Great new video of quite scientific range test of 6 electric cars here. Long range Model 3 wins - as expected of course! Kia Niro did surprisingly well though. iPace , e-tron and Merc eqc ~ equal worst.
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Long Range Test - Tesla wins!
- Thread starter mikemillar
- Start date
seattlite2004
Active Member
seattlite2004
Active Member
I think the claimed ranges will be to the European WLTP standard, which looks like it's more optimistic than the American standard - Model 3 on USA website quotes 322 miles.
Thanks for the summary of miles range, @seattlie2004. I thought about that but didn't get round to it. A summary of miles per kWh and range against total battery capacity would also be interesting.
Don't forge that they were left fully charged overnight before the test so lost a little range (3-4%) before the start.
Thanks for the summary of miles range, @seattlie2004. I thought about that but didn't get round to it. A summary of miles per kWh and range against total battery capacity would also be interesting.
Don't forge that they were left fully charged overnight before the test so lost a little range (3-4%) before the start.
Mercedes 194miles/80kWh = 2.425 miles/kWh
Audi 206miles/95kWh = 2.168 miles/kWh
Nissan 208miles/62kWh = 3.355 miles/kWh
Jaguar 223miles/90kWh = 2.478 miles/kWh
Kia 255miles/64kWh = 3.984 miles/kWh
Tesla 270miles/75kWh = 3.6 miles/kWh
Kia is looking good!
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Some things to keep in mind as far as the Tesla goes for this test.
0:50 - Tesla started at 95% (others also had drain overnight). The test started at 11:11AM
18:23 - Energy Consumption page says 1 mile of range left, so very close to 0% but above 0%, make note of the shape of the Energy Consumption graph
18:35 - At 10:22PM 261.5mi @ 252Wh/mi = 65.9kWh consumed. You can see from the Energy Consumption graph that this is less than 1 mile after the prior cutaway, so is a good representation of 0%.
24:13 - At sometime past 11PM, I think, 269.7mi @ 257Wh/mi 69.3kWh. They drove 8.2 miles after the readout said 0 rated miles left, and consumed 3.4kWh of energy (and you can see from the graph they were getting poor efficiency (414Wh/mi) due to use of the heat at low speed (~8mph)).
This suggests buffer is 3.4kWh. (Note this is yet another demonstration that that energy is usable if you're driving really slowly!) We know the buffer is 4.5% of a full pack from other data (a new car has a 3.5kWh buffer), so this car may have had a slightly degraded battery (75.6kWh - which would display as 309 rated miles as new, but is relative to 77-78kWh for a brand new car).
1) The cars were left overnight, and presumably due to Smart Summon Standby mode, or Sentry Mode, it was at 95% the following morning. That is ~15 miles of range lost overnight! Let's assume for our purposes that was Sentry Mode.
2) Since the test took 12 hours, but only traveled 270 miles, a fair amount of energy had to be lost while stopped. If Smart Summon Standby Mode was in use, we can assume about 7 hours of sitting, and I would guess between various fiddling around that was done while sitting in park/swapping drivers, etc., perhaps 4 rated miles were lost while sitting (this is a guess!).
But to check that guess, we can use that 75.6kWh battery capacity estimate and use the 230/234 scaling (Wh/mi on trip relative to Wh/mi from the BMS) that we know applies to the trip meter vs. BMS energy, taking into account that the battery started at 95%:
a) Starting energy: 3.4kWh + 0.95*309rmi*234Wh/rmi = 72kWh per the BMS/CAN bus.
b) Scale by trip meter to BMS observed ratio: 72.1kWh * 230/234 = 70.9kWh.
c) Observed on trip meter: 69.3kWh.
Lost: 70.9kWh - 69.3kWh = 1.3kWh => 5.5 rated miles. Which seems completely conceivable for that guess, so this seems to check out.
So, we can correct this datapoint with what we know, with HVAC in use, traveling at relatively slow motorway speeds:
270 miles, consumed 69.3kWh (which is 70.5kWh referenced to true battery consumed).
So 270/70.5kWh = 3.83 miles/kWh, or 260Wh/mi.
Obviously I know nothing about the other vehicles, so they may well need correction factors applied as well. I'm not trying to make them look worse. They also did not start at 100% in general.
But with this efficiency, with this specific vehicle, if they had been more careful, they could have (by starting at 100%, and not wasting any energy while in park) obtained 75.6kWh (BMS) * 230Wh/mi(trip)/234Wh/mi(BMS) = 74.3kWh (trip), and traveled 74.3kWh/257Wh/rmi = 289 miles.
If you started with a brand new vehicle with ~77kWh, you could travel about 300 miles.
My financial advisor rang me today - meeting cancelled, yet another broken alloy on his ICE Jaguar. But he's about to order a Tesla - before the government grant completely dries up. Model S price is a bit steep but Model 3 is too small and he doesn't like the hard suspension. He does a lot of long distance so comfort is important. X is too complicated, falcon wing doors etc, But, being a Jaguar man, his views own the i-pace are interesting. Nice car, well built, luxurious, but the technology is several years behind Tesla! So it's no contest. I suspect that the lack of fast charging would make things difficult for him as well - Interesting that the non-technical public are picking this up too. I've sent him my referral code....
Electric700
Active Member
May be he could look at a CPO / inventory Model S? There are some at:
New & Used Electric Cars | Tesla
https://www.cars.com/
He could save with free unlimited Supercharging if he can find one with that. A new Model S would come with it automatically.
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