Range Loss Over Time, What Can Be Expected, Efficiency, How to Maintain Battery Health

[dr_frankfurt]

I'm on week three of owning my SR+ and I have to say I'm pretty annoyed at how poor the range has been. Energy consumption is unusually high considering we drive this thing pretty conservatively, i.e. no constant hard accelerating, using regen as much as possible, etc. The majority of our driving is city with very few highway miles. On Friday, I Supercharged to 230 miles of range, and after driving roughly 50 miles over the weekend, I now have 80 miles of range left. I even tend to turn off Sentry mode to avoid further draining. It doesn't make sense to me and I wonder if the car itself has an issue. I have the NCA battery in my car. Attached my consumption graph for reference. Any advice?

 

[jjrandorin]

I'm on week three of owning my SR+ and I have to say I'm pretty annoyed at how poor the range has been. Energy consumption is unusually high considering we drive this thing pretty conservatively, i.e. no constant hard accelerating, using regen as much as possible, etc. The majority of our driving is city with very few highway miles. On Friday, I Supercharged to 230 miles of range, and after driving roughly 50 miles over the weekend, I now have 80 miles of range left. I even tend to turn off Sentry mode to avoid further draining. It doesn't make sense to me and I wonder if the car itself has an issue. I have the NCA battery in my car. Attached my consumption graph for reference. Any advice?

There is almost assuredly nothing wrong with your vehicle, just like the vast majority of the other people in this 140+ page thread. Based on the fact that you mention you "supercharged to 230", I am going to make an assumption that you both have an SR+ and also do not have home charging.

If you bought the car thinking some variation of "the car has 260 mile range, I only drive 20 miles a day on average, so even though I dont have home charging, I can simply charge every 9-10 days and have some left over", it will never work like that.

 

[AAKEE]

I'm on week three of owning my SR+ and I have to say I'm pretty annoyed at how poor the range has been. Energy consumption is unusually high considering we drive this thing pretty conservatively, i.e. no constant hard accelerating, using regen as much as possible, etc. The majority of our driving is city with very few highway miles. On Friday, I Supercharged to 230 miles of range, and after driving roughly 50 miles over the weekend, I now have 80 miles of range left. I even tend to turn off Sentry mode to avoid further draining. It doesn't make sense to me and I wonder if the car itself has an issue. I have the NCA battery in my car. Attached my consumption graph for reference. Any advice?

If you drive multiple drives on one charge the range wont be as you might expect.
Sentry mode, phantom drain etc will use up the energy.
If you drive it all in a single drive and keep the specified consumption you should get somewhere close to the EPA range if ypu drive until the car stops. If you drive to the range indication shows 0% or 0 miles you should cone close to about 95% of the EPA range.

 

[lynnpt2001]

Cars showing on the APP 277 Miles max charge. Would this be correct or is that low. Seems a bit low to me since our MX has 72K miles on it and has a 5% range loss. I rarely supercharge the M3, usually on a mobile charger 240v

Looking for some advice?

 

[jjrandorin]

Cars showing on the APP 277 Miles max charge. Would this be correct or is that low. Seems a bit low to me since our MX has 72K miles on it and has a 5% range loss. I rarely supercharge the M3, usually on a mobile charger 240v

Looking for some advice?

Sounds in the neighborhood of what some other model 3 owners are seeing.

 

[derotam]

I'm on week three of owning my SR+ and I have to say I'm pretty annoyed at how poor the range has been. Energy consumption is unusually high considering we drive this thing pretty conservatively, i.e. no constant hard accelerating, using regen as much as possible, etc. The majority of our driving is city with very few highway miles. On Friday, I Supercharged to 230 miles of range, and after driving roughly 50 miles over the weekend, I now have 80 miles of range left. I even tend to turn off Sentry mode to avoid further draining. It doesn't make sense to me and I wonder if the car itself has an issue. I have the NCA battery in my car. Attached my consumption graph for reference. Any advice?

So lets run some numbers out just to make sure we are all on the same page here... 230 miles of range is ~87.7% SOC or about 46kWh. You ended with ~30% based on 80miles remaining, or ~15.9kWh. So you used ~30.1kWh for 50 miles. That equates to an average of 600Wh/mile. In order for you to get every EPA mile out of the battery, your average needs to be approximately 230Wh/mile.

So now the question is what are the factors that would account for this discrepancy? Looking at your graph, I am going to say you are going up and down mountains. Using that assumption, I can also possibly assume that there are cooler temperatures on that mountain that would require you to use the heater. The mountains would be the biggest contributor of the two.

I understand you are frustrated at what you are seeing but please remember that the *EPA* range is based on a specific usage and it doesn't look like you are using the vehicle even close to what the EPA test is based on.

 

[dr_frankfurt]

If you drive multiple drives on one charge the range wont be as you might expect.
Sentry mode, phantom drain etc will use up the energy.
If you drive it all in a single drive and keep the specified consumption you should get somewhere close to the EPA range if ypu drive until the car stops. If you drive to the range indication shows 0% or 0 miles you should cone close to about 95% of the EPA range.

So if I drive like a normal human being by driving more than one straigh trip, the estimated range drops by 50%? That's ridiculous. I know I wouldn't get 260 miles, I even assumed best case scenario I could hit 200. But to go from 230 to 80 after less than 50 miles doesn't sound normal at all.

So lets run some numbers out just to make sure we are all on the same page here... 230 miles of range is ~87.7% SOC or about 46kWh. You ended with ~30% based on 80miles remaining, or ~15.9kWh. So you used ~30.1kWh for 50 miles. That equates to an average of 600Wh/mile. In order for you to get every EPA mile out of the battery, your average needs to be approximately 230Wh/mile.

So now the question is what are the factors that would account for this discrepancy? Looking at your graph, I am going to say you are going up and down mountains. Using that assumption, I can also possibly assume that there are cooler temperatures on that mountain that would require you to use the heater. The mountains would be the biggest contributor of the two.

I understand you are frustrated at what you are seeing but please remember that the *EPA* range is based on a specific usage and it doesn't look like you are using the vehicle even close to what the EPA test is based on.

I live in a city which is on the foot of the mountains. Majority of my driving is straight line back and forth, with an occasional downhill/uphill trip a couple times a week. 600Wh/mile seems a little high to me compared to the average 240-260 I've seen. Any tips on how I can reduce the consumption? I keep regen in Hold mode, apply as little throttle as possible to get the green light indicator visible, don't use AC too often, etc. Just ordered my wall connector so I have to make do with supercharging until it arrives.

 

[KenC]

So if I drive like a normal human being by driving more than one straigh trip, the estimated range drops by 50%? That's ridiculous. I know I wouldn't get 260 miles, I even assumed best case scenario I could hit 200. But to go from 230 to 80 after less than 50 miles doesn't sound normal at all.

I live in a city which is on the foot of the mountains. Majority of my driving is straight line back and forth, with an occasional downhill/uphill trip a couple times a week. 600Wh/mile seems a little high to me compared to the average 240-260 I've seen. Any tips on how I can reduce the consumption? I keep regen in Hold mode, apply as little throttle as possible to get the green light indicator visible, don't use AC too often, etc. Just ordered my wall connector so I have to make do with supercharging until it arrives.

What does your efficiency card show? That will help you know if it's the driving that is excessive or the stationary time that is draining your battery.

 

[AAKEE]

I have a 2019 LR RWD, 4/19 build, the last of them built before they went away, 324XXX VIN.

I started running SMT after about 6 months of ownership and 6,642 miles. My NFP at that time showed 77.6. I bounced around a bit, 77.4, 77.5 but the last recording of 77.6 was at 7,871 miles almost a year after picking up the car. The Energy Buffer setting when new was 3.5. It dropped to 3.4 at 10,339 miles in Dec. 2020. In June 2021 at 12,100 miles it dropped to 3.3 and has stayed there since.

Today I'm at 13,900 miles and showing a NFP that has been bouncing around 72.9-73.3 for the past few months.

For the first year of the car's life it stayed at 50% SOC between trips. I have a Nissan Leaf I use as daily beater for errands and to go play golf. The Model 3 is the trip/weekend car. I would charge the car to whatever SOC I need to stay in the middle of the pack as much as possible. Lots of 60-40 or 60-30 SOC trips.

When I took the car on its first 1,500 mile road trip I could still stay between 70-30 SOC for most stops thanks to the Supercharger network.

I've charged to 90% maybe 3-4 times. I've never been lower than 15% and that was just to let the battery sample a low SOC. That brings up this article I've been following the last 8 months. It argues the car needs to sample various SOC levels for 4-6 hours to properly calibrate the BMS.
I've usually let my car sit for a few hours when returning home, but started giving the car time to sit at a higher SOC for 4-6 hours before leaving on a trip giving the BMS time to sample.

My car is still showing 312-315 miles of rated range in SMT at 13,900 miles. Curious to see if battery degradation will level off or slow down now. I'm showing about 6% capacity loss and and about 3.7% range loss compared to 325 miles of rated range.

Not sure if I'm lucky with a "good" pack or how much I've helped myself with good battery care. My conservative approach is to stay between 70-30% SOC as much as possible and continue to store the car between 35-50% SOC. The EPA doc for the Model 3 battery calls for 15-50% SOC for long-term storage. I also take that to mean 15% is as low as I will try to go before recharging while on trips. But there will be times I may need to go to 100 or 0 to make a trip work and will charge or discharge as needed. But otherwise I'll ignore Tesla routing suggestions to go from 90-10 is I can insert another SC stop in between to stay between 70-30. I'm sure this will also be kinder to the battery when Supercharging.

Any thoughts Alan or Lastgas?

I’m sire your charging schedule has been nice for the pack.
There is a misconception fairly spread about staying in the middle of the SOC range.
Lithium batterys degrade less from time by being at a low SOC, the lower the better.
As long as you stay above the specified minimum voltage for the cell, lower is always better.
Tesla recommends charging when below 20%. This is most certain not for the health of the lithium pack, but it is to ensure that the battery dont go down so low in SOC that it stops charging the 12v lead battery. If tjis happens, we have two problems: where stuck and also lead batteries get damaged by low state of charge.
So, leaving the car at 5% will not hur the lithium battery pack but if the power drains we might be in trouble.

For calendar aging, low SOC is best and one smart thing would be to set the charging to commence so the charging is just done( with a margin not causing range anxiety) before needing to use the car.

The cyclic aging, in many cases this is less than the calendar aging, specially in the beginning of the battery life.
Cyclic aging is less with smaller cycles( DoD).
Also, cyclic aging is less when the SOC range is lower. This means 50 to 20% causes less wear than 70 to 40%. ( still 30% DoD in both cases).

The BMS calibration doesnt ad any real range. It ad miles on the battery meter but it wont put any extra kWh in the battery so the real range doesnt change. So one car with a good calibration where the Nominal full pack value is good showing 300 miles range will not go further than a car with a bad calibration, showing 270miles( but with a battery pack that is as good as in the first car). Whatevere we do, to know the ”true” degradation we need to do a full charge and drive one single drive until the car stops.

Compared to a really battery health minded charging scedule, I would say that the BMS calibration ad strain to the battery. Not by that much though, but in the light of the knowledge that a successful BMS calibration we dont gain any real range. We just increase a number on the screen and its only making us feel better, not the car.

There is a lot of research on lithium ion, and NCA in specific that show us that it will make a noticable difference to have the battery below about 57-60% true SOC ( which is about 54-57% on the Tesla battery meter) when the car is not in use, as the curve for calendar aging makes a jump for the worse above this number.
Just going below this, from, say 62% to 55% will cut the calendar aging in half.

There is also a thing that I’m not even sure if it is a good idea to write here, because it might cause battery anxiety.
Some of the battery research on Panasonic NCA cells implies that the worst calendar aging is happening with a SOC of about 75 to 85%. There is more than one research report that had that finding, I think at least I saw two of them and a couple of others that show traces of this when looking at them and knowing about the issue.

Tesla say “Up to 90% daily” and 90-100% for traveling.
I wont argue that, but I would say that it is not very good with 89% even if being on the right side by the Tesla norm. 70-90% most certain cause much more strain than some think.

 

[dr_frankfurt]

What does your efficiency card show? That will help you know if it's the driving that is excessive or the stationary time that is draining your battery.
View attachment 717806

407 miles, 114 kWh, 242 Wh/mi

 

[derotam]

So if I drive like a normal human being by driving more than one straigh trip, the estimated range drops by 50%? That's ridiculous. I know I wouldn't get 260 miles, I even assumed best case scenario I could hit 200. But to go from 230 to 80 after less than 50 miles doesn't sound normal at all.

I live in a city which is on the foot of the mountains. Majority of my driving is straight line back and forth, with an occasional downhill/uphill trip a couple times a week. 600Wh/mile seems a little high to me compared to the average 240-260 I've seen. Any tips on how I can reduce the consumption? I keep regen in Hold mode, apply as little throttle as possible to get the green light indicator visible, don't use AC too often, etc. Just ordered my wall connector so I have to make do with supercharging until it arrives.

What I would recommend is to go to abetterrouteplanner.com and enter in a normal route(out and back on the mountain run), and see what it says for expected consumption. In the interest of transparency, telling us what that specific route is would allow for us to look at it as well and possibly provide further insight. Providing the routes that you take over an entire week typically would provide an even clearer picture. Obviously not giving us specific addresses, but at least city to city or general area to general area would help.

There is something missing here since you say you only drove 50 miles and your last 30 mile graph only showed an average of I think it was 242Wh/mile. So the other question I would have is are you doing pre-heating at any point, or using the heater while the car is in Park?

The fact is, is that with the numbers you gave, it indicates an average of 600Wh/mile average over 50 miles, but remember only energy used while in a drive mode(Drive, Hold, Reverse) is accounted for in the trip meters. There is tons of history here on how all this works, so with respect, either your usage is causing it, or you have a massively faulty battery with a degradation of about 67%. While there is the possibility you have a faulty battery, based on the history of Tesla's batteries, the money is on your usage of the vehicle and not a faulty battery.

 

[AAKEE]

So if I drive like a normal human being by driving more than one straigh trip, the estimated range drops by 50%? That's ridiculous. I know I wouldn't get 260 miles, I even assumed best case scenario I could hit 200. But to go from 230 to 80 after less than 50 miles doesn't sound normal at all.

Its not ridiculous, its facts.

I think you had an picture showing 242Wh/mile.
In a single drive from full to 0% ( or miles) in the battery icon, you can go about
53000x0.955/242= 209 miles with the comsumption you have in that picture.

53000, because 53kWh seems like a bormal number on the 21 SR+.
0.955, because you only have access to 95.5% of the capacity above 0% on the battery indicator.
242, because its the consumption shown on your car as average for the 30 last driven miles.

 

[derotam]

407 miles, 114 kWh, 242 Wh/mi

Those numbers don't make sense, can you provide a picture of that please? It's not that I don't believe YOU, I just don't believe those numbers cause they don't factor out with each other and the computer is smarter than that. 114kWh / 407 miles = 280Wh/mile, not 242Wh/mile.

Again I will ask, are you pre-heating the car or sitting in Park with the heater on for any length of time?

 

[dr_frankfurt]

What I would recommend is to go to abetterrouteplanner.com and enter in a normal route(out and back on the mountain run), and see what it says for expected consumption. In the interest of transparency, telling us what that specific route is would allow for us to look at it as well and possibly provide further insight. Providing the routes that you take over an entire week typically would provide an even clearer picture. Obviously not giving us specific addresses, but at least city to city or general area to general area would help.

There is something missing here since you say you only drove 50 miles and your last 30 mile graph only showed an average of I think it was 242Wh/mile. So the other question I would have is are you doing pre-heating at any point, or using the heater while the car is in Park?

The fact is, is that with the numbers you gave, it indicates an average of 600Wh/mile average over 50 miles, but remember only energy used while in a drive mode(Drive, Hold, Reverse) is accounted for in the trip meters. There is tons of history here on how all this works, so with respect, either your usage is causing it, or you have a massively faulty battery with a degradation of about 67%. While there is the possibility you have a faulty battery, based on the history of Tesla's batteries, the money is on your usage of the vehicle and not a faulty battery.

When the car is parked, I have everything off; AC/heater, cabin overheat protection, sentry mode, etc. The car is parked right in front of my door and have nothing to worry about. Daily commute for the car is 2 miles each way, on a straight road. According to that trip calculator for my uphill/downhill runs, I should be using about 9 miles of range on the way down and 12 on the way up, using the streets instead of the highway. Let's just say 25 total to make up for some stop and go acceleration and overtaking. I've found that on the way up alone, the car goes through well over 20 miles of range no matter how conservatively I try to drive. Attached the readout as well, "Trip B" is the total I've driven.

 

[derotam]

Its not ridiculous, its facts.

I think you had an picture showing 242Wh/mile.
In a single drive from full to 0% ( or miles) in the battery icon, you can go about
53000x0.955/242= 209 miles with the comsumption you have in that picture.

53000, because 53kWh seems like a bormal number on the 21 SR+.
0.955, because you only have access to 95.5% of the capacity above 0% on the battery indicator.
242, because its the consumption shown on your car as average for the 30 last driven miles.

There is something not being said, I don't know what it is, but there is something. To make his original numbers make sense he needs to have used 600Wh/mile on average. His picture showed 242Wh/mile over 30 miles and they said they only drove 50. The other 20 miles would have had to have an average of 1137Wh/mile to get a 600Wh/mile average over 50 miles.

Again, it's either a completely failed pack, or there is a bunch of usage while in Park....or we are being given bad data(I am not prepared to call the person a liar at this point though).

 

[derotam]

When the car is parked, I have everything off; AC/heater, cabin overheat protection, sentry mode, etc. The car is parked right in front of my door and have nothing to worry about. Daily commute for the car is 2 miles each way, on a straight road. According to that trip calculator for my uphill/downhill runs, I should be using about 9 miles of range on the way down and 12 on the way up, using the streets instead of the highway. Let's just say 25 total to make up for some stop and go acceleration and overtaking. I've found that on the way up alone, the car goes through well over 20 miles of range no matter how conservatively I try to drive. Attached the readout as well, "Trip B" is the total I've driven.

Ahh, 470, not 407, now it makes more sense...

Ok so commute questions... your 2 mile commute... is the heater running for those two miles? and if so, how long does it take for you to drive those two miles? The other 40 miles, how is that made up?

 

[AAKEE]

There is something not being said, I don't know what it is, but there is something. To make his original numbers make sense he needs to have used 600Wh/mile on average. His picture showed 242Wh/mile over 30 miles and they said they only drove 50. The other 20 miles would have had to have an average of 1137Wh/mile to get a 600Wh/mile average over 50 miles.

Again, it's either a completely failed pack, or there is a bunch of usage while in Park....or we are being given bad data(I am not prepared to call the person a liar at this point though).

I’m with you.

Theres sometimes quite a steep learning curve to change to EV….

 

[dr_frankfurt]

Ahh, 470, not 407, now it makes more sense...

Ok so commute questions... your 2 mile commute... is the heater running for those two miles? and if so, how long does it take for you to drive those two miles? The other 40 miles, how is that made up?

Being in LA, we essentially have 8 months of summer that doesn't end until mid November, so no heater. I'll run the AC only if it's hot enough, with the fan on a lower setting. The roughly 50 miles over the weekend were 2 trips of the 20 mile up/downhill combo which I will count as 25 roundtrip, rounding up again to compensate for the stop-and-go/overtaking. That's all that was driven, unless I add the 0.5 mile roundtrip to the carwash and back.

 

[derotam]

Being in LA, we essentially have 8 months of summer that doesn't end until mid November, so no heater. I'll run the AC only if it's hot enough, with the fan on a lower setting. The roughly 50 miles over the weekend were 2 trips of the 20 mile up/downhill combo which I will count as 25 roundtrip, rounding up again to compensate for the stop-and-go/overtaking. That's all that was driven, unless I add the 0.5 mile roundtrip to the carwash and back.

Well, there is really only one more thing to do to really get anywhere here. With your original stated numbers, I maintain that your vehicle would have had to use 600Wh/mile average over your stated 50 miles. This would only allow you to be able to drive approximately 88 miles on a full battery. So, I would say the next step would be to charge your car to 100% and plan a drive of at least 44 miles with no stops, on the highway, no putting the car in park, no heat, no A/C, and no going over lets say 70mph max(preferable no more than 60-65).

After those 44 miles if your battery is at 50% then I say you have a bad battery and go make a service center appointment and tell them to look at the car data for that drive. Tell them the date and time of the drive and they can look at their data.

If your drive only puts you at about 80%, then all is well with your car....and your issue must be explained by your specific non driving usage.

I think this is as simple as doing a 44mile drive and it will give you all the data required. 50% usage over 44 miles of straight highway driving is a bad battery I think no matter how you cut it. I don't think you can drive 44 miles at 600Wh/mile legitimately without either getting pulled over for speeding, or crashing and killing yourself.

Do the 44 mile drive and then come back and let us know what happened.

 

[talkingevs]

We own a 18' Model 3 LR which we picked up in July 2018 brand new. At the time we bought it, it was advertised with a 310 mile range. They then extended the range to I believe 322 through a software update in 2019 (i think it was 2019). We obviously have experienced some decreased range over time, but most of it occurred within the first year of ownership. We would get around 298mi of range on full charge, which then dipped to around 297 this year. We have been mostly happy with the range loss seeing that its 3 years old. However, just this past week, we got update 2021.32.21, and we instantly lost another 10 miles. Now if we put the charge to 100%, it states we will have only 287 miles. Has anyone else seen this instant loss of numerous miles of range recently? If it is in fact true, we are now looking at 89% battery capacity compared to brand new (if using the 322 extended range that it had with the software update). Now i know the battery warranty states something about 10% or more you are due money back or maybe someone told us that, i cant remember. But tesla will probably go to the 310 figure which means we are at 92.5% right now.

1) Anyone else see a significant drop suddenly with software updates?
2) Ive heard running it all the way as close to 0 and then back to 100% can reset it. Is there any truth to this?
3) Suggestions or what are our options if it continues to drop?