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Tesla Model 3 in Australia
- Thread starter Electric_Blue
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- Australia Model 3 New Zealand
Candleflame
Active Member
Yap, this is consistent with my experience too. I have a wattmeter attached to my wall outlet and the aircon obviously goes way above the available 2kw ( i suspect it is 2kw from AC and 500W from the fan) when it cools a 70C cabin but once it stabilizes and just keeps the cabin i.e. at 22C it pulls between 1.2-1.5kw when AC is on and fan is at 2-3. Have not tested it yet in the middle of the day when it is much warmer.
If you drive through the 40C outback at midday the car needs to keep the fan at 5-6 to be reasonably comfortable. I don't actually think this makes a massive difference to the consumption though of whether it's a nice and chilly 29 degrees in the evening and the fan is running at 1-2 without sun or whether you are driving through the northern outback in summer with the fan at 5-6. I'd wager that there are massive inefficiencies with the system when it does not have to cool much.
In the evening when the fan can stay on level 2 or so I notice that I lose probably about 6km/hr (fits with about 1kw/hr) though I suspect this is more when driving through the midday outback.
I drove from Mt Isa to Hughenden (525km) which I would have probably almost made on one charge driving at 80km/h. There was a bit of headwind so lets assume 90kmh equivalent. According to the TeslaRangetable the car should have a range of 624km at that speed. If we assume 1.5kw powerdraw from the aircon then over the 6 hours of driving the range should have been reduced to 87% of it's original value which is 540km. Over those 6 hours I had the sound system turned up so thats probably another 15km or so gone and it is slightly uphill. Pretty much fits with the range I got from the car. The car initially suggested I could make it if I drive less than 90kmh but then corrected it to -1% after 3h of driving after which I topped up for a few hours anyway.
I have also noted that the car seems to kick the AC fan up a notch when it is plugged in. I.e. there is Level 10 fanspeed and then there is level 10 when it is plugged in where the AC is noticeably more noisy from the outside.
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Sure, but it would have even better range if the AC wasn’t such a power hog. Having a huge battery to run off is not an excuse to be profligate and think “near enough is good enough”. Other BEV manufacturers do much better on this score, Tesla should be utterly offended this is the case and resolve to do much better.
Maybe not the bar but certainly relevant. Also to HPSOVs point about efficiency, there are reports of Tesla making the seat heater / cooler more efficient. This is the biggest issue right now in terms of efficiency of the cabin (current gen is terrible), more than the ventilation (a/c and heat). And unlike a traditional car, cabin heating is more of an issue as the ICE is not generating heat. My understanding is that is the next up for Tesla to tackle.
Tesla is working on its own 'more efficient' seat with temperature-control system - Electrek
Also, I am not convinced that seeing the draw of the a/c when plugged in is perfecty accurate methodology. We know that Tesla does some amazing software optimisation - do we know for sure that it is optimising the same when plugged in vs. not for cabin ventilation? Very possible that it is running a different power profile when plugged in to optimise pre conditioning / pre heating vs. when driving.
I'll try that tomorrow. Today I let it run for a couple of hours with the wall charger disconnected. Everything else the same as the previous test (I'm not in the car, car is sitting parked/locked in the garage, 27C ambient temp, 22C aircon temp, auto mode).
The car started on 86% charge at 10am sharp. Cooled the interior to 22C in 4 minutes, the same as when plugged in.
Let the A/C run for 2 hours, and observed the expected ~2%/hour drop that would be consistent with a ~1.5kW constant load. Had 84% at 11am, and 82% at noon.
Now I can go to lunch in my nicely prechilled car.
I generally agree. However for those scenarios where I need all the range the car can muster it's good to know I can get an extra ~10% (40-50km) by leaving the aircon off (if/when this is actually tolerable).
Assuming aircon uses the same amount of power consistently when the car is in motion and not sealed up in a garage (airflow)
May be more tolerable just to drive slower and get extra that way if you really need it.
My house to Albany (422km), set max speed at 90 kph, 5:01 duration, 83% estimated battery use
Set max speed to 110 kph (max speed limit 110kph), 4:28 duration excluding stops, 98% estimated battery usage
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Priit
Active Member
I have been observing similar power drain when leaving the car parked at work. The staff parking area has no shade so parking in the sun with leaving the cabin overheat protection on and allowing it to use AC appears to let the cabin temperature go up to 38C and then kicks in the AC and appears to draw ~2% per hour.
In our climate in coastal QLD the seat heating efficiency does not really come into play and for us the biggest benefit would be improved cooling as even in the winter one would not use heating more than possibly early morning to warmup the car. where over 80% of time cooling will be required. I wonder if they can increase the efficiency of the AC with software/firmware update or if the AC system hardware is limiting there?
Blue heaven
Fair Dinkum Tesla
You will get an improvement in range but not 10% unless you were already running the aircon at low temps to start with.
Personally I wouldn't sacrifice aircon on warm days unless in desperation, in uncomfortable conditions humans lose concentration more than normal and tend to make poor decisions.
Better options are-
Turn the aircon up to 24.
Make sure the vehicle is parked in the shade before driving off.
Pre-cool the car on mains power
Drop the average speed by 5kmh but don't bother going below 60kmh on a long trip as an aircon consumes power over time rather than distance. ( best not to drive below 90kmh unless you have the road to yourself or other road users will get hot under the collar )
Yeah, my aircon is set to 23.5 max (tested in 40c on Saturday, worked a treat) and 20.5 min (heating on a cold evening). All set up in Tasker so does it automagically when phone connects over Bluetooth.
Started around there, but found it wasn't adequate for midday driving (and also that the car would start running the heat at times when it definitely wasn't needed). 22C is tolerable without the sunshades, or mostly comfortable with them.
Candleflame
Active Member
auto mode on 24C is just not tolerable. Manual mode is completely useless. Putting the AC on 25 degrees and fan on i.e. 8 or 9 gives you insanely nice cool breeze but actually consumes more power than 19 degrees in automatic mode! I suspect fan speed has by far the biggest effect on consumption as you not only increase the fans Whr consumption but also the ACs work as it has to work faster.
21.5C imho is completely fine for driving through the outback at midday without any tint or shade. 22 is tolerable.. Once dawn is coming 23 or no aircon is actually ok even when it's still above 30 outside. I think what's happening is that without sunlight a well cooled car can just be recirculating air for hours whereas if the sun is shining there is a lot of light energy entering the cabin. Certainly the glassroof feels so hot that you can burn your hand. Don't think tinting the side windows will make any difference, the sun is all hitting the top of the car.
probs best to switch the car to km as 1 km = 150watthours.
I will try a test in the cairns midday heat maybe on sunday and see how much the car consumes.
21.5C imho is completely fine for driving through the outback at midday without any tint or shade. 22 is tolerable.. Once dawn is coming 23 or no aircon is actually ok even when it's still above 30 outside. I think what's happening is that without sunlight a well cooled car can just be recirculating air for hours whereas if the sun is shining there is a lot of light energy entering the cabin. Certainly the glassroof feels so hot that you can burn your hand. Don't think tinting the side windows will make any difference, the sun is all hitting the top of the car.
probs best to switch the car to km as 1 km = 150watthours.
I will try a test in the cairns midday heat maybe on sunday and see how much the car consumes.
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I wonder the impact and how much heat stress that could put on the glass.
I had a crack that appeared shortly after I used the demistifier (though it may not be related). When I see how much back and forth was needed to get Tesla to replace it under warranty, I don't want to think what would have happened if that glass had been tinted.
The cost to replace the rear glass is $1,126.51 FWIW
WoodWombat
Member
Had to reach out to Melbourne delivery about another matter, and so I prompted them for an updated delivery date. It looks like my delivery has slipped from "Late November-Early December" to "Late December-January". No reason given, I would assume that vehicles arriving on the 22nd November (Syndergy Keelung) might run into Christmas slowdowns?
Part of me is hoping that they are just being conservative and that they will get me my car before Christmas.
Funny side note. At the beginning of the year, I established a "head race" between NBN being delivered to my house, and my Tesla showing up. NBN got pushed back repeatedly, so I thought that Tesla had won by a country mile, but every few weeks, the Tesla gets pushed further out, so there is a chance the NBN might snatch victory. A thrilling and exciting race, like the Chariot races in Ben Hur!
Part of me is hoping that they are just being conservative and that they will get me my car before Christmas.
Funny side note. At the beginning of the year, I established a "head race" between NBN being delivered to my house, and my Tesla showing up. NBN got pushed back repeatedly, so I thought that Tesla had won by a country mile, but every few weeks, the Tesla gets pushed further out, so there is a chance the NBN might snatch victory. A thrilling and exciting race, like the Chariot races in Ben Hur!
Priit
Active Member
Looking at the TeslaFi numbers, it looks like most of the fleet is getting 2019.36.2.1 ea322ad. I wonder why yours is not getting that one? What model, FSD options your car has?
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