SR+ Consumption and using ABRP

[agni_ban]

I have been a SR+ owner for just under a month ~2500 mi including a ~700 mi road trip. While the Tesla routing works great and the energy graphs are surprisingly accurate it doesn't provide any planning capability for a longer trip (with breaks etc), also the SR+ is not an option that is available on the Tesla routing available online, so even fewer planning options.

A better route planner is the only real option I could find but the SR+ is in Alpha and the default parameters it uses for the SR+ are pretty inaccurate. So I have done a couple of experiments to try and find the right values to use mainly for the reference consumption at 65mph.

The experiment:
I did a point to point drive from my home to a restaurant that I like particularly in NJ. It is about a 65 mile drive. I did this drive twice with almost the same weather and at about the same time of day and traffic conditions (same direction to keep as many params the same as possible) with normal driving (no unnecessary hard acceleration/braking) on the ~5miles of streets and on the ~60 miles of freeway tried to keep auto pilot engaged at 70 for one drive and 75 the other time. While it was easy to maintain 70mph (sit in the center lane and watch everyone cross on both sides ), at 75mph there were a few times when autopilot slowed down because of the car in front and some other cases when I had to manually cross the car in front by accelerating a bit to get back to my cruising speed. I don't think those deviations from the cruising had a major effect.

Results:
Freeway cruising @ 70mph:
I used about 25% of battery - Exactly 60 miles consumed from my driveway to the restaurant's parking lot.
Freeway cruising @ 75mph:
I used about 30% of battery - Exactly 71 miles consumed from my driveway to the restaurant's parking lot.

Using ABRP:
Now with this data I tried to go back to ABRP and plug in the addresses and the temperature, road conditions etc for the 2 drives (most of which was pretty much the same) and played with the Reference consumption and the max speed to get results that match both my data points.

The settings that seem to get me closest to my results are as follows:

I will try to use these settings for my upcoming trip to MA this weekend and see if they hold water and post an update.

Hopefully other SR+ owners find this useful and will provide their own findings here as well if possible.

 

[willow_hiller]

Thanks for doing this experiment. We just had a 1,300 mile road-trip using ABRP in part, and I noticed that we almost always arrived at the Supercharger with a greater percentage than ABRP was predicting at its default of 247 wh/mi at 65 mph. That being said, we keep our SR+ on Chill mode on the highway.

I figure it's better for ABRP to overestimate than underestimate the wh/mi so you get to your destination with plenty of buffer. I'm sure it's pretty dependent on driving behavior.

 

[darth_vad3r]

Don’t play with max speed. You need to play with % of speed limit first (reference speed).

What is the speed limit on the highway? You have ABRP set to 120% of speed limit, if you lower that number instead of reference consumption Wh/mi you should also be able to get it to match your trip more closely and I think be more accurate overall for many different trip types.

e.g. 70mph is 108% of 65, or 116.67% of 60mph.

 

[agni_ban]

Don’t play with max speed. You need to play with % of speed limit first (reference speed).

What is the speed limit on the highway? You have ABRP set to 120% of speed limit, if you lower that number instead of reference consumption Wh/mi you should also be able to get it to match your trip more closely and I think be more accurate overall for many different trip types.

e.g. 70mph is 108% of 65, or 116.67% of 60mph.

I kept the reference speed at 120 so that the speed capping param is always the max speed. You can check this by clicking on the route at a point and see what is the planned speed.
I tried leaving the Max speed at the default of 93 and plugging in 108 and 117 (ended up being 76mph) and got pretty much the same values.

 

[pdx_m3s]

Is reference consumption of 200 wH/mile a bit optimistic? I though it was more like 220.

 

[darth_vad3r]

Is reference consumption of 200 wH/mile a bit optimistic? I though it was more like 220.

I dunno. At 65mph? It’s kinda slow, I can get under 215Wh/mi going faster than that. More like 68-71mph. I usually go faster though. I think default ABRP is 247. That may be high, but higher is better for estimating. And not sure about other conditions assumed like temp, and average accessory usage, etc. It’s based on median data sample results.

 

[darth_vad3r]

I kept the reference speed at 120 so that the speed capping param is always the max speed. You can check this by clicking on the route at a point and see what is the planned speed.
I tried leaving the Max speed at the default of 93 and plugging in 108 and 117 (ended up being 76mph) and got pretty much the same values.

Max speed will only cap your speed if the trip could exceed it, and then only for those parts. Using a higher % of speed limit will add consumption to your entire trip, even the low speed parts.

As an extreme example you could put 1000% of speed limit and set max speed lower, and then it would be like you drove that exact speed the whole time.

 

[darth_vad3r]

If I tweak only ref speed to 125% and leave ref consumption at 247 Wh/mi, ABRP predicts my round trip commute fairly accurately, and that’s a good estimate of going 110-115km/hr on highway in a mainly 90 speed limit (sometimes 80, sometimes 100) zone.

 

[agni_ban]

I was basically trying to imitate my actual driving and trying to match what I saw the car do.
I agree I wouldn't plug in 200 when planning my trip, but this helped me sort of understand what my car can do under certain conditions and if push came to a shove I would better understand the capabilities of this machine. I guess this is a learning experience as I own it for longer through cold weather and rain/snow driving.
I used 215 to plan my trip starting tomorrow to MA and will post updates with more data from that drive.

 

[darth_vad3r]

I was basically trying to imitate my actual driving and trying to match what I saw the car do.
I agree I wouldn't plug in 200 when planning my trip, but this helped me sort of understand what my car can do under certain conditions and if push came to a shove I would better understand the capabilities of this machine. I guess this is a learning experience as I own it for longer through cold weather and rain/snow driving.
I used 215 to plan my trip starting tomorrow to MA and will post updates with more data from that drive.

If you set Autopilot to 65 mph, then let the car settle into that speed, then reset the “since h:mm” meter for a good long stretch, does your consumption on that trip at that speed show 200-215 Wh/mi?

The ABRP data is sourced from actual car data and user submitted data in thousands of short chunks (like 30s or shorter IIRC). They essentially use the median for their model. This throws out people maxing HVAC and also throws out hyper milers coasting behind semi trucks

It also adjusts for elevation changes and speed.

I think you are best served leaving the reference consumption as they set it (and as they further refine it) and adjust the reference speed to fit how you drive. If you obey a personal “max speed” you can enter that as well, but I wouldn’t use that to try to sway the calculation otherwise.

I’ve found it fairly accurate for my trips without so dramatically adjusting the reference consumption as you have (in fact not touching it), and only playing with the reference speed, temperature and the degradation.

 

[Gloor]

Cool I plan to use ABRP too. Seems like the only thing for SR+ now.

How do you find the SR+? I have one on the way and constantly debate if I should go for LR now that the price got reduced.
How was the long trip etc.? All good and easy, any range anxiety or something?
Any other feedback, please?

I have been a SR+ owner for just under a month ~2500 mi including a ~700 mi road trip. While the Tesla routing works great and the energy graphs are surprisingly accurate it doesn't provide any planning capability for a longer trip (with breaks etc), also the SR+ is not an option that is available on the Tesla routing available online, so even fewer planning options.

A better route planner is the only real option I could find but the SR+ is in Alpha and the default parameters it uses for the SR+ are pretty inaccurate. So I have done a couple of experiments to try and find the right values to use mainly for the reference consumption at 65mph.

The experiment:
I did a point to point drive from my home to a restaurant that I like particularly in NJ. It is about a 65 mile drive. I did this drive twice with almost the same weather and at about the same time of day and traffic conditions (same direction to keep as many params the same as possible) with normal driving (no unnecessary hard acceleration/braking) on the ~5miles of streets and on the ~60 miles of freeway tried to keep auto pilot engaged at 70 for one drive and 75 the other time. While it was easy to maintain 70mph (sit in the center lane and watch everyone cross on both sides ), at 75mph there were a few times when autopilot slowed down because of the car in front and some other cases when I had to manually cross the car in front by accelerating a bit to get back to my cruising speed. I don't think those deviations from the cruising had a major effect.

Results:
Freeway cruising @ 70mph:
I used about 25% of battery - Exactly 60 miles consumed from my driveway to the restaurant's parking lot.
Freeway cruising @ 75mph:
I used about 30% of battery - Exactly 71 miles consumed from my driveway to the restaurant's parking lot.

Using ABRP:
Now with this data I tried to go back to ABRP and plug in the addresses and the temperature, road conditions etc for the 2 drives (most of which was pretty much the same) and played with the Reference consumption and the max speed to get results that match both my data points.

The settings that seem to get me closest to my results are as follows:
View attachment 430638

I will try to use these settings for my upcoming trip to MA this weekend and see if they hold water and post an update.

Hopefully other SR+ owners find this useful and will provide their own findings here as well if possible.

 

[agni_ban]

Cool I plan to use ABRP too. Seems like the only thing for SR+ now.

How do you find the SR+? I have one on the way and constantly debate if I should go for LR now that the price got reduced.
How was the long trip etc.? All good and easy, any range anxiety or something?
Any other feedback, please?

The SR+ is a pretty awesome car. I have some people at work who have the AWD LR model which I actually drove around a bit before making my decision and performance wise the difference is only slightly noticeable but apart from that everything else is almost the same. Sound, and software feature wise it's not a huge difference, definitely not $10,000 worth of difference for how I value money.
I was in the market for a regular gas (premium) car and the SR+ blew pretty much all of the cars I was considering out of the water in terms of performance, cost and especially technology. My daily drive is ~30miles and I live ~10miles from a supercharger (this is important if I have to go to somewhere 100miles away for work/etc without prior notice) so for the value the SR+ was providing it was an obvious choice.

For the longer drives in/around the east coast (which is all that I have done so far) I never felt any range anxiety since there are so many superchargers. My wife likes the more frequent stops (approx every 1.5-2 hrs) and almost every time the charging was done by the time we got done with the restroom and picked up something to eat. Once when we decided to eat lunch we had to rush to avoid the charges for holding a spot after you are completed charging. Using autopilot on long drives is amazing. It make a 400 mile drive feel like a 50 mile drive.

It's a great car, there is a very active and helpful community (like here) which helps you ease into the EV life. I hope you'll love it

 

[pdx_m3s]

I was in the market for a regular gas (premium) car and the SR+ blew pretty much all of the cars I was considering out of the water in terms of performance, cost and especially technology. My daily drive is ~30miles and I live ~10miles from a supercharger (this is important if I have to go to somewhere 100miles away for work/etc without prior notice) so for the value the SR+ was providing it was an obvious choice.

Pretty similar situation here. I was looking at the 2019 Mazda3 Premium, as well as a couple other used BMWs. After driving the Tesla and working the math, the decision was a no brainer... went with the SR+ black/black/aero/AP for ~$35k after credit and rebate. My commute is 11 miles round trip with a supercharger nearby if needed, as well as superchargers along the long distance routes and destinations we frequent.

 

[Gloor]

Thats awesome. Yeah, I keep thinking that the extra cost is not worth the better audio and some more range but its tempting.
I think I'll stick to SR+ though. The technology will improve over the years and maybe in the future I can either get better battery or I will sell the car and get a better one. Cheers buddy

The SR+ is a pretty awesome car. I have some people at work who have the AWD LR model which I actually drove around a bit before making my decision and performance wise the difference is only slightly noticeable but apart from that everything else is almost the same. Sound, and software feature wise it's not a huge difference, definitely not $10,000 worth of difference for how I value money.
I was in the market for a regular gas (premium) car and the SR+ blew pretty much all of the cars I was considering out of the water in terms of performance, cost and especially technology. My daily drive is ~30miles and I live ~10miles from a supercharger (this is important if I have to go to somewhere 100miles away for work/etc without prior notice) so for the value the SR+ was providing it was an obvious choice.

For the longer drives in/around the east coast (which is all that I have done so far) I never felt any range anxiety since there are so many superchargers. My wife likes the more frequent stops (approx every 1.5-2 hrs) and almost every time the charging was done by the time we got done with the restroom and picked up something to eat. Once when we decided to eat lunch we had to rush to avoid the charges for holding a spot after you are completed charging. Using autopilot on long drives is amazing. It make a 400 mile drive feel like a 50 mile drive.

It's a great car, there is a very active and helpful community (like here) which helps you ease into the EV life. I hope you'll love it

 

[KenC]

I like using roundtrips to do these kinds of analyses, since you have a hard time factoring in wind. A roundtrip can mitigate that to some extent. Like others, I don't touch the reference consumption, nor the max speed. I adjust reference speed, outside temp, and sometimes wind, if I'm going one-way, and I know it's going to be strong.