indio, so I figured no sweat.......wrong. I stayed at 65 for a while but that wasn't solving the problem. I sort of ignored the GPS witch told me to go back. Came to a sign that said "Indio 47 miles"....... I was seeing 26 miles on the screen. Dropped down to 60 mph......no help......dropped down to 55......not much better. At 10 miles showing I dropped down to 45 and still had not arrived at the Summit of the grade. At 0 miles I reached the grade but it was a slight grade at first. Kept getting some intermittent regen. This was nervous time. Finally got to a steeper part of the grade and a little more regen. Having never done this before, I noticed that the "0" never changed, even with good regen. Anyway, I played the regen game for the full 20 miles not knowing how many miles I had left. We reached the bottom of the grade and pulled into a Loves Truck Stop. I nice young guy found me 110V and we sat there for 40 minutes earning 5 miles. Since Indio charger was 3.8 miles, we tipped the guy, took off........charged 5 minutes to get 30 miles and got home.
Bottom line........Was fortunate I could go 20 miles at "0" downhill. Drove over 30 minutes in that distance.
Learned a lesson......never be in a hurry to charge and AlWAYS have a cushion......I knew all this and still got in trouble. It was all my fault, not the car's.

 

[sorka]

Returned last night from Phoenix to Palm Desert with two buddies and luggage. Stopped at Buckeye charger with 20 miles, charged to 150 and headed to Quartzite charger. Arrived with 20 miles. We decided not to eat so stood around the car chatting. Was anxious to get home so we left with 115 miles. I knew the Indio charger was 115 and I knew there was a 20 mile downgrade into Indio, so I figured no sweat.......wrong. I stayed at 65 for a while but that wasn't solving the problem. I sort of ignored the GPS witch told me to go back. Came to a sign that said "Indio 47 miles"....... I was seeing 26 miles on the screen. Dropped down to 60 mph......no help......dropped down to 55......not much better. At 10 miles showing I dropped down to 45 and still had not arrived at the Summit of the grade. At 0 miles I reached the grade but it was a slight grade at first. Kept getting some intermittent regen. This was nervous time. Finally got to a steeper part of the grade and a little more regen. Having never done this before, I noticed that the "0" never changed, even with good regen. Anyway, I played the regen game for the full 20 miles not knowing how many miles I had left. We reached the bottom of the grade and pulled into a Loves Truck Stop. I nice young guy found me 110V and we sat there for 40 minutes earning 5 miles. Since Indio charger was 3.8 miles, we tipped the guy, took off........charged 5 minutes to get 30 miles and got home.
Bottom line........Was fortunate I could go 20 miles at "0" downhill. Drove over 30 minutes in that distance.
Learned a lesson......never be in a hurry to charge and AlWAYS have a cushion......I knew all this and still got in trouble. It was all my fault, not the car's.

Wow. And having spent 40 minutes at 1200 watts means if you'd only stayed at the sc for 1 minute lounger, you'd have had enough.

 

[Todd Burch]

Good lesson learned here, especially the one sorka pointed out: It can never hurt to get a few extra miles when you're gulping them, vs. trying to sip them at 120v with few miles left and in a crisis!

 

[SageBrush]

The net elevation change should have given you another ~5 miles, so you tried to go 115 miles with 120 miles of guesstimated range.

A higher friction road, use of AC, or even a bit of wind will eat up that difference easily.

Glad you made it!

 

[Chrisizzle]

Not to poo-poo the story but do I understand correctly that the 20-miles were all downhill?

I once had to drive about 5-km past 0-rating when the power bar is replaced by a warning and the car is limited to very low speed. That's not to one up the story but may provide some anecdotal detail on the 'reserve tank' available to drivers.

 

[FlasherZ]

If you look over the stories here, you'll see that you can't bank on any "reserve" being available to you. Just a quick word of caution to others who would read this and make assumptions... some cars power down right at zero, others are able to go a little bit further.

In earlier software releases, on long downhill grades Tesla's software wouldn't increase the range counter due to regen until 3 miles had been regenerated, so it's likely that it stayed at zero because you hadn't hit that threshold. Eventually the counter will start to go up if you're using regen, but only once you've accumulated enough to make the gauge go up by at least 3 miles.

 

[chipmunk]

I've had my own surprising drop in range on that same stretch of road. For those unfamiliar with that particular area, wind is a HUGE factor. Here's a small snapshot of what you pass:

This is actually just past Palm Springs, but my point is you're generally facing a headwind while traveling West.

 

[ShotgunF15E]

Anyone ever dry drafting behind a large truck when they're in a bind? I've noticed a huge benefit in other cars. Wouldn't normally do it in the MS, but if my range was reading 0 I'd find the closest one and hug his bumper.

 

[Naonak]

I do it all the time on long trips. It easily adds 20% to your range if you find the right combo of truck, road and speed. If I have a cooperative truck driver and a flat road (Think I70 in Eastern Colorado to Kansas) I can get over 300 mi on a charge or more. IIR anything over 45 mph and most of your power is going to overcome wind resistance. If you can use a truck to overcome that, you are using a lot less power.

 

[musicious]

NEVER use rated range, go to the energy app and change to average range over 30 miles if you want a better estimate (wish they could show that for the dashboard instead of rated), i just use battery % times 2 in the winter and a little more than that in summer; so at 90% instead of 240 miles rated range its 180mi in winter, around 210 in summer.

 

[Tdriver]

Regarding drafting.........I did that for a while but when the trucks get back to 70 mph, I could not afford to keep pace. Was not aware of the 3 mile threshold. Could not get off zero so I was on the edge the whole time. Looking back, I was extremely lucky the car did not shut down as there is no recovery.

 

[Roadrunner13]

If you look over the stories here, you'll see that you can't bank on any "reserve" being available to you. Just a quick word of caution to others who would read this and make assumptions... some cars power down right at zero, others are able to go a little bit further.
...

I want to re-iterate this message as things can be even worst.
A couple of people have reported the car shutting down BEFORE reaching 0 miles remaining, especially in colder weather!
These number are estimates and going anywhere below 5% would make me very nervous!

 

[Naonak]

Regarding drafting.........I did that for a while but when the trucks get back to 70 mph, I could not afford to keep pace. Was not aware of the 3 mile threshold. Could not get off zero so I was on the edge the whole time. Looking back, I was extremely lucky the car did not shut down as there is no recovery.

I'm not advocating it nor am I saying it's safe, but you can just close the gap a bit more and you'll have a net gain at 70. If you throw caution to the wind and have big brass balls, you can close to about 1 car length and you can go 90 and still have amazing range. Of course, if the truck decided to slam on it's brakes, you're screwed. Keeping 3 or 4 car lengths nets good results, even at 70. If you have autopilot, it can react a bit faster than you, usually, so it's safer - but it won't follow that closely, even when set to 1 length, so the point is kind of moot.