road trips range question...

[karkrazy]

Will take some practice, but you can trust the car and the onboard computer for the most part. How it maps stops and charging points is a great reference. All depends on your risk appetite at that point (how low you want your SOC to go). Congrats and have fun!

 

[Prodock]

Don’t fret, just let your car do its magic and all will be good. We’ve taken trips from NC to upper Michigan, where superchargers are an endangered species, and never had any issues…loaded down or light….windy or not. Don’t think you can make 8 hour runs without stopping to charge, but as long as you allow yourself to enjoy the trip, the car will figure out what you need to do.

 

[240vPlug]

I have a 23 coming and no prior BEV experience. I'll be driving mostly by myself but when going on road trips where I'm taking the family with heavier load, do I have to enter the weight or something to accurately assess charging intervals?

The Tesla will plot the charging stops for you in the NAV based on your consumption. If you have women traveling with you I don't advise any discussions about weight

 

[Pianewman]

Almost 20k miles of interstate road trips...FW is home, trips to Frederick, MD, Sarasota, FL, Denver/Aspen, Phoenix, some of them multiple.

Never a moment of range anxiety, as the interstates have nicely spaced SuperChargers. I drive 75-80 (west of TX), don't worry about efficiency.

 

[bruce4000]

At highway speeds, weight is not the main factor, speed is (aerodynamic drag).

 

[BitJam]

I have a 23 coming and no prior BEV experience. I'll be driving mostly by myself but when going on road trips where I'm taking the family with heavier load, do I have to enter the weight or something to accurately assess charging intervals?

Your speed will affect the range much more than an extra 600 pounds.

Slowing down from 85 mph to 25 mph will roughly double your range (or halve your range if you speed up from 25 to 85). If you do highway driving at 70 and over, you WILL NOT get the EPA range given on Tesla's site. Not even close. But if you drive gently around town then you may beat the EPA range.

Weight has a smaller impact. A long range Model 3 weighs about 4,000 lbs. Gaining 1,000 feet of elevation uses about 2% of the battery. BUT, you get most of that back going down the other side due to regenerative braking. If you add 600 lbs then you would lose 2.3% going up and get most of it back on the way down.

The car and A Better Route Planner both know about energy loss and gain due to changes in elevation. The extra 0.3% / 1000 feet due to more weight in the car is not a big deal.

There will be similar additional small extra losses due to extra weight when you accelerate quickly. If you accelerate slowly (for a Tesla) and use regen to slow down then, like with elevation, it won't be an issue.

BTW: for those who are curious, I got the battery percentage per thousand feet from the formula for gravitational potential energy: E = mgh.

 

[BitJam]

PS: the biggest effect from more weight is to increase the rolling resistance. At highway speeds the rolling resistance is less than the resistance due to aerodynamic drag. Rolling resistance will increase by about 15% when you add 600 lbs. On the highway this will be less than 7% of the total.

 

[240vPlug]

An extra 600lbs will make a significant difference. You can slightly increase tire pressure to help offset the increase in rolling resistance. Speed is also very significant as well. Doing 65 vs 75-80 will result in significantly lower consumption.

 

[epicshooter]

so say I start my road trip today, I map out all my stops, the nav gives me the charging stops. I drive for an hour or two and the the computer would update my charging stops base on my current consumption?

Generally yes, sometimes you may need to force a re-calc for it to update.

 

[E46M3]

If it needed to for you to make your trip successfully, but it appears you might be picturing "run it down to almost empty, charge up to full" the way you do with a gas vehicle. In general, you will start your long trip with 90% to 100% charge, run down to around 10-20% charge, then stop and charge back up to about 50-60% charge (unless there is a huge gap between chargers).

You will stop about every couple hours or so in a road trip in a Tesla, but charging from 10-15% to 50-60% will result in a stop basically long enough to use the restroom and buy some snacks, 15-20 minutes or so.

If I'm installing a NEMA 14-50 40 amp charger(Autel), what breaker amp should I pair it with to maximize charging speed? Thanks! And this 40 amp sufficient or should I go 50 amp? I kinda like the plug VS hardwire as I think 50 amp chargers are hardwired only?