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Range Failure

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gnuarm

Model X 100 with 72 amp chargers
I encountered a case of range failure. Now I get the issue of range anxiety.

I left the last Supercharger with my destination set and the remaining charge at my destination at 5%. As often happens that number rose as I drove until it was about 11%, so I thought I didn't need to stop at any more until the one near my destination. Typically secondary roads with lower speed limits yield lower consumption numbers and the last 65 miles of this trip would be on secondary roads. However on leaving the highway, the projected final State of Charge (SoC) dropped and dropped until I still had some 35 miles to go and the projection dropped below zero!

I had already looked for other chargers using the car navigator and not found much, with even destination chargers not much closer than the Supercharger. The in car browser has never run plugshare worth a damn so I had to rely on my phone. It pointed me to the nearest J1772 charger and I followed. That one crapped out because the business had recently moved and didn't take the charger with them. They said the old one might be working still so I back tracked the few blocks, but it wouldn't work. There was another further along but the plugshare reports were not encouraging with some old reports of it not working.

The second charger did work, so 25 miles from the next nearest charger and only 3% left on the car, I was able to charge for a half hour or so to be able to make it to the charger.

It is scary to think that the car would screw up the range estimate enough to drop more than 11% off the actual range. While Blanche Dubois may have always depended on the kindness of strangers, it's not how I want to plan trips in my Tesla.

Another point is that every time I changed my destination to different chargers it would appear that the car was less and less optimistic about my range. With some 11% projected for reaching the house, I switched to the closer Supercharger (it was not an intermediate destination at this point) and got a final estimate of only 8%. Switching back to the house gave 5% since that is 10 miles further. As I neared a decision point of route I switched to a number of slightly closer destination chargers and saw the final estimate drop to zero. At one point the tool told me I would not reach any of these chargers and I needed to turn around and go back to the highway where a Supercharger was some few miles back up the road!!!

What could have happened that the range estimate would continue to drop like this? This was the worst possible place for this to happen. Once off the highway there is a big, black hole of charging for quite a few miles. Not a pleasant experience.
 
A smooth drop in range is just driving faster than "average", cold, rain, headwinds, or any of those conditions that cause extra consumption that the nav wasn't expecting. Elevation changes are usually accounted for by the nav. And then, instead of slowing down, you just watched it go down as it told you you were going to run out of charge. Slow down enough to keep the charge remaining at destination from dropping and you'll be OK. Otherwise you'll have to do what you did.
 
The in car browser has never run plugshare worth a damn so I had to rely on my phone. It pointed me to the nearest J1772 charger and I followed. That one crapped out because the business had recently moved and didn't take the charger with them. They said the old one might be working still so I back tracked the few blocks, but it wouldn't work. There was another further along but the plugshare reports were not encouraging with some old reports of it not working.

The second charger did work, so 25 miles from the next nearest charger and only 3% left on the car, I was able to charge for a half hour or so to be able to make it to the charger.
Glad that you knew about Plugshare. If the EVSE is the ChargePoint network, it's a good idea to double check in their app to see if there are any user reports there or hints that it's working or not.

Also, numerous ChargePoint EVSEs are missing from Plugshare partly becuase Plugshare is crowd-sourced.
 
Bummer. You'll have less issues as you do more trips and get a better understanding of range. Starting off on a leg with 5% buffer is pretty aggressive, particularly in winter. A few more minutes at the supercharger would have saved you a lot of grief.

There are better range estimators available - you might try abetterrouteplanner and evtripplanner.
 
I'm sorry, but reaching your destination with only 5% in the winter does tend to spell disaster. By the way, when you used Plugshare, did you leave a comment that it was inoperative?

And always look at the range graphs, that's where reality is.

Winter!!!??? It was in the 60s for the entire trip!!!

The graphs are crap and I have been advised many times to ignore the graphs, to use the remaining charge indication in the navigator since that is literally the only method that takes all parameters into account. The graph is history which tells you nothing about the future. As I already said, the change happened when I left the 70 MPH highway and was taking the secondary roads. In this case the navigator failed. Trying to extrapolate from the mileage graphs would be pointless until it was far too late.

This is literally the worst advice I've ever received regarding this car.
 
Bummer. You'll have less issues as you do more trips and get a better understanding of range. Starting off on a leg with 5% buffer is pretty aggressive, particularly in winter. A few more minutes at the supercharger would have saved you a lot of grief.

There are better range estimators available - you might try abetterrouteplanner and evtripplanner.

Getting advice in this forum is a bit like the weather. Wait a while and it will change. In the past I have been told in no uncertain terms that the navigator remaining charge indicator is the best indicator and the ONLY indicator that takes all possible factors into consideration. As I said, it is pretty much every trip I take where the estimated remaining charge goes up by 5 to 8% and actual remaining charge pretty well matches that. I've never seen the estimated remaining charge drop so dramatically.

The two range estimators you mention aren't likely to be better for any given leg of the trip because they don't know anything about the conditions and other parameters unless you tell it. Where would I get the data to feed into it? The car collects it's own data.

BTW, I've had the car about 7 months and have put 15,000 miles on it. Do you really think I haven't been taking trips? I drive 500 miles trips about every two weeks. This is the first navigator range fail.
 
Winter!!!??? It was in the 60s for the entire trip!!!

The graphs are crap and I have been advised many times to ignore the graphs, to use the remaining charge indication in the navigator since that is literally the only method that takes all parameters into account. The graph is history which tells you nothing about the future. As I already said, the change happened when I left the 70 MPH highway and was taking the secondary roads. In this case the navigator failed. Trying to extrapolate from the mileage graphs would be pointless until it was far too late.

This is literally the worst advice I've ever received regarding this car.
Cool down dude, he was referring to the trip tab graph, not the current usage. The trip tab does give you the future expected usage based on speed and elevation. The remaining charge in the navigation come from this graph. As others have said, leaving with 5% is way too low. I leave with 15% on routes I know and good weather, 20-25% with unknown routes and less than optimal weather.
 
Winter!!!??? It was in the 60s for the entire trip!!!

The graphs are crap and I have been advised many times to ignore the graphs, to use the remaining charge indication in the navigator since that is literally the only method that takes all parameters into account. The graph is history which tells you nothing about the future. As I already said, the change happened when I left the 70 MPH highway and was taking the secondary roads. In this case the navigator failed. Trying to extrapolate from the mileage graphs would be pointless until it was far too late.

This is literally the worst advice I've ever received regarding this car.
I totally agree with you, the range indication graphs are useless. As you I find the navigator estimator to be the best, not sure how it failed you this time. Usually I tend to arrive at destination with slightly more battery left than predicted.
 
A smooth drop in range is just driving faster than "average", cold, rain, headwinds, or any of those conditions that cause extra consumption that the nav wasn't expecting. Elevation changes are usually accounted for by the nav. And then, instead of slowing down, you just watched it go down as it told you you were going to run out of charge. Slow down enough to keep the charge remaining at destination from dropping and you'll be OK. Otherwise you'll have to do what you did.

I like that you blame this on me for not slowing down. Did you read my post? The problem happened on slower roads with lower speed limits. At one point I was letting the auto pilot do it's thing at 45 I think (maybe slower) because it wouldn't go any faster as it had the speed limit wrong (I see that a lot actually). A line of cars backed up behind me more than 10 cars deep. There is some irony in driving such a powerful, fast car at a creep!

I appreciate the advice from this group, but often the posters didn't even read what I've written.
 
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Cool down dude, he was referring to the trip tab graph, not the current usage. The trip tab does give you the future expected usage based on speed and elevation. The remaining charge in the navigation come from this graph. As others have said, leaving with 5% is way too low. I leave with 15% on routes I know and good weather, 20-25% with unknown routes and less than optimal weather.

I didn't "leave" with 5% showing with no alternative. There were two chargers along the route and I passed each of them with 12% showing as the expected remaining charge. I have seen this number drop a bit, 2 or 3% by the end of the trip, but that was usually because I was punching the gas peddle... I mean accelerator.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "trip tab". Is there a display in the car I don't know about??? One that shows your future usage? Why would this show different results than the remaining charge in the navigator?
 
I'm not sure what you mean by the "trip tab". Is there a display in the car I don't know about??? One that shows your future usage? Why would this show different results than the remaining charge in the navigator?
It doesn't differ from the remaining charge in the nav, as I said, that's where the charge indicator in the nav comes from. The trip tab on the energy app gives you the original estimated usage profile for your plotted trip and then shows you a corrected profile of the energy usage as you drive with the corrected end of trip projection.
 
I hope you are not a pilot...

For anyone not comfortable estimating range and charge needed, or simply does not want to have to worry about figuring out when they have enough charge, Trip Planner is good to use. It says when there is enough charge to comfortably arrive at the destination, and will route through chargers as necessary.

Trip tab is good to look at if you are cutting it close - like planning on arriving with 5%. It will show you your usage compared to expected usage. It is on the energy graph.
 
I didn't "leave" with 5% showing with no alternative. There were two chargers along the route and I passed each of them with 12% showing as the expected remaining charge. I have seen this number drop a bit, 2 or 3% by the end of the trip, but that was usually because I was punching the gas peddle... I mean accelerator.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "trip tab". Is there a display in the car I don't know about??? One that shows your future usage? Why would this show different results than the remaining charge in the navigator?
He was referring to when you bringing up “Energy” tab, where it shows you the consumption for the last 5/15/30 miles, there is a button to switch to the “trips” tab, where it shows your actual usage (and future usage based on current actual) compared with originally calculated usage. (See example picture below)

Also when you see the remaining % starts to drop, you could turn on range mode to reduce power output / HVAC effectiveness in order to gain range. I didn’t see you mention it in your post. Why?
 

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I like that you blame this on me for not slowing down. Did you read my post? The problem happened on slower roads with lower speed limits. At one point I was letting the auto pilot do it's thing at 45 I think (maybe slower) because it wouldn't go any faster as it had the speed limit wrong (I see that a lot actually). A line of cars backed up behind me more than 10 cars deep. There is some irony in driving such a powerful, fast car at a creep!

I appreciate the advice from this group, but often the posters didn't even read what I've written.


Your failure was not slowing down when you saw the charge remaining at destination getting lower than you should have been comfortable with. Yes, even if you aren't on a freeway. It's about the only way you have to reduce your consumption. Following a large truck is also good, though you then have a big truck in front of you. From past posts and this thread you seem to be quite inflexible. I'm not sure new tech is really what you should be driving.
 
The graphs are crap and I have been advised many times to ignore the graphs,
That is bad advice indeed. The graphs supply a wealth of information if you know how to interpret them.
The graph is history which tells you nothing about the future.
The history tells you about how you are driving. Over the same bit of road my history graph and yours would be different. One would be able to predict our relative outcomes if driving conditions stay the same. But they don't always.
...to use the remaining charge indication in the navigator since that is literally the only method that takes all parameters into account.
It doesn't take future conditions into account.

The energy graph does take terrain into account but it does not consider road surface condition nor wind. Teslawinds is an application that displays the latest reported wind for your region resolved into headwind and crosswind components for whatever heading you are on. The data are quantized in time and space but are considerably better than nothing. If you see a stiff headwind you can expect realized range to be less than predicted and conversely. And if, for example, you are proceeding north with reported winds from the east and know that you will be turning east soon you can anticipate that you are going to lose range starting with that turn even though things are looking good while you are going north.

In summary, using Teslawinds and the energy graphs I don't get any consumption surprises. Not to say that I may not someday. But using what is available to you properly you should be able to do the same.

IMO Tesla should grab the winds data and use it. You, as a Teslawinds user, get the winds (and, as aside, elevation - your car gets it directly from the GPS/Glonass receiver but the API does not make it available) data free because of your low request rate. If Tesla did it as a corporation they would have to pay fees as they would be requesting relatively huge volumes of data. In a time when the company is looking for ways to trim costs this isn't likely to happen.
 
It doesn't differ from the remaining charge in the nav, as I said, that's where the charge indicator in the nav comes from. The trip tab on the energy app gives you the original estimated usage profile for your plotted trip and then shows you a corrected profile of the energy usage as you drive with the corrected end of trip projection.

Ok, but I'm not following what the graph tells me that the number doesn't. The number is very simple to follow as the trip progresses and is the part I have to worry about to see if I will make it to the destination.

I'm a gear head and am not bothered too much learning the intricate details (well some of the details). I can't imagine what the typical person would do with the range issues presented by this car. A friend who goes with me on some of these trips would literally have freaked out by the issues of having to look for charging in the wild.
 
on leaving the highway, the projected final State of Charge (SoC) dropped and dropped

Sounds frightening, especially since it not your typical experience.

every time I changed my destination to different chargers it would appear that the car was less and less optimistic about my range.

Maybe the BMS calibration is off; when you set off it had an idea of when it expected the voltage to drop but as you actually got close to the bottom of the battery it gave a more accurate prediction.

Personally I find the trip graph to be very accurate but sometimes, especially after I put on winter tires, the actual trajectory quickly points to a couple percent below the initial trajectory.