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Range Failure

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I believe the problem has two layers. The first problem was leaving with 5%. That means he didn't have energy to make it to his destination from the start. The second problem showed up when, for some reason, the energy graph predicted 12%. I'm a little surprised this would happen because leaving with 5% means the car already assumes a slower driving speed. There is little potential to driven even more efficient to make the prediction go up so much.

Not only do I find this unsurprising, I find this to be common. It is so common on my trips that I am surprised when it fails to happen. Leaving my place in VA and heading for Rocky Mount, NC it typically starts out showing around 5% remaining. The first 30 miles or so are very back roads. I want to say I get a small boost rising to maybe 8% by the time I reach the highway, not sure. But I know by the time the remaining charge estimate settles down it is usually around 15% or higher. I typically reach my destination with 12% to 15% remaining.

That is one of my major frustrations with the car, the inability to plan on reaching chargers at least 200 miles away even though the car has a range of 286 miles.
 
I'm not saying you did anything wrong. I'm just pointing out a behavior in the navigation that can fool owners and cause serious range issues later. I think Tesla should change the behavior when charging on a trip to always assume normal driving speed.

The second problem showed up when, for some reason, the energy graph predicted 12%. I'm a little surprised this would happen because leaving with 5% means the car already assumes a slower driving speed.

Are you suggesting that it was the 12% estimate that persisted for some 60-70% of the trip that was the error while the initial 5% estimate that lasted maybe 30 miles was the correct estimate and all updates the car makes should be ignored?

If that is the case, maybe this is a problem that Tesla needs to address.

I appreciate the link to the page where you talk about the 5% threshold for the trip planner. I was not aware of that. Yet another piece of information to use in how the Tesla cars are not remotely like ICE. I used to drive my truck down to the last half a gallon on reaching a filling station because I knew I could. With this car I never know what to expect. Sometimes the adventure is not so much fun.

Bjørn Nyland has a video where he had 14 km showing on the battery gauge and the car stopped running. Then after sitting a while it changed to 0%. He caught that on video. He speculated this had to do with balancing in the battery. While there may have been 14 km left in most of the cells, there was at least one cell which had run down to zero. The battery knew that, but the rest of the car didn't.
 
Next time I recommend taking a picture of the trip energy graph as well as a the 30 mile energy graph near the end for a discussion like this. Without more detailed information it's just a bunch of speculation and your disagreement. In my experience, the initial estimate is fairly accurate and efficient driving habits will gain a few points along the way. The trip graph shows the planned SoC along the route as well as your actual SoC. It should be obvious from the graph where you exceeded expectations and where you did not. If the last 20 miles of your route was stop and go and hilly, it should have been obvious from the trip graph that you were going to see higher energy use. It's possible that efficient highway driving used 7% less charge than expected, but inefficiencies in the last 20 miles burned up that and more.

I make a point of keeping in the green for arrival on trips based on the initial estimate, if it predicts my arrival in the yellow or red bands, I add a bit of a buffer. I'd rather waste an extra 15 minutes charging and be pleasantly surprised than have to make an unplanned stop.
 
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Next time I recommend taking a picture of the trip energy graph as well as a the 30 mile energy graph near the end for a discussion like this. Without more detailed information it's just a bunch of speculation and your disagreement. In my experience, the initial estimate is fairly accurate and efficient driving habits will gain a few points along the way. The trip graph shows the planned SoC along the route as well as your actual SoC. It should be obvious from the graph where you exceeded expectations and where you did not. If the last 20 miles of your route was stop and go and hilly, it should have been obvious from the trip graph that you were going to see higher energy use. It's possible that efficient highway driving used 7% less charge than expected, but inefficiencies in the last 20 miles burned up that and more.

I make a point of keeping in the green for arrival on trips based on the initial estimate, if it predicts my arrival in the yellow or red bands, I add a bit of a buffer. I'd rather waste an extra 15 minutes charging and be pleasantly surprised than have to make an unplanned stop.

I can't say why, but my experience is consistently different. Today I started a 125 mile trip with 92% charge. The first 25 miles are back roads with speeds up to 60 and only a bit of stopping/starting. The initial estimate for remaining charge at the destination was 40%. By the time I reached the highway it was up to 47% and along the highway it reached 48%. I suppose some of that was from a warming battery. But this is something I frequently see and I see this after using the Supercharger and then hit the road. I seriously doubt the battery is cold after an hour of charging.

I've been watching the trip graph and it pretty much changes as I say, curving a bit in the early part of the trip, then being a consistent straight line with a different slope from the original estimate. Nothing surprising or revealing. I'm really not sure what anyone could glean from this anyway. I expect on the trip where my final charge estimate dropped so rapidly you would simply see that in the graph which would not reveal any new information.

The original trip I talked about had the range drop in the final 60 miles, not 20 and it was eastern coastal planes, about as flat as it can be. One correction to the numbers. The city where I charged and the point where the remaining charge estimate went negative was about 20 or 25 miles from the Superchargers and 35 miles from the original destination. The destination was changed when I saw the range dropping to the point where I started to explore alternate charging options. So there is a bit of a discrepancy of 10 miles here which I likely didn't make clear.

I've also stated that I have driven this route before. Roads are flat and not high speed with nearly no traffic unless you use auto pilot which won't drive full speed when it doesn't know the speed limit and traffic backs up behind. There isn't much to not be predictable.

Bottom line is, it happened. People can choose to believe it or not. Doesn't matter to me. If people wish to discuss it, fine. But to argue that it couldn't have happened is pointless.
 
Bottom line is, it happened. People can choose to believe it or not. Doesn't matter to me. If people wish to discuss it, fine. But to argue that it couldn't have happened is pointless.

I'm not sure what to tell you. You asked for people's input and I don't recall suggesting you were making it up. The trip graph shows expected vs. actual state of charge by mile and the energy graph shows energy output/regen over the past 5/15/30 miles. Using the two, it should be possible to determine where the problem was in your trip.

At some point during your trip your actual state of charge had to start dropping steeply below the projected state of charge on the trip graph and that either corresponded to higher consumption or it didn't.

It is possible for an unbalanced battery to unexpectedly loose state of charge quickly without corresponding energy use. It's a common problem on my Zero motorcycle, which is one of the reasons why I'm glad it has a cell balance value visible within the battery app.
 
Range mode heats up the battery.
No.
Yes Range mode warms up the battery
No.
I mean range mode keeps the battery at around 110 deg F during the trip.
No.
This has been known for years, and I don't understand why so many people have this backward.
The purpose of range mode is that it keeps the battery heater OFF almost all the time in most conditions, so it is not wasting energy on that and can use that energy instead...for range. In range mode it will only use the battery heater when it is down to really extremely cold temperatures where it has to for the battery's safety. Here is some previous discussion of this:

Battery preheating | Tesla
Before I Call Service... | Tesla
Range Assurance Disappointment | Tesla
Regen braking reduced to only -30 kWh. Why? Is there a way to "pre-heat" the battery while still plugged in? | Tesla
Battery Pre Heat Available in App now! | Tesla
 
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No.

No.

No.
This has been known for years, and I don't understand why so many people have this backward.
The purpose of range mode is that it keeps the battery heater OFF almost all the time

One thing does not mean the other thing isn't happening. Yes, Range Mode sets the temperature points for the battery heater to come on at lower levels. It also sets the target temperature for the battery higher so the battery gets warmer when you drive while the car directs waste heat into the battery more and longer than it would without Range Mode.

Let's bring this back into the context of the discussion here. The OP supercharged and then drove over 100 miles. After supercharging and driving such a long distance the battery is so warm that the battery heater would not have kicked in one way or another. In this situation the effect 'Range Mode' has is keeping the battery at a higher temperature. In this situation and context the statement 'Range Mode' warms the battery is 100% correct.
 
I'm not sure what to tell you. You asked for people's input and I don't recall suggesting you were making it up. The trip graph shows expected vs. actual state of charge by mile and the energy graph shows energy output/regen over the past 5/15/30 miles. Using the two, it should be possible to determine where the problem was in your trip.

I was expecting a rational discussion. Some people here seem to want to blame me for everything including kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. Sorry if you feel I am picking on you.

At the time I was in no frame of mind to take pictures of the screen. I was focusing on figuring out how to get where I needed to be.


At some point during your trip your actual state of charge had to start dropping steeply below the projected state of charge on the trip graph and that either corresponded to higher consumption or it didn't.

It is possible for an unbalanced battery to unexpectedly loose state of charge quickly without corresponding energy use. It's a common problem on my Zero motorcycle, which is one of the reasons why I'm glad it has a cell balance value visible within the battery app.

I don't have any detailed info on this, but from the other numbers I've posted I think the loss of range started with around 30% left on the battery, that would be around 20% to cover the 60 miles and 10% for the remaining charge indicated. So I can't think of a reason why the battery balance would have started showing up at that point.

Even if I could see on the graph that the consumption increased, what would that tell me other than what I already know, the consumption increased? I still would not know why.
 
It's interesting that coming back to the TMC after a couple months, i see the same subset of users who are either love their tesla, or complain about their tesla. Like you don't see a owner in both categories, its usually just one or another.

As stated by others, planning on arriving at the supercharger at 5% is a recipe for disaster, especially in winter. Most veteran owners aim for 10-20 because they know there are environmental factors the car can't calculate that can come into play (headwinds being the most serious one).
 
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It's interesting that coming back to the TMC after a couple months, i see the same subset of users who are either love their tesla, or complain about their tesla. Like you don't see a owner in both categories, its usually just one or another.

As stated by others, planning on arriving at the supercharger at 5% is a recipe for disaster, especially in winter. Most veteran owners aim for 10-20 because they know there are environmental factors the car can't calculate that can come into play (headwinds being the most serious one).

Why do people keep talking about the 5%??? Does anyone actually read the thread?
 
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As stated by others, planning on arriving at the supercharger at 5% is a recipe for disaster,
He's right, that you obviously didn't read what this setup was. You're thinking of 5% margin for an entire distance that has no other charging possibilities in between, which is not what this was. The initial low % in this case is irrelevant, because the route had extra Superchargers along the way that you can check if you need to use or not.
 
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How does it matter whether or not there were extra Superchargers on the route, if one chooses not to stop?

Leaving a supercharger when it says you will have 5% remaining upon reaching destination is a choice.
Leaving a supercharger before Trip Planner says you have enough to reach your destination (or next charging location) is a choice.
Passing a supercharger on your trip and deciding not to stop is a choice.

Sometimes those choices will result in not having enough charge to reach your destination, which is the result I would expect.

The only thing I don't understand is why the nav didn't give all sorts of warnings to "stay below xx mph to reach destination" and ultimately "charging needed to reach destination". I get the "stay below" message all the time, even when I have enough to reach my destination.
 
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How does it matter whether or not there were extra Superchargers on the route, if one chooses not to stop?

Leaving a supercharger when it says you will have 5% remaining upon reaching destination is a choice.
Leaving a supercharger before Trip Planner says you have enough to reach your destination (or next charging location) is a choice.
Passing a supercharger on your trip and deciding not to stop is a choice.

Sometimes those choices will result in not having enough charge to reach your destination, which is the result I would expect.

The only thing I don't understand is why the nav didn't give all sorts of warnings to "stay below xx mph to reach destination" and ultimately "charging needed to reach destination". I get the "stay below" message all the time, even when I have enough to reach my destination.
Leaving a supercharger with or without being told by Trip Planner that you can continue when it has you will have 5% remaining upon reaching a destination when you know there are superchargers along the route prior to the destination is not a bad choice. Intentionally leaving out this relevant data in order to be "right" is manipulative and self-serving.

Passing a supercharger because it says you will have 12% remaining at your destination is a completely separate choice where the previous "5%" input is irrelevant stale data. Anyone harping about the 5% either didn't read, can't think, or is out to get OP.
 
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