New blog post from Tesla about the Model S: Model S Efficiency and Range | Blog | Tesla Motors Pretty interesting information. Good to see some official numbers from Tesla.
Woot! Overall, I think this blog post is a good way to help manage expectations. We might also be hearing official EPA numbers soon and this is just a way to get their story out ahead of time instead of in response to potential backlash. Noooice, and it looks like you can get about 225 miles of range @ 80MPH. So 200 @ highway speeds seems to be reasonable.
That would be over 11 hours of driving at 35 mph. Would almost certainly have to go to a track to do that.
This is really good news for me. That means I can drive any legal highway speed and get to the major cities in Texas on one charge or at worst, a one hour stop at a 40A station.
Looking at this I really want a 80kWh pack. I could easily make Charlotte on a single charge, and probably stretch anywhere I would want to drive. At least it looks like getting 100+ miles out of a 40kWh pack should be cake.
Is great for me as well. I anticipated something like this as a range by looking at the Roadster data. The trip I take regularly is 220km to Amsterdam, now I can hit "the gas" (~85mph / ~140km/h), charge with 3-phase 11kW (! ) and drive back a couple of hours later. That trip would be doable by not even charging in Range mode and also driving in Standard mode.
Awesome blog. You really get the idea that Tesla is not only out to make a profit, but also to make EVs accepted in public by shedding some light on the matter instead of just putting a number out there. The 400 miles should be doable, although it's very hard for them to confirm it's not done via going down a mountain and/or trailing a truck or something. But I think that's not the point contest I'd love to see how the Aerodynamic wheels effect the range, if it's more noticeable at higher speeds (it should) etc. A 5% increase would push the figure just above 325 miles @55 mph (assuming it's currently 310 in the blog), and to 210 @ 80 mph. Testing will show that eventually, tho.
"One quick takeaway from this graph is that the 85kWh Model S is expected to achieve 350-250 miles of range during constant-speed highway driving at 50-70 mph with the conditions listed above. " Awesome, better than I was expecting!
In the conference call, Elon just said the 85kWh battery is EPA 2-cycle at 320 miles of range and 5-cycle at 265 miles.