Model 3 without daily charging

[Gasaraki]

Hey everyone,

New to the Tesla club. I am anticipating a Model 3 LR in a few days, so I am learning about the vehicle even more now. I am curious about charging, since I do not have the ability to charge the car at home. I know, many of you will tell me that this is inconvenient to have an EV without ability to charge at home... but in my situation, it is worth it to still go with EV.

Here is my routine:
My daily commute will be about 10km .. which is about 50-60km per week. I assume this drains 10-15% of battery? So in 2 weeks, I would lose about ~30% battery. Which from 100% goes down to 70% .. or from 80% goes down to 50%.

AND, since I have a longer trip (400+km) once every month, I can then charge it back to 80 or 100% to make the trip. So I would basically always cycle between 50%-80/100%. Worst case scenario: I would go down to 20% before plugged it in.
The only thing is, that I do not have an option to daily charge it.

My question:
Do you think this is still good enough for battery longevity? I am trying to limit my 'inconvenience' of not having EV charger at home and optimize the charging with my routines that are anyway fixed.

I know in Owner's Manual they recommend to keep it plugged in if the vehicle is not going to be used to SEVERAL WEEKS. However, I will be using it daily - just it is for small commutes that maybe drain 3-5% of battery each day.. and then at the end of the week I either charge it at supermarkets or superchargers.

I am trying to figure out if having a charging stations is a MUST for owning an EV, otherwise your car will die soon. Since this would be significant difference compares to ICE vehicles - as I do not have to have a Petrol / Gas station at home in order to use my ICE car - while I agree that would be convenient, it is of course not impacting my ICE car. I am just wondering whether it impacts EV cars (not having charger at home).

Thanks.

Small commutes will drain more than you estimate. Every time your car wakes up, turns on the HVAC, etc it drains your battery that not not counted towards the "range". So put a buffer in your estimate. If you drive all local traffic in your short commute, then I would say the efficiency comes back due to regen.

 

[davewill]

How often it triggers is going to be based on whats around your car, HOWEVER, "how often it triggers" does not have anything (zero) to do with how much power it uses. The power use comes from the car staying awake, not from triggering the cameras.

Just plan on the car using roughly 1km an hour or so, just sitting there, while sentry mode is on, for every hour its on (whether there are alerts or not).

Yes, a lot of people don't understand how Sentry mode works. It doesn't notice an event, then start recording, it records constantly and when it detects an event, saves the current recording. So, the drain is constant.

 

[Nightcorey]

Small commutes will drain more than you estimate. Every time your car wakes up, turns on the HVAC, etc it drains your battery that not not counted towards the "range". So put a buffer in your estimate. If you drive all local traffic in your short commute, then I would say the efficiency comes back due to regen.

At the moment, I am at 62% with 85km done since I took the vehicle on Monday (it already had 10km and it was around 80% charged).
This would assume around 5% of battery drain per day, BUT this is because of many variables that affected it, since I am a new owner:

• I am not yet that efficient one-pedal driver, but I am getting better with it each day.
• Of course I also explored the Tesla a bit on the roads that I do not take usually for my daily commute, hence I did much more kilometers than I would usually do.
• I also tested Sentry mode for few hours during these days (but NOT over the whole night!).
• I was in the car for at least an hour at least to configure all settings, connecting my streaming apps, figuring out all the options etc.

When I check my 'Trip' from Home to Work, which is my regular (normal) daily commute, it takes about 1-2% of battery for that. And parking it over night, it is less than 1%. So it is about 2-3% daily realistically (once I stop testing it on roads and playing with settings). This range fits me great, as in a week it will be about 10-15% .. and even if it bumps all the way to 30%-50% for some reason, I still will have plenty of charge and comfortably charge at nearby chargers (ranging from 11 kW up to 150 kW in <500m radius) which are mostly located in supermarkets, that we anyway visit during weekends. Luckily, I manage to park my Tesla now in the garage that I thought I wouldn't be able to fit it - this allows me to disable Sentry Mode over the night, which would probably significantly impact these 'estimations'. Anyhow, plenty of data will be available soon for me - so no more guestimates!

I must say, so far I am really amazed by the car and I love it soo much! I wish I would have the newest SW version on it, because of some cool improvements there, but hopefully soon!


BTW, are you all here using TeslaFI? Did you link your car with the website? I am a bit hesitant, because a lot of stuff needs to be 'granted' for them about the car.

 

[Tronguy]

At the moment, I am at 62% with 85km done since I took the vehicle on Monday (it already had 10km and it was around 80% charged).
This would assume around 5% of battery drain per day, BUT this is because of many variables that affected it, since I am a new owner:

• I am not yet that efficient one-pedal driver, but I am getting better with it each day.
• Of course I also explored the Tesla a bit on the roads that I do not take usually for my daily commute, hence I did much more kilometers than I would usually do.
• I also tested Sentry mode for few hours during these days (but NOT over the whole night!).
• I was in the car for at least an hour at least to configure all settings, connecting my streaming apps, figuring out all the options etc.

When I check my 'Trip' from Home to Work, which is my regular (normal) daily commute, it takes about 1-2% of battery for that. And parking it over night, it is less than 1%. So it is about 2-3% daily realistically (once I stop testing it on roads and playing with settings). This range fits me great, as in a week it will be about 10-15% .. and even if it bumps all the way to 30%-50% for some reason, I still will have plenty of charge and comfortably charge at nearby chargers (ranging from 11 kW up to 150 kW in <500m radius) which are mostly located in supermarkets, that we anyway visit during weekends. Luckily, I manage to park my Tesla now in the garage that I thought I wouldn't be able to fit it - this allows me to disable Sentry Mode over the night, which would probably significantly impact these 'estimations'. Anyhow, plenty of data will be available soon for me - so no more guestimates!

I must say, so far I am really amazed by the car and I love it soo much! I wish I would have the newest SW version on it, because of some cool improvements there, but hopefully soon!


BTW, are you all here using TeslaFI? Did you link your car with the website? I am a bit hesitant, because a lot of stuff needs to be 'granted' for them about the car.

Glad to hear you got the car and have been having fun with it.

Now I'm going to be a bit of a spoil-sport: You're driving an 1840 kg four-wheeled auto that is subtly different, with different controls, maintenance, and repairs. This is not the car you learned about in Drivers' Ed in 11th grade.

Read the manual. It's on the car's screen. Go through each page, read every word.

On the one hand, there won't be a quiz. On the other hand Fore Warned is Fore Armed.

If you're super-duper well informed there will be no surprises. If you're not, there will always be a hundred things or so that won't be obvious.

Do you know where the emergency release for the NACS plug is located, and how to get to it? Do you know how to tow the car in case it gets stuck? How to open the frunk if there's a complete lack of electrical power? It's all in the manual - so, read it.

Sorry about that.