Mileage Stats, Etc

[int32_t]

I'm thinking ahead to my Model 3 and pondering how I would replicate an essential ritual which has always been a part of car ownership in my family. Regardless of who fills up the car, my family has always kept impeccable records of our gas usage every time:

• Litres added
• Cost per litre
• Fill-up cost
• Trip distance (after filling, this is reset)
• Lifetime mileage
• Date

Yes, you can work out some of those numbers from others, and that's a good thing. When I compiled all twelve years' worth of this handwritten data into a spreadsheet to compare the Accord with a hypothetical Model S over the same time period, some numbers weren't quite readable. So redundancy is a good thing.

Due to near-daily charging, it would be much more burdensome to maintain this type of record for an EV. And whatever outlet you plug into would need an energy use meter to count the kW since Teslas only report energy consumed from the battery, not the total energy use from the charge port. Obviously, given an unlimited amount of time to scribble numbers in a notebook, it would be nice to have the following:

• kWh added
• Cost per kWh (live for TOU rates)
• Fill-up cost
• Trip distance (as above, diligent resetting required)
• Lifetime mileage
• Date
• Car's reported energy use (great for efficiency calculations)

Am I missing anything? Do you collect stats like this? If so, what? Supercharging would really mess with the efficiency calculations since you can't measure the energy being added.

 

[int32_t]

This is really quite interesting ... I wasn't expecting this type of response! I was hoping for some number-lovers to chime in too ... engineering types for whom numbers and graphs mean everything. After all, it's cool to look through trends from twelve years of data and it would be neat to have that sort of data on a Tesla.

 

[sigmo32]

I used to keep diligent stats for my ICE. Then life got a bit busier, and I still kept the fuel receipts and wrote down the mileage on them, but rarely updated my spreadsheet. For the Model S, I will probably not do that at all.

 

[jerry33]

I'm in-between. I take a picture of the numbers once a month. The only thing this doesn't give me from the list above is cost, but it's so minimal that it's not really worth keeping track of.

 

[rfmurphy81]

Creating an account TeslaLog.com will record your charging sessions and trips so you can keep track; it doesn't summarize as well as I would like, but it's easy to sniff through each charge session and even determine the efficiency of the charge to determine how much energy was put in from the outlet versus how much the car reported receiving. You'll generally see that 110-120v will get you about 80% whereas 200-240v will get you between 90% and 95% efficiency.

There are also other methods out there, which I haven't researched, which will store this data locally on your computer rather than a third-party site; I believe VisibleTesla is one, plus there are a few others. Just take a look through the Model S User Interface forum, as some are stickied at the top or have a lot of activity.

 

[int32_t]

Creating an account TeslaLog.com will record your charging sessions and trips so you can keep track; it doesn't summarize as well as I would like, but it's easy to sniff through each charge session and even determine the efficiency of the charge to determine how much energy was put in from the outlet versus how much the car reported receiving. You'll generally see that 110-120v will get you about 80% whereas 200-240v will get you between 90% and 95% efficiency.

There are also other methods out there, which I haven't researched, which will store this data locally on your computer rather than a third-party site; I believe VisibleTesla is one, plus there are a few others. Just take a look through the Model S User Interface forum, as some are stickied at the top or have a lot of activity.

Aha! This is new information, I'll go look at each of those options. (But don't they require your Tesla account password ... ?)
So it turns out that the car will basically do the logging for me. Sweet! I do none of the work and still get to enjoy the numbers.

 

[ABCCBA]

@int32_t I have always, and I mean always, logged mileage and fuel consumption. Well over 35 years of habit....until the Model S. I did for about three weeks and through my hands up. Now I monitor, but don't record. The vampire drain on the vehicle is absurd and literally makes my stats useless. To be far, I do not drive much anymore. So, for example, I didn't drive the car but six miles this past week. But, I lost almost 60 miles to vampire drain over the same time.

 

[int32_t]

Wow that sucks. For me, I guess the point of collecting stats is to keep track of things like vampires too, and be able to definitively say if an update helps or not! I sure hope the Model 3 has next to no vampire drain ... imagine 500,000 of these hooked up to the grid slurping electricity and doing absolutely zip with it.

 

[Boatguy]

Wow that sucks. For me, I guess the point of collecting stats is to keep track of things like vampires too, and be able to definitively say if an update helps or not! I sure hope the Model 3 has next to no vampire drain ... imagine 500,000 of these hooked up to the grid slurping electricity and doing absolutely zip with it.

I suspect the M3 will have a bit less vampire than the MS, but still significant. It's not exactly doing nothing, it's listening on the net for an update, monitoring systems, probably doing some housekeeping in the various systems, monitoring for whether or not the fob is in range, etc. The vampire for my MS is about 2-3mi/day which is roughly 600-900Wh. Even with the vampire, the MS is dramatically more energy efficient than an ICE, and if you were trying to improve significantly improve it's efficiency, I don't think vampire loss would be the place to start.

If you want to be a numbers guy, I suggest you buy a JuiceBox instead of an HPWC. It will track every charging session for you and allow you to download the numbers. You can jot down your rated miles each night and morning and analyze away. You'll be able to calculate a few things, though most are constants so not worth computing very often.

1) Using the Energy Consumption page, you can calculate the M3's Wh/Rated Mile, the constant that Tesla uses to convert battery energy to rated miles, with this formula:

Wh/RM = Average Wh/MI * (Projected Miles / Rated Miles)

2) (RM added * Wh/RM) / JuiceBox charging session kWh = charge efficiency factor (CEF), which should more or less be a constant, and tells you how much energy is lost when charging at home. This is primarily due to the rectifiers converting AC to DC. This is not a factor at Superchargers, at least not for the car owner.

3) CEF * JuiceBox kWh = kWh added to your M3 = (RM added * Wh/RM)

4) If you never reset your Trip B, you have lifetime miles driven and power consumed, while driving.

kWh added to the M3 - kWh consumed while driving = Vampire kWh which again should turn out to be fairly constant per day (not per mile).


The point being that keeping logs is now mostly automated, but you can still crunch numbers.

I think it's highly doubtful that any of the software updates will materially affect consumption. Consumption is pretty well locked in by the aerodynamics of the body and the efficiency of the drivetrain installed at the factory. Post delivery, it's primarily influenced by a) driving speed / style, b) tires and tire pressure, c) ambient outside temperature.

Or you can just drive the car knowing that it has roughly 3x the energy efficiency of any ICE on the road!

 

[int32_t]

Vampire drain doesn't have to be as bad as it is, in my opinion. I don't know what-all is going on inside a Tesla, but a Porsche Cayenne consumes ~20-30 mA off its 12V system when the vehicle is off. Surely the cellular radio (the sole difference, really, isn't it?) doesn't make up the difference all by itself!

Interesting formulae, thanks. What's a Projected Mile vs a Rated Mile? I thought a Rated Mile is how far the car thinks you can go ... but then what would a Projected Mile be ... I suppose I didn't know as much as I thought I did ...

Juicebox -- cool! Function, rather than form, is obviously more important to the makers.

I have heard that sometimes Service resets trip counters, so I wouldn't want to rely on that.

 

[Boatguy]

Interesting formulae, thanks. What's a Projected Mile vs a Rated Mile? I thought a Rated Mile is how far the car thinks you can go ... but then what would a Projected Mile be ... I suppose I didn't know as much as I thought I did ...

Rated miles = remaining battery kWh / a Tesla Wh/mi constant, slightly different for each model (~ 290Wh for the 90D).
Projected miles = remaining battery kWh / average actual Wh/mi over the last 5/15/30 miles (user selectable) on the display.

 

[PacManMX]

I just got my MX a few days ago and have been searching all over to see if there is a way to automatically log mileage. Can't find anything that is decently simple. I can track energy usage via an Efergy Elite in my electrical panel that is attached to just the two leads going to my NEMA 14-50. All I want is to automatically log mileage to a google spreadsheet at a preset time each day....or even each time the car turns off. This way I'll be able to match up energy usage over time with mileage over time. Manually logging mileage is an option, but an undesirable one -- especially given I know automatically logging is somewhat possible. There has GOT to be some sort of solution for people who don't have degrees in programming! Any advice?

 

[kevinf311]

Echoing @MikeJr74 I monitor but don't record.

One thing that has made me unhappy is that the Odometer has been removed from the IC (for some time now but I'm still bitter ). A favorite idle game for me to play was to try and catch palindromic or otherwise significant numbers that the odometer would "roll" over to. In fact, from back in 2015 I might have a picture of my car at 311 miles whilst 311 was playing on the music application

 

[ABCCBA]

@kevinf311 lol, my wife is so like that. She has her trip and odometer synced to the Nth degree. She will drive around the block so that a certain number will or won't be displayed when the car is parked.

I am not certain what you were wanting to see, but I keep the Odometer on the left side of the IC by selecting the 'Trips' as shown in the attached image. Sorry if this is not what you were looking for.

Echoing @MikeJr74 I monitor but don't record.

One thing that has made me unhappy is that the Odometer has been removed from the IC (for some time now but I'm still bitter ). A favorite idle game for me to play was to try and catch palindromic or otherwise significant numbers that the odometer would "roll" over to. In fact, from back in 2015 I might have a picture of my car at 311 miles whilst 311 was playing on the music application

 

[int32_t]

I just got my MX a few days ago and have been searching all over to see if there is a way to automatically log mileage. Can't find anything that is decently simple. I can track energy usage via an Efergy Elite in my electrical panel that is attached to just the two leads going to my NEMA 14-50. All I want is to automatically log mileage to a google spreadsheet at a preset time each day....or even each time the car turns off. This way I'll be able to match up energy usage over time with mileage over time. Manually logging mileage is an option, but an undesirable one -- especially given I know automatically logging is somewhat possible. There has GOT to be some sort of solution for people who don't have degrees in programming! Any advice?

I don't have a Tesla or EVE account so I can't try this, but this might be a way to automagically log mileage to a spreadsheet. If you think it's worth a shot, go create a free IFTTT (if this then that) account and try creating a recipe with the EVE for Tesla service. It might have a trigger for mileage, and IFTTT can definitely save stuff to a google spreadsheet.

 

[jerry33]

@kevinf311not certain what you were wanting to see, but I keep the Odometer on the left side of the IC by selecting the 'Trips' as shown in the attached image. Sorry if this is not what you were looking for.View attachment 185366

Before they ruined it, the trip A and B were displayed. Instead they took up space with useless icons. You can still see the trip A and B, but you have to go to the 17" display and menu pick. It was very convenient having them on the instrument panel the way every other car has them.

 

[ABCCBA]

Actually, since my original post in this thread, I found on this forum a site that is superb! It is teslafi.com The features and logging and display is wonderful. It is currently being Beta tested and I was fortunate to have responded to one of the requests for more beta testers. I am on TeslaLogs, too. However, for what I do, the teslafi site is so much more user friendly. Every trip has a google map, mileage, energy, cost, etc. Great Job James! hope you don't mind me giving your work a shout out.

 

[rfmurphy81]

I had been using TeslaLog since I got my car and, while it has been great, it doesn't quite have the polish or extra data that TeslaFi had from the start (like range loss). It also seems like the TeslaLog administrator has disappeared from his thread so I'm wondering if something's happened. James has been amazing at handling all the little bugs and ideas that I've thrown his way since he opened his beta a few months back.

Be careful though if you have both. Both sites will be pinging your car constantly and it will be causing additional vampire loss. I wasn't able to easily turn off the connection to my car with TeslaLog and, even after changing my Tesla.com password, TeslaLog was still capturing partial data somehow. After it seemed like TeslaLog stopped, I was able to finally utilize his new sleeping mode functionality which definitely seems to be saving on the previous range loss.

 

[Rocky_H]

This is really quite interesting ... I wasn't expecting this type of response! I was hoping for some number-lovers to chime in too ... engineering types for whom numbers and graphs mean everything. After all, it's cool to look through trends from twelve years of data and it would be neat to have that sort of data on a Tesla.

Hey! I resent that. I AM an electrical engineer, but I’m also a laid back, not uptight personality, so I don’t like having to keep track of a bunch of tiny little details in my life. One of the main benefits of always having small fuel efficient cars was that I could drive them however I wanted to and know that I was ALWAYS being efficient on gas. Now, with an electric car, it’s similar—that I know it’s always efficient without my having to look and track and log a bunch of stuff.

 

[int32_t]

Yes, sorry. That makes sense. I'd rather not have to worry about the details either -- ideally the numbers would collect themselves and I wouldn't have to worry about them and just enjoy them five, ten years down the road. I'm sure there's a Raspberry Pi project in here somewhere.