At 39lbs in the tires, the ride is rough enough. Not too interested in going much higher. I guess if I knew I could add significant miles to my range, I would pump in a few more pounds. But I do not think that is the case.
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Just finished my first "road trip" and I am not happy with range
- Thread starter Guags99
- Start date
I've mentioned it earlier that I know how much these conditions impact my mileage in an ICE vehicle. It is not nothing, but it is no way more than a 15% reduction in mileage for those types of wind and that speed. Of course running the heat in an ICE vehicle doesn't hurt your mileage almost at all.
I just do not see me taking an 800 mile trip in the MY. If I planned conservatively, the little bit I would save in cost doesn't seem to counter the stress of worrying if the next charger was working. You are just so reliant on everything working as planned. If you got stuck limping to a slow charger, and then had to spend a night where you didn't plan to...that would eat up any cost savings.
Time will tell, but I don't think I could talk the wife into a long trip in the MY anytime soon!
Suit yourself, but I frequently do huge trips with my Model S, including 3,000+ miles and 5,000+ miles, and my car only has about 250 rated miles, so quite a bit less than your Model Y. That fear of a Supercharger site being totally out and not working almost never happens. Tesla puts in 8 or 12+ at each one to ensure a very high level of reliability and redundancy even if some piece of equipment does fail. It's really not something to stress about.
I've been holding back on commenting on this thread so far because of the weird premise of it. You intentionally avoided using the Gilman Supercharger on the trip there, and wouldn't use the one in Champaign and have been complaining and panicking about range. And you griped about the Supercharger not doing more than a 500 mph charging rate!! If you use the resources available, this is a non-issue.
You just seem to be creating a lot of problems in your mind about this.
Just to be clear. I never said I wouldn't use the supercharger in Champagne. I used it twice once I got there. Not sure why you though that. As for Gilman, it never even came up as needing it when I planned the trip. I used ABRP with what I thought was a realistic WH/M usage and since it was just about 140 miles, it never came up as suggested. I used it on the way home and it took the stress off.
My point was just that as much as I researched road-trips before I bought the car and since, I never saw anything that would make me think the range would be reduced by nearly half. I am not saying it is not out there, but I am certainly not the only one to be surprised by this kind of range reduction. It just changes the game a bit as you consider your travel options. If an ICE will get me there with less stress and similar cost, I will likely choose that.
Thanks for your input!
hi being a model S owner since 2017 ( so not a long as the true founder or " enthusiast") when you really had to plan out your trip because of the lack of super chargers and even Level 2s and "decide" to eat lunch or dinner when the car needed charging ( family would only wait the 30-40 minutes if they had some thing else todo) . those days are pretty much behind us as is true range anxiety of being down at 4 % for a long stretch would make anyone nervous ( Ive done that a couple of times) . the key is trust the cars calculation of what your will have percentage wise ( it does an impressive job of calculating under heavy load , speed, and temps) and don't really think in miles . the other thing is if you are headed out in the winter the tesla may not work for you in parts of the mid west between charging stations. I had a friend who actually had to switch to a rental gas car when he went deep into kansas I say this as I was definitely surprised when I went from my normal 250-280 W /mile at +70 MPH in the spring and fall , no wind , to over 800 watts per mile in 10- 12degree weather with the heat , the deicers and th car heater and the steering wheel heater on ( Nice but crazy inefficient) . Ev'S do take more planning ( a couple of extra stops) and the good news is the route planner does help stop you from running out. you can trust it. think iof it as a gas car with a small gas tank . oh an I only get 150mile charging ( and remember the last 20 percent takes as long as first 80) I'll wait till my next one has 500 miles total range and 500 mile/hr charging ( soon very soon!) .
They do charge at 500 miles in an hour....
150kW average rate for 15 minutes (should be doable from like 10% to 50% on a recently delivered car) over the course of an hour charging you would have gained 500 miles...
(Assuming a 75kWh battery, like the 3 or Y)
10% to 50% at 150kW average would be 30kWh in 12 minutes
Repeat that five times and it's 150 kWh in 60 minutes. Well if you can average 300 wh/mi when driving and you get 500 miles out of 150 kWh. Now that's with a good density of superchargers that allows you to stop roughly every 100 miles driven, but this is how a lot of youtubers optimize their driving and do crazy long road trips with very short and "easy" supercharger sessions.
(300 wh/mi should be super easy in a Model 3 on any day expect the absolute coldest/heavy snow or rain, probably doable with a Y, and just maybe with a newer S)
As Tesla opens more superchargers our options just keep getting better and as long as the energy usage model is fairly accurate (we feel safe driving to low SOC) we'll speed up our charging (reduce time at chargers) just from optimization. We ideally need Tesla to give us a couple options with their nav system. The standard we have now, an option for "minimize time spent charging regardless of number of stops" [this would be the optimized method I outline above], and maybe a 3rd of "customize your charging along this trip." This 3rd option would default to the current routing of less stops and longer charges but then allow you to select each stop and punch in the time spent charging there, then the car would re-route the downstream trip keeping as close to your specified charging duration. This would allow you to tell the Tesla when you might be stopping for lunch and charging for a long time, etc. Obviously to keep it simple it should just work, and probably work with less stops but longer, the majority of the population probably would rather only stop two or three times max vs five or six. Then allow some power user settings in submenus for the crazy ones that want to optimize.
Those are actually conservatives numbers too. If a Raven (and newer) S can follow the V3 profile of a 3 or Y, from 10% to 50% would average about 195kW. 40% charge would be 40kWh. At 195kW it would only take 12 minutes and 18 seconds to add 40kWh. Do that 5 times over and you've spent a total of 61.5 minutes charging to gain back 200kWh. Well ABetterRoutePlanner suggests a Raven S can do 65mph on a good weather day at about 286 wh/mi which means 699 miles from that 200kWh which only took a smidge over 1 hour to supercharge. Lets say ABRP is pretty wrong and it takes 20% more energy to cruse at 65mph (343 wh/mi), that still is 580+ miles from that 200kWh of charging. More frequent charging at lower SOC saves time (all things being equal, if there is a lot of traffic to get to the supercharger, etc than it might not be as perfect as this example).
In fact, ABetterRoutePlanner can do a fairly close job to optimizing a trip already with the existing density of superchargers with a Model Y. Going from my area (south east Washington state) to Universal Studios (daydreaming of something fun!) it shows 372kWh required for the trip, 1,190 miles, and 2 hr 12 min supercharging time. This was done based on leaving home with 100% battery, so lets minus out 75kWh from that total. That means 297kWh gained from superchargers on the trip in 2 hr and 12 minutes. That works out to be 135kW rate and 297kWh total energy; at the average of 300 wh/mi [what ABRP estimates I'll average] it would be 450 mi/hr charging. Not far from the perfect optimized example and with a couple extra superchargers opening up you probably could manually optimize that even more.
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ratsbew
Active Member
This seems like a pretty clear cut case of excessive highway speed (max speed 80mph, average 69mph....I'd wager that he was cruising at 80mph sustained for a large portion). Second factor is a likely light headwind pushing the "airspeed" close to 90mph. The heat pump should be pretty efficient at 34 degrees since it can scavenge quite a bit of heat from the air.
I don’t see any great mystery here. As soon as I saw the facts, my mind goes to “about 400 wh/mi”. More air in those tires and slow down to low 70’s and you’d be around 350-360.
I don’t ever assume I can get over 200 miles in the winter.
Your expectations were unrealistically high. 143 miles using only half the battery...I mean, did you do any research before buying?
I don’t ever assume I can get over 200 miles in the winter.
Your expectations were unrealistically high. 143 miles using only half the battery...I mean, did you do any research before buying?
My former girlfriend couldn't understand how I could drive an EV given that it could run out of charge. But she kept running out of gas in her Mazda.
They probably looked at the range Tesla advertises. I wish Tesla would be crystal clear and create a little widget on their car pages where you could change a couple selections. "City" (Like 30 to 40 mph), "Freeway" (Like 60 to 70 mph), and then give the option for "Snow or heavy rain", and "winter". You toggle if it's city or freeway and then if you expect rain or snow or just winter temperatures and it'll display the estimated range.
It would be crazy honest and crystal clear for owners. Maybe Tesla could even publish three "leading competing EVs" or something to show how their range decreases in the weather too so they would still look favorable compared to other EVs. The common person, which is where the market is starting to head towards thanks to the lower price are going to expect "close" to what the page says. If I'm used to seeing 30 mpg from a Honda I don't expect 16 or 17 mpg in the winter. Yes everyone here knows it takes a hit and we just don't notice it in gas cars as much, but it's also not as drastic, maybe it's 27 mpg compared to 30 or something.
The fact is that Tesla is still hands down some of the best range and weather and speed affects all EVs, they could be more forthright about by how much and still be a leader in the market.
I agree regarding headwinds. The last leg of a recent road trip I think we were fighting an approx 40MPH headwind.
The estimated arrival SOC just keep dropping until I was forced to draft off three different big rigs (going below 50MPH when traffic is going 75 to 85 is also unsafe). The building was blocking the wind, while we were Supercharging, so we had no idea how strong the wind was. Even if I had charged to 100%, arriving home without running out of juice might not of been possible and forced me to draft for at least a portion of the leg..
I now plan to view one or both of the following web sites to access wind speed and direction while supercharging and driving if wind speeds are high.
Tesla Traffic Incidents and Information You need to enable weather info
Tesla Winds and Elevation You need to follow the setup instructions, can be mostly done on a home computer.
Then bookmark both in the in-car browser for future car reference.
Tesla has access to the same wind/direction info these site access so I hope they integrate it with the in-car nav system someday. This would be more useful to me than another game but that is just my opinion.
The “windy” iPhone app works too & takes 30 seconds to glance at.
Been driving in 0F - seeing 800-860 wh/mi. Temps rose to the teens and I was able to get my average down to 660 wh/mi. I never get EPA ranges on my gas/diesel vehicles either. In this weather our Jeep that is rated for 14/22 we are getting 11... An average speed of 45 mph on long highway drive in the 20F-30Fs we did see 24 mpg. I guess the difference is it has a 24 gal tank so even 11 mpg is decent range.
That's why when someone tells me that there is no need to design an EV with more than 300 miles of EPA range I reply, yes, as long as that's rated range on the highway in 0F weather with the heat on. It's not that I don't know what I got myself into. And in there are no superchargers all over Alaska. Hopefully we get one Q2 this year - even though it's scheduled to be put in an area I do not frequent, at least it's a start. I'd love right now to "only" get 500 miles per hour charge rate...
That's why when someone tells me that there is no need to design an EV with more than 300 miles of EPA range I reply, yes, as long as that's rated range on the highway in 0F weather with the heat on. It's not that I don't know what I got myself into. And in there are no superchargers all over Alaska. Hopefully we get one Q2 this year - even though it's scheduled to be put in an area I do not frequent, at least it's a start. I'd love right now to "only" get 500 miles per hour charge rate...
Lots of great discussion here. I feel just a little "attacked" by those who ask if I did any research or planning. I can be sure I research these things more than the average person. I knew the winds, and the temps. And those who are willing to wager I was cruising at 80MPH for long stretches would lose that bet. 80 was the MAX, and I know I only hit it a couple times when I needed to. I was cruising at about 74mph most of the time and being passed quite a bit. The Speed limit is 70 for most of the trip.
And to be clear I wanted this to go well. And I am not saying it went horribly or I ran into anything more than a nuisance. I have been thinking about a Tesla for 6 years and of course I am a bit if a fan. So I am not wanting to complain for the sake of tearing Tesla down.
As a couple others have stated I just wish this was made more apparent. My future choice to not subject my wife to anguish due to range anxiety is certainly my choice. I just think that getting just over half range, in 15mph (mostly) crosswinds, in 34F weather was just surprising. In VERY similar conditions and slightly higher winds I averaged 25mpg with an epa rating of 30pmg in my wife's CX-5. That is a reduction of at most 20%. I think that using that kind of experience applied to the Tesla is what many would do.
If that makes me dumb, I guess I'll have to accept that.
BTW Daks - I have been driving in 0F weather than last couple of days and seeing the similar high wh/mi as you are. Thanks for sharing!!
And to be clear I wanted this to go well. And I am not saying it went horribly or I ran into anything more than a nuisance. I have been thinking about a Tesla for 6 years and of course I am a bit if a fan. So I am not wanting to complain for the sake of tearing Tesla down.
As a couple others have stated I just wish this was made more apparent. My future choice to not subject my wife to anguish due to range anxiety is certainly my choice. I just think that getting just over half range, in 15mph (mostly) crosswinds, in 34F weather was just surprising. In VERY similar conditions and slightly higher winds I averaged 25mpg with an epa rating of 30pmg in my wife's CX-5. That is a reduction of at most 20%. I think that using that kind of experience applied to the Tesla is what many would do.
If that makes me dumb, I guess I'll have to accept that.
BTW Daks - I have been driving in 0F weather than last couple of days and seeing the similar high wh/mi as you are. Thanks for sharing!!
Right, I get that. It is surprising. This is one of the "good news/bad news" things about electric drivetrains. When you have something that is extremely highly efficient, like 80-90%, it is up on a pedestal, and any amount of loss of efficiency makes a huge difference in knocking it down. But with gas engines, where they are pathetically inefficient, and are busy blowing 2/3 of the energy of the gasoline out the tailpipe and radiator, those same kinds of losses blend in with the 2/3 already being wasted and only show up as a slight blip, and people don't notice them as much.
So which was it? Nuisance or anguish?
Yes, winter has higher usage, and will usually require a bit more charging stops, but I'm going to return to my point about that. This route is very well covered by Superchargers with no long gaps at all. It's not anguish or range anxiety inducing at all. Stop in Gilman for 15 minutes, grab a coffee, and be on your way. It's not a big deal.
Minor nuisance for me...mid-level anguish for her! Which leads to mid-level annoyance for me. if you know what I mean ;-)
I am moreso considering future, much longer, road trips. But I hear what you are saying.
Thanks!
My wife just hates car trips of any kind any time. She just gets bored and feels cooped up and getting stir-crazy from sitting for a long time. She had said after doing a couple with the Tesla that she kind of liked having those breaks every couple of hours to walk around and do something different to break up the just sitting. But different strokes for different folks.
Sometimes a shift in expectations is just fundamental to this kind of thing. I find a lot of new owners come into it still thinking and doing the "filling station" type of habits. They plug in and then sit in the car watching the screen just waiting for it to charge. That is a way to guarantee being bored and frustrated. But to go into it expecting to plug in and walk away and go do something, for me, 15 minutes can disappear like nothing, and it doesn't feel like waiting.
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I think everyone hit the points of ev range killers for winter but I just did a road trip here in SoCal with my wife and 2 kids, 75F temps outside and little to no wind. I averaged 243 wh/mi, got basically the advertised range. I exceeded the trip planner estimates by 10% on each leg of my trip. Total trip was around 280 miles and ended up back at home with just under 10% battery left. I almost never exceed the speed limit which is 65 around here. Just saying there’s light at the end of the tunnel when the weather is on your side out there.
With my old EV I once did a trip with mild temps but had a 30 mph head/cross wind and only got a whopping 34 miles out of the 89 rated range. Even cross-winds can have a significant impact on your range.
With my old EV I once did a trip with mild temps but had a 30 mph head/cross wind and only got a whopping 34 miles out of the 89 rated range. Even cross-winds can have a significant impact on your range.
That's what I tell people from east coast (where they have actual winter) whenever they ride in my Model X or Model 3 in California. Unless you are moving here to SoCal, your Tesla will only have about 60% range of my Telsa in winter.
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