Yes, with short trips you'll never come close. Even in an EV with regen, starting and stopping kills your range like every other kind of car. But, an uninterrupted cruise on the freeway at less than 70 mph will definitely be another story. Of course, I'm assuming no or minimal environmental systems in use, for me that would be Fall and Spring mostly. I should mention I have 18" wheels with aeros. With different tires I could probably up the range another 5% to 10% at the cost of performance.
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LR RWD to receive firmware upgrade to 325 miles...actual capacity bump??
- Thread starter ratsbew
- Start date
Sunshine State
Automotive Enthusiast
Tesla just didn't want to address the inherent efficiency differences between the LR RWD, LR AWD, LR P-AWD, 18", 19", 20" wheels until now. All of those had the same EPA 310 mile range until this week. It was clearly ridiculous because there is a massive difference in efficiency between a RWD car on 18's and a Performance on 20's. My only question is why the RWD isn't going to get 330 miles or more. Maybe RWD with 19's would reasonably complete the EPA test at 325. I doubt we will ever get a clear answer from Tesla on this issue.
I am quite sure that they are just changing the Wh/mile constant in the computer to calculate the displayed distance from the SOC. It doesn't really matter to me since I drive with it showing % anyway.
Exactly, Tesla didn’t want people complaining,aiming that their $70k performance model got far less range than the $49k version.
diamond.g
Active Member
Ok, now I'm not so sure it is just a change in how they calculate the range. During the media call:
ELON: "We do find ways over time and have done this many times in the past where we are able to improve the efficiency of say of the drive inverter or the motor or we get a bit more comfortable with what how much energy you can extract safely from the battery pack without causing it long term harm. And so as we get more road validation and we are we're able to find optimizations and a feel a bit more comfortable widening the margins. And then we just update the car and make it better for free."
If they’re improving efficiency or unlocking more battery, why are the dual motor cars not getting a bump too? Or maybe these changes will allow dual motor cars to actually achieve 310 miles.
I was just about to go pull that quote as well..
Either Elon is just blowing smoke about what is possible, not what is ACTUALLY happening, or we take him at face value on these statements.
I can think of three speculative ways that Tesla could have adjusted the firmware to truly increase the range of the car.
A)The drive inverter and/or motor could by tuned in software to use less energy than before during certain driving scenarios Perhaps it is possible to run it with less current, or with more efficient timings, but with the potential for drive unit issues; they've now defined a new range for tolerances based on road validation.
B)They could have limited the packs because they didn't know how much range degradation to expect long term on the new 2170 cells. They locked more of the pack than necessary in case of the event that cells degraded faster than expected, so they could mitigate the issue. Now road validation is showing that cell reliability and resilience is proving to be either better than expected, or as expected with no unexpected issues after long term road validation. They can now unlock an extra kwh or two based on the current battery statistics.
C) What is considered 100% in a li-ion cell is to some degree variable, perhaps they considered 4.17v the maximum voltage for a cell, but now through road and longer term validation, they consider 4.21 the maximum safe voltage of the cells, resulting in more power being allowed to be placed in the cells.
Remember that 325 vs. 310 miles range is only a 4.8% difference. It does not seem extremely out of the realm of possibility that through firmware adjustments to the motor and battery pack range could have been improved this small measure. (heck they could probably get a 4.8% improvement by tuning the heater and AC power limits under some driving conditions.)
The fact that the range increase is coming at the same time as a 5% performance improvement makes me lean on the side that they've actually just tuned up the firmware for a lot of the cars systems after a lot of road validation and there truly is additional range being added above and beyond just adjusting the rated range in the HUD.
Shygar
Member
I was kind of speculating that as well. I do think it has potential to be more than just a display number. I'd be interested to see people testing this out once it's live.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I guess we will see. The thing is, if this is the case, we would expect better efficiency from all Model 3 vehicles (though probably not the same % improvement). That is what makes me think they are just adjusting to match the EPA rest results. But, that is definitely not what Elon said. But, I don’t think the data from users shows that the LR was “nerfed” relative to the other AWD vehicles, in terms of energy able to be extracted from the pack. So even if they are just making more energy available, not optimizing efficiency, they should be able to do that on all LR RWD and AWD vehicles.
Optimizing efficiency sure would make that vampire drain sting less though. I’m enjoying my 380Wh/mi wall-to-wheel efficiency without ANY HVAC use, but would be nice if it went down, even if they have not got around to fixing vampire yet.
People should get their baseline scientifically controlled runs recorded prior to installing the software update, so we can compare!
Stretch2727
Engineer and Car Nut
[QUOTE="People should get their baseline scientifically controlled runs recorded prior to installing the software update, so we can compare![/QUOTE]
I think we just need to see if the rated Wh/Mi drops on the energy graph and we will know if if was re-rating or added battery capacity. If the rated drops we need to see if it really drops or is just an adjustment.
My guess is they are just giving it more a more "realistic" EPA rating.
That it is being paired with a power increase makes this interesting. Could involve only the rear motor so maybe only a small benefit to the AWD cars so they decided to leave the rated the same for more margin. My P AWD rarely gets close to 250 Wh/mi. The long range RWD does very often in moderate temps even when driven semi aggressive.
Let's see.
I think we just need to see if the rated Wh/Mi drops on the energy graph and we will know if if was re-rating or added battery capacity. If the rated drops we need to see if it really drops or is just an adjustment.
My guess is they are just giving it more a more "realistic" EPA rating.
That it is being paired with a power increase makes this interesting. Could involve only the rear motor so maybe only a small benefit to the AWD cars so they decided to leave the rated the same for more margin. My P AWD rarely gets close to 250 Wh/mi. The long range RWD does very often in moderate temps even when driven semi aggressive.
Let's see.
they did kind of the same thing with the MR, which is announced for 264 miles.
Used to be 260. If the increase of power would increase the range, it would have increased the range for the whole fleet.
So the increase of range for the LR is a good incentive since Tesla brings it back.
But they were probably waiting for the right time to pull this card out of their sleeve. Just guessing...
Used to be 260. If the increase of power would increase the range, it would have increased the range for the whole fleet.
So the increase of range for the LR is a good incentive since Tesla brings it back.
But they were probably waiting for the right time to pull this card out of their sleeve. Just guessing...
I GOT THE UPDATE! Showing 293 at 90% Efficiency a little better, car is quicker now. Around 20-30mph it is improved, also a little from zero.
dhrivnak
Active Member
I disagree as we have been able to get rated range on the highway at 65-70 mph, multiple times. I have the aero wheels which may be a slight difference.
Stretch2727
Engineer and Car Nut
What is the rated Wh/mi on the energy page?
I would note some of your recent efficiencies from the trip meter to see if it drops. 5% efficiency will be hard to see on any short distance so I would note the longest you have stored. Even then it is tough with all the seasonality to consumption.
I purchased a LR RWD back in Aug of last year. Consistently got 228 Wh/mi until Oct 2018 when the Energy usage went up to 268 Wh/mi with no explanation. Same weather and driving conditions. No one else seemed to notice the change. I checked with Tesla service and they said my battery was fine. Here is what I think:
Since the AWD version, first delivered about that time and had less efficiency than the RWD, Musk placed a software mod on the RWD’s to lower their efficiency so as not to upset owners of the AWD once it was realized the AWD couldn’t get anywhere near the range of the RWD. Of course we know Musk asked the EPA back in 2017 not to publish the RWD 334 range rating since the AWD actually only tested at 308 miles by the EPA. Now that the EPA must test the 2019, musk had to unlock at least part of the actual efficiency capability of the RWD or it would look really bad for the RWD’s since they had been efficiency blocked back in Oct 2018. But why only 325 miles now? Probably because he doesn’t want to much of a difference between the RWD and AWD. Again, that would really piss off the AWD owners and squelch sales. BTY note that the 334 mile range by the EPA was on the 2017 model 3 which equates to the 126eMPG as shown on the 2017 window sackers, but on the 2018’s and 2019’s it is 130eMPG. My guess is that Musk found some software tweaks during late 2017 or early 2018 that improved the RWD even more and so definitely didn’t want that to be known. BTY the 130eMPG equate to 347 mile range for the LR RWD, not 334. That is from the 2017 test. I don’t think he will ever unblock all of the RWD efficiency otherwise that would really hurt AWD sales?
Since the AWD version, first delivered about that time and had less efficiency than the RWD, Musk placed a software mod on the RWD’s to lower their efficiency so as not to upset owners of the AWD once it was realized the AWD couldn’t get anywhere near the range of the RWD. Of course we know Musk asked the EPA back in 2017 not to publish the RWD 334 range rating since the AWD actually only tested at 308 miles by the EPA. Now that the EPA must test the 2019, musk had to unlock at least part of the actual efficiency capability of the RWD or it would look really bad for the RWD’s since they had been efficiency blocked back in Oct 2018. But why only 325 miles now? Probably because he doesn’t want to much of a difference between the RWD and AWD. Again, that would really piss off the AWD owners and squelch sales. BTY note that the 334 mile range by the EPA was on the 2017 model 3 which equates to the 126eMPG as shown on the 2017 window sackers, but on the 2018’s and 2019’s it is 130eMPG. My guess is that Musk found some software tweaks during late 2017 or early 2018 that improved the RWD even more and so definitely didn’t want that to be known. BTY the 130eMPG equate to 347 mile range for the LR RWD, not 334. That is from the 2017 test. I don’t think he will ever unblock all of the RWD efficiency otherwise that would really hurt AWD sales?
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