sometimes the range sucks

[init6]

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

Fixed that for you

 

[HenryT]

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

List now renamed to - 'Amongst the main things to consider when considering range calcs'

 

[Adopado]

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.

The way it was originally described as working was that it would not precondition if you were going to be low on battery ... so in theory it "shouldn't" be a problem. However, I have also noticed (as have others) what appears to be an overzealous application of pre-conditioning way in advance of when it's actually needed. I always assume that these kind of things get tweaked with new software updates. Was your example with the most recent update?

 

[Teddy69]

The way it was originally described as working was that it would not precondition if you were going to be low on battery ... so in theory it "shouldn't" be a problem. However, I have also noticed (as have others) what appears to be an overzealous application of pre-conditioning way in advance of when it's actually needed. I always assume that these kind of things get tweaked with new software updates. Was your example with the most recent update?

Mine is on the latest software, like I said it was 10-12% for a one hour trip which quickly dropped to 6%, quite nerve wracking as the margin disappears

I think in the summer it did it much later, maybe the battery temperature dictates when it starts?

 

[Jason71]

I think in the summer it did it much later, maybe the battery temperature dictates when it starts?

Yes. It's heating. The colder it is the more it will require and the longer it will take

 

[Adopado]

Mine is on the latest software, like I said it was 10-12% for a one hour trip which quickly dropped to 6%, quite nerve wracking as the margin disappears

I think in the summer it did it much later, maybe the battery temperature dictates when it starts?

I have to say I was experiencing this early precondition issue back in September with ambient temperatures in the mid to high teens.

 

[Teddy69]

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)

I was actually travelling from up north, stayed in Edinburgh for a night, stopped in Perth for charge on way down, then Edinburgh and Perth on way home

SC charge was about £36 and home charging another £3 about 460 miles total so maybe half the price of an ICE? I used about 158 kWh so 340 w/h

Interestingly in Perth I walked down to the petrol station for a break, came back and a M3 with bike rack had parked next to me taking up no less that 3 spaces even though he could have used the end one and not blocked other chargers, obviously didn't know you're better to park away from other people for faster charging and so on.

Then another one rolled in beside me, the guy had picked it up that morning and was on 4%. He couldn't get the charger out of the post, so was asking how it worked (give it a yank), then he had to reverse further as cable wouldn't reach. He seemed happy with his new car though

Lots to learn with EV's...

 

[icemankaka]

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.

the comfort level is different wink.
sometimes i just switch it off after heating uup the car then switch it off.