I just picked up my LR AWD couple days ago and after driving 169 miles, I have only 73 miles range left. I drove another 10 miles and it went down to 50 and I had to stop by a Supercharger station to charge. Sentry mode was not on. I live in SoCal and temp had been nice in the 70. My daily commute is about 40 miles on both highway and local street. I’ve been driving 65-75mph on the highway. I’ve been reading up on actual range vs standard range. I still think my range lost is nowhere near normal or an I paranoid? Is actual 210-220 actual miles on a standard 310 miles battery normal?
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Standard actual battery range or defective battery?
- Thread starter Rphdiva
- Start date
I did read other posts and most were driving long trips or testing their cars or the lost was not as significant.
I don’t drive 75mph for those 169 miles.
Out of my 40miles commute, half is on local street where I wouldn’t be able to go above 45mph. As for the highway, with SoCal traffic, I mostly drive under 60 and only do 75 rarely.
I drive quite conservatively and that’s why my concern for the roughly 70% as stated battery range
I don’t drive 75mph for those 169 miles.
Out of my 40miles commute, half is on local street where I wouldn’t be able to go above 45mph. As for the highway, with SoCal traffic, I mostly drive under 60 and only do 75 rarely.
I drive quite conservatively and that’s why my concern for the roughly 70% as stated battery range
Which tires you running at what cold pressure?
What is wh/mi showing?
You should be doing way better than that even at 65-75.
You could have a alignment issue.
With mixed driving mostly highway at 65 mph my average was was 230 wh/mi in summer conditions AWD on 19”. Which is about 10% better than 310 rated range. At 75 I’m guessing I’d be at 250 wh/mi and right about the rated range. I kept it in Chill to train my driving habits.
Also thoughtful use of HVAC can save a chunk of juice. Be sure to use recirculate when conditions allow.
Range is useless as a metric since it can vary by a wide margin based on car config, driving habit, and environment.
What you want to know is power consumption, which the car tells you. For you to get the rated range, you'll need around 230 Wh. If you see a reading higher than that, then you know you won't get the rated range. Adjust as needed.
For me in my LR RWD with 18 and 19" rims (aftermarket), I get about 260 Wh on lifetime average, but for highway trips it will usually be around 280-290 Wh. If you draft behind another car, you can typically keep your Wh around 270 while still driving 90 mph. But if you are the first car in your lane and not drafting, you will see that number climb 50 or 60 Wh easily.
What you want to know is power consumption, which the car tells you. For you to get the rated range, you'll need around 230 Wh. If you see a reading higher than that, then you know you won't get the rated range. Adjust as needed.
For me in my LR RWD with 18 and 19" rims (aftermarket), I get about 260 Wh on lifetime average, but for highway trips it will usually be around 280-290 Wh. If you draft behind another car, you can typically keep your Wh around 270 while still driving 90 mph. But if you are the first car in your lane and not drafting, you will see that number climb 50 or 60 Wh easily.
its about to get much much worse actually (as hard as that is to believe), as all the people who bought these cars and have not seen colder weather in them yet will start to post "why isnt this car getting its range?" in some form or another.
SilverSp33d3r
No Longer Silver
Is this driving consecutively or over a period of 4 days?
TimothyHW3
Active Member
Well, if you actually did read both posts it was almost then same scenario - mixed city highway driving, 65mph mostly, top 75mph. Literally two posts having almost the same exact conditions as well. I would suggest you read the answers there - you will find anything you need as an information( from AC consumption, to rated consumption and real life consumption). Trust me.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Displaying the remaining battery in ‘miles’ is certainly misleading, but it probably helps some people understand vaguely what they can expect. The trouble is the car can’t get past the physics. If more work is to be done, it takes more energy. Things like A/C, vehicle speed, outdoor temperature, heat use, tire pressure and all that make significant impacts in the energy the car takes to travel.
If you turn the heat on and never drive anywhere, you can kill the battery to 0% in about a day without having driven a single mile. Now, under absolute ideal conditions at absurdly unrealistic low speeds, downhill, you can travel probably ~1000 miles or more. This is the same story as any vehicle irrespective of how it’s powered. But it’s more noticeable in an EV since people tend to be hyper sensitive to the remaining range.
You can get the rated range, but it’s going to be in fair to good conditions and speeds in the 50-60ish range. Shorter trips will also kill range as the vehicle stays ‘awake’ after the trip to condition the battery. So if you stack a bunch of small trips together with long breaks between them, expect around 1/2 the rated range. But on the highway, the range is quite good. Still, in practice it’s unlikely anyone will ever practically drive 310 miles on an AWD. That’s running from 100% to 0% under nominal conditions. Tesla doesn’t recommend charging to 100% regularly, and I don’t know anyone that wants to run down to 0%. So the everyday range is more like ~200 comfortable miles. It absolutely can be much higher or much lower depending on conditions though. Driving through deep snow in very cold weather with the heat cranked, you’d be lucky to do 100 miles.
If you turn the heat on and never drive anywhere, you can kill the battery to 0% in about a day without having driven a single mile. Now, under absolute ideal conditions at absurdly unrealistic low speeds, downhill, you can travel probably ~1000 miles or more. This is the same story as any vehicle irrespective of how it’s powered. But it’s more noticeable in an EV since people tend to be hyper sensitive to the remaining range.
You can get the rated range, but it’s going to be in fair to good conditions and speeds in the 50-60ish range. Shorter trips will also kill range as the vehicle stays ‘awake’ after the trip to condition the battery. So if you stack a bunch of small trips together with long breaks between them, expect around 1/2 the rated range. But on the highway, the range is quite good. Still, in practice it’s unlikely anyone will ever practically drive 310 miles on an AWD. That’s running from 100% to 0% under nominal conditions. Tesla doesn’t recommend charging to 100% regularly, and I don’t know anyone that wants to run down to 0%. So the everyday range is more like ~200 comfortable miles. It absolutely can be much higher or much lower depending on conditions though. Driving through deep snow in very cold weather with the heat cranked, you’d be lucky to do 100 miles.
Yep, these questions keep coming up. A lot because people see the max range and think that they'll always get that. Somehow though people don't see issues with their ICE car that's rated to get 20 city/28 highway with a 13-gallon tank and wondering why they can't go 364 miles on every tank of gas before needing to fill up again.
Stop and go traffic, speed of 75 mph are gonna use more electrons just like they'll use more gas than a straight shot, non-stop drive at 45 mph. Rated range is based on a 75 KWh battery. So if you're using more than 242 watt/per mile, you'll get less than the rated 310. Seems simple to me. Just look at the average w/m since last recharge on the screen.
Stop and go traffic, speed of 75 mph are gonna use more electrons just like they'll use more gas than a straight shot, non-stop drive at 45 mph. Rated range is based on a 75 KWh battery. So if you're using more than 242 watt/per mile, you'll get less than the rated 310. Seems simple to me. Just look at the average w/m since last recharge on the screen.
I have standard 18in aero wheel. The avg w/mi is 255 and I drove over 4 days period. After I charge to 90%, it’s drained again after I drove about another 200 miles over 2 days running errands, again with mixed highways and local street. W/hr avg is 223. I did set air to recirculate. Will switch to chill mode to see if there’s any difference.
That sounds like all is well. Chill mode won’t do anything other than limit your throttle and maybe make you drive very slightly more efficient. I barely notice a difference in consumption driving efficiently compared to full throttle every light, and drifting every corner. But the car does appear to stay awake significantly longer after spirited driving events, presumably to equalize cell temperature. This extra consumption isn’t added in the trip meter.
The killers are repeated short trips in hot weather, heavy heat use, and high speeds. Combine all 3 and the range is garbage, but that’s the same story for an ICE vehicle. I had an ICE car that would do ~500 miles highway in the summer on a tank, and ~100 miles on a tank in bad winter weather.
The killers are repeated short trips in hot weather, heavy heat use, and high speeds. Combine all 3 and the range is garbage, but that’s the same story for an ICE vehicle. I had an ICE car that would do ~500 miles highway in the summer on a tank, and ~100 miles on a tank in bad winter weather.
Last edited:
darth_vad3r
Well-Known Sith
If you start on top of a mountain and drive down 1000 miles you would not run out of battery.
If you drove straight up a mountain at 75mph you might only get 100 miles! or less!
Miles on the battery gauge are a measure of energy. They are "rated miles". They get used up more or less depending on how you drive. Energy is also used for things like Sentry Mode. Just leaving the car 'awake' takes ~250 watts. That's 1 kWh of energy used in 4 hours... or about "4 miles" off the display without having driven at all. Do you have Sentry Mode on? Do you have Cabin Overehat Protection with A/C on? These things use "miles" when you aren't even in your car. "Range" is something you measure in one trip. Anything after you park is accessory/vampire drain. It sucks to lose energy if you can't plug in, but you can minimize it by disable energy-sucking features, or minimize the EFFECTs of it by just plugging in overnight.
If you want to get the actual range to match the range on the display, you might have to drive more like 50 mph, and all in one trip without stopping.
Last edited:
TimothyHW3
Active Member
This is not quite true. If you know the rated calculation value and keep the car under it, you can even achieve more. This has been actually tested. I did a recent trip with 430km or 270 miles highway(of which 70km slower roads of 60-90km/h) with roughly 84% used. I started with 96% and left immediately, so I stopped with about 12% and charged immediately.
On the highway I was driving at about 65-70mph and averaged 141Wh/km or 225Wh/m on a AWD 18". This is under the rated consumption by Tesla and it was in favourable conditions, but technically I could have done 315 miles on that trip.
Also, as I explained in my other posts, if I went to 0 I could've driven another 15-20 miles on buffer. You don't wanna do that, but if you really need to, in the summer, you can actually achieve around 330miles on the highway at the speed and consumption I had. This is LR AWD 18".
But this doesn't apply to every day driving short distances like you said, as there is small vampire drain explained in yet another post, but even with vampire drain, you can easily do 250 miles in the city. You only need to understand your car.
I would turn cabin circulation off. Minimize the phantom drain (use of electricity when the car is parked) at least until you get used to your driving habits and range.
Without Sentry and cabin recirc you should be well under 1 mile lost an hour, probably even under 0.5 mile. 223 wh/mi is pretty good for mixed use and should get your near your rated range.(~223 miles out of your 240 mi on a full charge).
In fact, 200 miles from a 90% battery is very good. 90% would mean you have a theoretical 216 mile max, and you got 92.5% of that max. Make sure to use regen as much as possible. If you see a stoplight red ahead start slowing down earlier by just letting off the accelerator and not hitting the brakes (if it’s safe to do) and let the car slow down for you. Any brake pedal is friction brakes in Model 3, so in stop and go and city traffic if it’s safe, just modulate the acceleration and allow the car to slow down by letting up on it. Based on your second test though you seem to be doing well.
I don’t see a real use to cabin recirc though since you still get to ~105F or so. 120 to 135 isn’t really THAT much more and a quick 3 or 4 minute precondition isn’t going to be much different between those two temps.
darth_vad3r
Well-Known Sith
Cabin recirculate is not the same as Cabin Overheat Protection. I guess you are assuming he called it the wrong thing and meant to say COP when he said recirc, and then you repeated it ... or you misunderstood what he was saying.
EDIT: actually you started the ‘cabin recirc’ the post you quoted said set the ‘air’ to recirculate.
Think you just mixed up 2 different things
XLR82XS
D M C
Exactly. People please search before starting a new thread. Please and thank you.
Yes, coworker of mine got a Model 3 and told me about the first trip he tried to take. He said he charged it up to the full 310 rated miles for a non-stop 270 mile trip and got out on the highway and set his cruise control to 83 mph and then was "surprised" that the rated miles on the display were dropping faster than the remaining distance miles in Nav. I kept my neutral interested face on the outside, but internally I was facepalming at how he thought he could maintain EPA rated efficiency at 83 mph.
Similar threads
