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Long drives with degrading battery

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We just finished our 3rd long trip of over 1000 miles. (trip 1 was 2000+ miles, 2 was 800 miles). I have 13k on odometer and my MYLR is about 9 months old. For this recent trip, we stopped total 9 times to charge for 1000 miles trip with an avg of 276 kwh efficiency. This was a Philly to Niagara falls, Canada drive (and return) which does have a bit of high elevation for most of the route. Very good temperature of 70-85) and 2 passengers total with really light luggage. We spent maybe 3 hours in charging. My max charge limit is now 313 miles and I guess i should expect it to go down a bit more.

So, i am now concerned about stopping too many times and the range anxiety associated with it. From here i only see more charging stops for future trips. Will this become a strictly city car as my battery degrades over time? What should i expect? Is this similar to your experience?
 
From here i only see more charging stops for future trips. Will this become a strictly city car as my battery degrades over time? What should i expect? Is this similar to your experience?

Why is that "what you see"?

If your car had 20-30 miles less range than it does now, how would it have changed the trip you just came from (I am betting if you ran the trip through a trip planning website like abetterrouteplanner or something, you would find your trip would not change AT ALL with 20-30 less miles range).
 
I've done several long (1,000+ miles) trips and you'll see, after a while, the BMS struggle with constant, hard-core supercharging. Rest assured, your range hasn't changed, only what's being computed. The BMS needs time to recalibrate and it can get confused with fill/drain/supercharge cycles. Give the car some sleep time and slow charging on AC so the BMS can recalibrate and re-compute the battery's low and high numbers.

Just yesterday, I finished a moderate length trip and arrived home with 14%. I let the car sit for about 6 hours then when out to plug it in. My battery level was 18% - I gained 4% by just letting it sit and letting the BMS recalibrate the low end capacity.
 
your battery and range for the fist 20-30k will have its biggest hit, most people notice a 5-6 percent range drop and then its dramatically slows to the next 100k to end up with about a 9-12 percent range drop at 100k, dont sweat it. but you will def see a range drop within that first 20-30k miles as the batter settles in
 
Thanks. Its just that the trip planner SC stops dont align with actual driving. As an eg, you start at 300 range and the algorithm thinks one stop is sufficient. Then the range drops due to inclines, headwinds, load in car, weather, etc. Add to that the mental anxiety when there’s a backup on highway or you missed your exit or there is a detour. So what started as 2 to 4 stops turns into 6 to 7 stops. It was fun at first exploring charging stops but not anymore.
I dont use sentry at home in garage and charge at 24A to 90% (for many months i was charging to 84%~) so assume the car sleeps every night? Not sure how else to facilitate the BMS.
 
Thanks. Its just that the trip planner SC stops dont align with actual driving. As an eg, you start at 300 range and the algorithm thinks one stop is sufficient. Then the range drops due to inclines, headwinds, load in car, weather, etc. Add to that the mental anxiety when there’s a backup on highway or you missed your exit or there is a detour. So what started as 2 to 4 stops turns into 6 to 7 stops. It was fun at first exploring charging stops but not anymore.
I dont use sentry at home in garage and charge at 24A to 90% (for many months i was charging to 84%~) so assume the car sleeps every night? Not sure how else to facilitate the BMS.
To recalibrate the BMS, you need to let it sleep at different charge states. If you always charge to 90%, it will only sleep at that state, and the BMS calibration will drift. It needs to occasionally spend a few hours sleeping at a lower charge state. Even then, it's still not completely accurate. The good news is it almost always errs on the conservative side (you'll have more charge than it says).

By the way, you don't have to worry about a backup on the highway. That will slow you down, so it will increase your range. The only time a backup will decrease your range is if you're completely stopped for hours. But a half-charged battery will keep you warm for a day even if it's freezing outside, and won't risk filling your car with carbon monoxide like the gassers also stuck in the same situation. Normally though, a highway backup will increase your efficiency.

And speaking of efficiency, please don't just throw "kwh" on as the unit for anything associated with an EV. First of all, it's kWh, but more importantly it's a measure of energy, not efficiency or power. I assume you meant you got an efficiency of 276 Wh/mile, but kWh is so different that I'm not really sure.

A handy primer:
kW = power (how fast the battery is charging or how much juice you're using to drive. Motors and charging stations are measured in kW)
kWh = energy (using 1 kW of power for 1 hour is, surprise, 1 kWh. The battery capacity is measured in kWh)
kWh/mile (or Wh/mi, or Wh/km) = efficiency (how many kWh it takes to go a mile. This of course varies depending on speed, wind, altitude change, and how much power (in kW!) you're using to run the A/C or heat

Hope that helps!
 
Thanks. Its just that the trip planner SC stops dont align with actual driving. As an eg, you start at 300 range and the algorithm thinks one stop is sufficient. Then the range drops due to inclines, headwinds, load in car, weather, etc. Add to that the mental anxiety when there’s a backup on highway or you missed your exit or there is a detour. So what started as 2 to 4 stops turns into 6 to 7 stops. It was fun at first exploring charging stops but not anymore.
I dont use sentry at home in garage and charge at 24A to 90% (for many months i was charging to 84%~) so assume the car sleeps every night? Not sure how else to facilitate the BMS.

So now this has pivoted back to where I thought it was going in the first place, which is "my car doesnt have enough range" / "why is my range less than it was, now" (evidenced by the "is this a city car only, now?" comment.

The 20 miles lost you are talking about has almost no bearing on actual number of supercharger stops on a long trip, and also has like ZERO bearing on around town usage if you charge at home. Its just something that people want to stress about, that has no real bearing on the use of the car either for trips or around town.

To answer your original thread question "is this an around town car only now?" = no more than it was when you first bought it, and "what you see now" shouldnt be any different than what you saw before, as it relates to long trips. 2-4 stops did NOT turn into 6-7 stops because your max charge is 313 now vs 335.

If the tesla trip planner isnt working for you, try another one like abetterrouteplanner, but the number of stops has not changed because of your 20 miles of degradation. Whether its an around town car only for you now is the same answer it was previously (either yes or no).

The rest of this is the same "degradation" discussion as the other 50+ threads in this subforum on the same topic, and the same one as the 250page thread I put all this discussion into in the model 3 subforum, so I will let those threads speak for the rest of it.
 
My dinosaur Tesla has 140,000 miles, 12% degradation, and an effective real world range of about 200 miles now.

I’ve driven all over the western US. Practically speaking, my experience has only improved with time given the proliferation of supercharger stations in the last 5.5 years.

The moment you free your mind from the “more stops = slower” mentality, the world is your oyster. ALL of my usual trips have gotten faster, not slower, because there are more charging options available and I can stop more frequently or at convenient intervals to work the bottom half of the battery (where charging is fastest) instead of topping up to 90 or even 100% to make it to the next charger.

Lots of “mental peace” in that for me. The truth is, range degradation in a 300+ mile Model Y will not change a single thing practically speaking for 99.9% of your trips.

Regarding “mental anxiety” over congestion or backups - rest assured that those almost always INCREASE your available range vs what the car predicts. Speed kills range. Traffic jams are like a range bonus.
 
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We just finished our 3rd long trip of over 1000 miles. (trip 1 was 2000+ miles, 2 was 800 miles). I have 13k on odometer and my MYLR is about 9 months old. For this recent trip, we stopped total 9 times to charge for 1000 miles trip with an avg of 276 kwh efficiency. This was a Philly to Niagara falls, Canada drive (and return) which does have a bit of high elevation for most of the route. Very good temperature of 70-85) and 2 passengers total with really light luggage. We spent maybe 3 hours in charging. My max charge limit is now 313 miles and I guess i should expect it to go down a bit more.

So, i am now concerned about stopping too many times and the range anxiety associated with it. From here i only see more charging stops for future trips. Will this become a strictly city car as my battery degrades over time? What should i expect? Is this similar to your experience?
I'm sure this is overkill for most people, but I plot out every Tesla charging station up and back. I print out the info for each station then put it in a booklet. One of the things I look for is the availability of restaurants, etc. When driving I use the navigation system and then decide on a case by case basis whether I want to charge earlier than the system suggests. I've done multiple trips from DC to Newport RI and having the booklet to quickly see my options reduces any range anxiety I might have. Being able to choose when to stop based on amenities at the location and your current charge level makes a difference instead of relying on the navigation system alone.
 
It's fascinating to see how different personalities and preferences are.

I print out the info for each station then put it in a booklet. [...] having the booklet to quickly see my options reduces any range anxiety I might have.
That would stress me out and make me dread trips. I prefer not having a lot of planning, because that feels like rules and obligation to me. I set off on my 5,000+ mile trip across the country a few years ago without a specific plan of even what cities I would stop in for overnights or which route exactly I was going to take. And when I was on the return trip on the way home, I just decided to go a different way through other states.
 
It's fascinating to see how different personalities and preferences are.


That would stress me out and make me dread trips. I prefer not having a lot of planning, because that feels like rules and obligation to me. I set off on my 5,000+ mile trip across the country a few years ago without a specific plan of even what cities I would stop in for overnights or which route exactly I was going to take. And when I was on the return trip on the way home, I just decided to go a different way through other states.
That would stress me out! I'm somewhere in between. I do like to plan a bit (okay, a lot), but then end up using the plan as more guidelines while traveling. In a few years when my trips begin to include the big National Parks out West, planning will be required because you have to have reservations a year in advance or do an awful lot of hoping that you can find a FCFS campsite. The goal is to have the National Parks be a couple of milestones in the schedule, while leaving the rest semi-open.

The other advantage of planning is it's fun, so I can start enjoying the trip long before I can afford to retire and actually hit the road. And by the time it happens I'll have such a huge list of weird local places along the way to stop, I can pick which ones to actually visit on the day of travel.

BTW, I had a really hard time finding a trip planner for multi-week trips that would help me find places to stay and see. Currently using Furkot, which sometimes gets a little janky in the UI, but reloading the page always seems to fix it.
 
Didn't see it, but maybe a suggestion of a switch to the good old % instead of miles. Some get fixated on miles and think they are going to disappear thus forcing the want to charge sooner. 25 or 30 miles left sometimes freaks people out. Even as they pull into the supercharger with said 25-30 miles.

Never had range anxiety, but my wife has a couple times. Times when I told her to push the envelope. It wasn't pretty.
Use the bottom half, but I have never had to reroute as many times as the OP due to charging need. Maybe this sounds like charging fear to top off.

Supercharging gives me less choices, but usually ones I prefer. Gas stations are so random, and amenities to look up are hit and miss using I-Exit app etc..
Screen just shows you the good close by, and one can research if they want to go further.

Interesting concept on printing charging stop information. People still print? Trees🌲=📜.
 
BTW, I had a really hard time finding a trip planner for multi-week trips that would help me find places to stay and see. Currently using Furkot, which sometimes gets a little janky in the UI, but reloading the page always seems to fix it
I used the app Roadtrippers to roughly plan out the cross country road trip a few years ago when we moved from NJ to CA.


That was before EV but worked well for me.
 
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My dinosaur Tesla has 140,000 miles, 12% degradation, and an effective real world range of about 200 miles now.

I’ve driven all over the western US. Practically speaking, my experience has only improved with time given the proliferation of supercharger stations in the last 5.5 years.

The moment you free your mind from the “more stops = slower” mentality, the world is your oyster. ALL of my usual trips have gotten faster, not slower, because there are more charging options available and I can stop more frequently or at convenient intervals to work the bottom half of the battery (where charging is fastest) instead of topping up to 90 or even 100% to make it to the next charger.

Lots of “mental peace” in that for me. The truth is, range degradation in a 300+ mile Model Y will not change a single thing practically speaking for 99.9% of your trips.

Regarding “mental anxiety” over congestion or backups - rest assured that those almost always INCREASE your available range vs what the car predicts. Speed kills range. Traffic jams are like a range bonus.
Plus, as someone who travels with small children, the supercharger always finishes charging before the family is ready to resume the trip.
 
I used the app Roadtrippers to roughly plan out the cross country road trip a few years ago when we moved from NJ to CA.


That was before EV but worked well for me.
Yeah, I did a bit of messing around with RoadTrippers, and it seems like what I want. But they don't have EV chargers included, and you have to buy the paid version to put in more than 5 waypoints or something. I'm perfectly happy to pay for a good product (I've already paid a year subscription on Furkot), but long trips is where these things tend to bog down or just crash horribly. And who wants to crash horribly on a long trip? My test route is a 5 week trip from the East coast to California, with (so far) 39 stops. If your demo version can demonstrate that, I'll pony up for the paid version. So far, Furkot is the only one I've found.