Tesla Range - Surely there’s something wrong?!?

[Juve]

Collected my model 3 LR not long ago and charged fully to 90% last week with range showing as 292miles.

I’m now at 88miles showing on the screen and looked at how many miles I’ve done since the last charge...... 72miles! Surely that cannot be right? I know it’s been freezing cold and most my journeys are 10-15 miles then stopping/restart but l was not expecting this...

Anyone else with similar issues? Have I done something wrong?
I have the fans on low and seat heating on low most times but that’s it.

 

[M3PBOSS]

Collected my model 3 LR not long ago and charged fully to 90% last week with range showing as 292miles.

I’m now at 88miles showing on the screen and looked at how many miles I’ve done since the last charge...... 72miles! Surely that cannot be right? I know it’s been freezing cold and most my journeys are 10-15 miles then stopping/restart but l was not expecting this...

Anyone else with similar issues? Have I done something wrong?
I have the fans on low and seat heating on low most times but that’s it.

Do you have sentry mode on? That sucks up alot of battery

 

[Juve]

Sentry mode is off. Dash cam on as standard.

 

[MrBadger]

+1 on sentry. Otherwise ~1% per day (on a LR) would be perfectly normal.

And also short journeys take their toll. There is what some call a 'departure tax', a disproportionally high energy energy use in first few miles.

When it warms up, you should get close to, if not exceed the EPA range on med/long runs (but not at motorway speed limits). But you cannot look at short journeys and extrapolate the range out from them.

 

[mtndrew1]

Sentry mode is off. Dash cam on as standard.

Make certain you understand when sentry is truly off.

With car parked and locked check the app. If it says “sentry mode active” then you’re gobbling up several miles of range per hour with that.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Range varies a great deal (around 20% or so) on EVs, from hour to hour, day to day, month to month, in exactly the same way as it does with petrol or diesel cars. All types of car, bar none, lose a lot of range under certain conditions, always have, and always will do. EV's are no different, exactly the same factors that cause range loss on conventional cars cause a similar range loss with EVS.

Typical things that hit range for all cars are, lots of short journeys, having the heating or aircon running, cold weather (increases drag as well as needing more heating), driving style, and driving at speed.

I posted on another thread some data I collected during a couple of years of Prius ownership, showing the dramatic differences between the official range (converted using mpg and tank capacity) and the actual achieved range, and how it varied. I find that the Model 3 is broadly similar, as was the i3 I owned before it.

Have a look at the variations in range for a petrol engined hybrid, here: My first winter

Also worth searching other threads, as this has come up several times in the past month or two.

 

[tardis56]

Try turning off Bluetooth on yours and anyone else's phones that have the app on. This was suggested to me and no more battery drain now.

 

[init6]

I left mine for over a week and lost about 20% of battery. Very cold weather though. This was also the time I noticed the car was going into online/sleep cycles every 6 hours. Perhaps yours is dong the same. Do you have Teslafi or Teslamate? They will give you a better understanding of what your car is doing and maybe help you find out the problem. What % battery do you have left? The mileage is a guess at the best of times.
Have you been preheating your car? This eats up the battery, power especially on HI. IIRC I was losing about 5% in the cold weather we've been having lately.

 

[LongRanger]

Can you post a pic of your energy graph for last 30 miles driven.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Make certain you understand when sentry is truly off.

With car parked and locked check the app. If it says “sentry mode active” then you’re gobbling up several miles of range per hour with that.

It’s about 300w for sentry mode I think, so about 1mile each hour

 

[Dilly]

As a ‘departure tax’ guide. I do a community paper round 2 mornings each week. It’s a 2 mile round trip and takes about 20 minutes
I put climate on when I get up and leave it on until I’m arriving home.
It costs 13 miles of range this time of year but only 2 - 4 miles in summer

 

[adsheff]

I always say to change the display from miles to % - as the miles is just a guess and only serves to make you worry.

All you need to know is - it uses a LOT more energy in winter. Multiple short journeys use a LOT more energy than one long one. Sentry mode uses a tonne of energy, especially if its somewhere like a car park where people are walking past all the time.

 

[simonh]

Your number sounds about right for what you describe IME.

I was doing the school run twice a day (around 10 miles each time). Car cold, heating on 21C, less than 30mph for the trip, around 350wh/mi. The same trip with heating off, big coat on and I can make it to school on something like 220wh/mi!

It's not clear if you have the new 2021 LR with heat-pump or not. I'd suggest giving it a try with the heating off and seeing the difference in efficiency.

 

[Zakalwe]

I'm seeing exactly the same on my 2021 LR. The cold kills the range, especially if you just get into the car without preconditioning it. Things like the seat heating also adds to the toll.

Personally, I'm glad that I'm WFH at the moment. I can't imagine what my regular 150-200+ daily drives would be like in this thing at the moment!

 

[Glan gluaisne]

A large part of this problem is the range display. If conventional cars had range displays rather than fuel gauges, and people were used to using them all the time, then this would be a non-issue. The range in my Prius, for example, could be around 100 miles less in winter than in summer. As in one of the other threads on this topic, that car had an official range of ~650 miles, the very best range I ever managed from it (in summer) was ~600 miles and in winter the range often reduced to close to 500 miles.

This issue applies to all cars, irrespective of fuel type, but tends to be more noticeable with EVs for a couple of reasons. Firstly, people are, understandably perhaps, fixated on range with EVs. Secondly, EVs tend to have about half the range of many conventional cars to start with, so the drop looks more alarming.

The fact that my Prius had an official range of ~650 miles and a real-world winter range of ~500 miles wasn't very noticeable and barely impacted route planing at all. However, exactly the same percentage range change with an EV, say from an official range of 350 miles to a real-world winter range of 270 miles may well be something that is far more noticeable, and impact on route planning.

 

[Zakalwe]

Its not how the range is displayed, its how little you get in the cold and how vast the difference is in the real world from whats advertised.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Its not how the range is displayed, its how little you get in the cold and how vast the difference is in the real world from whats advertised.

Is it really?

The range on my last couple of (petrol engined) cars used to drop by about 25% in cold weather, compared to the official range. That's not a lot different to the drop in range I'm seeing with the Model 3. My model 3 seems to drop about 28% in range in winter, so slightly more than a conventional car, but in the same ball park.

How many people noticed that their previous cars lost about 25% range, compared to the official figure, in winter? I'd guess not a lot. Most probably knew that their mpg was far worse in winter, yet may not have done the arithmetic to convert mpg change into a range change.

 

[adsheff]

Its not how the range is displayed, its how little you get in the cold and how vast the difference is in the real world from whats advertised.

Perhaps some explanation should be given with advertised figures. The figures quoted are 'best case' figures. In my mind this is obvious, just like the MPG figures etc. The 'best case' figures for the Model 3 are realistic if it is warm weather. I got a range of 350 miles one day when I did a medium trip at average speeds on a hot summer's day. So the figures aren't misleading, they just don't explain that there is a big difference between summer/winter and continuous/multi-stage trips.

 

[simonh]

How many people noticed that their previous cars lost about 25% range, compared to the official figure, in winter? I'd guess not a lot. Most probably knew that their mpg was far worse in winter, yet may not have done the arithmetic to convert mpg change into a range change.

I never ran my ICE car with the 'miles remaining' displayed. Only ever looked at the fuel gauge. So, the first thing I did was switch to % remaining. If I'm doing long trips then I always put it in the sat nav to give me the % remaining at end of trip and make any plans from that (or use A Better Route Planner for longer distance multi-stop trips).

 

[Adopado]

Collected my model 3 LR not long ago and charged fully to 90% last week with range showing as 292miles

Unfortunately everybody initially wants/expects a range displayed after they have put some charge into an electric the car. That's different in ICE cars ... in that instance we are happy just to know how full the fuel tank is. The problem with displaying a range (and the reason ICE cars normally don't use it as the primary driver info) is that you have no idea what conditions the car will face when subsequently driving. Speed, length of journey(s), road type, gradients, ambient temperature, wind strength, wind direction, rain, snow or dry roads. So the car just presents a range that the car may be able to achieve in averagely good conditions driven conservatively on the flat ... whether you achieve this range or get nowhere near it "depends". (We also have a Fiesta that can predict range ... I've seen it lose 20 miles in 1 mile of actual driving! Many of us set the car to display percentage battery rather than miles ... equivalent to a fuel tank display.)

A more accurate prediction of range is given by the energy graphs screen, especially if you have set a destination or "Trip" in the nav map. It gives a pretty good estimate of how much battery you will use to reach your destination and what your real range is likely to be. You will also get to know the typical consumption that you get on particular familiar journeys by looking at the Wh/mile figure ... like miles per gallon with fuel. It you look at your energy graph, or even just your trip meter, you will see the Wh/mile figures ... lower is better!