Tesla Phantom Battery Losses of 20%

[Mediocrates]

While I dont disagree with your observations, I somewhat disagree with your conclusions. Any car, be it ICE or EV, is going to get -20% in the real world. It's how we drive. While the EPA estimate tries to give a bechmark platform to compare all vehicles to each other, it rarely reflects how we actually use our cars.

In the 4 gasoline vehicles I owned prior to my Tesla, I routinely achieved about the EPA rated mileage for city and highway driving, which proportionally shifted between the two based on how much of my driving was of each type. This was four different manufacturers and a variety of types of vehicles (2 sedans, 1 coupe, 1 SUV) in the span of about 15 years.

It's entirely about driving habits. Those who achieve lesser efficiency tend to drive with greater shifts in velocity. It's not even necessary to drive at the speed limit all the time on all roads, it's more about mitigating changes in speed.

 

[zambono]

I just lost 11 miles in 9.5 hrs of being parked??

I just bought a 90D last month (manufactured May 2017). I have a future trip planned where I will be leaving my Tesla Model S 90D parked in an airport parking lot in the sun, in hot humid weather for 11 days. To gauge the amount of battery loss while parked, I've been monitoring it at work during the hot summer days. Yesterday, it got up to 93 degrees outside. I was parked in the sun, on black asphalt, with a window sun reflector (the silver fabric thingy) in the front window, back window and sunroof. While at work for 9.5 hrs during peak daytime, I lost 11 miles of battery. I was in the car around 6:30 pm so it might have lost even more if it was sitting overnight. WOW, that seems like a LOT!! I never opened the app to check on the car during that time. Other days it has been between 6 and 9 miles during work days.

Is it normal to see that much battery loss? If so, I'll lose 120 to 150+ while parked and I am concerned about having enough to drive the 1.5 hrs home.

Is anyone else seeing this much battery loss?

Might be due to the baby protection setting if you have it on, take that off. If you have third party apps checking the status of your car, remove those as well. I actually never installed any of them because I am skeptical about their security practices.

 

[KidDoc]

Count me as one that never gets the rated range either - Ive always figured it was "normal" as I never got the rates MPG from any of my old cars either.

Here are several recent "longer" drives - you guys are saying this is not normal?

How did you generate these logs? Pretty cool data!

I think your car is fine based on the Wh/m you average, probably due to those 21" wheels. The rated miles is based on 285-290 wh/m I believe so if you average around there you will achieve rated miles. If you are under you will exceed, if you are over you will get less. My lifetime is 335 wh/m so I will average about 20% less than the rated mile display if I drive normally. On long stretches I just have to make myself drive more slowly.

 

[KarenRei]

Indeed, range of any vehicle depends on speed. But particularly EVs. Try out the Tesla range calculator:

Model S | Tesla

Note how strongly the range correlates with speed - much more strongly than with anything else (ambient temperature, heating, cooling, wheel size, etc). A P75 at 70kph goes 44% further than a P100D at 120kph.

To the OP: If you want to go further on the highway... just slow down a little. Doesn't even take a lot. The EPA has to guess at how people are going to drive, and they try for an average. You're clearly above average in terms of speed.

 

[KarenRei]

Count me as one that never gets the rated range either - Ive always figured it was "normal" as I never got the rates MPG from any of my old cars either.

Your info says you're from Phoenix. You don't list your vehicle. Let's go with a P75 with 21" wheels. For your location, let's say 110° with AC on. The range calculator says you should go 221 miles at 70mph. Your worst figures show 188 - but also that you hit a maximum speed of a whopping 93mph. Now you may think that it's your average speed (46mph) that matters, but it's not; average speed is a distance-averaged speed-linear rate, but what determines energy loss is a time-averaged speed-squared rate (or distance averaged speed-cubed rate). In plain English, time you spend going fast matters a lot more than time you spend going slow. The calculator also does not account for braking losses and similar, nor pack age.

The numbers you have probably make sense, but without knowing more (such as a more precise driving profile) I can't do better than that.

 

[HX_Guy]

How did you generate these logs? Pretty cool data!

I think your car is fine based on the Wh/m you average, probably due to those 21" wheels. The rated miles is based on 285-290 wh/m I believe so if you average around there you will achieve rated miles. If you are under you will exceed, if you are over you will get less. My lifetime is 335 wh/m so I will average about 20% less than the rated mile display if I drive normally. On long stretches I just have to make myself drive more slowly.

The logs are Teslafi.com.

 

[HX_Guy]

Your info says you're from Phoenix. You don't list your vehicle. Let's go with a P75 with 21" wheels. For your location, let's say 110° with AC on. The range calculator says you should go 221 miles at 70mph. Your worst figures show 188 - but also that you hit a maximum speed of a whopping 93mph. Now you may think that it's your average speed (46mph) that matters, but it's not; average speed is a distance-averaged speed-linear rate, but what determines energy loss is a time-averaged speed-squared rate (or distance averaged speed-cubed rate). In plain English, time you spend going fast matters a lot more than time you spend going slow. The calculator also does not account for braking losses and similar, nor pack age.

The numbers you have probably make sense, but without knowing more (such as a more precise driving profile) I can't do better than that.

The vehicle info is my my signature.

 

[KarenRei]

Unfortunately, that's not a precise driving profile

Out of curiosity, how does that TeslaFi thing work?

 

[HX_Guy]

Unfortunately, that's not a precise driving profile

Out of curiosity, how does that TeslaFi thing work?

Its a subscription based service and logs a bunch of activity on the car, its pretty cool for geeking out on data. Check it out at Teslafi.com.

 

[KarenRei]

Its a subscription based service and logs a bunch of activity on the car, its pretty cool for geeking out on data. Check it out at Teslafi.com.

I went to the site before, but the site answered pretty much everything except what I wanted to know.

How does it get this data, and how do you interact with it? Is it easy to get the raw data? I personally don't care about some fancy formatter that you have to pay for, to me it's raw data that matters.

 

[clostridium]

I went to the site before, but the site answered pretty much everything except what I wanted to know.

How does it get this data, and how do you interact with it? Is it easy to get the raw data? I personally don't care about some fancy formatter that you have to pay for, to me it's raw data that matters.

You can download raw data from the site if you want to manipulate it in other ways. The reports it does are quite nice though. It's worth the 50/yr for sure.

 

[HX_Guy]

I went to the site before, but the site answered pretty much everything except what I wanted to know.

How does it get this data, and how do you interact with it? Is it easy to get the raw data? I personally don't care about some fancy formatter that you have to pay for, to me it's raw data that matters.

It gets the data by asking for your Tesla.com login, to get some sort of key - thats about the extent of it that I know.

 

[KarenRei]

It gets the data by asking for your Tesla.com login, to get some sort of key - thats about the extent of it that I know.

Ah, bet it's the same approach as this:

VisibleTesla

Clever trick. Imitates the smartphone app. I may do that to make some data analysis tools once I get my Model 3

 

[SocalMS]

If I'm driving 298 WH/Miles since the last charge, I believe this is very NORMAL driving
. AC on
. Radio on
. (300 to 350)WH/Mile driving habit

I would say this is all normal driving.

Regardless of EPA reports or whatever... as a Tesla owner, I would much more appreciate a transparent reporting of HOW MANY MILES I CAN REALLY DRIVE.

With all due respect, I call BS on anyone who says they are getting MORE than the stated miles available... I just don't see it (and please share your magic with us).

If I see on my odometer (150 Miles available). I would like to know that I can "reasonably" get 150 miles, not 120 to 130.

Tesla should underestimate the miles available rather than over estimate. (since chargers are not available on every other street corner)

At this point, they are OVERESTIMATING...

 

[KarenRei]

Regardless of EPA reports or whatever... as a Tesla owner, I would much more appreciate a transparent reporting of HOW MANY MILES I CAN REALLY DRIVE.

I wrote software to do this something like 7 years ago. Worked great. Took into account everything from terrain to weather forecasts to battery age to driver habits and about a hundred other things, calculated your range on my different routes at once and then fit a polygon around it. You could even pick a random date in the future and it would use historic data (climatology, etc) to figure out what conditions are most likely to be then, and you could tweak conditions yourself. The company I started ultimately went broke.

Of the auto manufacturers that we reached out to, the company that was most dismissive of our tool?

Tesla.

They were the only one that never even tried it. Said something like "We do all software inhouse and will develop our own range tools". My company had a joint development partnership with GM when it went under (and I really just burned out).

Still pretty bitter about it, because now as much as then it still seems pretty obvious to me that EVs should have an accurate range calculator embedded in them. Just stating EPA miles is stupid.

 

[DB 2]

If I see on my odometer (150 Miles available). I would like to know that I can "reasonably" get 150 miles, not 120 to 130.

Tesla should underestimate the miles available rather than over estimate. (since chargers are not available on every other street corner)

At this point, they are OVERESTIMATING...

@SocalMS Did you check your Ideal vs. Rated setting yet? (see here for instructions)

 

[supratachophobia]

If you can't get EPA, you might consider how you are driving. Obviously in winter, very few cars get EPA. But otherwise, getting EPA is easy in almost any vehicle.

So don't use "we" to include me or anyone else who knows how to drive efficiently.

Care to give lessons on efficient driving? Unless you are the one that takes 2 miles to accelerate to the the pace of traffic on the highway, no thanks. I'd like to think there is a safe balance between reckless and hyper-miling, but I still submit that said balance is less than EPA.

 

[supratachophobia]

I wrote software to do this something like 7 years ago. Worked great. Took into account everything from terrain to weather forecasts to battery age to driver habits and about a hundred other things, calculated your range on my different routes at once and then fit a polygon around it. You could even pick a random date in the future and it would use historic data (climatology, etc) to figure out what conditions are most likely to be then, and you could tweak conditions yourself. The company I started ultimately went broke.

Of the auto manufacturers that we reached out to, the company that was most dismissive of our tool?

Tesla.

They were the only one that never even tried it. Said something like "We do all software inhouse and will develop our own range tools". My company had a joint development partnership with GM when it went under (and I really just burned out).

Still pretty bitter about it, because now as much as then it still seems pretty obvious to me that EVs should have an accurate range calculator embedded in them. Just stating EPA miles is stupid.

That is super-interesting. Did it ever make it into any type of production? Would we see it in the wild these days?

 

[TexasEV]

I
They were the only one that never even tried it. Said something like "We do all software inhouse and will develop our own range tools". My company had a joint development partnership with GM when it went under (and I really just burned out).

Good thing Tesla wasn't depending on your software, wasn't it?

 

[SocalMS]

@SocalMS Did you check your Ideal vs. Rated setting yet? (see here for instructions)

Not yet... I'll do it later tonight.. thank you....