Long Distance Driving Range

[CuddleEmperor]

Hi everyone,

I just had a general question. I recently ordered my Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus here in Montreal Quebec (taking advantages of those sweet government incentives). Expected delivery in Jan/Feb 2022. I work as a Field Service Engineer and this would become my daily driver. The range is enough for most locations for me with a likely pit stop to charge up. My question is the battery efficiency in the winter. I spoke with the tesla representative in store and they mentioned in the harshest winter settings the battery will take a 30% hit in efficiency. I was just wondering if any other model 3 owners can confirm this for me with the harsh Canadian winters.

Thanks!

 

[duanra]

That is about right providing you don't go crazy on the heat, you don't have strong headwind, and the snow on the road is not too deep.

 

[GtiMart]

Play around with ABetterRoutePlanner to plan some typical trips. Compare consumption with summer temps against cold winter temps, snow on the ground, headwind etc. You'll see how much worse it gets. The important settings will be in advanced configuration. Take the time to familiarize yourself with it. All the settings correspond to an important aspect in consumption. Note that winter tires might make consumption a bit worse and that's not part of the settings.

 

[Amped412]

Keep your HVAC heat set at a lower temp and use the seat heaters. The seat heaters use less energy than the heat pump.

 

[KenC]

Depending upon what you consider to be "harsh", I think 20 to 40% lower efficiency is probably accurate. Here's my Stats data:

 

[GtiMart]

Although that trick might work, just get a feel for how things go before sacrificing your comfort. If you are ever in a situation where you will be stranded unless you take harsh measures, cutting heat and slowing down will help.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Hi everyone,

I just had a general question. I recently ordered my Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus here in Montreal Quebec (taking advantages of those sweet government incentives). Expected delivery in Jan/Feb 2022. I work as a Field Service Engineer and this would become my daily driver. The range is enough for most locations for me with a likely pit stop to charge up. My question is the battery efficiency in the winter. I spoke with the tesla representative in store and they mentioned in the harshest winter settings the battery will take a 30% hit in efficiency. I was just wondering if any other model 3 owners can confirm this for me with the harsh Canadian winters.

Thanks!

So, with everything you've been told, how much range are you "expecting" to get on a charge, on a daily basis? I think it's important to calibrate your actual range expectations in absolute terms of distance to ensure that this vehicle will work for you.

Not sure if you're getting the 253 (LFP?) or ~263-mile version, but you're going to have about 53-54kWh to work with (very approximate). 95.5% of that is above 0%. So that's about 50.5kWh. If you want to use 80% of that (90%-10%) daily (you can use more...this is just for margin), that's 40.5kWh.

So, in the winter, maybe you get 300-350Wh/mi (this is actually arguably optimistic - it could be worse!). I'm not sure if you're talking highway high speed driving or low speed driving (matters a lot).

Anyway, at 350Wh/mi, that means with 80% of your battery you'll get 116 miles out of it.

Again, obviously you could push and use 100% of your battery and get 144 miles.

And, you may well do better than 350Wh/mi. But it really depends on whether you're stopping, letting the car cool, then driving again, etc. It all depends on the exact nature of the driving (as mentioned above, snow, rain, wind (when driving at speed) all can sap the range). If you can get 300Wh/mi, you'll get 135 miles from 80% of the battery.

This is all before any capacity loss. It's good to budget 10% loss of capacity after a couple years. The newer batteries (LFP in particular) may do better. Also the 2170L batteries may do better. But to be conservative you should use historical data of 10% capacity loss. That reduces the numbers above by 10%.

Obviously usability depends on availability of charging at remote locations, etc., too. If you charge during the day without any inconvenience while you're stopped, it won't be a big deal.

Obviously in the summertime the numbers are way better - for lower speeds in summer you can probably do 220Wh/mi or even better. That'll give you 185 miles for 80% of your battery.

 

[Sophias_dad]

IMHO, you should really be getting a LR AWD for those harsh Canadian winters. Not only do you get a much greater range, but also AWD which will help considerably in snow.

I would not want to be planning my trip(daily) around where I could stop at a supercharger to get where I'm going(or get back), nor turning down the heat or driving slower. Range anxiety is sometimes a perfectly valid response(to too little range). What happens when the supercharger is busy or broken?

As @AlanSubie4Life suggested, unless you have one of them newfangled SR+ packs, you really gotta not plan to use the bottom 10% or top 10% of the battery regularly, and plan for 15% degradation of the pack in the first few years(not that it'll happen, but it could). I have not yet learned the behaviors of the new SR+ pack, but I understand they >expect< to be regularly 100% charged.

 

[thinktwice]

...and plan for 15% degradation of the pack in the first few years(not that it'll happen, but it could).

Wow 15% degradation within the first few years sounds extreme! But I understand what you're saying, plan for worst-case scenario.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Wow 15% degradation within the first few years sounds extreme! But I understand what you're saying, plan for worst-case scenario.

10% has been quite common for 2018/2019 vehicles. 15% has been seen but is definitely more rare. At the moment, if your time horizon of ownership is three years with typical mileage, I’d budget for 10%. If you’re in for the long haul 15% might be more appropriate.

You could always get unlucky when budgeting with these numbers - or lucky. But 5% error will usually be manageable, assuming you don’t have an extreme use case.

Past results may not be indicative of future results with the 2170L cells. And for sure not with the LFP cells.

Hopefully the inimitable @CuddleEmperor will come back to this post and let us know what distance he was planning on doing on a daily basis…

 

[Candleflame]

10% has been quite common for 2018/2019 vehicles. 15% has been seen but is definitely more rare. At the moment, if your time horizon of ownership is three years with typical mileage, I’d budget for 10%. If you’re in for the long haul 15% might be more appropriate.

You could always get unlucky when budgeting with these numbers - or lucky. But 5% error will usually be manageable, assuming you don’t have an extreme use case.

Past results may not be indicative of future results with the 2170L cells. And for sure not with the LFP cells.

Hopefully the inimitable @CuddleEmperor will come back to this post and let us know what distance he was planning on doing on a daily basis…

As per teslafi. 10% degradation (70.92kwh) after 2 years means you do better than average.

 

[theothertom]

And for sure not with the LFP cells.

The limited data I've seen is that LFP will loose 50% in cold (-10C) weather. That's worse than NCA batteries. A work around for either LFP or NCA is to preheat while plugged in prior to driving.

 

[MacNeil]

10% has been quite common for 2018/2019 vehicles. 15% has been seen but is definitely more rare. At the moment, if your time horizon of ownership is three years with typical mileage, I’d budget for 10%. If you’re in for the long haul 15% might be more appropriate.

You could always get unlucky when budgeting with these numbers - or lucky. But 5% error will usually be manageable, assuming you don’t have an extreme use case.

Past results may not be indicative of future results with the 2170L cells. And for sure not with the LFP cells.

Hopefully the inimitable @CuddleEmperor will come back to this post and let us know what distance he was planning on doing on a daily basis…

We have a 2018 Model 3 and I am guessing that degradation has been about 10%. On the other hand, we probably have less range anxiety than when it was new. Partly due to more confidence in range as calculated by the car but, more importantly, the availability of Superchargers (and other chargers) has grown much faster than any degradation. Obviously that will not be the case for all locations or all owners but might be something to consider.

 

[jjrandorin]

Hopefully the inimitable @CuddleEmperor will come back to this post and let us know what distance he was planning on doing on a daily basis…

They havent, though ,and havent even been back on TMC since Sep 23rd. I guess they got the answer they were looking for.

Any further discussion in this thread is likely to turn into battery degradation, etc, and to spare myself moving further posts from this thread into the main one, I am going to lock this one. If OP has further questions on the vehicle, they can start a new thread with those questions.