New M3 Battery Drain?

[JamesIng]

Today is day 8 with our new m3. So far- it’s great. We are moving out of state in a few weeks, so I’m charging at a supercharger 20 mins from our home until we move and install at 240v

Problem is, I’ve been keeping track of miles left vs miles driven and on each trip around town and sometimes it’s even (drive 5 mi, lose 5 mi of charge), bur most times it’s very skewed (drive 15, lose 24). One time it lose 22 miles just sitting there parked while my wife was in a store for an hour.

Is the battery still calibrating to normal use levels or should I be concerned about drain?

Made a service appt for 5/13 just in case. Hoping they can remotely fix if anything is wrong.

 

[Camera-Cruiser]

Driving 15 and using 24 can be quite normal based on speed, weather and AC/Heater usage. To lose 22 miles while parked, wow, I think you would have to be running the heat maxed out. Did she leave the car and tell it to keep the climate control on? I use that feature constantly.

But then, that should be easily reproduceable any given day.

 

[jjrandorin]

I guarentee there is nothing wrong. Short trips use more energy. Change your display from miles to percentage (as the miles range shown is based on epa mileage, and just enjoy driving the car.

This is very (very very very) common post from a new tesla owner. My recommendation is to not track ANYTHING and just enjoy driving the car for about a month (after changing from miles to percentage if seeing the miles charge not match the miles driven is going to bother you, which it likely will in the beginning).

 

[swaltner]

By default, Tesla has their cabin overheat protection option enabled. Read the owner's manual for complete details on that.

This feature keeps the cabin from being lethal, but sacrifices battery power to do it. It keeps the cabin at 104 F/40 C or below. In direct sun, the cabin temp can easily be 40F or more over ambient temps, which means it can trigger when the outside temp is as little as 60 F. If you don't have children or pets that you could accidentally leave in the car, you may want to disable that feature. I personally have mine set to Fan Only mode to slightly lower the cabin temps in the summer, but not use a large amount of battery energy to do it.

@jjrandorin is correct in that new owners obsess about all the minutia too much. Just enjoy driving the car.

 

[JamesIng]

Thanks all- I will change miles to %. That should help a lot. Appreciate your feedback!

 

[jjrandorin]

Thanks all- I will change miles to %. That should help a lot. Appreciate your feedback!

Enjoy the drive, and welcome to tesla ownership

 

[TexasEV]

And this is why Tesla service centers are so swamped. Model S owners understood EPA rated range and YMMV. Model 3 owners who are new to Tesla assume there’s something wrong with their precious battery. Chill, people.

 

[ewoodrick]

Just don't worry about the drain for a month. There's a lot of things that impact it to begin with, especially heavy feet and range anxiety.

 

[jmaddr]

I post one more observation that this is completely normal. In fact, it’s. It is normal even on ICE vehicles. My Audi would routinely say I have 300 miles when I filled up, and I don’t think I ever got above 270, and much less most of the time with my heavy foot and city driving. On the track I got less than 160. . It’s all about driving style, wind, temperature, etc. The EPA 310 is ideal, and hard to obtain in real world (especially on the 19” and 20” wheels).

 

[jjrandorin]

I post one more observation that this is completely normal. In fact, it’s. It is normal even on ICE vehicles. My Audi would routinely say I have 300 miles when I filled up, and I don’t think I ever got above 270, and much less most of the time with my heavy foot and city driving. On the track I got less than 160. . It’s all about driving style, wind, temperature, etc. The EPA 310 is ideal, and hard to obtain in real world (especially on the 19” and 20” wheels).

Its common with both ICE and EVs... when we make changes to something in our lives, we pay closer attention to anything around that change. Relating to cars, one common thing people generally experience with this phenomenon is, once you buy XXX model car, you all of a sudden notice a lot more of that same model on the road (especially in your color).

With tesla's being the "first EV", new owners are paying attention to EVERYTHING about it. Couple that with the fact that in general, EVs provide more information than most ICE cars related to their usage (and there are third party websites / apps that provide tons and tons of data on someones tesla driving experience), and new EV drivers end up many times overwhelmed with data.

I honestly believe that the data mining apps (teslafi, stats, etc) are HORRIBLE for new tesla drivers, as it provides so much data that they dont know how to interpret other than "something is wrong.. this number changed 2% over the past 3 days".

I personally think its better for new EV owners to just drive the car for at least a month, but many here sign up for some monitoring or other right off the bat, when they take delivery of their car, to "make sure they capture all the data from the beginning".

A month is a long enough time for drivers to get used to the usage of their car, and get an idea of how things work. THEN the data monitoring can be helpful, if one is into all that data. I signed up for stats app the first week, used it a week, and then stopped (because I was convinced there was something wrong with my car because XXX and YYY), and realized I was just obsessing over things that didnt need to be obsessed over. Im up to 6k miles now since I took delivery in the beginning of december last year, charging at home, and happily driving away.

Most new tesla drivers will get to that point, but the beginning is "scary" for many because its new, and they dont know how or if EV ownership is going to change their lives. After a while, you realize. yeah it changes, but almost 100% to the positive.

 

[hcdavis3]

Its common with both ICE and EVs... when we make changes to something in our lives, we pay closer attention to anything around that change. Relating to cars, one common thing people generally experience with this phenomenon is, once you buy XXX model car, you all of a sudden notice a lot more of that same model on the road (especially in your color).

With tesla's being the "first EV", new owners are paying attention to EVERYTHING about it. Couple that with the fact that in general, EVs provide more information than most ICE cars related to their usage (and there are third party websites / apps that provide tons and tons of data on someones tesla driving experience), and new EV drivers end up many times overwhelmed with data.

I honestly believe that the data mining apps (teslafi, stats, etc) are HORRIBLE for new tesla drivers, as it provides so much data that they dont know how to interpret other than "something is wrong.. this number changed 2% over the past 3 days".

I personally think its better for new EV owners to just drive the car for at least a month, but many here sign up for some monitoring or other right off the bat, when they take delivery of their car, to "make sure they capture all the data from the beginning".

A month is a long enough time for drivers to get used to the usage of their car, and get an idea of how things work. THEN the data monitoring can be helpful, if one is into all that data. I signed up for stats app the first week, used it a week, and then stopped (because I was convinced there was something wrong with my car because XXX and YYY), and realized I was just obsessing over things that didnt need to be obsessed over. Im up to 6k miles now since I took delivery in the beginning of december last year, charging at home, and happily driving away.

Most new tesla drivers will get to that point, but the beginning is "scary" for many because its new, and they dont know how or if EV ownership is going to change their lives. After a while, you realize. yeah it changes, but almost 100% to the positive.

Agreed jj. Kinda the same thing with the forums. If I had been active on the forums before I bought my car I would have never bought a Tesla. I’m a data nerd, so I love Teslafi. However there are thousands of people who don’t frequent the forums and if there’s a problem they simply call Tesla.