sometimes the range sucks

[Teddy69]

This is for a 6 month old M3 LR

Had this journey today, (part of much longer trip) was reasonably confident I had loads spare starting at 59%,(I was thinking 20%) eventually got to the charger on 8% having watched it start at 10% spare on return trip quickly dipping as low as 6%. On the way out I was 60/70, on the way back 55/65 (range anxiety kicking in on the first ten miles I got slower and slower)

It also said it was preheating an hour out, which might be the cause of the remaining battery drop early on.

It was heavy rain, 3 deg etc, so I guess plan for the worst, these cars have almost half the range of the claimed part of the year where I live.

hit my highest yet 228kW/1028 mi/hr at charger though

 

[icemankaka]

well, with winter temperature you'd be burning more electrons than you'd think (unless you dont run the heating)

with my MS i hit average 600wh/mi in some slow traffic last week

 

[freekie]

Hope to be up in that part of the country soon if Nicola doesn’t close the border! Where was the supercharger that gave you that superb rate of charging please?

 

[mesh1o1]

I only got mine yesturday and went on a trip from Telford to Welwyn Garden City today about 130 miles each way... I had a full charge last night on my M3LR and was expecting to come back with near empty but had to charge at my brothers got 12KW from him and on the return had to stop at Rugby for a supercharge... Was expecting from a 260 mile journey to do a decent job but I'm putting it down to either;

Battery not fully up and running yet
Winterp

 

[browellm]

I only got mine yesturday and went on a trip from Telford to Welwyn Garden City today about 130 miles each way... I had a full charge last night on my M3LR and was expecting to come back with near empty but had to charge at my brothers got 12KW from him and on the return had to stop at Rugby for a supercharge... Was expecting from a 260 mile journey to do a decent job but I'm putting it down to either;

Battery not fully up and running yet
Winterp

Five main things to consider when considering range calcs:
Speed
External temps
Elevation
Wind resistance
Rolling resistance (wet weather)

 

[icemankaka]

Five main things to consider when considering range calcs:
Speed
External temps
Elevation
Wind resistance
Rolling resistance (wet weather)

How warm to people usually set their car? I go from herts to central london 2-3 times a week and it makes a big diff i decide to go crazy on the heating and wear a tshirt, or set it to 19ish like the summer and dress accordingly. burn rate is like 600+ vs high 300s (so 50-60% ish)

 

[Overworked]

Hope to be up in that part of the country soon if Nicola doesn’t close the border! Where was the supercharger that gave you that superb rate of charging please?

That would be the v3 Tesla SuC shown on the map at the Tesla SC!

 

[Jason71]

I only got mine yesturday and went on a trip from Telford to Welwyn Garden City today about 130 miles each way... I had a full charge last night on my M3LR and was expecting to come back with near empty but had to charge at my brothers got 12KW from him and on the return had to stop at Rugby for a supercharge... Was expecting from a 260 mile journey to do a decent job but I'm putting it down to either;

Battery not fully up and running yet
Winterp

Check out ABRP. You were never going to do that highway journey on a single charge in winter.

 

[exlatccatsa]

EVM has just done a video on this.

 

[HenryT]

Five main things to consider when considering range calcs:
Speed
External temps
Elevation
Wind resistance
Rolling resistance (wet weather)

Could add 'load' to that as well.

 

[Adopado]

Could add 'load' to that as well.

...and route/road types (which also links to speed of course)

 

[candida]

Check out ABRP. You were never going to do that highway journey on a single charge in winter.

Or in summer. Two runs here are for my P with at 6 degrees c and 19 degrees c. I was surprised how small the difference is.
My live reference consumption is 3.6 mi/kwh at 65.

I'd put your experience down to expecting the car to do what Tesla said it would... I did too, for a while...

 

[mesh1o1]

cheers guys on a side note, has anyone paid for ABRP and is it worth the extra or is the free model good enough?)

 

[browellm]

Paid version includes live weather compensation for really accurate trip calculations. Problem is the free version is so good. Probably too good, really.

 

[adsheff]

The battery preconditioning for supercharging knocks a lot off the range. You'd think they would have it switch off if you were looking at ending up with 8%. I did a long drive recently, and when I set the supercharger as the destination, it started preconditioning more than an hour out, and knocked about 5% off predicted remaining batter. Given that I was looking at arriving with 5%, which I wasn't happy about, I changed the sat nav to just navigate to the service station, rather than the actual supercharger, so that it would stop preconditioning. Maybe it charged a little slower, but you don't want to be down to 5% on a cold winter day on busy motorways - there's just not enough of a margin to account for unexpected events.

 

[Jason71]

Or in summer. Two runs here are for my P with at 6 degrees c and 19 degrees c. I was surprised how small the difference is.
My live reference consumption is 3.6 mi/kwh at 65.

I'd put your experience down to expecting the car to do what Tesla said it would... I did too, for a while...

I know I suggested ABRP but you have to tune the reference wh/m. I find it a bit paranoid by default. based on a usable capacity of 70kwh that journey would require 270wh/m. I recon I could do that in summer just about. I drove Telford To Cornwall in the summer and averaged 250wh/m. Traffic was a bit slow in places though which helped. The reality is I would not even try though. not worth the stress. destination charging would be the ideal if not there are plenty of Superchargers along the way

I think you and I have been here before but I think if you check you will find nowhere that Tesla told you what the motorway range of your car was at any time of year. I wish they would. I wish they all would. All they ever tell you is the WLTP or EPA which is a mix of driving it is not equivalent to a long motorway journey and you are never going to achieve it on a UK motorway journey at any time of year. The motorway range which is all anyone ( with off street parking) cares about is never discussed except in car reviews or forums.
So if its a lie its a lie of omission that the whole EV industry is guilty of. but it still sucks.

Matt Watson did a good EV motorway range comparison. spoiler alert. M3 did 270miles.

 

[house9]

How warm to people usually set their car? I go from herts to central london 2-3 times a week and it makes a big diff i decide to go crazy on the heating and wear a tshirt, or set it to 19ish like the summer and dress accordingly. burn rate is like 600+ vs high 300s (so 50-60% ish)

From what I have read you are better off using the seat heaters and a lower heating temp. The seat heaters shouldn’t use as much energy.

 

[Overworked]

I got my M3LR the last week of September. The long runs after that were averaging about 266wh/m whereas last week in the cold the same runs were turning in about 340 wh/m - sometimes worse!

 

[CaptFish2003]

Ahhh, the jolly seasonal winter range discussion - merry Christmas all.

 

[Alistairuk]

This is for a 6 month old M3 LR

Had this journey today, (part of much longer trip) was reasonably confident I had loads spare starting at 59%,(I was thinking 20%) eventually got to the charger on 8% having watched it start at 10% spare on return trip quickly dipping as low as 6%. On the way out I was 60/70, on the way back 55/65 (range anxiety kicking in on the first ten miles I got slower and slower)

It also said it was preheating an hour out, which might be the cause of the remaining battery drop early on.

It was heavy rain, 3 deg etc, so I guess plan for the worst, these cars have almost half the range of the claimed part of the year where I live.

hit my highest yet 228kW/1028 mi/hr at charger though

View attachment 740637

I'm slightly intrigued why you doubled back on yourself to go back out of Edinburgh and round the bypass, instead of just going straight through

That pre-heating thing for Supercharging confuses me as well, I've had it kick in with "pre-conditioning battery" for Gretna when I'm at Motherwell (well over 1 hour from Gretna at motorway speeds) - you would think it would be smart enough to know it's probably not necessary - especially when using Tesla's route planner!

A slightly recent trip to Paris, from Glasgow, showed me how much cold weather/rain/wind obliterates your range - the drive down was atrocious once I got south of Grantham - what should have required only a single stop ended up with 2 and also ridiculously slow charging rate from the superchargers at Cambridge & Maidstone too. (The way back was much more as expected in the sunshine)